Chapter 4, The Moment I Said It

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

IX

Two days later, Milo had his servants move the surface woman to the room beside Milo and Kida’s.  Milo locked the room after dinner and unlocked it in the morning.  He watched the room like a hawk and hid the key to it.  Everyone, especially Kida, thought he was being much too paranoid about the girl’s safety.  In response Milo would laugh sarcastically, “Oh, yeah.  She was perfectly safe already, just like Oliver Cromwell’s head or the Pyramids of Egypt, right?!”  No one seemed to get the reference.  People began to wonder if the King’s royal duties were wearing him out.  Milo had lost much of his trust for the people who worked in the hospital wing.  He was trying hard to maintain his trust in the people around him.  It seemed his only sure-fire friend was Kida.  

Kida had noticed that Milo’s mind would wander when he wasn’t near that room.  She felt a little neglected, well, actually very neglected lately.  They were having lunch together and he was barely paying attention to her.

“Milo?”

Looking off to the side, he turned back to Kida, “Huh?  What is it?”

“You’ve barely touched your food.”

“Oh, right,” he started eating his lunch.

“It’s not just that,” Kida sighed, “your mind had been elsewhere lately.  What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing.  Just, you know, thinking.”

Her tone was getting colder, less curious and more probing, “About what, exactly?”

“Well, to tell the truth, I’m rather worried about that girl from the surface.”

Kida’s annoyance rose. 

“Oh how wonderful.  Her again.  Why is he always talking about her?” she thought to herself.

“Why are you worried?”

“Well, she hasn’t woken up yet, and it’s been, well, a really long time,” Milo was getting nervous.  He hadn’t heard Kida speak with this tone of voice before.  He wondered what he could do to make her feel at ease.

“I see,” Kida was silent for a few moments.

Milo was desperate to fill the silence, “I’m just worried about her safety.”

“Her safety?  You really shouldn’t be concerning yourself with her so much.  Other people can take care of her.”

“But I’m the king.  Aren’t I supposed to take care of all my subjects?”

“To an extent.  You’re treating her like family.”

Their voices were growing louder.  She was starting to piss him off.

“But what if she’s dying?”

“She’s not dying!  You just want to be with another woman!”

Milo felt his body clench.  Kida was being impossible.

“That’s ridiculous!  I’m not allowed to care about someone other than you?”

“If you’re going to act like this, then no!  You’re making a fool out of me and out of yourself!”

“Really?  I’m so sorry,” he said sarcastically, “I’ll never make a fool out of you again!”

Milo got up to leave.

Kida yelled, “Fine.  And don’t come back!”

Evening came.  It had been nearly ten days since they found the girl from the surface.  Milo lay on the couch outside his royal suite.  After the fight he had had with Kida, she wouldn’t even talk to him, let alone let him into his own bedchambers.  He tried to get comfortable on the couch, but he had the dream when Audrey kept punching him again.  He woke up at four in the morning.

“Should I even bother going back to sleep?” he wondered to himself.  He decided against it.  Instead he resolved to go check on the surface woman in the next room.  

Milo sat up and put on his glasses.  He delicately tried the door of his bedchambers, and, luckily, it was unlocked.  He quietly walked to his desk and opened the desk drawer as quietly as he could, trying not to wake Kida.  He fished a key out from under a pile of books and papers in the drawer.  Then he unlocked the door to the girl’s room.  He felt a shiver run through his body.  

Closing the door behind him, he went to look at the girl up close.  Would she ever wake up?  The nurses had basically given up on her.  Milo believed she could, she would " there had to be a way.  Time heals all wounds.  He felt her wavy brown hair between his fingers.  It should have been quite greasy by now, but it wasn’t.  Strange.  It felt like silk.  He hadn’t felt surface hair other than his own for so long.  He could have smelled her hair for hours.  He felt her smooth skin.  So pale.  Paler than his.  

