Chapter Text
And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
—The Masque of the Red Death
May 19, 1962
Malia can hear the party going in full swing even through the dense metal of the ship, her sharp hearing making out the faint pops of champagne corks and the tapping of high heels. She isn’t quite sure why the adults are celebrating, but she’s in her best dress and slim fingers are wrapped around the little gold heart she wears around her throat. ‘If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can be together all the time’ is etched delicately into the locket, Malia’s favorite quote from her very favorite book.
She would gladly stay in her cabin and read all night if she could, but the Captain asked her to join him on deck himself and she’d said yes before thinking what it would mean.
Malia doesn’t like being surrounded by a bunch of strangers, but it’s the only way she gets to see her family again after a year in Italy with a cousin. So, she lifts her chin the way her big sister showed her before she left and marches up the stairs like the steadfast tin soldier heading into battle against the evil Jack-in-the-box.
The adults are drinking and dancing when she reaches the deck, dressed in their best clothes with their hair all done up and their jewelry glittering under the light of the pretty lanterns crisscrossing overhead.
Most of the people ignore her, she’s just a silly little girl with nothing to say that will keep them entertained. It doesn’t upset her as much as it used to, she likes being ignored after a year of being constantly scrutinized by a nanny that hated everything about Malia from the way she wore her hair to the way she slouched at the dinner table. It was a mutual disdain and Malia had done everything in her power to see the little vein in Nanny’s forehead bulge out.
She finds herself a bench slightly apart from the revelry, bringing out the little game she’d snatched from her cousin’s room before she was expected at the docks. It’s a word game, you twist the little white boxes to create new words or even sentences and Malia has become proficient at it in the past week that she’s had it. She’s still trying to figure out which word to make next when a new set of hands are reaching around her to spell out bored.
“Seems to apply to anyone with a brain,” the First Mate explains when she peers up at him. Chris Argent is a kind man, always happy to take time from his schedule to ensure that Malia has something to entertain herself. He has a daughter her age back in California, safe with his wife and far from the aunt that would taint Allison’s innocence. The aunt is currently on stage, crooning Senza Fine into the microphone as couples dance.
“You don’t like parties, Mister Argent,” she asks, gazing up at him with big brown eyes. He’s handsome too, her older sister would probably flirt with him until a blush colored his cheeks.
“Not particularly, no.” He remains standing, gazing around until his pale eyes land on one of the men handing out champagne flutes, face going hard. “Excuse me, Miss Tate, there’s something I need to take care of.” He’s striding off before she can even open her mouth, taking a man in a dark gray jacket off to the side to have words with him. Kitchen staff, she remembers. All of the kitchen staff are dressed in the gray jackets to help guests distinguish the difference between deck crew and the others.
Malia’s gaze strays to the blonde on stage, the red dress so tight on Kate’s body that it looks like a second skin, barely covering her breasts as she moves her hips sensuously from side to side. “Senza fine, sei un attimo senza fine. Non hai ieri non hai domani. Tutto è ormai nelle tue mani, mani grandi mani senza fine,” she sings, her voice soft yet carrying plainly over the sounds of revelry.
A new, white-gloved hand appears in front of her face now and Malia turns her attention to its owner, a brown-haired man in his late forties, dressed in a Captain’s uniform with its stark white fabric and gold brocade along the broad shoulders of it. Deucalion is handsome as well, she supposes. He’s at that age where the wrinkles added definition to his features rather than overtaking them, startling blue eyes and a sharp smile that makes her grin in response.
“May I have the pleasure of this dance,” he asks, the only Englishman onboard. Most passengers were Italian, heading to the States to see if it could compare to the great Coliseum or Terme di Saturnia.
“You may,” Malia accepts, settling her hand in his much larger one. Deucalion leads the way onto the little upraised dance floor and Malia giggles as he spins her around, making a game out of it and ignoring the scathing looks they receive from the pairs surrounding them. Deucalion—or Deuc as he’s been insisting upon since Malia boarded—doesn’t much care what his passengers think of him, he gets a nice payment to deliver them from place to place and his attitude doesn’t affect the amount.
Dancing takes her mind off the ache in her chest from missing her family and she’s able to fully relax as she sways to and fro like she used to with her father. Deucalion was twirling her out again when a strange metallic twang cut through the den of noise, like wire being pulled taunt. Malia’s pulled forward sharply, face buried in Deucalion’s belly and a faint spray of something warm misting against her bare arms and cheek.
Around her, people are collapsing to the ground, pools of red expanding closer and closer to her pretty white shoes. It takes a full minute for her to process exactly what had happened, Deucalion collapsing to the floor with the top half of his head landing three feet away, blue eyes glassy and unseeing. Across the ship, the wire that’s been supporting the lanterns has reeled itself up, cutting through the guests at an amazing speed.
To Malia’s left is a woman with blood coloring her lips and her satin gloves ruined by viscera as she tries to grasp at the intestines spilling out of her belly; behind her is a severed arm with a cigarette still clutched between two fingers, the white filter unstained and the tip glowing a faint orange; near the railing, the man in the gray jacket has Chris’s head forced back, running the ragged edge of a broken champagne flute across the vulnerable skin of his throat.
Terror builds and build inside Malia, like a stone lodged in her throat that won’t let her breathe, won’t let her speak.
When the man’s eyes land on her, she turns on a clumsy heel and takes off at a breakneck pace for the stairs. She can hear the thundering footsteps behind her, gunshots echoing on the third level where the pool is, screaming and begging and sobbing. She smacks her palms flat over her ears, sure that she’ll be safe if she can just make it to her cabin and lock herself inside.
Malia slips halfway down one of the narrow halls, shoulder slamming against a wood-paneled wall and gaze drifting down to the half-dried blood. It’s tacky, a distant part of her mind observes, making sickening thwip sounds whenever she walks from where it sticks to the bottoms of her shoes.
Behind her, a man in a dove gray jacket comes out of the bathroom, a straight razor in his clenched fist. There are several such men roaming the ship, kitchen workers turned mutineers. She tries to draw in a sharp breath, but that stone in her throat keeps it from happening, transforming it into a stuttering wheeze. The man bares his teeth in a grin and starts towards her at a steady walk even as she begins to sprint again.
Her fingers just manage to brush the handle of her door when someone grabs the back of her dress, slamming Malia hard against the solid wood and making her lip split open. The copper taste on her tongue makes her belly curdle, supper threatening to come back up and splatter over the man’s shoes as she’s jerked around to face him. The man brings a straight razor up to her eyeline, either not noticing the warm liquid dripping onto his knuckles or not caring. She squeezes her eyes shut tight, expecting a sharp, stinging pain at any second.
When it doesn’t come, she chances a glance around and spots a second man standing next to her captor. He’s young, she realizes, maybe in his mid-twenties with styled brown hair and a cutting grin. He’s grinning at her now, nimble fingers turning slack rope into a noose without him even having to look at it. He hands it off to the man with a straight razor, winking at Malia before sauntering away. She wants to yell at him, beg him to just let her live and she’ll never tell anyone about what she’s seen tonight. She’d go home and never say another word if that’s what it takes. But the man doesn’t care, he just yanks her into her cabin and begins to work the noose around her throat.
That’s when the stone seems to dissolve, as the rope begins to tighten and Malia has just enough air in her lungs to scream.