For a second, Jake hung to the rope in open-mouthed shock, staring at the wide open mouth of the Sunset Bar that had swallowed up his wife as gravity had made her slide inside of it, head first. He'd had her. She was right there. He could still feel the leftover grip from her hand in his. They'd actually been touching. And then she had been ripped away from him completely.
He could call the Entity now. Yes, there would be witnesses but the time had to be now. There was no way for Amanda to get back in time from the Sunset Bar. Surely she would be calling the Entity to be collected by the realm's fog herself...
But what if she wasn't?
That was a Hell of a slide she just made. And when she slid into that open doorway, it had been quick. What if she'd slammed her head against a wall or among the pile of junk that he was sure was in there and was either stunned or unconscious? She might not recover until the water hit her, or she might remain unconscious until she was underwater and drown. And the other, more terrifying possibility...Would she leave without him?
He had resolved himself that he would not leave the ship in the harness until she was with him. And he was further resolved now. He wouldn't leave for the realm until he was sure she was leaving with him. They would have left the ship together. Mere moments ago, that had still been possible. And now that things had gone south...He would not leave for the realm until he knew she was conscious and coming with him.
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"NO! GODDAMN YOU NO!" Shaw raged in his gravelly Welsh accent at the window and banged his fists against it in rage as Rogo was sheet white and silent beside him. Jake seemed locked in catatonia, he hadn't moved a muscle in his frozen position, harnessed to the rope and holding it in one hand as his face remained fixed towards the open entrance of the Sunset Bar.
Panicked, Rogo said, "What happened? SHAW?! What happened?! I can't see what you seen down dere! Tell me what's goin' on damnit!"
Shaw's voice was hollow for a moment. "The ship dropped and Amanda slid into the bar...And there's no way Jake is not going after her. It suckered us all. It let them believe...And now it's going to take them with her."
And then Shaw's rage overtook him again and he pounded on the window once more, raging. "NO! YOU BITCH! YOU CAN'T HAVE THEM! YOU CAN'T!" Shaw's eyes filled with tears of rage.
Jake suddenly moved, as if he could hear Shaw screaming above him. Jake was raising his head and seemingly looking up at him from the harness and it almost seemed like he could see Shaw through the window, though later, Shaw would tell himself that had been impossible. Shaw himself could barely see Jake's face from his vantage point but he knew what the expression on it would tell him.
Only feet below him, Jake's mind was entirely made up. Jake was not going to leave his wife. This was his worry at leaving before Shaw, and his worst nightmare was realized. He did not care if he died, he did not care if the Entity could not rescue them, even though, at the time, he couldn't understand a reason why it wouldn't be able to. All that mattered was that he was not returning to the realm alone, and he would not leave his wife. If the Ocean Princess claimed them as permanent passengers, so be it. They'd be together on the ocean floor. Being with her, even dead, was better than being without her and alive.
Shaw watched, helpless, but understanding, as Jake unclipped his harness and crash downwards, landing on his feet on the sloping deck, which was beginning to slope even more. Again the fall should have broken his legs as it should have broken Amanda's, but Jake seemed to have the same luck as Amanda, and he did not lay on the deck howling in pain. Instead, he simply laid on his back, legs in front of him, and slid down the deck into the Sunset Bar. Shaw kept a vigil at the window but he knew the truth and after all they'd experienced together his heart broke in his chest.
He was never going to see either of them again. Julie McCoy had joined Rogo, standing behind them, and the Dr. Bricker stood next to her, slinging an arm over her shoulder. Behind him, Shaw could hear her openly weeping. "They're both in there now," Shaw told the other three. And that was all he said. After all, there wasn't really much more to say.
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In the T.V. helicopter, both the cameraman and pilot were silent. They'd watched in anguish as the pretty American woman in the shorts had lost her grip on the rope and eventually slid into the interior of the ship. The man on the rope in the harness, the only other person on deck that hadn't left yet, had only stood for a moment or two before he'd removed himself from the safety of the rope to slide in after her. It must be her husband, they both realized. They'd seen she had a wedding ring on her finger when they'd watched her travel inside the ship. Had the man who was on the harness not known her, not been married to her, surely he would not have followed her just now...Because going after her meant that he would die as surely as she would.
The camera was still recording, but the hands holding it had fallen into his lap. For the first time in his life, the cameraman wished that he could shut off his camera. He'd filmed many things, but he knew, as Shaw had realized only moments ago in the other hovering helicopter, that the camera in his hands, and those build into the helicopter that were not controlled by human hands and this were not privy to human regret or emotions, had captured the last footage that would ever be collected of the two Americans alive.
He steeled himself. He had a job to do. It may be the first deaths he'd ever captured on camera but he had an obligation to see things through. He raised the camera to his face to capture the stricken cruise ship's final moments, including the event only seconds from occurring that the cameraman knew sealed the two American's fates beyond all shadow of a doubt.
One of the classical features of the Ocean Princess, a holdover of her ocean liner styling, was a mast fore and aft, similar to a ship like the Titanic. The masts, at the time of the Titanic's Atlantic crossing, were used to run wires for the wireless communications system. On the Ocean Princess, it was completely decorative. The wires that had streamed above the ship between the bow and stern masts had done absolutely nothing.
