20: Sabrina

Sabrina

 

            The large bed seemed cold and lonely without someone next to her, particularly when that person had been her one tie to another life. Michael had been led away to see the ship's physician. That had been some hours ago and the sun was beginning to set. It seemed like the daylight would remain forever, and with no way to gauge time, she had no idea how long days lasted here. However, as with all things, the day was coming to an end.

          She hadn't slept much, not for lack of trying. In the few occurrences where she slipped into a semi-conscious state, all she saw were snarling maws and black shadows, which roused her to such a degree that even the hint of sleep would evade her for hours. Sabrina sighed and rolled onto her side, clutching a mass of warm blanket tightly in her fists. She thought about her mom, dad, and brother. She wanted to know where they were and if they were alright. She prayed that they had escaped the mess that was wrecking the east coast, and that they were headed west into safety.

          Her heavy eyelids slowly began to drift without her cognizantly realizing it. They fell to sweet bliss, and Sabrina finally fell into a much-needed sleep.

          She looked down at the seven red cards in her hand, each with an object or person with a brief description. At the center of the table was a solitary green card with an adjective, this one being "Obnoxious." Her father sat next to her on the left, her brother on the right, and her mother directly across. They each had their own hand of seven red cards with nouns. This round, her mother was the judge. The object of the game was to place to most relevant (or most ridiculous) noun card facedown to coincide with the adjective card, and the judge would choose the one they liked the best. Apples to Apples was a favorite in the Barnes household, even though both children were now legally adults. During holiday visits, there would always be at least one game played, almost always following a large and delicious meal that they had all pitched in to prepare.

          Sabrina looked at her hand. She held Barbara Streisand, My Bedroom, Doing the Dishes, The Berlin Wall, Sputnik, Al Capone, and Grapes. It was hardly a good hand to put anything for "obnoxious". She bit her lip in concentration as she weighed her options.

          Her father slid his card to the center of the table. Her brother followed suit.

          "Sabrina's got nothing," her dad teased.

          "Yeah right, I've just got too many good things," she sassed. Defeated, she pulled "Doing the Dishes" from her hand and slid the card face down to the center. Her mother gathered them up, shuffled them a bit, then flipped each card as she read the options she had to choose from.

          Sabrina wore a happy grin on her face, but it faded when she looked over her mother's shoulder into the hallway. A little girl in a white dress stood at the doorway into Sabrina's room. No one else at the table seemed to notice, they just continued playing their game. Sabrina brought her eyes back down to the cards her mother was giggling at, but they couldn't hold her attention. She glanced back up. The little girl tilted her head slightly to the side, then beckoned. Sabrina frowned. She couldn't focus on the game anymore.

          "Excuse me," she said politely, pushing herself back from the table. Her family gave idle nods of acknowledgement. Sabrina slowly walked down to the hallway. The girl turned, her white dress spinning around her skinny legs, and marched inside. Sabrina followed.

          Her room was unchanged; her parents had left both their children's rooms intact after they left for college. Her bed was set into the far corner, her TV directly across from it. A computer desk with a clutter of pens, pencils, and stiff-bristled paintbrushes sat in mugs bearing pictures she had made as a child. Stacks of sketch paper were tucked into the shelves, almost all of which were heavy with graphite. Many of them were from her middle and early high school days, when she really began to understand shading. It was at that age when she had discovered the multiple grades of artistic pencils to achieve different tones and depth. That had been like opening a door to entire new realm of possibilities for her art, and she had taken off from there.

          The carpet was the same, despite her parents' constant assurance that it would be ripped out and redone because of all the discoloration from spilled paints or ground-in charcoal chunks. Along the walls were framed works she was particularly proud of. Most were black and white pencil portraits.

          The little girl in the room moved with such grace that she appeared to glide. She made her way to Sabrina's bed and lifted the small stuffed rabbit from the bed. Her small hands stroked its ears back and poked its nose. A small giggle escaped her lips. It was a happy, beautiful sound.

          "Who are you?" Sabrina asked quietly.

          "Nora," the girl replied, not looking away from Sabrina's stuffed toy.

          Sabrina furrowed her brow in concentration, then her eyes widened. "You're the girl from the beach? That dream I had last night."

          "Mhm," Nora replied.

