Sea Sick: A Horror Novel

Jack handed over his paperwork and waited while it was examined. Eventually the young man smiled, plucked up one of the plastic cards from the table, and offered it to Jack. “Welcome aboard, Mr Wardsley. Someone will take you to your room once you are on board.”


“Thank you,” said Jack, moving away to re-join the queue. A wide hatch in the ship had been opened up and people were now beginning to move inside one by one. Queuing directly in front of Jack was a group of three young men. They talked loudly and impatiently amongst themselves. They seemed to be quite drunk. One of them, Jack noticed, sported a ridiculous haircut, full of shaven lines and childish squiggles. It made his skull look like a hedge maze. He was the loudest of the three and every other word was laced with profanity. Jack took a deep breath and tried to keep his calm.

I came here to get away from cretins like this.

Thankfully, it wasn’t long before the queue started moving again and the three young men disappeared up ahead, barging their way, impolitely, to the front. With a bit of luck, the ship would be big enough that they wouldn’t cross paths with Jack again.

They better bloody hope so.

Now in front of Jack was a little girl with her parents. The mum and dad were muttering to one another as if engaged in some kind of spat, but their little angel was oblivious to the tension. She was playing with a life-sized baby doll and pretending to feed it with a miniature bottle. With her golden pigtails and rosy-red cheeks she was the picture of innocent and adorable youth.

The queue started moving again. Jack could see through the hatch entrance into the ship’s interior. Well-trodden red carpeting led down a narrow corridor before entering into a wide-open area beyond. Midway down that corridor was a Filipino woman, checking people’s passes as they walked by. Before that, however, standing just outside the hatch, was a scruffy, bearded man with a plastic container. It seemed to be full of rubbing alcohol and the man was squeezing a small amount into every passenger’s hands before they entered the ship. Jack sighed. The paranoia of swine flu, bird-flu, and a whole host of other overblown health scares were obviously not yet forgotten. Jack wondered what good, if any, a tiny dose of alcohol could really do against a super-virus. It seemed like a na?ve precaution.

Ahead, the little girl’s parents took their turns with the alcohol, rubbing their hands thoroughly like a surgeon scrubbing up. Once they were done they ushered their daughter over to take her own turn.

“Can my dolly have some, too?” the little girl asked as she ran over to the man with the dispenser. “I don’t want her to get a horrible cold.”

The alcohol-man seemed unmoved by the girl’s cuteness, but he obliged anyway, spraying an additional blob onto the plastic hands of the toy baby. Jack smiled at the innocence of it all as he passed by the family and headed inside the ship. He didn’t need any rubbing alcohol. It was a mildly-effective precaution at best, made necessary only because people were, for the most part, unconcerned with personal hygiene and good manners. Disease spread because of lazy, unwashed people, not because of individuals like Jack. He skipped right by the man with the dispenser and showed his pass to the Filipino woman inside the corridor. Then he headed further inside.

The open area at the end of the corridor housed an extravagant foyer with staircases on Jack’s right leading up to an ornate balcony. On his left was a walkthrough jewellery store and gift shop. Straight ahead was a pair of smoked-glass doors; the words, OCEAN VIEW RESTAURANT, written above it in calligraphic script. A crowd of people – passengers and crew members alike – were already buzzing about the area with excitement and energy. It was likely that Jack’s group was the final intake of passengers for that day. Everybody else had probably arrived earlier in the morning, or perhaps even the previous day. Suddenly Jack felt like a newcomer to a party that was already well under way.