You look for a hole to crawl in

You have always pictured yourself a brave woman, yet now confronted with **** but certain **** you realize that you are not. You could kid yourself by saying that you do not want to give up on life, that there is still hope, but since you have always been, or at least always tried to be, honest with yourself, you know that there is none.

The boat is in the middle of the Caribbean sea, the closest port or island is beyond your reach. You suspect the whole staff attending the passengers to be vampires and even if you are wrong and only a few of them are monsters, they know you saw them and they will be searching for you.

Beyond that, you do not know anything about what you are facing. Vampires? You have seen the movies, read the books, probably masturbated a couple of times to a particularly sexy representation of the creatures. But what you saw is totally different, this is real life not some romantic allegory of Victorian era puritanism, this is pure horror, an animalistic predator hiding in the cracks of society to feed on humans.

And how does it work, what are the rules? What is truth and what is myth? No way to know, what you know is what you have seen: these creatures are monsters, they do not care for human life, they are vicious and powerful beyond comprehension.

All you know is that you have absolutely no hope of surviving this cruise.

And yet you cannot face the horror, you cannot go out, back in the game of life and accept your fate, all you can do is crawl, crawl under whatever machine you find and wait for the creatures to find you.

***

It has been hours since you woke up and found yourself paralyzed in fear between your two machines.

Finally, the thirst gets the best of you. You start wandering again looking for some water. Maybe you will find a better place to hide, you reason.

After a while, you find a faucet but the water that comes out of it is so filthy and smells so bad that despite your crippling thirst you do not manage to **** yourself to drink. You move on.

More metallic corridors, gangways, incomprehensible machines and an infinite maze of pipes.

You have the impression of having walked in circles for hours when eventually you find a door with a sign that says: break room.

You step in. The place is small, packed with a few chairs, a table, four lockers, a small fridge and a bunk bed. On the other side another small door. You run to the fridge and slam the door open. In it, an apple, a wrapped sandwich and six small bottles of water. Thank God, a break of luck at last.

The pure fresh water flowing down your throat tastes divinely. You sit on the bed eating the sandwich. You have found your hole.

Once you are done. You go back to the door and lock it from the inside. You explore a little further. The lockers are empty except for a couple of nude pictures hanging from the door of one of them and an old candy bar in another. Behind the door, you find a small shower and a toilet.

Definitely you are in luck. You take a shower. You scrub yourself of the filth and the drain fills with dark mud but the water is hot and you feel invigorated. The towel you have been caring around is useless but someone left one mostly clean hanging from behind the bathroom door. By it a large pair of overalls. Too big but yet it feels great not to be naked anymore. You crawl on the bed and fall asleep instantly.

***

You spend the next three days hidden. On the third morning, you hear an alarm. At first, you want to ignore it but then smoke starts to seep under the door. You finally find the courage to exit. The hall is filled with more dark smoke. Panic takes you and you start running aimlessly.

Once again, luck seems to be on your side as you find a door and step into the morning light. People are running everywhere. A man grabs your arm and drags you towards a lifeboat.

A few hours later, as the Caron is still sinking, you are rescued by the Bahamas life guards.

Your sister and friends are not among the survivors. You will never know what happened.

As the years pass you will come to forget about the monsters. Yet, never again, will you sleep with the lights off.