RUST

  

 

 

The metal skeletons raised broken but proud all the way up to the sky it seemed, high high, rusty and golden and bright as the dying sun bathed their faces with light.
The girl looked up. Any other day she would have been scared of them, those giants that sailed the sea once and now died on land. But not today, there was something far scarier to fear today, and he was near.
She listened up but couldn't hear. There was no noise other than the seagulls and the soft wind in her ears. She shivered. There had been no time to grab a jumper, no time for anything really, but running. Her heart was still running; she feared even if she made it out of here, her heart would never stop racing.

She had heard of moments like this one, last moments, moments in which the dying life passes in front of one's eyes like a movie— of course, she had—but she had never been this close to one of them. So this was it, wasn't it? She would take her last breath here, within the immense sleeping liners. 

His rushed steps on the gravel drew closer. She climbed the rusty stairs, flying towards the deck, nearly missing the dark hole on the floor. That might have ended things quickly. Maybe she had time to run back and fall, just fall, break her neck. A moment of vertigo and then ... nothing, no pain. But what did this monster have prepared for her? Nothing that easy for sure; he was the monster the news always talked about. He butchered others. The girl shivered.

He was getting closer, the echo of his footsteps vibrating on the metal ; he was on the stairs now; he'd followed her. The girl dropped to the floor, cowering in the shadows of the big copper wall. A ghost in the Titanic, she thought. A ghost already. The stench of rust in her nose, like blood it smell. Her blood would smell just like that, on the ship, on his clothes, on her hair soon.

He was running now.
She closed her eyes, pressing her hands against her ears, shivering with cold and fear. Please, please help me, she cried to the ships, to the sun, to the rust and the seagulls and the grass. And then— they helped. The next step never came, and in its place, a swooshing sound, a swear-word in a foreign tongue, silence and a thud.