He was so happy that she was safe, so happy that she wouldn’t be used by those men anymore.  Milo wanted her to wake up so badly.  Now.  But then he would eventually have to tell her about those men, the corrupt security soldier and he couldn’t do that to her, crush her with the truth.  Maybe he wouldn’t.  He wanted her to be happy.  

“Who are you?” he whispered.  She looked so familiar.

The king leaned in closer and smelled her hair again.  Such a different smell.  It reminded him of old times; his parents, maybe.  It reminded him of university, enormous libraries, fall leaves, ancient trees, water, old photographs, flowers, fresh linens, the museum, Coney Island, his boyhood home, his boyhood bed, his mother, the spring air…  Such an intricate smell.  It forced so many memories back into his mind.  They were pleasant memories, but it hurt to think of them, knowing he’d never see his family again.  

Beatrice.  Her name was Beatrice Wilde.  From the museum.  And everything slowly came back to him.

He’d barely talked to her when he worked at the museum.  He wanted to, but he was terrified.  It was hard for him to talk to girls.  Audrey, Packard and Kida were the only women he really felt comfortable around.  He didn’t know how then, so he decided to focus on his research instead.  He knew so little about her.  She worked at the ticket booths.  Her name was Beatrice Wilde.  She was a university student.  

Why did it take so long for him to remember her?  Maybe Atlantis had made him thoroughly forget his past life.

They’d exchange a couple hellos here and there, when they passed each other by.  They were practically strangers.  

He chuckled to himself, “This is a good chat we’re having right now.  Just like old times.  We never talked, but we knew each other’s names.”

They were practically strangers.  So why did he feel so compelled to protect her?  

He’d always thought she was pretty.  He wondered what she was like.  Whether she would want to know him.  Maybe she thought he was crazy, like everyone else.  Was there anyone at the museum who didn’t just think of him as a lunatic?  Milo wondered how she ended up in Atlantis.  

He felt butterflies in his stomach and his heart rate accelerated when he realized it.  It could be him.  He could be the knight in shining armour that had to save the damsel in distress.  He really wanted to save her and find out more about her.  Maybe it wasn’t just a coincidence that they were currently the only two surface-dwellers in Atlantis.  

So he did it.  No hesitation.  Without thinking, for once.  He leaned in and kissed her.  Explored the stiff mouth with his tongue.  Her cold lips were so soft.  He wondered if he was any better than that muscular man in the hospital, but he was doing this to try to save her.  

X

Beatrice looked from the submarine window to the papers in her hands.  She didn’t know how Milo came up with all this information about Atlantis all on his own.  It seemed impossible.

He even provided directions from Iceland to Atlantis.  Unfortunately Beatrice had run out of these directions.  The last thing in his notes was to keep going deeper and lower until you see a variety of shipwrecks.  After that she would have to rely on intuition.

“Ok, Jay, take us further down.  We’re looking for a place with a bunch of shipwrecks.”

“Okay, boss,” Jay, one of her two assistants, answered sarcastically.  He was fairly slim with short blond hair.  Even after being together for several days, Beatrice still didn’t feel that he took her seriously, since she was a woman.  He’d been criticizing her constantly.  Assistants capable of respecting their superiors for more than five seconds despite gender were much more expensive (and hard to come by in the 1910s).

“I still think it looked more promising to the left,” Jay said.  What he was saying was idiotic.  It made no sense.  It was almost as if he was just disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing.  

“I’m just following the directions.”

“Hey, Beatrice, I see a shipwreck to the right,” George, the other assistant, spoke up.  He had thick black hair and a black beard.  Unlike Jay, he was professional and knowledgeable.  George had navigated for many ships before.

Suddenly they were looking at hundreds of ships.  Some were old eighteenth-century pirate ships, some were fishing boats from no more than five years ago.  There were steamboats and giant cruise ships, tiny rafts and submarines.  Beatrice even spotted a rotted Viking ship, surprisingly well-preserved after hundreds of years.