Well, almost nothing. When the ship broke apart, the last thing to separate had been those strong decorative lines. They hadn't wanted to part, and let the bow begin its progression to the sea floor. Eventually, they had, but the damage had been done. The brackets and bolts holding the stern mast in place had weakened or snapped, and now the increasing angle of the stern being lifted out of the water finally broke the rest of the bolts and bracketing, and the mast tilted forward. It crashed into the top of deck 10, the mast separating in half, and the bottom portion smashed decks eight, seven, and finally collapsed a portion of the superstructure above the Sunset Bar entrance, sealing it as though it were a cave-in before rolling off to port side and sinking into the sea.
The upper portion of the mast tilted perpendicular in its fall, slamming into the main deck and pounding the now-closed off Sunset Bar entrance even further, before tilting to port, upending, and joining the bottom half of the mast in its quick descent to the bottom.
With the forward part of the ship on its way to the bottom of the ocean, the aft portion from the bottom of the hull to the top deck was entirely open to the incoming water, and it soon was racing up the hull to claim the rest of the ship as tables, chairs, and other items slid unfettered into the water from the openings from her split decks. At the front of the fractured hull, the Ocean Princess was vomiting up everything that was loose.
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The interior of the bar was a cacophony of noise as everything not nailed down shifted and rattled. Jake heard two HUGE crashes behind him but he was afraid to turn his head and slide where he didn't want to. He grabbed at the bottom rail of the bar as he slid by to break his slide and screamed, "AMANDA!" "WHERE ARE YOU?! AMMMMMAAAANNNNNDAAAAAA!"
The bar was entirely silent. She did not scream a reply, she did not scream in pain, if he hadn't seen her slide in here, it would seem that she wasn't in this noisy, tilted room at all. He knew there was an exit at the other end of the room and had a moment of panic that she'd slid through it and was further into the interior of the ship. Maybe she'd already slid into the wall of water creeping steadily through the sinking portion of the ship and had already been drowned. Or perhaps she'd already thought her way to the realm. Had she left? No. He didn't believe that for a moment now. He'd already considered her doing so and had ruled out the possibility entirely.
She'd have been of the same disposition as himself. She'd have known he'd come looking for her, and wouldn't have left for the realm herself and risked leaving him to do what he had just done: Follow after her and hang here in the semi-darkness and shout for her until the water came to claim him. Christ it was dark in here. The bar had windows, but they were all deeply-tinted and let in little light. He didn't realize that the deck entrance to the bar had collapsed, which was preventing the sunlight from illuminating the room through the once-open door at that entrance.
Since it was a shorter slide, and he'd have a bit more control of the direction he moved, he let go of the lower rail at the base of the bar and continued letting himself slide down the path he hoped that she had. Following her route entirely was the only way he was going to find her, because she was obviously in no state to signal him. He kept his legs raised slightly and let the slant of the deck pull him along on his back. He could make out the Sunset Bar's alternate doorway and saw that he was to the right of it by several feet, so she definitely hadn't slid past this room, which filled him with brief relief. Eventually he reached the end of the line and his feet stopped against something soft. In the extremely-dim sunlight, he finally saw her. Oh fuck. Was she dead?
She was almost doing a headstand. Her head was pointed downwards, and her back and legs were pressed and curled around the pile of wooden rubble. She must have hit it head first, and the momentum lifted up her body before it settled in this bizarre position with her legs bent at an angle like she was kneeling, but upside down. He realized to his horror that he now had his feet pressed against her upper chest, and if he'd not been raising his feet slightly as he slid, he'd have the heels of his shoes in her face . He moved his legs at an angle and let himself fall sideways.
He rolled over onto his belly and got on his knees and let the side of his body press against the wood pile. He ran his hands all over her, feeling for broken bones, but came up empty. His roving fingers brushed the flashlight she still had hanging from her wrist. He flicked it on and raised it. She'd doubled over the strap around her wrist and it was likely the only reason it hadn't fallen off and rolled away. Her right arm limply followed the flashlight around as he raised it and pointed it to her face. Her head was bent backwards, the back of her head embedded several inches into the pile of broken table tops and legs, as though settled into a memory foam pillow, and he pulled her head free and supported it with his left hand as he used his other to dip under her bent knees and lay her on her back on the other side of his left knee.
Blood coated her head on both sides, and she'd taken an apparently deep cut to the left side of her chin which was now healed. Because she'd settled upside down, the blood had flowed over the left side of her lower and upper lips, her left cheek, her closed left eye, and her forehead before the healing apparently had stopped the bleeding. Was her neck broken? He didn't know. Her head hadn't been hanging that limply. The actions which had slowed her momentum before she slid through the doorway hadn't slowed her enough to keep her from crashing into this pile of destroyed furniture at considerable speed, that was obvious.
They didn't have minutes, they probably didn't have much more than seconds. He didn't have smelling salts. He needed her conscious if they had any fucking hope left of getting out of here alive. So, hating himself, he started slapping her face until she groaned and her right eye opened. As she fully regained consciousness, she noticed she was blind in one eye, and in a panic, clawed at her face and managed to scrape off the blood covering her left eye until both of them were open. She saw him, whimpered in relief and sat up to clutch him to her, the flashlight bobbing and shining its light all over the room.
If anything had been broken, it appeared that it was healed now, even if the break had been to her neck. He could see her legs and toes were moving. "Are you okay? Fuck you looked like you were dead."
