Heavenly Seas Chapter Two

Theo needed calories after the heavy dancing. Heath’s stomach rumbled so much he couldn’t read anything from the library. Calvin ate to get his mind off his frustrations. Heath didn't think much of the buffet. What could a devout vegan like him have to eat when there was an assorted selection of fish? Fish…the smell of them made him flinch. Didn't help that his big brother would taunt him with a big plate of fish and meat. His stomach churned at the crisp animal flesh.

Calvin and Theo saw a feast for the eyes and the mouth. For Heath, it was a sight so disgusting. With nothing Heath wanted, he picked his usual soya yoghurt, hummus and carrot sticks. The salad was too pretty to eat.

“Come on!” Calvin said, moving his plate of exotic fish and meat towards Heath. “It's protein. It's good for you.”

“No thank you.”

Theo took at least a dozen pictures of the food. He left it to go cold. The food was inedible by the time he had finished taking the perfect images.

“Why does the food go cold so quickly?” Theo devoured his dishes only to spit half of it back out again. However, when it came to deserts, nothing went to waste.

“Have you spoken to any of the passengers?” Calvin asked. “Some admirable people here.”

Theo shook his head. “The steward that works in our cabin is cute!”

“Have you spoken to her yet?” Calvin asked. “Other than hello.”

“Not yet, but I plan to.”

Heath sighed. “Cabin crew can't have relationships with passengers…”

‘I know,” Theo said to Heath, rubbing his hands. “it's the thrill of the chase. She's got that exotic vibe.”

Heath took a sip of his chamomile tea. “I’m sure there's plenty of women around here you could choose to bang.”

Calvin rose to his feet the moment he cleared his plate. “I must go. I’m going to check on Mother. She's not been right. She's shaken up. She’s ready to dry up the bars. That's not good.”

“I think she already has,” Heath said.

“I know too much booze is bad for you,” Theo said. “But Mummy Dearest is her own human being.”

“Do you have to call her that!” Heath said, grimacing.

Theo laughed in Heath’s face. “She's a tough cookie. She knows what she's doing.”

“My instinct is telling me to go.” Calvin stood up and patted both his brothers on the shoulder. “I’ll see you both later.”

Calvin and Theo were left to their own devices. Theo looked up at Heath and asked him the same question he asked every week. “Do you think you will ever eat meat again?”

“No.”

“I suppose we better get going then.”

Heath nodded with a burning throat. “If I look at this place anymore I will get sick.” Both of them got up and got lost on their way back to the cabin. So many hallways, and elevators that looked the same.

“Wait…Is our cabin on deck 7 or 8?” Theo asked, scratching his head. It should have been easy to find their room; just listen out for a hysterical drunk woman.

“I’m sure it’s deck 8.” Heath grabbed his keycard from his pocket. “Yeah we’re on deck 8. Our room number is 8013?”

“Dammit,” Theo muttered. They had walked past cabin 9013. “We’re on the wrong deck.” Coming across a map of Heavenly Seas, his fingers drifted towards the abstract art gallery nearby. “We’re close to the gallery. Since we’re here, we should explore the ship a bit more like we said we would.”

Heath sighed. “If you say so. Are you sure we’re going to get back okay?”

“How did we get so lost?” Theo said, staring at Heath as if it was his fault.

Heath rolled his eyes. “You looked like you knew where you were going. Honestly, everything starts to look the same.”

Theo shuddered. “And you didn’t think to ask anyone where we were meant to go?”

Heath shook his head. “There’s nobody about to ask…”

Theo’s footsteps paused. Looking around, he noticed men in black cloaks and women in red dresses. Any attempts to grab their attention were in vain as the figures marched through them. Was there a memo that he missed? Halloween wasn’t for another two weeks. Theo opened the door in front to be greeted with red lights and a gallery of crucified dolls. At least he hoped they were dolls.

“What is this?” Theo asked. “I can’t believe they call this art.”

“I’m not going in,” Heath said, blanketing his nose with his palm. “It smells funny.”

Theo peeked his head through the gallery then slammed the door. “I know what Calvin would call it: bloody crap!”

The next couple of weeks were plain sailing, minding the pun. Theo and Rose spent much time together when she was off-duty. Calvin and Heath tried and failed to keep them apart. Theo and Rose were a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, doomed from the start. Elodie knew because she had been there. Elodie could have joined in trying to save Theo from the madness, but what could she do? She was too busy feeling sorry for herself.