“Well, this is the right place according to your stupid directions, but who’s to say we won’t join them in the shipyard of death?” Jay smirked.

“Well we haven’t yet,” Beatrice tried to stay calm, but unexpectedly they felt the entire ship lurch.  Their papers and belongings fell everywhere.  George’s coffee fell on him and his mug fell to the floor, smashing into tiny pieces.  He bellowed in pain.

Suddenly Jay was terrified.  He didn’t care about proving Beatrice wrong anymore.

“I’m going to die,” he said in a whisper.  His voice was frightening and intense, “But first I’m going to have you, Beatrice.  And then you’re going to die with me.”

Beatrice looked at Jay’s crazed expression and ran to the other side of the submarine as fast as she could.  The misogynist assistant charged after her and caught up quickly.  He pushed her against the wall and started to kiss her lips aggressively.  Beatrice couldn’t stand his kiss.  It tasted like raw meat.  Thinking she had given up on evading him, Jay started to take off his pants.

The girl ran to the other side of the sub, making it rock even more than it was already was with the Leviathan lunging at it.  George ran after Jay, trying to convince him they would survive if they kept calm and strategized, but Jay punched him in the face.  George fell to the ground, unconscious.  Beatrice shrieked.

After more running and stripping, Jay was wearing nothing but his briefs.  He was actually quite muscular.  

Beatrice was terrified, thinking to herself “If he takes a swing at me, I’m done for!”

She kept running around the small submarine, not sure how much longer she would last.  He pinned her against the wall again. 

“You belong to me.”

He squeezed himself up against her so hard that she couldn’t even move her neck.  He released quickly and then punched her in the stomach.  Beatrice slid down the wall onto the floor.  Her body was throbbing but she was still barely conscious.  Just what Jay had planned. 

He pulled down her pants slightly and then her underwear.  Then he pulled his underwear off.

“You’re mine.  So pathetic.  Look at our leader now.  Sprawled out on the floor like a rag doll.  I hope you like it up the a*s too,” he snickered.

It was cold suddenly.  Was it that the water from outside had entered the submarine?  It was.  He could feel the icy water on his feet and on his legs.  But what he felt was much colder than that.  Colder than he had ever felt before.  And then the pain seeped through his veins.  It was coming from his back, and his stomach.  It was excruciating.  He burned with anguish.  He looked from Beatrice’s horrified face to his own body.  A knife was coming out of his stomach and his torso was soaked in blood.

“Who did this?” he said weakly.

Jay looked behind him and saw George cleaning the blood from his hands with the water flooding the submarine floor.  

“You b*****d!  F**k you!” Jay reached for his pistol, but realized that his gun was in his pants which were lying in a heap several feet away.  He was determined to kill George.  He tried to get up but it was so painful it made him faint.

“I never liked him.  Pity those will be his last words,” George said to himself.

The submarine was gaining water at a ridiculous speed and shaking like mad.   George put Beatrice’s pants and underwear back on.  She was still barely conscious, with only a slight inkling of what was going on.  George ran to the control panel and desperately tried to steer the ship away from the Leviathan.  The water was up to his chest.

“We’re not going to make it.  But maybe I can save Beatrice.”

George put Beatrice in the supply closet and wedged Milo’s papers and other objects into the gap below the door until water stopped flowing into the closet.  

“Goodbye Beatrice.  You’ll be safe for a little while at least.”

George thought he heard her scream “No!” but he couldn’t let water into that closet.  Someone from their team had to live.  And that closet only had room for one.

He went to the front of the submarine and prayed to Poseidon until the water covered his mouth.

Author's Note

Reccommended music:

If You Could Read my Mind (Gordon Lightfoot – Scala and Kolacny brothers cover)

The Moment I said it (Imogen Heap)

In the Fall (Billy Talent) for the Flashback scene

If I Were a Carp (Final Fantasy/Owen Pallet) for the Flashback scene