And suddenly it was like they were simply back in their comfortable cabin, and not in the interior of a sinking ship. "Never better!" She yelled. Her voice was a mix of terror and panic but Amanda being Amanda, she found it within herself to fire off one more zinger, even in the situation they were now both facing. "I knew you couldn't resist the chance to fuck me! Better hurry! Fuck it, quickie it is!" She let go of him and her hands dropped in her lap. The flashlight settled there too, illuminating her legs. Jake saw they were also coated in bloom probably cut to ribbons from from the broken glass she'd slid over, that Jake's heavy jeans had prevented from reaching his own skin. Thankfully, the wounds themselves had healed. Her face remained fixed in a terrified grin at the joke she'd just made. She was going into shock. She looked like the survivor of a major car crash, with so much of her exposed body covered in drying blood, eyes crazed, mouth almost locked in a rictus grin.
He had to snap her out of it. He figured the best spot to think their way home was back on the deck and so he grabbed her shoulders and shouted at her, "Come on we've got to get back out the door and get the fuck out of here! Left! The bar has a low rail at the bottom!" The move worked, and Amanda started moving. They both gripped the carpet with their hands and dug in the toes of their feet as they made their way left across the tilted floor to where they could climb to the bar's deck entrance. Then Amanda screamed, "JAKE!" He looked at her, then looked up, and could see no sunlight. Amanda flicked her wrist to toss the flashlight into her palm and shined it forward. The doors were not simply closed, the deck had collapsed and the doorway seemed sealed off. He wasted a few precious seconds staring at the sealed doorway in disbelief.
She shook himself out of it. No. Fuck that, they were not beaten yet. He glanced to his right. "The windows! We've got to try and break out of one of the windows. Move to your right!" So they did. And they slowly made progress, angled above the doors of the bar's interior entrance. Amanda's lips curled once more into a grin. Her heart was beating so fast it felt like she wanted to pass out. She tried to think and couldn't, and simply let her body move on instinct to Jake's frenzied commands. After all, Shaw had left so now he was the VIP captain of the ship. They made progress and Amanda's rational mind started to once again take command and then her odd way of thinking returned and she found herself wishing that Captain Jake had a uniform on because what was better than a man in uniform?
And then the Ocean Princess, vengeful in her death, made one more move to smite them. After all, now that the ship had increased its potential victims from one to two, how could it allow itself to die without the presence of the ship's VIPs? Of course that was ridiculous, neither the ship nor the seawater had a brain, but in that moment, it seemed that both did, and that the seawater HAD truly spoken to it as it had stalked Amanda on deck six, flooding up the darkened corridor to try and claim her then. It hadn't been successful in that moment, but this was the last chance, and now it had both her and her husband at its mercy. All it had to do was get them closer to it. And the Ocean Princess aided the murderous water by allowing her stern to raise higher out of the water. The deck canted further and they eventually lost their tenuous hold on the carpet. Amanda started to move backwards first and Jake was only a split second behind her.
The doors at the other end of the bar were made of heavy wood, and equipped with automatic door closers, but the tilting deck and the heavy weight of the wood was making the closers fight a losing battle. Already they were handing partially open from the forward list, and they did little to slow Amanda or Jake's slow downward side as their feet met them. Instead, they opened further and the pair both kept moving downwards into the cabin-lined corridor below, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the darkened ship.
The door was out, the windows were out, and now Jake knew that they were down to their last chance. There was no choice now. Even though they were not outside, surely the fog could save them still. Jake screamed, "Fuck it! Forget it! No Time! Think! Now!"
And as they continued their gradual slide further into the ship's darkened, sinking interior, they called the Entity, together.
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Immersed in the beginnings of a trial, the Entity heard the voices of Jake and Amanda from the real world. "HELP US BRING US NOW!" "FUCK WE'RE GONNA DIE FUCKING SAVE US PLEASE HELP!"
The panic was so apparent in their thoughts that the Entity did something it had never done before. It immediately ended the trial prematurely and sent out its fog to save its favorite humans.
The Spirit was returned to the basement of the shack at Yamaoka Estate and she slashed her sword around in anger and confusion that the survivor in the blue shirt and brown pants that she hated, and that she had been chasing down was suddenly no longer in front of her.
At the camp, Ash, Jane, Ace, and Zarina stood in a square next to the fire and shared confused looks. The trial had only been going on for a minute, and yet it was over just as quickly.
Ash shrugged. "Maybe the Spirit saw me in the trial and decided to do some sort of ghostly rage-quit. I know she hates me. She was trying to chase me down but I was looping the Hell out of her. I'd be frustrated at me too."
He didn't think about it much more. He flopped in front of the fire as Jane Romero joined him.
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The water climbed further and further up the decks from the top of the hull to the bottom to claim its still-living prizes. Despite efforts to try and get some sort of hand or foot hold, Amanda and Jake were inching ever closer to it from the opposite direction. The seawater filled every corridor on every deck from floor to ceiling, and was coming to swallow them as completely as it was currently swallowing the rest of the ship. The aft portion of the hull was listing a bit to port, and so after they passed through the doors they both followed gravity until they were almost against the port side wall.
Jake thought quickly and grabbed her hand and used his other to stop their slide by grabbing the hand railing above him, next to the last cabin adjacent to the doorway of the Sunset Bar. He pulled himself to his feet and pulled Amanda up with him to grab the rail beside him. They had to keep their feet forward to keep them planted to the floor. Amanda could hear the thunder of the water and locked her left hand on the railing in a death grip. She stupidly decided she had to see it as well. She raised the flashlight and turned, pointing it down the corridor, and immediately knew how stupid her decision had been. It illuminated a wall of water from floor to ceiling, rising higher and higher to swallow them, 40 feet away and rapidly climbing. She screamed at the top of her lungs in her terror and fear.
