Salt

blood, tears, and seawater

cw: suicide

The first thing was the feeling that she was falling. That brief, stomach-flipping moment that jerks you awake when you dream you’re tumbling out of bed.

The second thing was a hard object cracking against her face, telling her it was a fall and not a dream.

She jerked up, brought a hand to her eye socket, tasted blood.

The floor bucked under her, and she had to brace with her other hand to keep her head up. Her face was a wet, sticky mess. One eye was not opening. The room was in motion.

She looked around in a panic, trying to figure out where she was, but there was nothing familiar. She was on a plush carpet, lovely to walk on but hardly enough to break a fall. Next to her was a narrow bed with crisp white sheets and a slick duvet. The pillowcases were embroidered with a gold emblem near the seam.

She saw a suitcase, open, with clothes hanging out of it but the clothes looked foreign to her. There was a window, a round one like on a boat. Looking up at it she saw only bright white. Her head throbbed.

Like on a boat.

She pushed herself to her feet, pausing at the top to let a dizzy spell pass. The room tipped again and it wasn’t in her head. The boat rocked.

She found a tiny, immaculate half bathroom behind a door. Did she know it was there? She cupped her hands full of water and lowered her eye, her temple, then her lips into it. The water was not cold enough. The pool in her hands turned pink, then red. She did it again. Finally, she looked in the mirror, and realized, behind the split eyebrow and swollen lip, she didn’t know who she was.

Turning away from the mirror, she noticed a tall stack of paperbacks next to the bed. The two on top sported bookmarks poking out. She recognized the books as her own. She didn’t know where she was in the world, but she knew the exact scene playing out in each of those novels when she had saved her place. So, this was her room.

A name came into her head: Ina. Was that her name? She searched around the little room for a phone. Surely she had a phone somewhere. But it could not be located.

She started to leave the room, but when her hand met the door handle she paused. Was she a prisoner? She looked down at her body. She was wearing white silk pajamas that she didn’t recognize. They bore the same emblem as the pillowcases. What was this place? She patted herself down, checking for injuries, and noticed her hands. Her nails were chewed to the quick, raw and bleeding.

She cracked the door, half expecting a guard to shove her back inside. But outside was only a hallway, lined in dark blue carpet with gold details. There were shell-shaped wall sconces in front of four matching wooden doors. The light nearest her flickered in a way that seemed out of place. The other doors were open, swaying and softly bumping their frames as the boat lurched.

“Hello? Excuse me, is anyone here? I have a medical emergency.” Her voice seemed to be swallowed up by the hallway.

The rooms were quiet. Directly in front of her was something that looked like a room service tray, overturned, a puddle of dark liquid half soaked into the carpet. She pressed the carpet with her toe, and watched the liquid ooze out of the fibers. She smelled wine.

A party.

She had felt the bass in her chest. She remembered a woman in a bikini and sarong running barefoot across the deck with a bottle of wine in her hand, shrieking in delight, reaching for that door.

The memory blurred. The light flickered and the wine seeped out of the floor over her toes. Her skin crawled.

She remembered again. A woman in a bikini and sarong running barefoot across the deck, clutching a heavy wine bottle as a weapon, clawing desperately for the door, shrieking in terror.

At the end of the hallway, a door held another round window, white light shining through. She made her way there, steadying herself on both walls as the hall swayed and buckled around her. As she passed each door she peered inside. Unmade beds, suitcases strewn across the floor, no occupants.

She opened the door onto a deck. Next to her, painted in bright blue letters two feet tall she read Ina. The name of the boat.

The boat was her uncle’s yacht The Ina, registration Boca Grande. She had an answer, so why did it make her uneasy?

There was a railing in front of her. Beyond it, she couldn’t see the water that she felt tossing the boat like it was a toy. There was fog in every direction. But she could hear the ocean, sloshing and growling like it was hunting. The sound hinted at its immensity, its malignancy.

The wraparound deck in front of her was a rich wood tone, shiny with varnish. She remembered a person in a blue polo shirt mopping it, fighting a losing battle against salt damage and spilled margaritas.

The crew. There were three of them, tanned twenty somethings in khaki shorts, serving food and folding towels. She sharply recalled her shame at the way her uncle and her cousins treated them. As a consequence, she had asked for nothing. A wave of relief washed over her. She wasn’t a prisoner and she wasn’t alone on the ship.

Out of the white fog, as if she had been summoned, a crew member emerged. Khaki shorts, navy blue polo, dark hair in a perfect, slicked-back ponytail. She was barefoot and looked deep in thought.

Despite the circumstances, embarrassment bubbled up; she couldn’t remember the crew member’s name. Forgetting her injury for a moment, she reflexively smoothed the silk pajamas and opened her mouth to say excuse me. The fog had made her timid. It was so quiet, so disorienting.

But before she could speak, the uniformed woman put both hands on the rail, swung her leg over like she was getting on a horse, and jumped. The jump was awkward, more like a fall. Her foot banged against the rail as it trailed behind her weight. Two seconds later, a splash.

She sucked in a breath and yelled.

“There’s someone in the water! Man overboard! Help!”

She ran to the spot and looked over but could see only the thick white cloud. She looked for a life preserver, a rope to toss but there was nothing.

“Help! Help! Someone! There’s a woman in the water!”

But no one came. She was a good swimmer and briefly considered diving in. But she had no idea how fast they were going, or even what the water conditions were like. All she could see was fog. Her palms were sweating and she realized her grip on the rail was tenuous.

She stepped away from the edge, flattening herself against the outer wall. The boat was shrouded in an opaque silence and the fog seemed to grow even thicker around her. Where was everyone? Her heart raced. Get out of here. Get out, something is wrong.

