#batswegen

[aboardtheship]

The Desk

Upon the desk sits a number of things. An empty oil burning lamp. A children’s spinning top. A photo frame. A glass paperweight. A book with no cover. An ink well and pen. A necklace with a photo pendant. There is a thick sticky fluid spilt on the desk. It smells like oil and blood. I have tried and failed to light the lamp with this many times.

There is also a briefcase. It has no locks, no hinges, no means to open it. 6 sides and a leather handle are all it features. It has never been opened and yet still there are things contained within.

If you were to stand in front of the desk, you would only see it and the things upon it by touch, for there is no light in this place. The desk itself is old and battered. Many scratches and marks scar it’s surface. The drawers are missing.

When I touch the desk, something within it allows me to see it, to visualise it, to FEEL it. Something is shimmering, rippling, eager, underneath the surface.

I do not sleep. Each and every night I lay my head down and close my eyes to rest I am instantly here in the darkness. The desk and the things upon it are my only company.

I have thrown the things from the desk a thousand times in a thousand different directions in frustration and anger but each night as I visit this place they are as i first came across them.

I have been chained to the desk in this way since I first came to this ship. It may sit in the dark down here, with me, each night, forever.

I need to open the briefcase.

[aboardtheship]

The Wind

If only the infernal wind would cease I could maybe hear what Jackson is screaming. He looks panicked.  Looking out across the sea makes me shiver. The wind is blowing so hard I can’t breathe but the sea is like a sheet of glass. How the hell is this happening? They’d been talking about this before, how the water wasn’t behaving quite as water should any more out here beyond the second boundary marker. I then realise he wasn’t looking or shouting at me but beyond me, at something else. I don’t want to look round. I really don’t. But my head inevitably starts to turn…

[thebatswegen]

Visit Original Link

From a reel found lodged in the back of a drawer of the tape cabinet. The cover reads only 'Kepler 4B'

[aboardtheship]

The Figurehead

Some wonder the point of a figurehead on a vessel like this. Some enjoy the softness and curves of her figure that remind them how they once lay with a wife or a partner. Some enjoy the same memories but with much less reverence of those with whom they lay. She is the only woman any of us have seen since the passengers were... 

  ...were used.

  For the few who know the truth, some of the first on board of which I am one, she is a much needed relief from the rust orange walls that has made tired our eyes and the diesel stench that has invaded our noses every day of every month for all these years. She softens us, reminds us who we once were, reminds us of the reasons we keep sailing on the endless ocean and when she needs to, she reminds us the gravity of where we find ourselves.

  We few are the lucky ones, we know the truth.

  For on occasion, she wakes.

[aboardtheship]

Chief Warrant Officers, Whale Island. Two weeks after this was taken was the last time my legs stood on land.