Jake turned at the sound of her scream and and saw it in the flashlight beam and it made his heart beat even faster. She turned and slapped her right hand against his back in a panic, and the flashlight thudded into his back as well. Her screaming turned into words. "WHATDOWEDOWHATDOWEDOWHATDOWEDOWHATDOWEDOWHATDOWEDO!?" Amanda's voice was complete panic. They were trapped and waiting for the fog and Jake somehow came up with the resolve he needed. He knew what they would do. It wasn't much considering but it would buy them a few more precious moments, he hoped. There was a closed stateroom door next to him and thank God or Entity the door was unlocked and the knob turned in his hand. The door swung open and pulled its knob from his hand and slammed into the wall.
He pulled himself up the rail and stood in the doorway, holding onto the frame as Amanda pulled herself to him and leaned against the other side of the doorframe with her right shoulder, instinctively pushing her left hand into his right arm to help support him. The only thing in the stateroom that wasn't in a pile against the downward wall was the headboard and frame. Everything loose, including the bedding, had slid down and against the wall first, and the mattress and box spring had fallen and landed on top of it. He moved into the tilted cabin with Amanda following closely behind.
The highest point, and the one most distant from the rising water, was the headboard bolted to the wall. Because of it's location, so close to the Sunset Bar, Jake reasoned this was likely the prime cabin reserved for a professional shipboard drunk. They walked sideways, standing at an angle on top of the fallen box spring and lunged in tandem to reach the bed frame and they climbed up the rest of it towards the headboard as the sunlight streamed through the porthole next to them, fully illuminating the cabin. Amanda, to his left, locked her fingers around the top of the headboard and Jake, to her right, did so as well. He glanced at the porthole but saw that only Amanda would be small enough to fit through it.
Jake glanced at his wife and saw that Amanda, her mind at the end of the line, was no longer able to ignore the fact that the sea was coming for them and this dry cabin would only give them an extra minute or two of safety. Rational thought had short-circuited and she had seemingly shut down and how in the fuck could he blame her? She screamed until the air empties from her lungs, and then drew a breath only to scream again. Jake wanted to scream himself because they had maybe a minute, tops, before the water filled the room and they were carried to the bottom of the sea with the remains of the Ocean Princess.
Where was the fog? FUCK where was the fucking FOG They'd called the Entity the fog should be there where was it where was the fucking FOG?!
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Chugging through the waves, the sole rescue ship of the morning, the Norwegian Star, made it back before the Ocean Princess sank. Vandenberg was standing on the deck of the little ship and could see it as they approached. But as they got closer and closer, Vandenberg's heart fell. He could see that the Ocean Princess only had minutes left to live.
The engines died away and the passengers they had saved all slowly made their way up to the top deck and joined him. The last to arrive was Captain Gomez. "I'm sorry Adrianus, we can't risk getting any closer or we may be pulled down by the suction. Surely everyone is off the ship by now. We did our best. We helped save many."
Vandenberg nodded. He felt the Captain was right, he had to be. But then he looked up, and he saw the T.V, station helicopter was hovering over the sinking ship, which made sense, but he also saw one of the bigger rescue helicopters also remained hovering. If everyone had been evacuated, wouldn't they have turned and headed to the airfield by now? Surely the people who had almost died on the ship would not want to watch her take her final plunge. The only reason the helicopter would remain hovering over the ship would be because...
Because they hadn't got everyone off, his mind answered him. Because there were still people aboard and they were waiting to see if they somehow survived...That was the reason, wasn't it...
He looked at the ship, and felt more and more depressed, feeling the conclusion was right. There were people left aboard...But who? He turned to look at the ship once more, but soon he and the other passengers and Captain Gomez were enveloped in a fog bank that had approached from behind them and quickly made it impossible to see anyone but themselves on the Norwegian Star's deck.
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Shaw was looking out the window as the stern of the Ocean Princess rose higher and higher out of the water. He hadn't noticed the Norwegian Star had returned. Tears were streaming from his eyes. The bitch. She had to kill someone, and had taken the two. The bitch. The smashing and collapsing of the Sunset Bar's deck entrance had been a final exclamation point on their fates. It had trapped them. It would not let them go.
"What da Hell is dat?" Rogo had moved to a window further down from Shaw. Shaw turned his head to try and get a glimpse of what Rogo was looking at and looked towards his left and in all of his years alive he'd never seen anything like it.
A fog bank. A HUGE fog bank blanketing the ocean and approaching the sinking Ocean Princess. It moved in a swath almost a mile-wide, covering the surface of the sea. It moved quickly and swarmed around the sinking ship and stopped, blocking the entire sinking hull from sight. The shock of seeing all of it stunned him and all he could do was stare.
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The Entity was...Displeased. Not at its favorite humans of course. They were in trouble and needed its assistance and it rushed to provide it.
No, it was displeased at the situation. in the real world, the fog was not as potent as it was in the realm. It could not penetrate the surface of the water and it swirled around the portion of the hull that it knew Jake and Amanda were on the other side of, and it also was unable to penetrate the steel hull to claim them. It attempted to move through the Sunset Bar, but the structure collapsed and made a seal over the cabins beyond it.
If it did not find a way in before they submerged, they were doomed and it could not save them.
The Entity did not like the powerlessness and displeasure it was feeling.