Elodie found the perfection too good to be true. Every time she walked past a door, she flinched, expecting an attack. Instead of the grim reaper, Elodie bumped into an old face. Dal Gong-Gi, the disgraced pop star. His ex-wife claimed he had prostitutes with his hot dinners. She had seen Gong-Gi at the bar with a whisky in his hand. She thought nothing of it at the time. She doubted he would know her.

“It’s Elodie isn’t it?” Gong-Gi said.

“Excuse me?” Elodie gasped. He was one of her regular clients at her first and only job. She nodded. There was this assumption that every celebrity knew, loved and remembered every other celebrity. It couldn’t be any further from the truth.

Gong-Gi leaned over and smiled. “Ah! So it is you.”

“To be honest,” Elodie said, pushing herself against the wall. “I didn’t think you would recognise me.”

Gong-Gi cracked out another smile and hugged her. “How could I forget you? The paparazzi seem to hate you almost as much as me.” He kissed her on the cheek like an old friend. Elodie had been with married men before, and even though Gong-Gi was a divorcee, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was dabbling with someone else’s man.

“You’ve still got that Elaine Jinx down your throat?” Elodie asked. That name alone was enough to turn Gong-Gi’s smirk into a face of terror. The anxiety was contagious. “I know how you feel, her columns make me want to do such unholy things. Honestly, you should take her to court!”

“Any song I record is destined to flop now,” Gong-Gi said. Elodie observed how Gong-Gi clenched his fists and brought them to his lips. She knew that movement. It was a hand yearning for a drink. “It’s been years since I’ve seen my daughters. Anyway, how are you?”

“I’m okay.” It was a lie, and they both knew it. “I’ve got all my boys with me. I can’t believe how big they are now. So did you come here alone?”

Gong-Gi shook his head. “I had some friends over.”

“Like who?” Elodie asked. “Anyone I know?”

“Do you know Professor Denki?” Gong-Gi asked.

“Is that the table-tennis-champion-turned-mad-scientist?”

“Yes.” Gong-Gi nodded. “I had his granddaughter’s best friend with me.”

“You had?” Elodie pondered, rubbing her cheeks. “As in you had her in bed or…”

He shook his head again. At this rate, Elodie thought he was dancing. “I know what you’re thinking, it’s nothing like that at all.”

Elodie knew she wasn't stupid. “ That explains the shrieking I heard from your cabin.”

His lips quivered. “It’s a long story. Speaking of noise, I have never forgotten those little noises you made in bed.”

“So that’s why you never forgotten me?”

“I’ve slept with many women, and some men,” Gong-Gi admitted, wrapping his arm around her. “We’re not so different, you and I.”

“So this female companion of yours, what’s her name?”

“Her name is Sook-Jo. Shall we go inside my cabin?” He removed the pineapple sign from his door, before opening it. From the inside alone, the golden corridor made her suite inferior. “There’s so many things we should catch up on. Come in, my balcony is amazing. Let’s have some drinks.”

“Sure.” Just like that she was sold. “So are things between you and Sook-Jo going well?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“She’s been ranting like a lunatic since we left Australia.”

“What do you mean?”

He buried his head in his hands. “She said werewolves wrecked the gym; the jacuzzis are full of bodies, and kidneys were dangling from the chandeliers.”

“Whatever she’s had…I don’t want it!” In an attempt to alleviate the conversation, she said, “I know I hallucinate when I’m drunk.”

Gong-Gi shook his head. “Sook-Jo doesn’t drink. You’d be surprised. The other day she was babbling nonsense about a toe in someone’s drink. And I haven’t seen her since we left Singapore.”

If it wasn’t for the toes, Elodie would have been inclined to agree with him. Her mouth had a mind of its own when she shrieked out Gong-Gi’s name. She didn’t mean to shout at him, but it had to be done. “I don’t know her, but it sounds like she’s being perfectly rational.”

“She’s not. Elodie, you don’t know her. She was raped on national television. That’s enough to fry anyone’s mind.”

“Her mind is not fried.” Elodie didn’t know Sook-Jo, but she learned if somebody said something was wrong, they were right. She didn’t blame Sook-Jo for leaving the ship when she did.

“What makes you say that?” Gong-Gi asked.

Elodie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Because it was my drink that had the toe in.”

Rose gave strict instructions for Theo not to open the letter till midnight. So at quarter past eleven, he opened it. Surely 45 minutes wouldn’t make a difference. The fruity perfume on the envelope made Theo feel like it was Christmas. It was that present you knew you weren’t supposed to open, yet you did it anyway.

