Round 1 entry

How could it come to this? I thought for the hundredth time in the last hour.

It was mind numbingly boring being chained to a pole. Not to mention unfair, especially when you were there because of a practical joke.

Frustration had yet to give way to despair, leaving my mind too sharp to allow time to pass unnoticed. But I could feel the despair clawing at my mind with icy fingers.

Icy fingers? came the following thought. The irony of the image made me smile as I sat back down on the cold hard deck, my legs going either side of the annoyingly solid and firmly held pole. Here I was thinking of icy fingers, just twenty minutes after the ship had hit an iceberg.

The sound of approaching footsteps drew me away from my icy thoughts, as, underneath the sound of the heavy footfalls, was another sound that gave me a glimmer of hope. Jingling of keys.

Round the corner before me came the object of my 'would be' salvation. Only for that salvation to turn out to be damnation. It was the man that had accused me of the joke. He had only done it to try to save face… and what a big face he had, twisted as it was into a humourless smile.

“Want these do you?” he asked with his surprisingly high voice that no one of his girth had a right too while holding the keys up before me.

I felt my face turn to a scowl as I rose to my feet. I would be damned if I would allow him to tower over me. “Where did you get those from?” I asked, my voice betraying none of the frustration I felt inside.

“I liberated them from the captains office while I talked to him about your punishment,” he all but spat over the last word. It didn’t faze me. At my station in life, you always get spat on from above.

“You mean you stole them,” I retorted.

“How dare you!” he bellowed in my face. “I am a man of breeding!”

I smiled inwardly at the response my mind formulated. But I’m smarter than to dig an even deeper hole for myself than I was already in. “Did you want anything or are you just here to be sadistic?”

I garnered more amusement when I realised he didn’t know what sarcastic meant, his chin… well… both of them… dropping down with his mouth in a little O. Breeding indeed!

“I just thought I would tell you, you are going to die!” he bit out when he decided I had insulted him.

“Whatever,” I muttered disinterested in the topic.

“Don’t believe me eh? The ship is sinking you know?”

I frowned. How could it be that the Titanic… the largest passenger ship, pride of the British Empire, and unsinkable vessel… sinking… Yeah…. That was likely!

“Still don’t believe me? Take a look at the deck!”
Out of curiosity, I glance at the deck, and suddenly realise that it is sloping. It had happened so gradually over the past few minutes I hadn’t noticed. “You have to un-cuff me!” I said a little panicked.

“Why?” he asked, his smile finally slipping to reveal the soulless person behind it.

“I’ll drown!” I exclaimed.

“So?” he asked. “You and all the rest of the gutter trash they let onboard.”

“That’s murder!” I yelled at him as he jangled the keys and I realised that he really meant it. He was going to leave me to die.

Suddenly, the assistance I had received for my practical joke earlier arrived.

Out of my pocket.

I had brought a pet with me on the trip to the new world.

My pet snake.

The man saw it and let out a decidedly un-masculine scream as it started to curl round the pole, its head reaching out towards the moving keys.

Desperate, and afraid for my life, I utilised the distraction to act.

I kicked off from the ground. My hands chained to the pole acted like a pivot, and I travelled round to plant my feet into the man’s overly large gut.

He doubled over in pain allowing me to kick his legs out from under him. He dropped the keys by my feet. At last, something went my way.

Sliding my hands down the pole, I got the keys and released the cuffs. I was free. Now to make it out of the ship with my life…