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The room was moving more and more perpendicular...And the noise. My God the NOISE as the metal hull creaked and popped, doors were ripped from hinges, and the water roared up the corridor towards them. Amanda and Jake were hanging onto the massive square headboard for dear life, suspended in the air, legs dangling. The air pressure was building and building and was filling his head and God it was awful and it made him feel dizzy.
He looked at the porthole next to the bed to his right and he would never know what compelled him to do what he did. He made sure he was gripping the headboard as tightly as he could and swung his right foot as hard as possible into the porthole's glass. It refused to give, but one of his kicks sprung the latch and on his next kick he knocked the porthole wide open. The fog immediately sensed it finally had a way in and swarmed around the porthole but the rush of air from the ship kept it from making its life saving entrance.
Amanda continued to scream beside him. From somewhere deep within her, her brain recovered enough for her to say what she was now sure were the last words she'd ever speak to him.
"OH FUCK OH FUCK JAKE I LOVE YOU I FUCKING LOVE YOU JAKE I LOVE YOU I DON'T WANT US TO DIE I DON'T WANT TO LOSE US JAKE I WANT TO TOUCH YOU ITS NOT FAIR FUCK!"
Amanda looked over her shoulder and the brief moment of clear thought left her once again. She screamed and cried and kicked her legs in hysterical panic. Jake looked over his shoulder and saw what she did, the wall of water pouring in through the door, filling the cabin, and rising towards them. Jake managed to scream that he fucking loved her too. They were going to die together. It seemed clear the Entity couldn't save them in time.
Air continued to rush from the cabin through the open porthole in a loud roaring whistle. The fog rushed towards it again and again but it still remained blocked from entering by the air breaking it apart as it rushed from the room. Still, it never gave up. The Entity never gave up, and finally the rush of air tapered off and the fog could finally flood through the porthole and it swarmed over Jake and Amanda as the water surged above their feet, then their ankles, and tried to suck them into their watery deaths and prevent it from saving them. But the water was no match for the fog, even in its weaker state from being in the real world.
It was the fog of a God, and that God was damned if it would let this arrogant, murderous water even believe for a moment that it was going to claim the lives of the Entity's two favorite humans.
In seconds they were gone, safely on their way back to the realm. Back to their home. And only seconds after that the water filled the room completely.
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The bow of the Ocean Princess had knifed through the depths at an almost perpendicular angle, belching much of what was inside behind it to form a debris trail of items such as clothing, unbroken glasses, books, dinner plates pots and pans, and wine bottles. The bow mast had long since given in to the momentum, snapping backwards to crush the bridge before it was pulled free of the ship. It hung in the water for mere seconds before the weight made it follow after the front half of the ship it had separated from like a faithful dog.
The water had ripped off the remains of the bridge roof off and torn off a portion of the roof over the roof decks. The high tech navigational equipment was also pulled free to sink slowly after the ship. She reached a top speed of 25 miles an hour before the bow struck the bottom at 5,910 feet. More than half of the bow disappeared into the silt and the anchors sprung free of their mounts to bury themselves as the hull plating was crushed, fractured, and buckled. It hung perpendicular for a moment before the rest of the ship tilted forward and then fell, pulling what remained of the bow free from the silt. She slammed down on her superstructure, buckling and crushing decks as she settled in a capsized position. The entirety of decks 10, nine, and eight were flattened into the silt. seven was half crushed, and the remainder of the decks all saw collapsing and breakage as the steel bucked and broke from the impact.
Then, the noise stopped, as the lighter items still sinking in a long, huge swath above it settled in colorful snowfall on and around the crushed forward portion of the ship.
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Shaw and Rogo looked down at the water, their mouths open. As suddenly as the thick fog had appeared, it was gone. Only the final 20 feet or so of the stern portion of the Ocean Princess was above water, perpendicular. Her propellers, long frozen, glinted in the sunlight. She seemed to be clawing at the air to stay above water but there was no chance. Over the next 30 seconds he watched it disappear further, and further, until it was gone completely. The time was 11:53 a.m.
The shock of the sight of the fog left Shaw's mind and it once again filled with the sadness of knowing the coffin of the Ocean Princess had doomed the couple to being permanent passengers in its watery grave. Three inflatable life rafts bobbed on the surface, two of them capsized, the third upright but awash with water. They were joined by multiple lifeboats that had been broken free of the davits. They surged up through the water like corks popped from a champagne bottle before slapping back into the water and bobbing up and down.
He wept. And beside him, at the other window, Rogo wept too. The pilot, even though he knew it was entirely futile, hovered over the shipwreck to see if the last two people that had been trapped inside of her broke the surface somewhere, or popped out from one of the upturned life rafts. He waited and waited. All that remained of the ship now were the now-useless boats and other light debris.
You miserable bloody bitch, Shaw thought as he stared at the last remnants of the ship. And then he thought of a word that Amanda would have been proud to have heard come from him.
Fuck. It's not bloody fucking fair.
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With the fog once again lifted, Vandenberg, Gomez, and the other passengers had also watched the final death plunge of the Ocean Princess. Many of the passengers were crying. Vandenberg looked up and saw that the big rescue helicopter was still hovering, and he knew for sure now. There had been people left behind, and the pilot was keeping the helicopter there in the futile hope that whoever had still been on her when she sank would somehow come to the surface. If the helicopter had merely been waiting to observe the ship's final plunge, it would have left by now.