Inching along the side she came to a metal staircase. At the top was the yacht’s bridge, partially hidden in the clouds. Someone had to be driving this boat. And if not, she could use the radio to call for help. She was grasping, she knew. Was she supposed to say mayday or something? All her ideas sounded like lines out of a kids’ adventure book.

As she started up the stairs she heard a sound above her. The door to the bridge was open. Standing in the door frame was a dark skinned man in a captain’s uniform. White jacket, brass buttons. A reassuring captain’s hat. She breathed out. Here was hope.

“Captain! We have to go back, a woman went overboard!” She called up to him as she leapt up the stairs, but he didn’t look at her. “A crew member,” she added, as if that might make a difference.

It was increasingly hard to find her voice in the white silence around her, and she grew quieter as she continued. She stopped a couple steps from the top, something telling her to keep her distance.

“Captain? Sir? A woman went overboard.”

She thought the captain’s face twitched when he heard the word overboard. He slowly turned toward her but his eyes were vacant.

“Hello?” The word came out as a whispered prayer.

The captain leaned to the side, slowly. Then he allowed himself to fall, headfirst, over the rail.

She gasped, her hands reaching for him in vain, then covering her face. He didn’t land in the sea but on the deck, with a sickening crack. She saw his legs jutting out from the shattered wood at terrifying angles. His hat lay upside down in a spreading puddle of blood.

Her own legs threatened to stop working. The blood seemed to drain out of her head and limbs to join the puddle below. But she forced herself up the stairs into the bridge. With shaking fingers she closed and latched the door behind her. She leaned against the door and tried to slow her breathing.

Before her was a control panel, its lights blinking, a metal wheel, and the black bubble of a compass. A huge map was rolled out on a table, held flat by a white coffee mug with Ina printed on the side in blue. She couldn’t read the map, its markers for channel depth and shipping lanes were unintelligible. But she didn’t need to interpret it. In the center was an X, traced shakily with a bloody finger.

Above the X, Bermuda. Bermuda. She was supposed to get off in Bermuda and fly home. Why hadn’t she?

There was a bright orange radio. It looked to her like an oversized walkie-talkie but its color told her it was for emergencies. She pushed buttons at random but the screen was dead. The static radio sound she had been hoping for never came.

There was a loud bang behind her and she turned to see a crew member, a blond, muscular man, slam against the window. He was jerking the door handle and screaming, but his sounds weren’t words. His hands left bloody smudges on the glass and his face bore deep, wet scratches down both cheeks.

Her terror pinned her to the table. She knew without knowing why that she couldn’t let him in.

She spoke to him but her words were quiet. Like she was reading a script to herself.

“Calm down please, just tell me what’s going on.” At the please her voice cracked and she started to cry. “I don’t know what to do, please tell me what to do. What is happening?” She thought of the injuries to her own face, the way her voice and memory had failed her.

He made furious eye contact with her through the dirty red window. His expression was wild and he bared broken teeth. She recognized his face, recalled his mouth close to her ear. She remembered telling him to back off. Ice pulsed through her veins.

“I - I’m sorry, please just tell me. Is there a way to call for help? I don’t know how to use this radio. I can’t let you in. I can’t.” He roared.

Then he was gone, jerked away from the door like someone had pulled him. A moment later she heard the crash of his body hitting the deck. She let out a wail and curled into a tight ball on the floor, covering her face with her hands. The ship rolled and the white coffee mug slid off the table, crashing down next to her. Its contents spilled out and she smelled rum.

They had not made it to Bermuda. She held her head in her hands as the memories flooded back. She recalled the captain’s face, lined and suntanned, his voice thick with an ambiguous accent.

“We’re haveeng some trouble weeth the navigation systeems.” He had laughed. “Ze Bermuda Triangle you know, she tests us. For now, I’m navigateeng by hand, ze old fashioned way, and it’s going to take a beet longer than planned. In the meanwhile, we are in ze Sargasso Sea, so please enjoy this beautiful and mysterious par of ze ocean.” He had raised his mug in a mock toast, sloshing dark rum over the side.

Her uncle and cousins were drunk by then, sun poisoned and passed out on the deck chairs. They couldn’t have cared less, but she was anxious they had been navigateeng by hand for days. The sun was relentless, the flat sea endless in every direction. She watched the water, day in and day out. The captain projected a relaxed confidence, but she suspected that was the point.

She had been re-reading the same books to distract herself from the doom nipping at her heels. She began to dream of water rushing into her cabin, of waking up with the yacht upside down, sinking slowly into the abyss. She began to dream during the day, imagining the ocean squeezing her lungs, dragging her through a maelstrom to its darkest depths.

There were formal dinners, cocktails, wine. Activity gave them the illusion of forward motion, when they might just as well have been motoring in circles. Her cousins had grown restless when their phones stopped working, then the crew suggested a dance party to lighten the mood. The music had been great, the ocean invisible and out of mind. Drugs were produced from suitcases and the bass didn’t die out until the sun came up.

A woman in a bikini and sarong swinging a wine bottle in the early glow of morning. She had hidden in her cabin. With her books. The blood under her nails not her own.

When she took her hands from her face she was back on deck, though she didn’t remember leaving the bridge. The shiny wood was wet, her bare feet cold in a bloody splash of salt water. She grasped the rail, and a breeze twirled the hair around her face. When she breathed, the white fog gave way to the most pristine salty air she had ever tasted. She heard a sound like a heartbeat coming from beyond the rail. The gaps in her memory left space for whatever was calling to her.

It wasn’t the sea but a womb, an elemental return.

The last thing was the feeling of falling, wind in her face and sea spray all around. She hit the water hard, plunging into a directionless black trap. Then she remembered.

Her name had been Eleanor.

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