"Attica, I need you to go into the back and sort out through the books," Mrs. Higgins said.
Maybe I should introduce myself. My name is Attica Corbett. I am twenty, never had a boyfriend, live alone and work in a bookstore in town. I lead an ordinary life, but I will not deny that there were times where I wished for some sort of adventure.
At the moment my boss, Mrs. Higgins, was asking me to go and sort out through the old books in the back to see what we could keep in storage and what could be sold as antiquity.
Taking out the first box, I began to search through the books that were in it. Most of them were just factual, every now and then would be an old fictional one. This was the same routine, until I came across a book that immediately got my attention. The Last Log of the Titanic. Quickly forgetting about the other books that had to be sorted, I picked up the book on Titanic and immediately began reading it.
I had not gotten much further than the second page when a sense of nausea and muscle aches came over me, my eyes began to get heavy. I attempted to get up and get some water to relieve the feeling, but it was no use, the sensation just made me completely immobile. Leaving me one hundred percent at the mercy to the pain, I tried one final time to cry out for Mrs. Higgins, but it was to no use and slowly my world went black.
"Miss?" I heard a soft female voice in the distance. "Miss Attica, please wake up. It is time to go." Slowly I opened my eyes to find a woman in front of me wearing a black dress with an apron. With a start I sat up in the bed that I was lying on, and looked around. The room I was in was a dark mahogany in colour and by the looks of it the walls were wood. There were a dresser and a mirror. All around me there were portraits and paintings. The bed that I lay in was a canopy bed with a rich red colour.
"Who are you? Where am I?" I asked the woman, who by this time had a look of shock written on her face.
"Why, Miss, you are at home in your bed, and I am Bryony your maid," she said, looking at the floor in a submissive way.
"Uh-huh," I said as I slowly nodded my head.
"Now, please, Miss, you must get ready! Your father sent me up here to get you out of bed and dressed, we must leave shortly."
"My father!" I asked, in shock. I knew that he had a taste for antique furniture, but this was over the top even for him. And to have a maid, that was something that was completely out of the question.
"Where is he?" I asked the maid. Perhaps he could tell me what was going on.
"He is waiting downstairs for you to get dressed. Now please, Miss, do get up," Emma said, and I could tell that she was getting anxious.
In a flash I threw the covers off me and ran out of the room and down the stairs, not paying any attention to Emma's cry of shock at the sight of a woman running around the house in nothing but her nightgown.
"Father! Father!" I called out as I searched for him.
"Attica, dear! In here." I followed the voice until it led me into a room where a man sat in an armchair with a newspaper. It was a man that I did not recognise: he had brown hair and looked far younger than the father that I knew. He must have been in his fifties rather than my father who was in his seventies.
"Father?" I asked with caution.
"Attica, what is the matter? You look like you have just seen a ghost," he said as he put down the newspaper to look at me, and slowly got up.
"Is everything alright, dear?" he asked.
"Yes – no! I am not sure," I told him as I walked up to him.
"Did you have a bad dream?" he asked as he gently pushed one of my curls behind my ears. That was another thing: since when did I have curls?!
"Yes, I think so," I told him as I looked down to the paper that he was reading and my heart did a leap into my throat. There, on the top of the paper, was the date April 10th 1912.
"Well then, go upstairs, get freshened up and dressed, and let's go, we do not want to miss the Titanic and keep Damion waiting." It was the first thing that he said that had truly struck me, the Titanic. We were setting sail on the Titanic, the voyage that turned out to be the greatest disaster in all of history. Then, however, I remembered what he said after that as well: Mr. Cooper.
"Father, who is Damion?" I asked, and he merely looked at me with a slight pity.
"My dear, that dream must truly have shaken you if you are unable to remember the name of your own fiancé" he said, and slowly, ever so slowly, I realized what a predicament I was in.
"What? No!" I almost yelled. I did not want to be engaged to someone that I did not even know.
"Excuse me!" my father said in a rage. "I am your father, and you will by no means speak to me like that. Is that clear?" I nodded, but in my heart I knew that I would fight until I did not have to marry an unknown man.
"Good. Now get dressed, and let's go." I merely gave him a slight glare and went back upstairs where Bryony was still waiting for me, this time with a bath drawn.
Once I was out of the bath, I was helped into a corset that, although my have taken away any kind of heaviness to my figure, limited my lung capacity to half. Bryony then proceeded to help me into the only travelling suit that had not yet been packed. It was an elegant white suit with buttons all down the front. It had long sleeves and a striped collar. My hair was pinned up, and to finish the look she placed a large, elegant hat with a feather at the side on my head. with that I once again made my way downstairs to depart on the greatest journey of my life.