Relax
by Vivik
"...and at that point, I just told myself I abolutely had to get away for awhile. The stress was literally killing me, you know?"
Mrs. Delilah Nixan-Sullivan looked out her frosty window and heaved a deep sigh of contentment. Life as an Alaskan businesswoman paid well, but it most certainly wasn't an easy job to have. Delilah's 30-year-old face should have looked happy and young, but instead, her bright eyes were cradled by encroaching wrinkles, and her smile was caged by tired lines around her mouth. Her casual shirt was faintly stained with a crayon, wielded by her three year old daughter.
"I understand completely." The middle aged woman seated across from her nodded sympathetically, her eyes glinting. "You have to get away once in awhile, yeah?" The two ladies smiled in shared empathy.
"Well, I'm going to get some breakfast, Mary. I'll see you a little later, hm?" The other woman smiled and replied that she was going to spend some time with a relative for the rest of the day, and that perhaps she would see Delilah again on the next day.
As Delilah trotted down the hallway to the luxurious boat's diner area, she had a small queasy feeling come upon her suddenly. She looked down at the floor, and then out at a nearby window. The waves outside crashed against the boat, threatening in their volume and force. Swallowing the odd lump in her throat, she attempted a throaty chuckle. "I'm so glad I have this steady floor to stand on!" she muttered to herself. Chuckling again at the ridiculousness and abruptness of her last statement, she continued: "After all, it would be pretty hard to relax without the floor!" There was no one else in the hallway, and the slow creaking of the boat as it turned gently from side to side sent a chill up her spine. A thickly bound book, resting on a chair, slid off to the floor with an ominous, hollow thunk.
A bit nervously Delilah continued down the hallway, stopping as a man's piercing yell rang out through the boat.
"We're approaching something large! Nobody panic! Please-"
His words were cruelly cut short by a long, heart-stopping crunch as the boat slammed into something hard. Water began gushing in, and blood began gushing out. Screams, wails, shouts of fear drowned Delilah's ears, though her lungs managed to survive. As her body was thrown into the water, a small green object flew at her and landed on the water. With a small gasp the woman realized it was a child's float, the kind you put around your waist and lean your head back on. She grasped for it hungrily and tucked it around her waist, floating slowly away from the fiery, bloody, watery remains of her cruise ship.
Hardly five minutes passed, and with a dumbfounded expression on her face, Delilah watched the last tendril of smoke from the ship pass out of view. Endless swathes of water stretched out around her and her small floaty, the swift waves gently raising them up and down. Tears began to flow from her once she fully comprehended what had just happened to her, and what the situation was. Being a woman of strong reserve, however, she grasped her floaty and racked her brain for some way to reach the shore.
The crashing of the waves rubbed and irritated the rash on her mind more than any boisterous music might, making it impossible for the woman to think. She let out an exasperated grunt of self deprecation. "Why in the hells would this happen to ME?" The grunt turned into a shriek. "I am only a common woman, trying to relax on a vacation!" She would have laughed if it weren't for the bitter tears she wept, at the utter irony of the ship's crash.
An hour passed. Sixty minutes - thirty-six hundred seconds - forty centuries..."Ohhh..." With bleary, salt-ridden eyes the broken woman was quite a sight, floating in the middle of the ocean with a green, bubble-eyed monster around her midriff.
Two hours. Delilah was starting to feel a gnawing hunger - judging from the sun's position it was just after noon, and she had not broken her fast. The scent of the warm salty air only accentuated this pain.
Four more hours. The sun was starting to set, and with desperation Delilah shook herself from a hunger-ridden delirium in order to look around for any sign of hope. Nothing...just the waves...
14 hours. The middle-aged woman had fallen asleep, the rushing of the waves and the cradling arms of her flotation device cuddling her to rest. When she awoke, the stars were nearly faded out, and the sun was beginning to peep at her from east. The hunger was the only thing she felt now.
Five days. She had not slept, only fallen repeatedly into a hungry delirium. She sat limp, so hopelessly entwined with her floaty, that she had given up all hope of rescue. Reclining into the green creature's grasp, she managed to croak a few words.
"I...might as well relax...that's...wha...why I came here. After all...I wanted to...relax." Her throat burned from the effort, and she leaned her head back onto the bulbous, surprisingly inflated support of the floaty. Her eyes rolled back and she sighed, contentedly.
Two months later, another boat floated down similar waters. Through his loud speaker, the captain let out a throaty chuckle. "We've got clear waters for the next five days, my weather report says, so be sure to relax outside everyone!" A loud chorus of cheers rang up across the boat's many departments, and one couple toasted to each other outside the pool.
One man approached the captain's quarters, timidly knocking on the door. As he was admitted, he nodded his head. "Our men have spotted something ahead of us on the water. Looks like a flotation device with some sort of dummy attached, or something."
"Well, go check it out then." The captain smiled and resumed watching something on television.
A little while later, the man came back, with a pale face. "We need you to see this, sir." The captain, with an irritated sigh, followed the man down to the boat's undocking section, where a large cloth covered a mass. With a flourish he tore it off.
Two bloodshot swollen eyes stared amusedly at him. The horrifying smell of salty decaying flesh filled the captain's nostrils as he watched the rotting woman's skin peel off of her in lengthy strips.
What was most disturbing, however, was the fact that her arms were folded across her lap peacefully. Her head reclined on the deflating floaty's head rest, and there was a sickly, happy smile across her half-eaten lip. Perhaps she had relaxed after all.
Guess that's my tidbit o' knowledge for the day.
