The place I died

This is the place I died. It was a place of polish and wood married to a foundation of metal. It was a death of ice and water. When I forget to forget I can feel the press of liquid slipping into my airways. I can feel my skin go numb in patches of needles, all but my lungs which hold the memory of being so achingly full but empty of anything that I need.

This is the place I died, sliding into darkness. I am of the forgotten in the depths, to remain forever trapped between within and without. This is the place that I have died, both within a crush of bodies and alone. We were all so alone at the end, even in our crowded graves. Our silent graves. The graves that spread far from the ship, with their bodies that lay forgotten in the silt. The screams cut into gurgles, sucked away from the stars into the darkness.

The place I died was pressed between a wooden handrail and passing bodies. I died tangled in wood, one arm had slid through between the rail and the wall. Another four feet through the hatch and my grave would have been spread like the others. But this is the place that I died on this ship of ghosts.

This is the place…

I wasn’t supposed to be here. I wasn’t supposed to die. Or perhaps more than any other, my late addition meant that this was always meant to be the place I died.

Jeremey caught the flu and so I was his replacement. The dock representative of the White Star Line told me when and where to report with a voice that said he was better than me. He told me that I would be provided with three stewards' uniforms. That these uniforms would be cleaned by the on-board laundress but any damage would be deducted from my pay. I was representing White Star’s image while onboard. My assignment would be working in Second Class as only the permanent stewards were assigned to First, and I was competent enough not to be stationed in Third. I would be paid upon arrival in New York.

It was good pay, when you could get it. Three times what I could make at one of the factories over the same amount of time. It did not matter that I had no sailing experience, that was not what I was there for. There were others to sail the liner, workers down in the engines or officers on deck. I was to direct and serve the guests.

It is strange the things I wondered in the last few moments before the water took me. I wondered if the White Star Line would honor their contract with me, and pay my sister my due wages for the days I spent working. I wondered if they would keep my wages in an effort to regain the money lost in the icy sea.

I reported to my duty station in the days before we set sail. I remember that the gang plank connecting to the great ship was the fanciest I had ever seen, and it was the one for staff. The ones for the guests were even fancier.

The steward’s quarters I was assigned were in the Second-Class section. We were four to a room in second class. I heard rumors that the stewards in first class were two to a room, while down in Third the stewards slept in shifts.

My uniform was crisp and stiff, with thin cloth gloves to cover the dirt that had long been made a permanent part of my fingers. Like the others in my room, factory workers found competent enough, we were instructed that our appearance mattered. Our uniforms were to be crisp, we were to be patient and polite to all guests.

It was a job. Well paid and as good as any. It was not meant to be my life.

This is the place that I died, in fear and cold. My body drifts, caught by a wooden handrail, pulled with half a ship into the darkened sea. I share my grave with others from every walk of life, limbs encased in silk and fur entwining with the roughest spun cloth whose grease remained long after the cloth was gone.

This place that I died, this place that I wait, this place that is remembered and forgotten and twisted by the ones that escaped. We wait in this place with a secret, you see. A secret that’s hidden from the living at sea.

Do you want to know the secret I hold? This secret I gained down in the cold.

We wait in the silt and the water and the dark. We wait and have waited with this secret, we wait to share our grave.

You see, it is secret, it is hidden, but it is known. No one was meant to survive the place where I died. The Titanic was always meant to go down with its complement full.