Atu Ep.3 (2) No any difeferrence with the chicks at work. Linda's still weird abot what happened. Janey and the kid's are still at her sisters. I'm working 13 shifts on Friday Saturdy and Sunday all alone – what's the point anyway ? I might jerk off on Saturday. Maybe even Friday because I can't go out really :-( 19/05/09: I think that Linda mihgt 23/05/09- got in coresponance with a friend in Isla s Irland who knows someone form Aiden O'Brians' $ camp and might be able to go up there for a while, like a weakend enough time to check the place out - if its possible we could do it right there and then – omg lmao ifit really works! Fingers crossed :D 25/05/09 Janey and the kid's found out about the trip to Irland and now theres big problems at home. They don't want me to go and now Janey is woried about the money now but THIS IS our shot so that we don't have to worry about money anymore ever again! 02/06/09: amy name is NIC and I cant get my F@ng shit together!!!! Three sleeps to go!!- Nic finally got his stupid visa sorted.~ he's real smart and all but he can be so unnporoffessionnal. So Close call!! but now I can pack the stuff... 05/06/09: It's amazing! The really hard part was getting Yeats in the right position with his two front feat up over the wooden posts while I and Nic worked the recipcicle up and down his cock to get him to ejaeculate – It wasreally exciting for all It happened pretyy The female sexhormones worked - I t happened pretty fast and soon we had Yeats' generic material! (his sperm) 10/06/09: Nic says he's waiting to see if Molly's pregnant. IT will take a while he says...b I already got a bunch of people want to buy the seemen. He better HURRY UP with the thing because my reputaputions' on the line with this one. Not to mention my family. “Fuck me.” I say softly to myself. “He’s gone completely mad.” And the spelling – I mean Jesus Christ even for a Cow-boy it is atrocious. I suddenly feel very sick. I sit up on the bed urgently and bump my head on the bunk - “FUCK!” “Language!” A sailor reproaches from somewhere in the darkness. What am I doing here on this damned boat? I rub my head. Before I had read the ‘diary’ I thought I could make it through this: I thought I could make it because I was the leader and if the others were okay I didn’t mind suffering. In truth, most of the others are fine. But our stations of employment are far from equal: at the top there is Bill practically running the whole boat – God knows it will only be a matter of time before they make him Captain, either that or he'll stage a mutiny and slaughter all the commanding officers on board – then Gabby, a psychotic nymphomaniac doing temporary admin work and what we all know she's doing on the side for extra cash – possibly for cigarettes – and Carl working up on deck, his rippling muscles glistening with sweat in the hot sun – the faggot, he probably gets off on that – those three are okay – they’d been let off light but Harlan and I are hanging onto our sanity by a thread. No. I won’t let this happen to us. I have to do something. I have to get us out of here. I decide to go see Gabby up in her ‘special quarters’. She had been given a room all to herself because she was a lady – or at least female – and she wouldn’t be harassed by all the insatiable and sex-starved sailors. I run up the wooden stairs and onto the open deck where the cold salty sea air meets me with a refreshing spray and I feel it whip past me and then dart up high amongst the mast ropes dancing about the tips of the sails then back down again giving life to everything that is dead and still and then disappears into the sky which looks like a million burning diamonds strewn through an infinite black emptiness, impossibly deep, like two mirrors reflecting each other in total darkness. While walking I let my hand touch the various decking of the ship as if to ground myself; as if I am about to float away from here any second – I have to talk to Gabby right now – we have to go back before it is too late – I round the corner to where her door is, just a few meters ahead, and to my shock there are about 12 large men lined up outside. I walk past them while they nervously wring their hands, smooth their hair and smell their own breath in a cupped hand I listen for Gabby’s voice but can only hear a man screaming in what sounds like agony. I make for the door but the sailor at the front of the line grips my shirt-neck, holds me up and tosses me aside like a small dog – “Oi, wait your turn, shit-cleaner!” The rest of the men laugh at me as I get up from the floor but I ignore them and speak loudly to the first man so that the rest can hear, “Look I just want to TALK to her alright? It’s important.” “I just want to talk to her as well!” shouts one of the men at the