With shaky hands, Theo observed the words. It meant having to go back to that place again. Damn. He scratched his head as he reread the letter to double-check that his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him.

Meet me at the abstract gallery as soon as you read this.

No one will be around by then. Much love,

Rose

Great, Theo said to himself. It meant that he had to go back to that place again. He wouldn’t have Heath there as backup, and Calvin had no interest in art, let alone the grotesque type. He gulped. It was time to be a big boy and go by himself.

He couldn’t go to the gallery at that moment. Theo searched for Heath, but he wasn’t in the library. He returned to his cabin, but nobody was there. Evidence of his mother’s drunken states had been wiped clean.

“Where is everyone?” Theo asked. Shaking his head with shrugged shoulders, he left the cabin. He had seen all sorts on this cruise, so to stroll around in silence was almost deafening. The lack of sound nerved him. No seagulls crying and no waves crashing against the boat.

He knew it was late, but there had to be people about somewhere. Even the bars were empty. Where did everyone go? Was he seeing things? Did opening the letter too early teleport him in another dimension? Perhaps too many video games and movie nights rotted his brain as his great aunt used to say.

All the questions that floated in his head, none of them got answered. The moment he took his first step back into the abstract gallery, none of it mattered. The scent was different than before. The metallic scent had been replaced with a floral perfume. The dolls were still in odd positions and the red lights blinded, but the atmosphere was inviting.

Rose waited for him in a wedding dress. She was the brightest thing in the room. There was a twinkle in her eye that she didn’t have before. “Hey, cutie. This place is so romantic at nighttime.”

“Come again?” Theo couldn’t understand how crucified dolls and mannequins in BDSM positions could be romantic, but each to their own. “You find this romantic?”

“Can you see the mist in the room, it makes the place feel so magical?” Rose smiled, flashing her teeth. “Don’t you agree?”

His stomach tremored. “If you say so.”

“I’m so glad you came.” The way Rose moved was as if she was powered by artificial intelligence. Theo had never known a woman who could say all the right things at the right time for him. “I enjoy spending time with you.”

“I have as well,” Theo said, missing out on the part that he wished he could get out.

“How do you feel about taking things further?” Rose opened her arms and reached out her palm.

“Further?”

“I think you know what I mean?”

“Hooking up again?”

Rose laughed and shook her head. “More than that! I think we would be beautiful together. I can see why you’re your mother’s favourite. What do you think?”

A doll slid off a crucifix and crumbled onto his feet. “Rose…I love you, but can we get out? This place is creeping me out.” As Theo was about to open the door, Rose dashed to close it. Taking a key out of her pocket, she locked it. Theo’s eyes widened. “What are you doing?”

The key crumbled to nothingness in her hand. Rose tilted her head up. “Are you scared?” she cooed.

“Not really, this place just isn’t my scene, you know.”

Rose snatched Theo’s hands and brought them to her chest. “I know the first few times in here may be weird, but once you get used to it, it’s a great place.”

“Rose, can I ask something?”

She nodded, pressing his hands deeper into her chest. “Of course.”

“These dolls…are they corpses?”

“You are so human, you know that. I guess it’s natural for your kind to have a morbid curiosity.”

“Rose…” Theo pulled his hands away, but Rose thrust them back. “Are you okay? You sound like you’re possessed by something?”

“Possessed, not at all. I’m just showing you the real me.”

“We need to get out of here!” Theo barked, noticing the so-called dolls had been reanimated back to life and were swaying their arms. “There’s got to be another key somewhere.”

“Oh there is a way, but you MUST trust me.”

“Trust you?”

“You still trust me right?”

Theo had two choices; succumb to artistic zombies or take comfort in a lover who may or may not be human. “Yes, I do.”

“Give me your neck, let me kiss you.” Rose nibbled on Theo’s neck. The sensation shook him. The only way he could describe it was if he was having two blood tests on his neck—a sharp pain at first, but relief when it was over. Something was getting sucked out of him that wasn’t just blood. The ten seconds Rose spent giving him a love bite felt like an eternity. “That was good, wasn’t it? Now can you see how wonderful this place is?”

Theo observed the gallery again. He crouched down towards the doll that fell and shook the rotting hand. The doll, touched by Theo’s manners bowed before him and waltzed away. He started to see things the way Rose could see them. How beautiful the rays of red radiated against the dolls. The dolls' shrieking noise was an operatic masterpiece, and he could see the lovely patterns he couldn’t see before. Theo’s entire body spasmed as he erupted with laughter. “Oh, it’s wonderful! Let’s have a dance!”