And Vandenberg joined the passengers in tears, wondering who were the unfortunate ones that had not been pulled to safety. He hoped and prayed that the cursing American woman had not been among the unlucky, but later, he learned that she was and the news had been brutally devastating.
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As the helicopter had hovered and waited, the stern sank into the deep blackness. Despite being almost perpendicular as she sank, eventually she settled upright as she was carried by gravity to the bottom, also belching looser, lighter items in her wake like confetti as the bow had done. Above the surface, the T.V. station helicopter turned away. The pilot and the cameraman had seen more than enough, and the sight of the woman and her husband not making it off the ship, they knew, would haunt them for a long time.
The Chinook remained hovering for a full five minutes, but eventually, the pilot knew that so much time had passed that even if the couple had made it off the ship, they'd been underwater too long and had drowned. With a heavy heart, he turned the helicopter from the now-calm sea and took it's rescued survivors to dry land. Shaw, Rogo, and Julie McCoy intermittently shed tears the whole way.
A mere 30 seconds after the pilot turned the helicopter away from the site of the sinking, the entire keel of the stern of the Ocean Princess slammed into the silt at a speed of around 20 miles per hour. The effects were devastating. It was as if the entire ship was crushed in a compactor. The decks squished together. Had their bodies still been in that cabin on deck six, Jake and Amanda's remains would have been rendered unrecognizable, and there would not have been much room for their spirits to move around as they haunted the blackness.
Everything on the stern collapsed on itself in the span of about 30 seconds, and it no longer had any sort of appearance of a ship. The plates sprung and bent outwards and by the end, most of it looked like a pile of brightly-painted sliced deli meat.
And then slowly, and patiently, the lighter debris coated it like it had the bow section of the ship, as well as the pitch blackness of the sea floor around it. The bow's final resting place ended up being about 100 feet from the crushed and maimed aft portion of the Ocean Princess. The her death had not been pretty, and the speed and depth of the ocean she sank into had made it so her corpse would have required a closed-casket funeral. It was a long time before all of the lighter debris that couldn't rise to the surface finished settling on, around, behind, and forward of both smashed and annihilated sections of the once grand dame of the seas.
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Jake and Amanda opened their eyes, high and dry, in their cabin in the realm. Jake was numb with shock. He slowly got to his feet and struggled to process the fact that they had been less than 30 seconds from drowning in that ship. He'd been standing at an angle for so long that standing normally was almost a foreign sensation and he swayed almost drunkenly on the solid wooden floor. Amanda also swayed and stumbled around the cabin in a jittery crouch, wide-eyed, teeth chattering.
For 20 seconds, nothing happened. Then Amanda screamed. She ran at him and she screamed and she beat her hands on his chest and began crying again in leftover hysteria. "I AM NEVER EVER EVER GOING ON A FUCKING BOAT AGAIN NEVER EVER DO YOU FUCKING HEAR ME NEVER!"
The survivors, grouped around the fire, looked among themselves in wide-eyed confusion at the sound of Amanda's voice. Has they been out of the realm for two weeks already? What had happened? They'd never heard her scream and wail so loudly in all the years they'd spent with her at the camp. Ash looked among them and the slowly, and carefully, made his way towards Jake and Amanda's cabin.
Amanda cried for several long moments, heartbreaking wails that stabbed at Jake's heart. Finally, the wails lessened and the blows of her hands lessened and he took her in his arms and held her as she cried. "If you...Hadn't opened..." She couldn't finish the words. She couldn't finish the harsh reality that if the porthole hadn't been opened they'd now be dead and drowned.
Jake said nothing, but he knew she was probably right. The fog came for them but outside the realm but it didn't appear to have the power or ability to reach through the water or pass through the metal of the ship. He felt the same way as Amanda. The only thing he believed that had saved them was opening that porthole and giving it access to them. His numb mind saved the information for later. If there ever was a later. Their first trip to the real world had ended prematurely and with the pair of them mere seconds away from death. It was not a ringing endorsement for them to return to the real world any time soon. Shit, the next trip would probably result in them nearly being killed by a fucking falling asteroid.
His mind kept spinning as he considered the implications. After all, their leftover healing abilities saved them from damage that ordinarily would have killed them. Would they have stayed down there, trapped in the water, being somehow healed from the drowning for the remainder of the time it could fully heal them or would they have immediately drowned and died? The thought of it chilled him to the bone. Drowning and undrowning, trapped in that pitch black cabin over and over again until finally drowning completely? Did he even want to fucking know the answer? No, not really.
But the answer, of course was yes.
First, the abilities would have healed their crushed bodies. Then it would have kept emptying the water from their lungs, but with the decks crushed, Amanda and Jake would have remained pinned solid in the darkness, unable to move. The water would have kept drowning them, and the realm's powers would have continued emptying them in a seemingly endless litany. After the full powers had dissipated, the half-power would have kept them alive for a further two weeks, though the healing would have been slower. But Jake's horrifying speculation was true. Amanda and Jake would have been in Hell, unable to communicate and being revived over and over for about three weeks before the powers finally ceased and they could finally, and by that point, blessedly, die. When the water would have filled their lungs for the final time, the relief of it would have seemed like a miracle.
Jake did everything in his power to forget that he'd even speculated on what would have happened if they hadn't gotten off of that ship. They'd watched "Titanic" and thought that the last moments for those poor souls would likely have been awful, but now they experienced it for real, themselves. They had experienced what those real-life passengers inside the Titanic had felt as the water pinned them in the darkness and drowned them. Awful didn't even begin to fucking describe it.
