Water. Cold water piecing my body surrounded me. My brother, just six, was blue and his eyes were puffed and red from crying. A dreadful sight. Icicles formed on his hair and eyelashes. No doubt I looked the same.
All I'm hearing is screaming. Screaming for someone to save us from this nightmare that seems not to end.
I saw my friend, Evelyn. Her dark brown locks looked near about frozen. Her older brother, Thomas, was dragging her through the water trying to find something floating so the hurting would go away.
A man not far from this scene is blowing his whistle nonstop. But I can barely hear him. The sound of screaming seems to drown out the beating of my own heart that I can hear thumping away.
The man with the whistle makes me remember not long ago when they were crying, "Lifeboats!"
I closed my eyes and held Sammy close to me. He looked up at me with sad brown eyes. I thought of a fire. A scorching hot fire as if it could come into being and warm us. It did not.
Turning around in the water hurts so. It's as if a thousand knives are sticking through me. As I turned, I see another horrible sight. It chills me to the bone even more than the cold already has. A couple, a young lady with red hair and a young man who looks familiar, but it could be the cold is getting to my brain. Everything is blurry, yet so clear. It hardly makes sense in my own mind.
The man is attempting to help the lady get onto a floating object. A door, perhaps. The door can support her, only her. From here they look so sad. And why wouldn't they. If you stay in the water, cold as it is, long enough you'll…
I tried to think of a happy subject. Papa came home from work all cheerful-like. He picked Sammy, my brother, up and swung him around. Mama asked, "What happened?" Papa said, "We'll be going to America, third class, on the Ship of Dreams, the Titanic.
No words were needed. We set to packing.
The Titanic was bigger than life. It had everything. In our cabins, there were bunk beads. I let Sammy have the top bunk.
We met our newfound friends Thomas and Evelyn. Thomas was like the older brother Sammy never had. Evelyn, the sister to me.
It was a dream. Only a dream. And with dreams come nightmares to haunt you the rest of your days.
It started any other day. Our parents were at a late night party with the other adults and we were playing games in our friends' cabin.
Everything happened so fast. We felt a shudder and we heard a crack. Wanting to find out what it was, we voted to run up to the promenade deck. There we saw a humongous block of ice with which the teenagers from our class were playing with. The first thing that came into our minds was Snowball Fight!
For about twenty minutes, we were having a grand time. Then out of nowhere, the cry "Women and Children first!" rang across the air. We didn't think much of it until crew members shoved lifebelts into our arms.
The cries registered in our minds. The ship was sinking.
Everything happened so quickly afterword. We realized our parents probably didn't hear the cries and we went to find them. By the time we realized that they were probably gone, the water was up to my ankles. Sammy looked around, mouth agape, wondering how this could happen.
The lights were flickering on and off. It was so scary. I was really glad that my friends had stuck around this whole time.
By the time we came back up on the promenade deck, we couldn't find any lifeboats. Evelyn, the most optimistic of our group said, "Fear not! There are more things that can float besides lifeboats. Don't just stand there. Look!"
We did. But all we found was a barrel and a door neither of which we could carry. All of a sudden, we felt a great shudder and the sound of something breaking apart. Thomas looked ahead and shouted, "It's breaking!"
We all looked to where he was looking and that was our mistake. We felt ourselves plummeting downward. We were falling. Thomas, having fallen right next to me, whispered, "My God, the boat's rising." I looked up and saw Sammy descending. I reached out and took all my strength not to cry out when he landed in my arms. Up ahead, we could see people trying to get to the top of the ship. We all looked, and with a voice that sounded braver than my own, I shouted to be heard above the screaming, "We must jump!"
They all heard and we grabbed the rail. It was icy cold, but I believed the water would be much colder. "Get ready to fly!" Thomas said. He grabbed Sammy and threw him off the edge. From below, I saw Sammy give a thumbs up sign. Evelyn went next. Thomas helped me jump. Then Thomas himself.
Now we are back to where this story begins. I, Ruth Hawkins, a third class passenger of the RMS Titanic has witnessed the last days of her voyage. We didn't reach America. We are lost, orphans, in the North Atlantic.
"I l-love y-you R-r-ruth," I gulped and held my freezing brother closer.
From the corner of my eye, I could see the man kiss the red head on her hand and smile. I didn't have enough strength to even cry.
I closed my eyes. It took to much of my little power to keep them open. I was tired. And warm. It suddenly became warm. I felt myself freezing. I was in a world of darkness, then suddenly there was light.
I was dying. Slowly dying.
Then, nothing.