Dear Alice,
I hope that this letter finds you well, I’m sailing to the big apple today, I actually had a rather peculiar dream last night.
In it, a massive black steel ship departed from port, and I was a passenger on it. The precarious, creaking mass mercilessly sailed across the dark sea, through the small golden circular window that had small rivets smashed into it I could see the beautiful ocean, although in the dream it came across as more of a terrifying blue desert staring at me. It almost seemed to be saying ‘I’ll get you soon, you’re safe in that iron cage now, but soon it will break and I’ll have you then!’ Ever since I had first set foot on this infernal dream vessel I hadn’t been able to get this image out of my head of being swallowed up by the cold ocean and slowly drowning, then being doomed to haunt the wreckage of this infernal, I hesitate to use the word, ship forevermore.
As you could’ve guessed from my personality, my nightmare-self probably should’ve considered changing his profession from a factory worker to the noble carnival fortune teller. You see, just a few seconds after this image of water slowly filling my lungs entered my mind I heard a loud BANG, and a terrible, short-lived jittering and jerking began rocking the floor. Then a loud screech began. I clapped my hands over my stunned ears and then saw a huge white spike slide through the wall of my cabin like it was a butcher’s knife sliding through a carcass. Then, a torrential torrent of seawater burst through the horizontal gash in the garish brown wallpaper of my cabin. Bent metal jutted in at me as the water flowed into my room, almost like the opposite of blood flowing out of an open wound. Without thinking I ran toward the small door in my cabin and opened it with the appropriate vigor. I could hear the screams of people around the ship, as they too realized what was happening. I managed to close that door just as the water was about to escape. I heard it slam against the door, like a petulant child. I took the stairs to the top deck of the ship three at a time, nearly tripping on several occasions. There I stood, leaning against the railing overlooking the black ocean, trying not to let my last meal make a reappearance. I could hear the steady crash of the waves against the hull of the ship and I began to have an ominous hope that they didn’t cut the lifeboat budget.
I woke up in a cold sweat after experiencing that. Everything just felt so… real. The sound of the water filling my room, the screams of the other passengers, my imagination is so vivid. You may think me perturbed, but I’m not. For I will soon be on the great steamliner known as the Titanic, the world’s first unsinkable ship.
So, yeah. What I just transcribed was a letter that my great-grandmother, Alice, received from my great-grandfather just before he set foot on the Titanic and… well, you probably know the rest. We found it in her old house in an envelope with the word GUARDIAN ANGEL… ALWAYS LISTEN TO HER! written across it in black pen. I’m not one for the supernatural or otherworldly, but I do sometimes find certain things difficult to rationalize. This is one of those things.