Chapter 3, Trust Issues

The third chapter of "Wilde Horses Couldn't Stop Me!"

VII

The girl had been asleep for an entire week now.  Would she ever wake up?  They had tried all their Atlantean techniques and strategies.  Milo had tried everything he remembered from the surface world, and yet… nothing!  It was distressing.  But she was still breathing.  Her heart was still beating.  It was like she was in some kind of eternal slumber.

The Atlanteans were fascinated with her.  Not only was she a surface-dweller, which was still exotic to them, but the whole situation reminded them of one of their oldest myths, “The Sleeping Queen.”  It was exactly like the surface fairytale “Sleeping Beauty.”  The Queen is cursed and she cannot wake up until her true love kisses her.  Atlanteans were such romantics.  Men had started to visit the surface girl in the hospital and tried kissing her in order to save her, just like in the fairytale.  The people sincerely believed that what would save the woman was not Atlantean medicine, but a kiss from “the chosen one,” whoever that would be.  So the men kept trying and trying…  And Milo just wished she would come out of it someday.

He was having strange dreams, nightmares.  There were two in particular that kept replaying night after night.

In the first Audrey kept punching him over and over again, harder and harder, and she repeated her catchphrase, “two for flinching.”  Suddenly he was working in the boiler room at the museum again.

In his second dream he was in a submarine and it was being crushed by the Leviathan.  He fell out of the submarine and glided down to the bottom of the ocean.  All kinds of monstrous mutated fish closed in on him.  They started to bite him with their long razor sharp teeth and he heard a voice screaming, “Milo!” A dead man in a sailor’s uniform started to drift toward him, his blood mixing with the water.

He had the latter dream that night and he woke up in a cold sweat, panting.  Thankfully he didn’t wake Kida.  He tried to go back to sleep, but he couldn’t.  Giving up, he wandered over to the hospital wing of the palace.  It wasn’t the greatest place to wander about in the middle of the night, but he was so worried about the surface girl, he had to go check on her.  He had a strange feeling about her.  Milo took the stairs to the second floor.  Everything was so eerie in the hospital at night.  It was so quiet it was like someone screaming in his ears.  His wandering did not calm him down after his nightmare, it just made him even more frightened.  

The sound of whispering almost made him fall over.  He saw the girl’s room at the end of the hall, but two men were talking outside of it; one the night security soldier for the hospital wing, and the other, a man Milo had never seen before " ugly and muscular.  He hid around the corner so they couldn’t see him eavesdropping.  The unfamiliar man was handing the soldier money.  Was it some kind of bribe?  Then the guard unlocked Beatrice’s room and the ugly man went in, closing the door behind him.  The soldier left to go back to the first floor.

Milo was nervous about what the man was up to.  He waited for a long time, and then decided whatever the man was doing was serious.  The king had to investigate.  He peered through the window of the girl’s room.

Milo couldn’t believe his eyes.  Maybe he was still dreaming.  He slapped himself and looked again.  It was real.  He felt a lump in his throat and hot tears falling down his cheeks.

Beatrice lay there, completely unconscious and oblivious.  Completely naked.  And, on top of her, thrusting, grasping her pale breasts, was the ugly, muscular Atlantean.  The man was quietly moaning in ecstasy.  He didn’t care about her consent, about whether she was conscious or not.  

Milo looked away.  It was the worst thing he had ever seen.  He couldn’t bear to watch.  And then he felt it in his heart.  He had to make it stop.  Milo was about to go in and rip that man off of the surface woman when he felt warm breath on the nape of his neck.  

Turning around, he found himself face-to-face with the security soldier.  Milo gasped.

“Evening, your highness,” he said with a menacing friendliness.  The man grinned, “I could kill her.  I could make it look like you did it.  Or I could take the blame for it.  I’d kill her any day of the week, even if it meant risking it all.”

“Who?” Milo whispered, absolutely terrified.

“Beatrice.  Kida.  Doesn’t matter.  Anyone you care about.  All of them.  I don’t have big plans.  But I do like to make money and I don’t care what I have to do to get it.  So just pretend this never happened.”

“But…”

“Pretend it never happened or I’ll KILL them.”

“Can’t you make money some other way?”

“F**k that!” he chuckled loudly, “Do you know how little work I have to do in this humble little business of mine?  Now get the hell out of here and don’t you dare tell anyone that this happened.”

Milo sighed, “I guess I’ll have to.”  A pained expression crossed his face, “Can’t you make it stop?  It’s just… horrible!”

“Relax, Miles.  He’s nearly done,” the soldier patted Milo’s shoulder.

The man was hefty.  He looked confident and trashy.  Proud of his bad taste.

“Listen to him.  He’ll be another minute maximum.”

“Wait, how do you know his sex patterns?”  Milo suddenly looked completely disgusted, “He’s a repeat customer… and you’ve done this before…”

“It’s a sick world.”

“How many times… for h-her?”

“Three, or so.”

Milo gaped, then he stormed down the hallway, teeth clenched.  How did his advisors manage to hire such a corrupt man to guard the hospital at night?

He wanted to throw up.  It was all too much for him.  And he was powerless even though he was the king.  He paced the city until morning.

VIII

“Just a few more months,” she whispered as she wrapped a slab of lard in paper packaging for the ninety-fourth time that afternoon.  It was hard to tell whether she was thinking out loud because the machinery was so noisy.  Beatrice wondered if she would be able to hear after all of this.

It was a little past three o’clock in the afternoon and the girl was already tired enough to go home.  It was mind-numbing, doing the same thing constantly.  She had begged them for a different job for variety, but her boss told her if she made a remark like that again she’d be fired.  Lard factories are not interested in change unless it will earn them a significantly higher profit.

Beatrice was now working three jobs.  Seven in the morning to three in the afternoon at the museum, and then off to work at the lard factory from three until midnight.  Then she’d usually work seven in the morning until eleven at night as a maid for a few wealthy home-owners during the weekend.  

Her only free time was sleeping and the occasional break or day off which she spent researching Atlantis and other ancient societies.  But that suited her fine.  When she had time to herself, she found herself thinking of Milo, who had died a terrible death in Atlantis.  And no one seemed to care or notice except her.  It always left her sobbing in her tiny apartment.  So she kept herself occupied.  But that wasn’t the only reason she worked one hundred and seventeen hours a week.  She was going to find Atlantis for Milo.  In his memory.  To get his dignity back for him and to give him a figurative immortality.  She needed a lot of money to buy a submarine and some employees for her expedition.

When she told her father her plans he told her to get out of his house.  And she did.  It wasn’t an easy thing to do, but it was for the best.

Beatrice started humming a song she was making up on the spot.  Save for the hum of machines, there was no music at any of her jobs, so she made her own.

She remembered what Milo had written about Atlantis in his papers.  The land was a paradise.  They had beautiful white hair, tanned skin, and blue glowing tattoos.  They ate delicious food, full of interesting flavours.  These people had brand new inventions that solved all their problems.  If only she could use their inventions right now.  

Beatrice dreamed she was swimming with Atlanteans as she packaged the lard.  

“If anything can save me, it’s my imagination,” she thought to herself.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…

Author's Note

Something really great I discovered on YouTube is basically all the incidental music in Atlantis. It is great music to accompany the writing of Atlantis fanfiction, although it makes my work feel so insignificant in comparison. I like trying to remember what dialogue and action is happening while certain themes are playing. My favourite tracks are the “Crystal Chamber” and “Secret Swim”.