James never realized the moment he fell asleep.
Only that he couldn't stop himself from doing it.
He felt nothing at first, and what a delight it was to finally feel nothing troubling him at all.
A lifetime must've gone by like that, finding comfort in nothingness, before he finally took a breath.
And then he was drowning.
Suddenly aware that he was no longer trapped in the bowels of Titanic, but fighting for his life against an underwater current dragging him deeper into the ocean.
His chest pierced with an agonizing panic when he realized he couldn't breathe. His lungs stiff with sea water, aching and burning to release.
James kicked for the sunlight glimmering just above the surface, desperate to breathe.
But try as he might, he couldn't break the undertow.
The shock of the freezing water leaving his body dumbstruck, as if he'd suddenly forgotten how to swim. His joints so paralyzed by the violent jolt of the cold Atlantic, that he couldn't make his limbs do anything to save him.
And feeling as if his chest would explode for holding his breath so long underwater, James was forced to let the air go. Breathing in a smothering kiss of salt water instead.
Never before had he felt so powerless.
It wasn't the thought of death that scared him, but the idea of drowning. Like he had known this feeling of helplessness before. Of feeling like he'd never again be able to breathe, and that no one would come to save him. And being so terrified of drowning, James would've seen himself taken out in any other way but this.
The pain of water pressing against his lungs brought to his racing mind a nexus of blurry images. White hallways bleeding with the dim lighting of cast iron wall lanterns, broken china scattered all over elaborate carpets soaked with blood and water, a woman in a white bonnet and apron squeezing his arm as she whispered her prayers.
An iceberg on a starry dark night at sea, crawling out of the shadowy Atlantic like a ghost in the ship's masthead lights.
"Yes, what do you see?"
"Iceberg, right ahead!"
"Hard-a-starboard!"
James was sure he knew the images and the voices within them, but couldn't remember clearly the faces they belonged to.
In fact, he couldn't remember much of anything.
He knew he'd last been on the Titanic, and he knew he'd been leaninfg on someone as they stumbled through the corridors of the ship...But try as he might, the face of the woman who'd been curled up beside him was a blur in his faint memory.
The only thing James knew for certain, was that as he slept, something terrible had happened the night before.
And the truth of that gut-wrenching reality was unbearable in every way imaginable.
Why hadn't he shared in the ship's fate and gone down into the Atlantic with her?
How could he have no recollection at all of what happened in her final moments, before he couldn't keep himself from falling asleep anymore?
What did it matter now, if he drowned here before he could ever find out?
Surely, this couldn't be real.
And just when he realized that he had no hope of being saved, a hand broke the surface above him and locked around his arm.
Yanking him clear out of the water and slamming him back down again on dry ground. James's trembling fingers grappled against the scratchy hard pavement, immeasurably grateful to find out it was so sturdy and nothing at all like water.
"I gotch' ya, bruh! I gotch' ya!"
Blimey...James had never been "gotten" by anyone quite the same before.
And he reckoned he weighed at least 12 stones!
Yet this wild ogre for a man made him feel that he weighed nothing next to a sardine caught in a net.
"Breathe, my bruh! Get that shit out!"
And then his anvil for a hand bludgeoned James between the shoulders again.
"I said breathe, homez!'
Thus, having no other choice but to do-or-die, lest he be beaten to a pulp, James's stomach heaved, choking up all the seawater blocking the air from his lungs.
And though he'd longed for it desperately, breathing was agony.
The cold ocean breezes ripped through his aching chest, so tender now after holding in the icy Atlantic water for so long.
His breath so painfully shallow as he gasped for air. Until at last, he felt himself warming up again, bit by bit.
Using his hand to shield his aching eyes from the sun, James squinted against the bright morning light, until he could make out the face of the scruffy-looking gentleman standing over him.
The man appeared to be of the vagabond variety, and had some kind of trolley in his possession with the name "Walmart" plated on the side, a heap of peculiar shiny black bags piled inside of it, and a devlish little creature yapping away as he kept guard of it. The little blighter might've easily been part jumping bean, as he cleared 3 inches, roughly, pogoing himself into the air and barking madly at James from the royal perch of his belongings.
Reminding the sailor of just how much he preferred cats anyway.
"Good-good morning to you, sir," James greeted the vagabond politely, his chest still heaving to catch his breath. "I'm immeasurably grateful to you for coming to my aid."
His savior's wide grin was missing one or two of his ivories.
"Well, top of the morning to you too, my good fellow!" he mimicked James's English accent, performing an exaggerated stage bow, that was actually unexpectedly graceful.
"I don't mean to disturb your morning promenade, sir, but as you can see, I'm having a hard time of it," James explained. "Would you be so kind as to tell me what strange island I've found myself marooned on now, please?"
His unlikely hero chuckled, as if he knew everything without James even having to explain it.
"Ah dawg, let me tell ya'. I don't drink Henrock no more, for this reason. But last night, I was fucking smashed, man. Flat on my ass, like bugs or some shit was crawling all over me, so I took my shirt off and shit. And come to find out, dumped out all my weed on the street. So I was like fuck, gotta get me some more scrilla so I can get me some blaze. So I went over to that Little Ceasars over there, the one on 7th right there, and I told them to let me hold a dolla, you know what I'm sayin'? But they don't carry no more than 20-30- 400 at a time. And I was smashed, bruh, I just told them to gimme what they got. So I took a hundred bandz and walked around the block a couple times. Came back to the same goddamn Little Ceasars I just came out of. Used the same fucking 100 dolla bill they gave me and ordered $100 worth of Mountain Dew. Oh and a small large pizza on my EBT card. Told them to have it delivered to my corner right there-I stay right there on that corner there-Then passed the fuck out before the cops woke me up and arrested my ass. So I feel ya when I say I know how them nights go, dawg."
