On A Lovely Little Cruise

This week, the Flash Fictions come back! Yep, I've been working my own prompts myself over the last few weeks. Well, this one is about a horror holiday. Mine went in a totally different direction... I've never been on a cruise, but my folks have.

enjoy.

1^st, January – I’m having a wonderful time on this cruise that my folks insisted I took. Despite having a slight case of sea-sickness and paying through the nose for the injection to get rid of it, I’m going well. My best friend, and lover, Dennis, came along with me and we’re having a wonderful time. The sea breezes are just perfect. The food is top knotch and our rooms are above the waterline, and we have a Queen Size Bed and a little balcony overlooking the lower decks. Yep, we forked out extra money for the best.

This is going to be the best holiday ever!

4^th, January – Oops! I haven’t been writing in here as often as I had hoped. We’ve been island-hopping and totally enjoying ourselves. I’ve been on so many places and loving the local culture. Dennis has been by my side the whole time and has made sure we got back to the ship an hour before we left the docks.

And there’s some lovely news we’d love to share! Dennis proposed to me! Yes! We are engaged! We’ve known each other for five years and now we’ll be organising a wedding when we arrive home. I can’t wait!

11^th, January – Some strange things have happened since my last entry. Our ship has taken a different route than what it was supposed to. Instead of Vanuatu then onto the Cook Islands through New Caledonia, it’s heading up into Malaysia, away from its usual route. We haven’t seen the Captain at his table in the past three nights and the nightly entertainment has been really, … strange to say the least. Instead of show tunes by a Tony Bennett look-alike, they’re playing Turkish and Russian music where men sit on one side of the room and women on the other. This is strange. And if you’re married, you sit at the back.

20^th, January – Last night I was dragged from my bed by the hair and Dennis was forcibly removed from my room as some people held me against the wall at gunpoint. I was too scared to say anything but cry as they took him out into the hallway and beat him until he was unconscious calling him names. Then…

24^th, January – I couldn’t finish my last entry because I had to go and be sick. I can hardly move because after they beat Dennis (I don’t know where he is by the way), the three in the room gang raped me… shit… I feel so dirty. And they keep calling me slut. But they’re calling all the women that who are either single or engaged; and they’re taking us away to … oh shit… I don’t know what to do.

30^th, January – I’m being held prisoner in my room with three other women and a young girl who’s barely out of her teens. She’s either mute or in shock but she’s stopped talking. The other women are too scared to talk too much about what has been happening and I’m wondering if the Australian government knows this ship has gone missing off its route. We haven’t seen any television or listened to the radio since the change in the route; and this worries me. I haven’t seen Dennis either. I wonder if he’s still alive.

7^th, February – I’m not sleeping. It’s dangerous to do so. Us women take shifts in standing guard over each other – particularly the girl – so we can be ready for them for when they come for us. We know that the ship has stopped moving because we can’t hear the engines anymore. But we don’t know where we are. It’s 3am and I hear footsteps in the corridor…

17^th, February – I’ve been at the Australian Consulate for three days. Two days after the ship went off course, the Australian Government knew something had gone wrong and took steps to make sure to keep the passengers safe. Unfortunately, not everyone on board was found alive. Dennis and I have been inseparable since we docked in Singapore. How we got to be so far off course was due to us being boarded when we made a supply run at some point in New Caledonia… but they’re not exactly when.

Actually, Dennis and I have decided to get married here at the Consulate. We don’t want to be apart any more than we have to be… not now we’re expecting a new little somebody in our lives. I was sick over the last few days because I had morning sickness – and that wasn’t seasickness either. I’m about a month and a half along; we’re so blessed something good came out of this horror.