Ship To Wreck // Zori

Cait
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Pronouns: she/her
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if looks could kill

Ship To Wreck // Zori Feb 1, 2018 19:42:22 GMT -5 via mobile

Post by Cait on Feb 1, 2018 19:42:22 GMT -5

PERCY ALTOR

"drown me in disaster"

[presto]

When I left today, I slammed the door right off its hinges. I’d been pissed off from waking up from another night I couldn’t remember, and the agitation grew when I noticed the sun already starting its descent towards the horizon. More wasted time. God dammit.

I shouldn’t be surprised. Cheap liquor is just an ally of time travel. A burglar in disguise, and I gave him the keys. Here, take what you want, because I have nothing, nothing at all. Losing time is a habit that I want to outgrow, but it’s a waste of space in my heart. There’s nothing but empty minutes to follow in my lonely footsteps.

The fire rekindled. It leapt to life when the door fell to the ground, as if that faint draft of wind had a voice of whispers, building the flames back up into the inferno reflected in my eyes. Haunting. We had a few quiet days in this body. That’s the best I can ask for. For her. For me.

Percy, so screwed. So quiet when she sleeps, but don’t you see it? She is always sleeping. She’ll never wake up.

She’ll never wake up.

She’ll never

wake

up.

God, shut up.

(Evidence of this harsh truth in the silence that precedes the self-inflicted destruction.)

I’ll deal with it later, I tell myself another lie to get me through another day.

No time for patience when the world won’t stop. No time for forehead kisses and sacred goodbyes, “I’ll be back soon,” when the ocean pounds against the shoreline. I feel the vibrations rattle my bones, but maybe that’s my own shudders.

(How can you live like this?)

When I look out from my place on the landing, I can’t fathom any of it. The finality of the dark blue, the intrigue of the unknown. Low tide or high tide, I don’t know, I don’t want to know. I’ve stopped looking into the waves for answers (there’s nothing there, it’s all in your head), so instead, they’ll just remain constants – beautiful in their terror, even now. Even after death upon death upon

something familiar; something foreign.

I force shaky steps towards the water’s edge, trying to forget, yet at the same time, trying desperately to remember what happened here, why, and how, and all the other unanswered questions the world wants to throw at me. I’m dizzy, and it’s not just the hangover making me nauseous in the glow of sunset. (I have to look away; the colours are too painful.)

This was a bad idea. All of it was a bad idea. I should forget this. I should go back.

(Go back to death, and quiet, and lost nights, and disappointment, and crestfallen sickness down unswept corridors.)

No.

No turning back now. I wasted half my booze money on this piece of junk. The old guy knew he was robbing me in broad daylight, but I suppose he also knew what stupid things desperation makes us do.

Stupid things like sail out past landfall safety towards a myth of an island on a piece of fucking driftwood.

Yep. Definitely still drunk.

I can’t know how long I sat perched on that piece of wood, struggling desperately against the waves that taunted me, threatened to reach out and touch. They know I’m an imposter. I don’t belong out here.

They make me pay for it when the sun has all but vanished, and all I have to guide me is a backdrop of waning orange and a weak light from an island wasteland.

I see it too late, as my head goes under again

and again

and again

so close

and yet

so far.

Tell me something I don’t know.

TABLE BY CHELSEY

[/presto]

i always used to be into writing sort of modern abstract
lyricism stuff (that were like) slight vague indications of a feeling.

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last seen Nov 16, 2024 7:29:34 GMT -5

Ship To Wreck // Zori Feb 9, 2018 18:23:19 GMT -5

Post by Deleted on Feb 9, 2018 18:23:19 GMT -5

Gander Ellesmere

He scaled down the western side of Denver’s hill, scarf tucked neatly underneath a heavy overcoat and hands nestled in pockets. A fresh snow fell the night before, dusting patches of the crumbling underbrush with white. Trees here bend their backs from so many years in the wind, forgotten and gnarled. He stopped to pick berries from a bush, and popped a few into his mouth, built a fire from the bits and pieces he collected at the forest’s edge. Spent the afternoon watching skyline clouds tumble passed; his father’d be back with his uncle and fish needing carving, but for now, he ambled. Reaching the outcropping overlooking the waves coming in, he stared out past the jagged boulders slipping above the water’s surface.

The rocks told time with salt and smooth edges. Worn down from the waves crashing and swelling, they were patient reminders that not even their solid permanence is immutable. They never learned to tell time like the mainlanders, slaves to numbers and order. Seasons shaped the steadiness of life, often stretching winter through their bones, and summer ending in a blink. Trust came from the water, and from what they could create. An islander was a part of the Rock but a servant to the sea; the mainlanders could have their capitol, and reapings, but that wouldn’t take away who they were.

