FATE, MAYBE?
Chapter Two
April 14, 1912, Sunday Night
Continuing into Monday Morning, April 15, 1912
It didn’t take long for me to get
settled in back home.
I had long ago set my things back
in their regular places. Looking around my room, there wasn’t much; I didn’t
even have a proper bed. There was a very old mattress on the floor, covered
with two shabby blankets, which were probably as old as the bed. The floor was
nothing but dirt, which made it dusty when you had walked over it many times
without sprinkling it with water. It was nothing grand and fancy, but it was
home.
I told everyone good night and
went to bed early. After the ordeal the other day, I didn’t have much energy.
I lowered myself onto the
mattress and quickly got comfortable. Then, I fell into what seemed to be a
deep slumber.
I knew I must have slept soundly
for a few hours, but sometime in the early morning, I started tossing and
turning, although I stayed asleep.
Water.
It was surrounding me in every
direction except up. I could hear the distressed calls of adults and the crying
of children. I wished I could help them, but I had no idea where the calls were
coming from.
Suddenly, I was standing in a
whitewashed room. There wasn’t much in it except for a few bags and two bunk
beds. All the beds were full except for one. Soon, I realized it was the room
on the Titanic I was supposed to be staying in. Suddenly, water started seeping
into the room from underneath the walls. I walked backwards towards the door
when suddenly I felt myself being pulled out of the room and I stood suddenly
on the outside deck. People were pushing their way towards the lifeboats.
Women were screaming and clinging
onto their husbands and children. The children all called for their parents as
they were shoved roughly into the boats.
Everyone was panicking, and they
couldn’t get the lifeboats with people into the water quick enough. Suddenly,
the ship began to tip and people slid off the deck and fell into the icy depths
below.
I was very aware of how cold it
was. I felt like I was floating and then looked around me. I saw that I was
surrounded by water. Something else was floating towards me. I swam over to see
what it was.
My heart nearly stopped when I
saw what it was. Two frozen blue eyes stared blankly at me. I screamed and
pushed the corpse away. Swimming backwards I ran into something else. I turned
around and saw another body, then another, and another. I screamed again and
then felt something suddenly slap me against the face.
I bolted up in my bed, almost
hitting heads with my mother, who was leaning above me with a concerned look on
her face.
"I’m fine," I said.
She just nodded and walked
towards the door, sending me only one more glance over her shoulder.
After she exited the room, I
looked around my room and saw that my blankets had both been pushed completely
off the bed. That was probably why I had felt so cold.
I got up, made my bed, then
crawled back into it. I sat there until the morning sun rose above the green
Ireland hills, too afraid to go back asleep. I just stared up at the ceiling
and tried not to think about the horrors of my dream.
Ironically, when you try not to
think of something, you only think about it more.