The Champagne Ship

The champagne ship sailed through the night returning to a home washed over by the waves of the unknown. Unprepared for the inevitable — if it wasn't that night, it just as easily could have been another. The familiar bed, the beautiful, soft, warm body. The rest — the rest, mere steps and a staircase away. A morning, a familiar place, I'd never reach. They were waiting, ghosts hidden in the bushes, and emerged like memories conjured in dreams, shape-shifted by my subconscious, through the shattered glass of my imagination. They came silently toward me, closer somehow — without movement, without sound. Their silence by choice, my own throat in their grip, so tight a scream as distant and unreachable as a whisper. One grabbed, the strap went taut between our grips. They were taking so much more than any of us could have fathomed — in a 3am silent death dance. And yet — I refused to let go. As one pushed me face down on the pavement, pistol-whipping my head — I still held on. I didn't feel the blood as it slid down my neck. I felt no pain. The other pulled the bag, the tilt of his body viewed through the darkness, from the ground— I don't know if it was his struggle or mine that lifted him out of a sneaker. Until finally, I relinquished. And just as they emerged from the bushes — invisible, and then upon me — they split in opposite directions, running past the edges of my periphery, while their shadows still danced on the pavement. And finally, I began to scream.