I foretell our devastating fate.

Brine poured over the lip of the ship. It smelt deliciously thick with salt and sealife. Burnt-gray cloud smattered the sky but a strange pale light kept the ship in clear sight. Malcontent shipmates were aboard. But they were not shipmates anymore. Something had changed and mutiny mutated into an unbridled desire to kill.

Their thirst for blood sent electric pulses throughout my body. I ran at full tilt, ignoring the blazing pain of the wood planks gripping my bare feet and the icy wind tearing at my face. I wanted to preserve my life, at least from their groping fingers. They found everyone thus far. I was the only one left, alongside a frantic-looking girl. My face was likely marred with the same eccentric fear. Her breath poured outwards in wavering bursts. Their voices reached us. Their swiftly pattering feet filled our ears and sent our knees ajar.

As if the same impulse urged us at the same pace in our heads, we automatically turned at the same time and ran in the same direction. We both fell through to a secret hull in the ship where the light shafted in thin, gray lines. The alteration was difficult to get used to, but once we grasped our surroundings we saw a torturer hovering over a victim who was plastered in blood and burbling past layers of pain. Tears washed away two curvaceous lines that ran to his jaw: two pale lines shone white past a mask of black-flaked blood. I didn't feel pity for the victim, and I felt comfortable with the torturer. He looked at me and I looked at him. We understood one another and felt safe in each other's company.

The other girl wrenched her head side to side, a sliver of a whine carrying up her throat to taper into a groan at the back of her mouth. Two slits lay in the floor. No noise came from them, but I knew something metal and swift lay underneath that would slice her body into thousands of dirty pieces. She seemed unaware, or knew but didn't care. She slid under like a fish on the slimy deck of a ship. There was no noise. But she was dead for sure.

They would find me eventually. I was positive of that. But I didn't want to leave this haven. The victim heaved breath after breath, a languished wheeze concluding each. I wasn't afraid of what the torturer had done. I knew it was his job, that he was a malicious person by craft. He may've also been sadistic by nature, but it didn't matter because we fed off of the courage and hope in each other's presence. I wasn't sure whether to follow the other girl's fate, or stay close to my silent, seemingly dangerous friend. They came and the wheezing man wept some more. The torturer was still. I knew there was no hope, but I did not close my eyes. The boards bit into my feet. They were icy cold to touch. The ship moaned in a jarring fashion, grunting under the exertion of the ocean. My sea legs held fast. Theirs didn't, but that was because they didn't belong here.

They stole me away; I was the one-person left that might be able to preserve their fate.

The ocean would grow angry. Although the torturer would stay silent, I knew his rage would develop and soar with the waves. Someday soon, plates of water would sever their heads, including my special friend's.