Winds picked up and a steady drizzle fell. He waited, listening as the birds started to call—a storm coming off the coast. Wasn’t long until his father’s boat trudged out across the bay, and settled along the docks. Hanging on the deck was a net of fish to be scaled and cleaned. The men were already steady at work when Gander pressed out along the dock, and gave a wave. His father looked up from his spot on the bow to give a nod.

’S landers out ‘n the waves. His father wiped a hand over his nose and pointed back out past an outcropping at his eleven o’clock. He gave a shrug and turned to start gutting part of the catch, his blackened hands already fist deep in fish entrails by the time Gander drew close. Nay idea why there’n the water or why’s they came out t’us. He pulled out the spine and set out on his next victim, not looking up once to his son.

“Yah jus’ gonna leave them out o’er there?” Gander watched his father keep on with his work. The other men cleared off the refuse and started on their own lot. The boat rocked and shifted in the waves. No one wanted to bother with fools that came too close. They’d made their own trouble and were at the ocean’s mercy now. This would not have been the first time they left someone to find a way back on their own—but it wouldn’t be so for Gander.

He stepped to the dock and toward the little wooden boat. His hands tugged the rope to start the engine and he pressed out across the waves. Each rogue wave lifted him across the water. He scanned for signs of the wreck in as the sun faded across the horizon. Bits and pieces of wood knocked against the hull as he slowed, and listened to the steady drizzle and rocking waves. Was that…? He dragged the motor and pressed closer to the sides, hands outstretched. He was ready to go in if he needed, but atop a bit of wood he could see a figure.

“Grab both my hands and come in close!” His voice called out across the waves. “If ye can’t reach I’ll come in for yeh!”

Cait
Moderator

1,512 POSTS

Pronouns: she/her
last seen Nov 13, 2024 8:16:08 GMT -5

if looks could kill

Ship To Wreck // Zori Feb 18, 2018 8:46:11 GMT -5

Post by Cait on Feb 18, 2018 8:46:11 GMT -5

PERCY ALTOR

"drown me in disaster"

[presto]

Come to meet me in death: a vision of jagged stone illuminated against a dying light.

A voice, lilting and gruff and practiced in the art of storm manoeuvres, and there are bone white arms reaching in front of me, a mind of their own, desperate. Please, I want to say. Help me, I force my tongue to lift. My sister, it sits on the floor of my mouth, heavy and unmoving. Collapsed arms crumble under the weight of all these unspoken words, in the face of adversity. Unfamiliar; I probably imagined it, is what I tell myself as I fall, deeper, lower. Surrendered.

Come to meet me in death: rippling blue and sharp panes.

Funny. I always thought I’d be welcomed to an afterlife by the lost souls of my parents, floating around in retribution, because we all know they didn’t belong anywhere, sea or sky or land. Unfathomable spirits.

Eventually, that vision shifted to include my sister’s corpse. No smiling face of Ma; no permanent frown of Pa. Just lifeless eyes and a frozen grimace of pain. It’s easy to remember the ancestors of youth. They do no wrong in the eyes of the innocent. No flaws, just martyrs.

Not so easy when I’m plagued by a graveyard presence incessant, grown up out of the same blackened bedroom that calls its likeness to plague.

Salt consumes me, sticking to microscopic bronchioles I cannot see, but they close up in terror. Flakes of imitator dandruff, and they never leave. Nothing has ever left me. I miss the peace of my own, silent mind.

It roars.

I’m

going

to

die

and whilst I knew this day would come, it wasn’t meant to be like this – not like them and their stupid fucking burial rules.

It was passed out in a puddle of my own vomit, choked to death and left abandoned in the streets by runaway drunks. Not to be found until dawn had broken and the street cleaners came to clear away midnight disasters. Again, and again, and again.

It was quick, reckless and unorthodox. Rebellion ablaze, giving up and letting go of rules upon rules. Child, teenager, and an ending brought to light by pummelling fists or gunshot wounds. A smile upon your abominable face. To die as you lived. The dream.

It was in pain, as an elder, because I never believed in the sentiment of “passing away peacefully” after spending so long fighting for the right to breathe in and out and in through the salt. Alone, in a weathered house by the ocean that I never learned to love, clutching a photograph of a young girl I thought I’d forgotten.

These are all good ways to die.

But I didn’t want to go like them.

And now, this reality creeps on me, taps me on the shoulder and watches me desperately try to squirm away. The splinters dig in, harder still.

