Dangers of the Sea

Leave Her Johnny, Leave Her

A light breeze flutters over the bare skin of my arms sending a shiver through me. Joshua lazes with me on my mother's quilt on the grass field. A small basket rests between us. He passes me a glass of wine and we sit together in a comfortable silence. 

No words are spoken between us. It's a familiar silence. One of comfort. His presence is one of the few that I feel most comfortable around in a silence such as this. 

Joshua smiles sweetly at me, and I can't help myself. I retaliate by pulling a silly face at him. His smile turns into a bark of laughter that has us both dissolving into giggles and hilarity of childishness and ridiculous facial expressions. When he pulls a particular face, my gaze is caught on his collar. 

A dark bruise peaks out from under Joshua's collar. I shift my weight forward and move his collar slightly out of the way. The bruise wraps around the length of his throat. Encompassing almost the entirety of his neck. There's markings deep along the bruise that hold silhouetted details distinctively of rope. 

His hands latch onto mine gently pulling them away. His soft, loving  hands hold mine in a gesture of comfort. He releases his grip and drops his hands. I look up at him. What I see haunts me.

His eyes bulging outward, mouth gaping wide open like a dying fish gasping for air, and purple shading grows on his face as he loses oxygen. A rope is laced tightly around his neck. I take a step to move towards him. To pull the rope off of him and hold him, but something holds me fast. 

At both my left and right sides are two guardsmen. Neither one glances my way as they grip onto me. Up on a podium now stands Joshua with a hangman's noose around his neck ready to bring upon his death. I can no longer see the peaceful field of home that we were once in. Now I stand in a horror show of death as my love stands before its doors. 

He's going to die. 

The executioner, my husband's murderer, makes his way towards the lever. I need to get to him. 

"Joshua!" I cry out. Please, don't. Not him. He's all I have. "Joshua!" I plead. The roaring of an enraged crowd drowns out my cries. 

By some miracle from the Heavens, he looks at me. His eyes find mine in the crowd. He grants me one last gift before I lose him forever. A small smile filled with love. 

The sack is shoved over his head. Tears are pouring from me, hiccups ripple from the depth of my soul. He's done nothing wrong. He's a good man. Don't take him away. The lever is pulled, and he drops into Death's arms. Legs kick and flail to grab a foothold, arms push outward in stunted attempts to grasp a rope from behind his back. The kicks slow and the flails soon cease. Now all that swings from the rope is a limp corpse that I once called my love.  

Something erupts from me that I never thought possible. Wails. God awful, unholy wails of sorrow. The roaring crowd is silenced and the only sound that can be heard in the wails that cannot be stopped. I drop. 

Cracks along the ground do nothing to distract me. My eyes cannot stray from the body long. It swings back and forth in the wind, but I can see his face. The bag isn't there and I can see the loving brown eyes are white and empty. Devoid of life and love. It stares right into me. Piercing my very being. Tears pour out of me like a river, hiccups erupt to endless wailing, legs fail to move, arms shake. I can't move. I can't breathe. 

Footsteps approach me.

No.

It - it can't.

Joshua, with his lifeless eyes and rope bruised neck stares down at me.

He speaks clearly though. 

"Yusuf, I found a stowaway. What do I do?"

What?

The voice that comes from him is nothing like what he sounds. It's young and boyish.

My eyes flutter open to see not Joshua, but a young boy standing to my left. He's dressed in simple sailor clothes of a loose shirt and baggy trousers, and black leather boots that seem slightly too big for his small stature. 

I have to blink once then twice. In my immediate line of sight is the wooden ceiling of the ship's lower deck. The young boy stands opposite of an older man with middle eastern features. The boy stands closest to me with a finger pointed directly in front of my nose.

A petty thought runs through my mind to lean forward slightly and bite into it.

Movement comes from the middle eastern man and I look his way. His clothes are more fitted with the shirt stretching along his broad shoulders and loose around his waist where a tied sash replaces the use of a belt and beige pants are pulled over the bottom of the shirt. He levels a pistol at the center of my forehead. 

Oh, fuck! 

I duck as a shot goes off right where my head was. Wood splinters and slashes into my back. I crawl to the right only to run into a crate. 

Shit, shit. The steps forward and levels the gun at me again. No, no, I can't die. Not now. 

"Yusuf, what are you doing?" the boy screeches. 

A mad man is going to kill me. They were right about the savages in the east. He's going to kill me.

"We kill her, Vincent. She's a threat," 

I'm not a threat. I just needed to get out of London. 

I can't form words. Boots slam and I assume the boy is running off to not see someone killed. Well, there goes my only hope. All I can do is stare at my soon - to - be - killer. 

This is it. 

I squeeze my eyes shut and brace for death. At least I will join Joshua. 

"NO!"

I wait for the gun to go off and end my suffering. For the pain of the bullet entering my head to come, but nothing comes. Then the gun goes off and deafens my world.