Titanic: What REALLY happened
A Titanic story by talking2myself
DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of the Titanic characters. If I did I'd be rich!
Yeah, I've heard the story. The poor lovers caught on the doomed leviathan. The whole standing on the front of the ship dribble. The infamous nude drawing. The big shiny diamond that caused all this trouble. I've heard them. The flowery sappy love rumors that have been circulating all over. And I bet you heard them too! I bet you were taken in by them. Well, I'm sorry to burst your romantic bubble, but I was there! And (you may want to sit down for this) it's not what really happened.
Oh right, introductions. My name is Trudy. I'm short and what I'd like to call plump, but mistress calls me fat. She never was very nice, mistress. And it's impossible for anyone to get fat on the salary she pays the help. I slaved away for that vile woman for too many years of my life, but at least we lived in jolly old England then. Safe and on solid ground. That is until the money ran out. I myself noticed my wages were getting smaller and smaller. So how does Mrs. Ruth DeWitt Butaker plan on solving this crisis? Marry off her only child and move to America of course.
The ship we were sailing on was the grandest ever built. An elegant RMS. The mighty Titanic. You know, I probably should've known that it would sink. Anything that big shouldn't stay floating for long. Too bad they didn't have a disclaimer about that whole "Unsinkable Ship" motto. Terribly ironic.
Well, anyway we walked up the gangplank. Miss Rose walking ahead and looking all pretty and distressed, and then me walking behind her carrying the bags. You know for going into the poor house she sure had a lot of clothes!
Now this is where loverboy comes in. Him and his friend come running up the gangplank. Supposedly, they were late. Supposedly, they won a poker game to get those tickets. Well, before we left I just happened to stop off at a bar. Hey, if I'm going to spend weeks at a time at sea with Mistress and Rose there's no way I'm leaving without alcohol... lots of alcohol! I saw their game. They were desperate and they owed those guys a lot of money. It all came down to one hand. I'm no Einstein, but I'm pretty sure that a pair of twos won't win any poker game. So what do the two geniuses do? First they claim that it's a full house. Then, they panic swipe the money off the table and the tickets and ran like hell out of the room. It was at this point that I realized I'd be late if I didn't get going soon. So I met my mistress and collected her fifty odd bags and walked up the gangplank.
Thing One and Thing Two were there as well. They were waving to no one in particular trying to blend in and look like passengers. Smart move since the Russians they had beat in the poker game were yelling at them and threatening to do rather unkind things to their bodies. Now I have a long running list of things I've learned from this experience and it starts out like this. ONE: don't get on ships that claim to be unsinkable. TWO: don't sign waivers before you get on ships that claim to be unsinkable, and THREE: don't mess with Russians. As I started to follow Rose I heard the two idiots babbling," We're luckiest sons of bitches in the world." I rolled my eyes. Seeing as they weren't being used as a Russian pinata I'd have to agree with them.
So while these two charmers are trying to look natural, me and Rose got settled into our rooms. I began going about the challenge of unpacking all of Rose's paintings which brings me to number FOUR: Don't bring valuable artwork when traveling. If all those Picasso paintings weren't decorating the ocean floor even as we speak, they would be worth approximately three hundred million a pop! Now I could get fat on that money!
Now I know that Rose was having a few issues with her fiancée. Cal didn't share her taste in art, called them "fingerpaintings." If I told him they were three hundred million dollar finger paintings he might've changed his tune. Anyway that was only the tip of the iceberg, (oh that was good!). I suspect he was bad in bed, maybe he was a closet case, I don't know, but they didn't like each other. They just had to suck up and get along to make each other look good. Rich people are funny that way.
During dinner Rose had her meltdown. It was kind of like a midlife crisis only it drove her suicidal. That's what she said later, but I think she just had a little too much to drink. Rose got all melodramatic and ran out to the edge of the ship. I followed her of course. They'd blame me if I didn't save her. So here's Miss Rose dangling over the edge of the ship all posed and everything. Then, she looks down. "TRUDY!" she screams," TRUDY! SAVE ME! HELP! I DON'T WANT TO FALL!"
I rolled my eyes and started to help pull her back inside the boat. I almost had her in when Romeo himself shows up. "Trudy, let go!" she whispered suddenly and resumed her dangling. I look over and Jack is standing there watching this whole thing. The way I see it. Either A. he'll save her and I'm off the hook. Or B. he'll let her drown and he'll get blamed for it and I'm still off the hook. So it's pretty much a win-win situations for yours truly. I backed away quickly watching Miss Rose shuffle her body so it's elegantly posed against the moon. When, I say elegant I mean she had all the right parts sticking out in all the right places. Kind of like a playboy ad.
I watched her coyly let this guy, Jack turns out his name was, talk her down. Jack in turn was doing this whole macho thing about winters in Chippewa Falls Wisconsin. Which yeah, the winters there are cold, but we're not talking sub arctic temperatures. And the good Wisconsin folks are smart enough to wear caps and mittens and not hang off the edge of a ship to get a man, so they stay warm.
In the end, Jack managed to lift her down from the bloody rail though it didn't go quite as gracefully as she made it sound. She collapsed on top of him, more like threw herself at him. I just sat there watching it like it was a bad soap opera. And just like all bad soap operas, the villain promptly arrived. Boy was he mad! Which leads me to lesson FIVE: NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES FIND YOURSELF IN A COMPROMISING POSITION WITH SOMEONE'S FIANCEE! Get that? Good! It's an important one.
So Jack being the handsy devil he was was going to be arrested. He almost was too. But then Miss Rose of all people slips a hundred into the arresting officer's hand. He "buys" Miss Rose's story about looking over at the engines and Jack is off the hook. There are casual thanks and the rest of us take off. I thought that was the end of it. That Jack would disappear and I wouldn't get anymore entertainment.
Boy was I wrong!
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here's a little fun fact for you. I actually live in Wisconsin about an hour away from Chippewa Falls so I know what I'm talking about here!