"Four times..." Amanda choked out the words through her tears..."Four times The Entity saved me four times now...We were at the brink of dead and it saved us..."
Amanda broke down again completely. He pulled her to the bed and laid down with her and held her and she cried for at least another 30 minutes off and on. Jake sometimes cried with her. After about five minutes or so, she'd seem to be collected and then she would cry again strongly. He'd almost feared that even though she was now safe with him, that her mind was not going to finish recovering and that she would have a complete mental breakdown. I mean, how could that be beyond the realm of possibility?
He'd experienced the same things and felt on the brink of it himself. He'd felt the water pulling at his ankles, he had almost heard it whisper at him to quit fighting and let it claim them. It would make it quick, the water seemed to soothingly say to him in that moment. It had taken him all of his willpower not to listen to it, especially when it had seemed that they were only prolonging the inevitable.
They'd been heroes on the ship but no matter how much they had done nothing could have steeled them to the cold finality of death. He knew it was even worse for Amanda because she HAD died before, and once again, in that moment, had known it was coming for her to finish what the Entity had prevented it from doing the last time. And again, without that porthole being opened, he was sure that this time it would have been successful.
Thankfully, after a half hour had passed, it seemed that she was on her way to a full recovery. The anger she had expressed towards him, which he knew was simply a side effect of her twisted nerves and hysteria, also completely dissipated and she crushed her warm little body into his and started speaking in a guilty rush of words. "I'm so fucking sorry I yelled at you honey. I'm so fucking sorry if it seemed I was blaming you because it's not your fucking fault that it happed and...You came for me of course and at least we would have died together because if the roles were reversed I'd have done the same because I wouldn't have wanted to fucking live without you I'd rather be fucking dead and the beginning of that trip was fun but never will I ever ever ever get on a fucking boat again not even a fucking rowboat."
And she cried again for a moment before she collected herself. "I want you and I want us forever Jake and I lost it and was hysterical because I knew, I KNEW that we weren't going to get it. In that moment I knew forever was over and I never want to lose forever but i was so sure in that stateroom that it was gone and...FUCK."
Jake firmly agreed and told her so. The Entity looked in on them of course but felt it had nothing worthwhile to say. They were back in the realm and safe. It looked into Jake's mind and saw the final moments play out through Jake's eyes and the Entity thought that the horror they had just faced was worse than any of the horrors they would ever face in the realm. The ship and the sea had almost been more deadly than all of the realm's killers, combined.
It knew they would recover and cope, and it could already sense that they were calming and recovering. It left them to their solitude to fully recover from their shock and heal. It would speak to them after. They'd been seconds away from real death and they needed to cope through it as they were doing. For a long moment, Amanda and Jake stayed with their bodies pressed together, relieved and grateful to be alive.
Ash had finally made it to the cabin. He looked in the window and departed. The outburst they'd all heard Amanda have seemed to be well over now. Whatever they'd done on their two weeks away from the realm, they certainly wouldn't do it again.
"They're on the bed now, it's fine, they're not divorcing or anything," Ash told the other survivors clustered around the campfire as he returned. "Not sure what happened but it was bad and if they want to tell us about it I know they will." Heads nodded in agreement. "Just relax, I'm sure they'll be feeling A-OK soon."
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They snuggled. Amanda occasionally shuddered involuntarily but she had stopped crying. After all, this time the bed they were in was not perpendicular, which made cuddling next to the man she loved with everything in her heart and body a lot fucking easier.
Their nerves calming, Jake finally found it in himself to crack the first joke since they'd returned. "I know that since I will likely live forever that I will never forget you yelling at me as that ship sank that you knew I couldn't resist fucking you, and then before, when you were hanging on that rope and saying we should fuck since we were the only ones left aboard. "
And she laughed. And she cried a little but she laughed more than she cried and she squeezed him tightly and said, "And you didn't take me up on it either time. Even when I said that a quickie would be okay. I must be losing my looks."
Jake chuckled. "No quickies, I want the time to do it right when I fuck you. If we died before orgasm where's the fun in that? Hell, hearing the noises you make when you cum, and watching your body tense and your cute little toes curl feels almost as good as when I cum in you myself. I love that every time I've fucked you, I've always made you cum at least once. I feel like a fucking sex God."
Amanda giggled. "I love that you love that. But even in those moments, not reaching orgasm wouldn't have mattered, I think. I know that's probably crazy to hear me say. "But if I was ever sure that I was going to die just feeling you inside me, being one with you in my last seconds of life...Would have helped me cope. Yes, I'll admit it. For that moment, just being able to feel you snugly inside of me would have been enough."
Now it was Jake's turn to giggle. "I'll remember that if we decide to fly anywhere and the plane looks like it's going to crash. Or Hell, in any disaster situation that is clear we're not going to survive. Get inside my Amanda, and wrap our bodies in each other until we take our last breaths."
She smiled. "I know we couldn't even touch each other in that ship's cabin but I think even if you just held me tight and we told each other we loved each other until the end I could die happy. I think that got to me as much as knowing we were losing forever. Knowing we were going to die and not being able to feel you hold me one last time. We couldn't or we'd have just gone in the water and we wouldn't be here now so it's not like I don't understand that but...Even in that terror my heart was aching at not being able to feel you in that last moment I was alive. I truly thought we were going to die in that moment. And it's not the Entity's fault, not at all. It warned us that it would take a bit of time for the fog to reach us in an emergency. We got lucky this time that it could pull us back here. I definitely never want to do ANYTHING that gets us that close ever again."