"Dog?"
James thought he must've hit his head rather hard indeed.
Greatly confused over the baffling nature of this man's discourse and why he should be called a dog by the end of it."Well, I'll say."
The officer's eyes dragged up to the man's metal trolley, and the little bat-looking creature still growling at him.
"Sorry, I believe we've terribly misunderstood each other," James answered the man. "Were you referring to me...or to whatever that wee little gremlin is there?"
"Ah, Pookie? Ah, you good, man, he chill as fuck. He don't bite. He just get triggered when 'certain folk come rollin' through our neighborhood, you know what I'm sayin'? What I mean is, we don't get nobody talking like Hugh Grant and shit on this side of New York. What you doing way out here, my brother?"
"Titanic," James said. "I was on the Titanic before I came about here, when she struck ice, somewhere off the coast of Newfoundland. I believe I was somehow thrown overboard."
The man stared at him for a moment, dumbstruck for words...before it finally seemed to hit him, "Straight? I feel ya, man! Titanic, huh? Sheeeeit, if that shit got you white boys swimmin' in the ocean with alligators and shit, roll me some of that shit right der. For real, though."
And then it was James's turn to stare back at him dumbstruck.
"Did you...say New York?"
"Damn straight."
And assuming the man meant yes by that remark, James knew at once that it couldn't be possible.
How could it be otherwise, when he had only just come off a doomed ship in the middle of the Atlantic? All out of a pair of coordinates that put the ship 347 nautical miles south of Newfoundland and still, 782 more to New York. A distance that might've been sailed by Titanic in two days, perhaps, for all her 20-odd knots.
Was he to believe then that he'd managed it in just one night, solely by drifting along willy-nilly through the Atlantic ocean?
But the man didn't seem to understand how absurd an answer he had given, as he bent over his trolley in search of something.
Pulling out a transparent rectangular box of sorts that smelt deliciously like pork and eggs. The wording etched in the box reading Denny's, which James assumed must be the grand old chap's name.
Passing the box over to James, Denny said, "Here, man. You obviously on a bad trip. This for that hangover, dawg. Peace the fuck out."
And pushing his trolley and hellhound along the pathway, he proceeded to snap at his rat-dog for a companion, "Goddamit, Pookie! Cut all that barking shit out! Where's your fucking manners? You know guests eat first around here. Goddamn greedy mutt!'
"Many thanks, Denny," James called after him. "I'll return the favor when I am able, if you are ever in Scarborough."
"Don't even worry about it, dawg," the Denny man waved James off dismissively as he kept on walking. "Just pay it forward, man. Gotta help each other out on these streets, you know what I'm saying?"
"Duly noted," James answered uncertainly. "Though, might I trouble you with one more request, if you don't mind? If you would kindly direct me to where I might post a telegram to the White Star, I would be greatly obliged."
The man called Denny rubbed his hand over his face, like James had presented him with the most daunting of all life's questions, before his brows suddenly lifted again.
"Yeah, yeah, I know where that is! Yeah, I got'cha, bruh!"
Then he did the queerest of things.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a rectangular gadget of some kind that lit up at the very touch of his finger.
And then he just stared at it. As if he were under the sway of some kind of fit or trance.
In a silence far longer than was comfortable for James, without saying a word or showing indication that he was even still aware that he was there.
Giving James enough time to glance back down at "Pookie", who was now licking James's hand because it smelt so irresistibly like bacon and eggs.
"Yeah, ok, yeah," Denny kept muttering to himself, without ever really getting on with an explanation.
And unable to resist the bright light shining like heaven out of the man's hands, James slowly leaned forward, overcome by an irresistible curiosity to study the nature of this strange blinding device, and why it had the man so spellbound.
It appeared to be called Apple, but didn't seem to have any obvious relation to the fruit, which was quite baffling to James.
He could only compare it to some kind of...moving-picture newspaper? As if the man were staring into an illuminating page of printed words that jumped up and down at the command of his fingertip.
Google, the newspaper was called.
And below its title of fascinating rainbow letters, James's wide wonderstruck blue eyes followed the man's dragging finger to an address.
"Here it go right here...White Star Line...Titanic, The Exhibition," the man said, holding up to James the strange glowing device.
Odd...James could've sworn, last he remembered, that the office was located at 11 Broadway, New York, NY 10004.
But he took a mental note of the address anyway.
526 6th Ave, New York, NY 10011.
"Yeah, I knew I knew I'd seen that place before," Denny said, as he pointed south. "It's back north, over there on 6th...That way, bruh. You're gonna take a left there at that light where the PayDay Loan place is, and go all the way down until you hit 6th. It's that building right next to the Sunglass Hut and the smoke shop on the corner of 6th Avenue and 14th Street. You can't miss it."
"Many thanks, Denny," James nodded to him.
"Good luck, dawg. And if you ever get any more of that Titanic shit, come through and smoke me out, a'right?"
Then the man called Denny went on his merry way.
And as the sea fog changed course around him, James realized that finding the correct address to file his report about Titanic at the White Star office might only be the beginning of his troubles.
Because after swallowing his fair share of seawater, it had to be a trick of his own broken mind.
Yet there she stood, clear as day.
The Lady of Liberty herself.
And lying in wait behind her was not the same New York James remembered from his transatlantic voyages as an officer of the Oceanic.
Because this alien world, as James Moody soon came to realize, looked nothing like the one he had left behind on the RMS Titanic.