This Waking Sleep

The hold of the boat is filled with a noisy and braying cacophony of goats. An inch of water covers the steel floor and the interior of the hull leaks water between riveted sheets of steel. I manage to keep dry by sitting in one of the elevated goat pens, sitting among the beasts.

The goats bray loudly in my ear and warn me away with their baleful black eyes. Initially, they butt at me with their heads, but thankfully, their horns have been clipped down to harmless nubs. They do not have enough running room inside the cramped pen to cause me any physical injury.

The only place I am truly hurt is in my pride.

I lay a bed sheet across the straw pen floor to keep from sitting or laying down in goat offal. Occasionally, the ship lurches and startles the animals, and they trample across the fabric. They leave dirty hoof prints and pattern its clean whiteness with their blasphemous natures. I keep my bible close at hand, fearful of sin for lying down with these unclean animals.

The crew is modeled after their captain. They are a rough set bunch of scarred and tattooed thugs who stare at me with cold faces. I suspect they would like nothing better than to throttle me dead and steal the gold fillings from my mouth. They stay their hands however. They are under threat of the captain that no harm is to come to me.

Still, there is a tension. They throw crusts of bread to me from a trap door set in the ceiling of the hold and it is barely enough to sustain myself. If not for the captain, I am quite certain they will stop feeding me altogether. I realize that I am not allowed out of the hold and on deck for my own safety. It has nothing to do with rules and regulations.

The goats; the bad food; the threat of murder by unruly sailor. I find that I cannot sleep in these conditions. It is a three month journey, and I begin to fear I may perish as exhaustion sets in.

I could shout and scream and beg to be let off or taken back to New York. Instead, I hang my key from one of the cage bars and let the action of the rolling sea move the object back and forth like a pendulum. The effect is identical to the way the key worked back in my apartment. I stare hypnotically and watch it sway until my mind is locked into a waking sleep.

I perform this trick night after night and quickly lose track of time. I sit for hours, both day and night. The only way I can be sure of the passage of time is by the growing pile of bread crusts that rot in the water near the entrance to the hold.
The goats step on me with their sharp hooves, but I pay them little attention.

Soon, I begin to hallucinate.

Hull is in my visions, as is Paris. But there are other people as well. A blonde haired woman and an older gentleman with graying temples and a monocle. May is there as well. I do my best to shake these dreams free, but they stick fast and I feel powerless to purging them. It becomes like an old silent film in which I am the star, but it is filled with awfulness. First, the man with the monocle is sawing at May’s limbs while she is tied down, and then I am. The woman with the blonde hair fucks atop of Hull and then slashes his throat open with a razor blade at his point of orgasm. On and on these visions persist, over and over, as different players are substituted for each scenario, one more violent than the next.
When I bite into the neck of the nearest goat, it tastes of wet fur and old leather. Then salty warm blood wells into my mouth, runs over my chin, and splatters down my neck.

I have never heard the screams of an animal before, but there is a first time for everything.

I am aware of my moral obligation not to eat the captain’s livestock. Someone has paid good money for these animals, and further, the captain has been charged with their safe transport.

Eating them alive, in fact, is quite rude. But in my hypnotic state, I’m numb to all feelings of guilt or regret for these actions. They exist, but they feel far away and distant. They feel frozen in another time.

I kill all of the goats systematically. Each one takes a long time to die. I use my teeth first, and then I use my bare hands. Whatever I don’t eat gets discarded from the cage onto the floor of the hold. Soon, the layer of water that roils across the bottom of the boat turns to a red sludge that gathers flies and stinks of a slaughterhouse.

Eventually they send a man through the trap door. I watch him shimmy down a rope lowered from the deck above. He holds a lantern in one hand and a belaying pin in the other. His face is pale and underscored in the light shed by the oil lamp.
I lunge from my hiding place. With a shout, he hits me with the heavy wooden pin in his hand. Just like a dream, I feel no pain. I hit him back with my fist and the lantern falls. It hits the goat sludge with a shattering of glass and its light snuffs out.

The hold grows dark and I wrap my hands around the sailor’s throat, driving his skull into the steel floor. I repeat this motion until he is motionless.

The rope dangles freely from the trap door, and I can see the crew peering down into the hold with looks of concern etched across their rough faces.

I climb, hand-over-hand, until I am above deck, and then I attack the crew.

They die like the goats die. They scream.

I save the captain for last. Unlike the others, he doesn’t scream as I chew a path through his spurting flesh. He doesn’t beg as I break the bones in his hands and his feet to better fit the tender flesh between his fingers and toes into my mouth. He is stalwart.

He spits in my face and calls me a devil.

When he is dead and the deck is still and cluttered with the broken remains of the crew, I search the craft from bow to stern.

I find a cabin boy hiding below deck and break the pup’s neck with my bare hands.

I take back my payment to the captain and my belongings. When I am satisfied with my carnage, I move to the front of the boat to crouch on the bow. The key hangs from my hand.

The moon is wide and accommodating, and I watch the key sway in the moonlight. I forget the boat and let the ocean currents take me where they may.

I wait.

I listen to the waves lap against the sides of the boat and listen to the blood drip down the masts.

I wait for the Paris in my dreams.