The light vanishes.

.
.
.

“Yah jus’ gonna leave them out o’er there?”

(No.)

(Yes.)

(Please.)

(No.)

(I don’t know, I don’t know, it could be so easy.)

(...)

(Yes.)

.
.
.

I can’t remember closing my eyes or swallowing down salt water like it was a reservoir of liquor, but the burning reminds me of the permanent numbness in my heart. Awakened, sluggish bones of familiarity and I kick, kick, kick, feel the beat, beat, beat of a heart on the brink of collapse. (I’ve been this way for a while now.)

“Grab both my hands.”

Okay.

“Come in close.”

Okay.

I’m shivering, registering for the first time the ice in my blood, and I am relieved for the painful reminder of life. Something sharp enough to help me find some remnant of strength, but it pushes back against me. As my hand touches skin, warmth flooding steadily from callused hands despite the fresh reminders of Winter aftermath, I sigh. Exhaustion. I’m as ill as the rest of them.

I can’t.

(so stupid, so stupid)

(so weak, so weak)

“I’m sorry,” I stutter, torn between pulling harder and pulling away, suspended in off-balance limbo world where down is up and the right to life is a privilege you earn.

Not for me.

(I can’t make it.)

Maybe it’s time to give in. Up.

(stupid)

(an idiot)

(we’re all)

(going)

(to)

(die.)

We’re falling through the sky, trees in the distance bent over backwards to witness this particular Song Of The Sea. My broken body brushes past boulders, stuck out from the ocean and rimmed with salt from the watery depths I’m drowning in. In another universe, it would be easy to fall in love with a place like this. To live free of fears; to not live beneath tragedy.

As I go under, again, again, again, I wonder whether I’ve been delivered this second chance.

(beat)

(beat)

No. The world isn’t kind enough for that comfort.

TABLE BY CHELSEY

[/presto]

Last Edit: Feb 18, 2018 8:53:23 GMT -5 by Cait

i always used to be into writing sort of modern abstract
lyricism stuff (that were like) slight vague indications of a feeling.

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last seen Nov 16, 2024 7:29:34 GMT -5

Ship To Wreck // Zori Feb 27, 2018 14:54:13 GMT -5

Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2018 14:54:13 GMT -5

Gander Ellesmere

Land dwellers misread the power of the sea. Perhaps they forgot what it meant to be at its mercy, surrounded by tides and shales of rock. Gander remembered being small, and taken to the ocean to feel the waves swallow him up. His father would tell him that a man was foolish to struggle against something so vast (back then he wondered why a child had to be scared into submission, but that was for another day). Waves could tip a boat, the weather could change in an instant at sea, and all the while there would be no one to know he had disappeared, swallowed down, down, down to the mud and rocks below.

I’m sorry.

No—he gives in to the waves, weakened by whatever weight he’s carrying. How long had he been in the water? Better still, how could his father leave someone so close to the shore to drown? The unnamed boy from the shore struggled and lost to the sea (Gander could see well enough he wasn’t familiar with it’s strength), but he wasn’t going to fade away. He ripped away his jacket and tore off his shirt, boots too, piling up his clothes at the end of the dingy. Waves rocked the little boat back and forth. He eyed the shore and took one last breath before launching himself off the side.

He was used to the crack of cold that rattled across his skin. The water in wintertime cut deep into his bones, and could leave one breathless if they were unaware of its touch. He kicked down and reached to grab the sinking body, arm wrapped around the boy’s waist, before kicking up with both feet. Rupturing the surface in a spray of salt water, he coughed. He made space for the boy to lean his head back against his shoulder while he kicked toward the toddling boat. Gander could feel the salt itch underneath his eyelids, and his lungs burned up toward the edge of his throat (mucus dripping out his nose). He swung around to the boat and pressed the boy against its frame.

“Hold… on…” Gander wheezed out. He idled there for a moment, their bodies swaying in the waves. By now his father would be setting off for their house on the edge of the rock. He probably hadn’t even bothered to look twice for Gander out at sea. “I have teh get’n… pull you up. Don’t let go and make a fucking mess ah’ this.” He shifted to the side of the boat and paused, letting the cold water slice down over his shoulders and onto his back. On a count of three, he reached over the side to grab onto a rope ladder, and pulled himself upward. He took a few deep breaths on his knees before turning to grab the boy again.

“Grab the rope and my hand…” Gander commanded. He let out the little rope and grabbed the boy by the wrist. If he fucking pulls me in… But Gander thought better of cursing. He leaned over and with a grunt, hoisted the boy with all of his might.