back. They all laugh again – then another guy yells out “Hey maybe we should talk to her together!” and the hilarity continues. “Gabby!” I shout. There is no answer. “GABBY!” I yell again then jump forward and pound on the door. Suddenly a flash of light lights up in front of my eyes and I feel weightless, formless. The wooden deck comes up to meet the left side of my face, flat and hard. Confused, I remain still and then after a second I move my eyes around to orientate myself and realize that I am lying on my back because the sailor at the front – who is now standing above me, fists weaving, ready – had punched the side of my face so hard that it had knocked me clean off my feet. “Kill him, Bobby!” I hear someone yell and the world comes back to me. The door swings open and now Gabby stands in the doorway. I can feel the right side of my face throbbing and swelling. “What the HELL is going on?!” she screams. Thank God. “He was t-trying to jump the queue!” stammers Bobby, suddenly very nervous. Gabby turns down at me, frowning. “NO QUEUE JUMPING, SAILOR! That’s the rules. Now, BACK OF THE LINE!” she screams, pointing to the back and then for good measure kicks me in the stomach, winding me. Everybody cheers. “Wait Gabby,” I shout, trying to breathe and reach up to her feebly, “It’s me, Rueben!” but that mole-blind bitch had already slammed the door and immediately I am pulled to my feet by six big ugly hands and roughly shoved back past the line of men, each one getting a punch in, spitting in my face, head-butting me and yanking me about by my hair like a doll. I am finally ejected from the mob with a kick that launches me flying to land face-first a few metres from where they stand. “And don’t try come back, shit-boy!” I heard one of them call out. I lay there motionless for a while, listening to the creaking of the wood under the noise of the men’s voices as the ship slowly swayed in the waves. After a few minutes I lifted myself to my knees and began to crawl away, back to the lower decks. Gabby didn’t need me it seemed – she didn’t appear unhappy, in fact I think she liked being in control of those apes. After a few feet I stood up unsteadily and headed to the kitchen to talk to Harlan. When I got down there, Harlan was busy preparing something that looked hideous – no doubt one of the ‘specialty dishes’ for ‘upper management’ that would make a normal person’s stomach turn just to hear the ingredients. “What happened to you?” “Never mind.” I wiped my mouth and saw blood on my hand. “Shit, those guys are animals.” “Wash it off in the basin.” I walked over and started washing my face. “Harlan, we gotta get out of here.” “I gotta make supper – You gotta get out of here. Bill likes to check up on my cooking while I’m preparing it to make sure I don’t spit in the food. He could come down any second.” He dropped what looked like a kidney onto a chopping board and paused. His face changed colour then he turned around and vomited into a bucket. “Bleeaaaaghh!” Vegetarians have such weak stomachs. I turned back to him. “No, Harlan – the boat, the boat – we gotta get off the BOAT.” “What? Leave? But this is what you wanted!” he looked at me while wiping his mouth, turned back to the mystery organ and then after a second made a sickened face and turned away again shuddering with his eyes closed tightly. “No, you idiot – my plan was to take over the boat and rob them after we’d got them completely inebriated with that Datura, remember?” “Oh yeah that’s right – we did have a –” “Not become goddamn employees! If that’s what you can really call us.” I began feeling about my person for bruises or perhaps something worse. “More like fucking prisoners.” I added. One of my teeth felt loose. In the meanwhile Harlan had steeled himself, taken up the cleaver with two hands and was now hesitantly poised to attack the thing on the board. I watched him and waited for him to drop it but just when I thought he was about to, he sort of sighed and then his whole being appeared to just give up on the effort – he hung his head, dropped his arms to his sides, let the cleaver fall to the floor and he just stood there, shoulders slumped and a light around him I didn’t notice until just then seemed to dim. He put his hand softly on the table as if just to touch it and after what felt like a long while said “Maybe that is what we are Rueben.” “What?” I shot at him, in disbelief. He said nothing back to me but I could see something dark happening in that little head of his. This was not good. “Look at me, Harlan.” He didn’t look at me, but he put his other hand on the table and leant onto it, his bony shoulders lifting up towards his ears, like he was trying to push the table through the bottom of the ship. “Maybe that’s what we’ve always been, Rueben.” Now