          "What are you doing here?" she asked again. Nora turned and looked at her.

          "What are you doing here?" she fired back.

          Sabrina's jaw opened slightly. "This is my house, I live here."

          The girl shook her head. "This isn't really your house." She slid a hand back over the bunny's ears. "It just looks like it. What game were you playing with those people? Was that your family?"

          "Yes," Sabrina said carefully. "My mom, dad, and brother. We always try to spend time together when my brother and I get to visit for holidays. And that was just some silly card game. Nora, why are you in my house?"

          "I wanted to see what it was like," she said. "It's not what I expected. But I like it. It's very warm here. These pictures are really pretty, too."

          Sabrina looked up at her drawings hung upon her walls. "Thanks," she said, unsure of what else to say.

          "I wish I had pictures in my room," Nora mused, although it seemed like she was now just thinking aloud. "So this is what your house looks like?"

          As she spoke, the lights in the house burst and the walls began to yellow and brown like paper held to fire. The framed paintings slid from their nails and burst on the ground, sending glass shards and splinters out in all directions. Flames began to lick at the clothes in her closet, spreading slowly upwards. A dancing orange glow cast the shadows of Sabrina and Nora on the deteriorating walls. The drywall peeled like flaking skin and dropped, revealing the insulation and wooden studs that were blackened and charred. The ceiling began to crumble above them, releasing jagged chunks that fell like white comets with long, thick tails of dust.

          Sabrina covered her head and ducked, but Nora remained stoic and still as the room actively disintegrated around them. The dust was chokingly thick. Sabrina covered her mouth, coughing violently, and looked up. The ceiling and top forth of her walls were gone entirely; what remained was a charring jagged husk that smoked and spit glowing embers. Above them a volcanic orange and black sky swirled with smoke that reflected raging fires around. Overhead, an endless stream of planes roared. All around them, gunshots rattled in the air. Long tracers rocketed into the sky toward the planes. Those that were hit burst into wild streaking fireballs that hurdled toward the ground. Omnipresent was the piercing wail of human screams.

          Sabrina stared up, shaking violently. A small, gentle hand grabbed hers. Nora looked up with intelligent eyes, but she was absolutely placid. "This is what you think happened to your home." It wasn't a question. Sabrina said nothing. Nora's eyes stared up her. Then the little girl softly placed the stuffed rabbit into Sabrina's hands. It was undamaged by the fires. It was exactly how she remembered it, the touch of its fur so familiar to her hands. Sabrina fell to her knees and buried her face in the comfort of Mr. Bunnyton.

          "Sabrina," a small voice said.

          Sabrina looked up. Her room was back to normal. The lights were on, the walls intact, nothing was burned. Outside came no noise of chaos. From out in the dining area, she could still hear her family laughing as they continued to play Apples to Apples.

          "Go back to your family," Nora said. "I'm sure they miss you."

          Nora began to walk out of the door, but Sabrina stopped her. "Wait," she called. "How did you know my name?"

          "Michael told me," she said plainly, then turned down the hallway.

          Sabrina followed, rabbit still in hand, but when she turned into the hallway, Nora was gone.

          "You okay, honey?" her mom asked, leaning back over her shoulder to look at her daughter.

          "Yeah," Sabrina said weakly. "Yeah, fine, mom."

          She stirred, opening her eyes. Back in the captain's quarters in an overlarge bed, Sabrina blinked a few times. With no candles or torches alight in the cabin, the only light came from Nox's blue radiance outside. She slid out of the bed, gasping as her bare feet touched the cool wood, to look out the porthole. The gas giant glowed brightly in the night sky and it's reflection danced upon the seas. It truly was beautiful.

          She moved to the nightstand where she noticed a large clay pitcher full of water. There were no cups to speak of, so she gingerly lifted the clay to her lips and sipped.

          At the back of her mind were thoughts of a little girl in a white dress.

          She felt much more refreshed and assumed she had been out for at least a few hours. Now restless and alone, she decided to go peak outside of her room. The massive doors opened slowly as she pushed on them, allowing the soft candlelight of the corridor to spill in. Contained in glass bulbs, the small fires didn't sway as she sneaked by. The long wooden corridor was relatively barren. No ornaments, carvings, or decorations. Just small jutting platforms a few feet from the floor that held the candles. At the far end was a circular door with an inscription above it. The hallway continued in a T-intersection with the door in the center. Sabrina reached it, looked down each branch and saw no one. Her fingers wrapped around the hand and pushed down. There was a loud click and the door swung open. Feeling nervous and slightly guilty for prying, she ducked in.

