Titanic 1912

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Titanic 1912

Get off the boat and onto the lifeboat, get off the boat and into the lifeboat. I thought as I heard the screams of terror and pain all around me as the officers barricaded the exits for the third class passengers. Everyone was yelling and shoving each other. We could see the other lifeboats being boarded and starting to leave and that only made us more frantic. I don't know how long it was before we somehow managed to break the barriers that held us. I didn't care, now that I was free; I moved on pure instinct. I shoved someone aside to get closer to a lifeboat. I tripped over her long nightgown and fell onto her, feeling the jerk of her head and hearing her choke on her breath as she hit her head on the side railing. I wheezed trying to regulate my breathing, trying everything I could do to not panic. Get off the boat and into the lifeboat. My thoughts got louder as I scrambled off the woman looking down for a second only to see blood pouring from a cut in her head. My mantra stopped as I looked in horror at the dead woman. Her eyes were still open, tears beginning to freeze on her face, though her muscles had relaxed. I reached down hesitantly, hands shaking, to wipe the blood from her forehead, but more leaked out slowly, though life no longer flowed through the corpse. From the corner of my eye, I saw the flash of a lifeboat being lowered down and I ran. With tears freely falling from my eyes and my gasps turning frantic I lunged and jumped on, causing the boat to swing and the people to scream. Once they noticed how young I was instead of pushing me off, they tried to pull me in. My body was a small pile of bones shivering violently at the sights and sounds, and the violent cold crawled through the coat I had on. I had only had time to put a coat and life jacket on over my clothes before I started to hear the screams. The moment my body hit the floor of that lifeboat, the exact moment my body realized it was not in imminent danger anymore, memories flooded my mind, forcing me to hunch over my legs to try to contain them.

A family flooded my vision. The feeling of warmth and happiness on a summer day as I watched two young girls play around a bush picking berries with their mother. These are not my memories. I thought as the scene glazed into another. She was older now, in grade school maybe, holding a chalk slate in her hand, writing down notes from what the teacher was saying. I saw her head turn to look over at a boy on the other side of the room. He glanced up at her and made a face. This isn't right, these aren't mine! My thoughts grew louder and more frantic as my body tried to come up with an explanation for why this was happening.

In the next scene, it was snowing. Snow fell in big flakes softly floating down and getting caught on people's hats and coats as they busied down the streets trying to get somewhere warm. I turned around and saw the girl again. She was older this time, maybe seventeen or eighteen, around the same age as myself. I watched as the same young boy from the past memory caught sight of her and started walking towards her when a ball of snow hit him square in the chest. A snow fight broke out between him and his friends and she watched laughing at the sight of the teenage boys having fun. He noticed her laughter and started walking up to her with something behind his back. "Come on now Margret, you don't want to be the only one left out do you?'' He said with a mischievous smile. Instantly her hands rose up to protect her face as her laughter grew in a slight panic and stated, "Don't you dare hit me with a snowball, Charles, or so help me I'll..." She was interrupted by the snowball hitting her across the hands that had tried in vain to protect her face. She gasped in disbelief and knelt down to pick up more snow and turn it into a snowball of retaliation.

I heaved in sharp stinging breaths, trying to get out. To get back to my body and my memories. I couldn't feel anything, but I knew I was in danger and that I needed to be aware. The scene shifted once again at a nauseating pace this time. It showed me of her life, she ended up marrying Charles. I saw the death of her mother and sister from some sort of illness. I saw the grieving of her and her father. A fight between her and her new husband. A child. A miscarriage. She had run away holding her child in her arms, trying to find a better place to live, a new start.