He put his hand under her shoulders and pulled her upwards so she could rest her chin on his chest and said as he looked in her eyes, "It's over. Lucky or not, we made it, and I thank the Entity for that. We're here and we're safe and I have you, and you have me. And if I'd died the last thing I would have heard is the most important words you say to me. You say it to me often but when you say it in that particular way, I know it's because you're so overwhelmed that you can't say it any other way.
Amanda drew a blank. All she remembered was screaming in terror. "I actually managed to form a sentence? I really don't remember doing anything but scream when we were hanging on that headboard."
"There were a lot of fucks thrown in there, but the last thing you were really saying to me right before it looked like it was over was that you fucking loved me. And when you say you FUCKING love me I know it's extra special. Your love for me completely fills you in that moment, and if that had been it for us, hearing that one last time would have helped me cope with oblivion. I even managed to tell you I fucking loved you too."
Amanda smiled as she stared at his face. "Well I do, goddamn it. Even when you take me on floating deathtraps I fucking do. How could I not when you followed after me? When I fell through that doorway there was no hesitation was there?"
Jake shook his head. "I looked up at the helicopter and I don't know if Mr. Shaw saw me or not, but of course. I let go and I followed you. That was never in doubt. We left that ship together or we went down with it together. I even forced him to go before me because I wasn't leaving the ship without you, and thank God he listened to me and left me, because I'd have felt like shit if he'd died. I'd have probably gotten back off the helicopter but even if we'd done what we just did, Shaw would have probably been left behind to drown and that would have been gut-wrenching. I'd have never gotten over that guilt."
Amanda nodded. She felt the same. then she lightened the mood herself. "Well, I don't think we need any further proof of our love, do we? Neither of us were leaving that ship without the other. I would not have left without you. I'd have always chosen to go down with you than leave without you. I'm completely at the point where I'd rather be dead with you than alive without you."
Jake smiled. "I feel exactly the same, and...I promise you, Amanda, there's only one way from this way forward that I'll ever want you to go down...when you're with me."
And for a split second, the long-established roles of Amanda and Jake were reversed, and it was Amanda who rolled her eyes at Jake. "God, sex is honestly the last thing on my mind." She looked at her legs. "I still have blood dried on me, it's probably on my head too. It feels crusty."
Jake looked at her seriously. "It doesn't matter, you could be covered head to toe in mud and I'd still think you were beautiful."
Amanda looked at him sarcastically. "Mmmhmmm."
Jake looked at her with feigned shock. "Did the Entity bring back the right person to the realm?" He poked her. "You sure look like my wife, and you sound just like her but this lack of libido thing is making me wonder..." Jake snapped his fingers. "Lery. We've got to get you back to Doctor Carter, we'll just use that machine of his to shock your libido right back into you..."
And she tickled him. And he tickled her, and they tickled each other mercilessly and to Amanda's surprise, her lust for him swarmed her stronger than ever. She tugged at his clothes and he tugged at hers and after he had her shorts off, he paused and pulled his wallet from the back pocket of her shorts.
"Shit, I forgot about my wallet." Then he noticed her other pocket, and saw the baggies that contained her documents and his passport, and his cell phone. The shorts were still heavy, and he found the two packets of $10,000 bills in the front pockets
As he held them up, Amanda said, "That was one of the good things I'll remember about that trip. Cleaning out those wannabe poker pros." She smiled darkly, remembering Stetson's face when she'd turned over that full house.
Somehow, she had not only gotten these things from the cabin, but had the presence of mind to take steps to prevent them from being soaked and damaged by the water. "How did you...?"
"I'll tell you later," Amanda said. Knowing she was alive, and seeing her husband's erect cock made her body fill with lust more strongly than ever. "Give me a few minutes." She dashed out of bed, naked, and Jake heard the cabin's shower running briefly as she washed the dried blood of her healed wounds from her body.
The shower shut off, and there was another pause as he assumed she was drying herself. From inside the small bathroom, he heard her voice. "Close your eyes," she told him. So he did. "I've got one other surprise for you." There was a pause, and then she got into the bed and laid next to him. "Ok."
He opened his eyes and looked at her and he felt a surge run through him. While his eyes were closed, she had imagined herself in the purple lingerie she'd bought on the cruise. The thigh highs were on her legs. She spread them revealing the G-string. She had pulled her breasts from the top of the romper and the short purple robe was open. She pulled the G-string to the side of her pussy, exposing her wet lips. She rested the damp hair of her head on her pillow.
"I almost felt death," Amanda said, staring into his eyes. "I felt it while feeling I'd never feel you again. Now that's done. I don't feel death. Now I need to feel you. I feel alive and I need to feel you fuck me like you've never fucked me before."
And fuck her he did. And because of the intensity of it she truly felt like he fucked her like he'd never fucked her before. And when he made her cum, all the tension and fear and terror she'd felt in that moment rushed out of her in her scream of pleasure, the loudest scream she'd ever let out during their sex together.
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As the other survivors relaxed by the fire, they were again startled by a scream from Amanda. It was as loud as earlier, but there was no mistaking that this scream was from Amanda's earth-shattering orgasm.
There was a silence. Nea and Kate hoped that they found a guy that could fuck them so amazingly that they made the noise she did.
Ash grinned. "See? Told ya they'd be A-OK."