          The room, as the door, was circular and lined with iron sconces on the wall where large torches stuck at an angle, their burning ends all pointed towards the center of the room. The whole of the room was arranged in concentric circles.

          The outer circle contained metal supports that held up six small skeletons spaced equally apart. Most were small and ichlyoid in shape, their fishy shapes vaguely recognizable. But nearly all had vicious features, such as disproportionately large jaws housing rows of fangs. They reminded her of deep sea creatures she had seen on TV specials. Spines rose from the vertebrae of one of the ghoulish sea creatures.

          The next circle, slightly smaller, held only four skeletons, though slightly larger. One was that of an eel with a skeleton that was coiled around a central support rod. From the main body branched three smaller lengths of vertebrae, each with its own snarling skull. The three heads all faced different directions.

          Next to it was what looked to be a plaster cast of some kind of tentacled invertebrate. It wasn't an octopus, yet not quite a squid either. The body was bulbous with eye sockets wrapping around the center of the body. Two stringy stalks with gaping holes dangled near the eye sockets. On either end of the body were several long, whip-like tentacles that ended in flat, suction-less pads.

          The other two were great hulking crustaceans hoisted up several feet on large poles. Their segmented legs dangled to the floor, making them look like a grotesque magnification of an elementary student's collection of bugs pinned to styrofoam. The shells of the giant crabs were pebbled and ridged. Heavy claws were supported by smaller piles. The serrated edge of the pincers was white while the rest of the creature was an orangey-brown. Just above the slack mandibles were two curving horns that stuck out like thick lances. On either side of the horn pair was a glassy eye.

          Only two creatures' remains were on display in the subsequent ring. Yet this ring took up a vast amount of space. On a lattice of metal work, the skeleton of a large shark was on display. It was similar to the sharks she knew in almost every way, except for the fact that it had calcified bones instead of cartilage. That and the second, smaller set of jaws it had set slightly farther in than the primary jaws.

          The other skeleton was not nearly so large, but more incredible. Hoisted upright, the figure was nearly eight feet tall. The upper half of the body was recognizably humanoid, though large. At the center of the sternum was a strange angled opening that angled upwards. The arms were long and the fingers very thin. The skull stared blankly ahead with unseeing sockets. The hips were very large and thick. The spine did not conclude with a coccyx, however. It continued down with a long trail of vertebrae that ended in a fanlike spread of tiny metatarsals that were elongated and thin. It was a fin.

          "Oh my God," Sabrina whispered.

          She realized what she was looking at.

          The final circle was not a ring, but a circular epicenter in which the largest creature of all was located. It was placed vertically in order to fit in the chamber and held up with a mixture of metal supports and wire fastenings connecting it to the ceiling. In the torch light, it's flickering shadows almost made it seem to swim.

          It was the Dreadfish, the one for which the ship was named. She knew it because she recognized the skull. The captain wore a smaller replica as a brooch to hold his shoulder cape in place. The fish was sleek in shape, with a narrow skull and long sockets. Sharp teeth lined the entirety of the maw, and the bottom jaw ended in two tusk-like fangs that extended much farther than the top of the skull. Fibrous tentacles, she assumed cast replications, dangles from the rear portion of the fish slightly above the base of the tail. At the end of each tentacle was a small skull. Sabrina looked carefully and realized the skulls were identical to the one at the head of the fish, and that one tentacle was missing a head. It appeared the captain didn't wear a replica at all.

          There was a small knock on the door, and Sabrina nearly collapsed in fright. She turned around, wide-eyed, to see the little boy who had brought her a book to read in the doorway, his small frame touched by firelight. He looked at her and smiled.

          She took a deep breath and smiled back. Taking it as an invitation, the boy eagerly made his way to her. He stood at her side, looking up at his father's grand trophy with admiration. She did, too. Sabrina and the little boy shared no spoken language, but at that moment they didn't need it. He took her hand, as a boy would take a mother's, and she squeezed it gently.