mullet runs through the waterway... and the fishes' natural predators knew it. A school of Bull sharks had hidden among the bridge pilings of its entire length across the waterway - there was no escaping them. To the shark, erratic splashing movement meant the mullet had arrived. Dinner was served a la frenzy. Margo (and Victor) couldn't drown fast enough and didn't.
After Armada's head cleared this time he swore never to eat fish or hold a rod again and massaged his wrist where in his dream his hand had been bitten off during the shark attack. When his tremors finally subsided he stormed down to the psychiatrist's cabin and beat on his door to no avail - the man and his wife were in a dining room for breakfast. Incensed, he returned to his own suite and barked at everyone he came in contact with, including members the ship's staff in spite of the fact he had just demanded several of their services. Victor smashed half his luncheon dishes on the veranda decking and threw the rest overboard. He ranted, "I'm trapped in a Final Destination movie and playing all the characters!" Then he remembered part of something the girls said, "You will experience their fate every night... over and over," and broke into a cold sweat. "That damn shrink had better stop this or I'm going to wring his scrawny neck and throw his worthless ass overboard!"
Armada knew he couldn't search the entire vessel to find him - it was too large. He also knew tonight was formal dining and it would take extra time for his wife to don her best attire so he stationed himself in close vicinity of the man's cabin to catch him and demand a new course of action. It worked. Victor observed the pair returning from some unknown activity and enter their suite around five p.m. Bang, Bang, he struck the door - the fellow hadn't even had time to take a leak.
The meeting was short and semisweet. "It takes a full day to get the medicine effectively into your system. Take two tablets tonight, not three... three would be dangerous. Come see me here tomorrow at two o'clock, after lunch for a full session," and led his irritated yet cooperative patient to the door. "Good night, Mister Armada and sweet dreams."
Victor grunted and departed in silence. He had four drinks before retiring. "So what? The man never said: Don't take with alcohol."
"It's night again. Why does everything seem to happen at night?" He was running, panting - caused by an adrenal rush and shock, out a liquor store in rural Sweetwater, Florida located twenty miles south of Miami, within a group of three young men who had just robbed and shot the owner/clerk. They pocketed roughly two hundred dollars and took a middle-aged Pakistani man's life without remorse. The trio expected a (stolen) getaway car driven by another gang member to pull up at the store front and whisk them back to Little Havana (the Cuban - Spanish section of Miami).
Hector, age twenty-one to whom Victor had attached didn't have a weapon - the other two toted black, nine millimeter hand guns. The young man had been instructed to carry the leader's valuable, silver iPod so it wouldn't get dropped and damaged during the job. Hector had rejoined his old gang a couple of years ago after being laid off from his job as a car/truck washer at the cigar factory. It had been a decent gig and took him away from his previous life of street crime. Due to bad economics (lack of green) he returned to the posse.
The fleeing boys were unaware the clerk had hit a silent alarm to the police station when he saw them assemble outside his door. He noted they weren't wearing masks, which was a very bad sign. He tried to sneak to the storeroom and bolt himself in but the young men were too fast and cut him off. The leader shot him in chest and face as his number two jimmied the cash register. Hector served as lookout. Out they ran.
"No car! Where the hell is he?" ranted the leader then spied a police cruiser parked across the street in the shadows - the officers had just stopped to take a routine (fast food) dinner break. Apparently the getaway car driver had spotted the police and backed off, leaving his three amigos to fend for themselves. The two officers received a: 'Robbery in progress' alert for this store's location over the radio, immediately followed by a: 'Shots fired report'. They jumped out of their cruiser and popped the trunk lid to retrieve shotguns in less than thirty seconds. These Everglades raised, country boys weren't too great with their city issued pistols but they grew up hunting with shotguns which was a whole different story.
"Freeze, ass holes!" ordered the policemen. "Drop your weapons!" from behind their vehicle.
The leader looked up the street and saw his driver idling two blocks off. He decided to blow away these stupid rednecks then high-tail it to their escape car. "No way you frig'n pigs!" he returned then raised his weapon to take aim.