he did turn to me, with a small, ugly smile on his face. I had never seen him smile like that, it was horrible. The hairs on the back of my neck my neck stood up – whatever it was inside him that made that expression on his face would destroy him for sure – Harlan was too good and gentle a man to harbour a thing that would talk like that inside him. If I was scared before, now I was terrified. I walked over to him and grabbed his face with both of my hands – but when I did it I could hardly hide my revulsion – it felt like it was a dead piece of meat that I was holding, smiling at me, empty. “Christ – Harlan –” I felt my eyes become hot and wet again and my voice was starting to falter. “Harlan! Listen to me. We can be free. It’s not us, it’s this place. It’s these people –” I leant forward and craned my neck to look up into his face but he looked right past, still smiling that awful smile and I didn’t know if this was real or if he was joking with me – he looked like he was in a trance, hypnotised – “Harlan! Listen to m- HARLAN!” Suddenly I heard footsteps coming from above at first, then suddenly a bit to the left, descending the stairs – the sound of big, heavy boots – Harlan let a quiet hopeless laugh escape that bitter mouth of his and said “You’d better go.” still not looking me in the eyes. There was of course, nowhere to go since there was only one door to the kitchen so in a panic I looked around for a place to hide. There was a dark room in the far left corner of the kitchen where a few more carcasses of the herd hung. I ran into the room, sidling past the hanging bodies and crouched in the shadows, as far out of sight of Harlan’s cooking area as I could. Just as I did, I heard the door swing open. A few seconds later I heard one boot-step on the floor, then another. Then I heard the sound of the meat cleaver being pulled from the wooden floor, the square blade singing like a far distant bell. “Boy?” There was silence, but I could not hear it past the accelerating pound of my heart. “What are you doing boy?” Harlan didn’t answer the question and I prayed that he wasn’t smiling that smile at Bill; it would be like baring teeth to a mad dog. “I’m preparing the spleen, sir.” The spleen. The fucking spleen? How disgusting. Then out of nowhere I heard the sound of a violent scuffle and then the hideous rasp of a person choking. It wasn’t Bill – his voice was calm and even. He talked calmly although the sounds grew more frenetic, “Now I’m gonna tell ya’ somethin’ that I want you to take on board, sailor – that is what you are, right? A sailor? Right?” “TH-b-b*-k-*GH” I could tell that Bill was applying and releasing pressure to Harlan’s throat, bringing him close to passing out but stopping before he lost consciousness. “Right. Well, the only reason that you’re down here…making nice food all day and not up there, doing real work is BECAUSE-” “KK-h-*phk*” “I. PITY. YOU.” I closed my eyes, held my head in my hands and tried to pretend to be somewhere else – I couldn’t bear to hear it. After a second I heard a body hit the floor CRUMP and I could hear Harlan gasping for breath. “Now GET THAT FOOD READY! I got a party to host up there and I don’t have time to come down to crush your windpipe so that you’ll get your job DONE ON TIME!” Harlan’s breathing began to return to normal and was harder to hear and I began to calm down myself. “Get up. GET UP!” Again I heard the sound of shoving and shunting as Harlan was being pulled to his feet. “GET COOKING BOY! You got TEN MINUTES!” then a sharp crack rang out which I assume was Bill giving Harlan a stern clout about the head and then the boots stomped out of the room, up the stairs – bang bang bang bang – onto the upper deck growing more distant and finally disappearing amidst the other sounds of the ship. I got up from my corner and gingerly stuck my head out to make sure that Bill was actually gone. Harlan was standing at the table looking down at the cleaver on the cutting board. He was shaking slightly. I rushed over to him – “Harlan, let’s get out of here now. Come, we’re – ” “NO!” he pushed me away roughly. “LEAVE ME ALONE!” “Harlan –” “Just GO! There’s nothing you can do for me. For yourself, for anyone Rueben – don’t you see? I got it pretty good here. It’s bad but it’s okay. Don’t make things worse for me Rueben. Please, I’m begging you. Just go. Go and sleep and get up and do what you have to do tomorrow and we’ll all just carry on.” I stood there looking at Harlan and I felt cold, insubstantial. I shook my head and spoke as confidently as I could. “Harlan. I’m gonna get out of here. And I’m gonna get you out of here - and Gabby and Bill, Muffy, the Terran unit, the other horses. All of us.” “What about Carl?”
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