A deafening, Blam! Blam! from the already zero'd-in, ex-Army vets, split the damp air and quieted the ever present crickets. Both the armed robbers were hit: one spun in a circle, the other was lifted off his feet and both then crashed to the sidewalk. Hector, unarmed and scared speechless held his two arms out defensively in front of his body with the nice, shiny, silver iPod in his left palm. "Gun!" both officers shouted and blasted Hector into oblivion - almost cutting him in half.
The next morning...
"I don't know how much more I can take," moaned Victor. "Six different horrible deaths I've been through. I'm pretty sure the girls said there would be more. And... they would repeat until the game is over? What does that mean? I've suffered enough. I took the pills Doctor Quack prescribed, apparently for nothing! I'm going to be in his face every day until these nightmares end." 'Don't take three pills, it's too dangerous,' he warned me. "Well, up yours, Doc. Sleeping is too dangerous. I feel rotten." He pondered various options, "Wait, wait. I know the answer! I'll meet with the girls again and barter a new deal, a compromise in my favor. It'll work... after all, I'm a master negotiator. Now that I know the game plan I'm going take control and get this bogey off my back." He paused and frowned, "If only I didn't have to sleep until the deal's done."
Victor didn't realize each repeated reenactment would become clearer, fuller and more intense: the horror and suffering increasing profound. "My two new purposes in life," he declared: "Number one is to meet with those stupid, little girls and number two, to harass that butt-hole doctor until he gets off this ship!"
He began his plan by sitting on a stool and riding the elevator twelve hours a day in anticipation of pushing that damn thirteenth floor button when it finally appeared. In between his vigilance he'd take a break, go down to the psychiatrist's cabin and chew out the man who had falsely promised him relief and didn't deliver. "You lying, money grabbing bastard," he yelled at him which ironically Victor had been his entire life.
Another week passed and the nightmares worsened. Victor had run out of pills and the doctor he now hated refused to give him neither additional samples nor a prescription to be filled in Los Angeles when they docked. When the ship did arrive in the California port, the man and his wife aborted their cruise and left in haste to escape the crazy person attacking their cabin door at all hours of the day. They demanded a full refund from the cruise line and got it.
After departing the next stop up the line, San Francisco, the ship's physician came to Armada and told him to get off in Hawaii or be confined to his stateroom indefinitely until his conduct and disheveled appearance improved. Victor had been acting erratically and looked like a ghoul from a science fiction movie which greatly disturbed the other well-financed passengers. His personal hygiene had also been all but abandoned. Small, spoiled children ran from him and cried. The ship's doctor assured he would check on him every two days. Armada continued to haunt the elevator or hunker down in his suite every day.
Weeks later at the port of Hong Kong
The Chinese government had refused to allow passengers or crew to disembark. The U.S. and Taiwanese navies were conducting joint combat maneuvers in the international strait separating the tiny independent island from the giant communist mainland. The party leaders in Beijing were vilified and in retaliation decided to inspect all American ships arriving and departing for illegal contraband, weapons, drugs and foremost - foreign spies by condoning off and searching each
vessel for as long as the military exercise continued. Five hundred army troops were dispatched to complete the mission on the Colossus of the Ocean. China's greatest resource has always been manpower. Each room on every deck was inspected by a search team which included a drug sniffing canine while an intelligence unit reviewed passenger passports and crew work permits. Everyone had been required to sit in a lounge, theater or restaurant during the process. All the elevators were shut down - similar to the mandatory pre-cruise life boat drill, forcing the people to use stairs.
Victor shuffled along, en route to report to his assigned Muster Station located aft on deck eleven in the elite, posh Pioneer Lounge. He felt tired as hell from his every other night horror show and as a result had lost fifteen pounds during the twenty-five days since departing Rio de Janeiro. Armada was definitely in no mood for this idiotic, political pissing contest. It was five stories down from sixteen to eleven, then back up which would be a lot more difficult after the Chinese's annoying, tit for tat show of strength concluded. This was the price he personally had to pay for being a capitalistic pig in an