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Ishmael cannot hide her fatigue a minute longer. Every step of hers is accompanied by a burst of dizziness and brief lapse in vision, and her eyes flicker open and shut in momentary bursts. Despite not being the one completely and utterly drunk off their ass right now, (that instead, would be Rodion, now a half and a quarter into a bottle of cheap brandy) Ishmael wavers and shakes like a man given infinite credit on his bar tab. All that keeps her awake is the sheer noise that the other Sinners make as they sit around a table within one of the bus’ many rooms. Supposedly they were playing poker, but Ishmael doesn’t care. She loiters around the back of the small room whilst the others cause a rabble.
In her haze of tiredness, she doesn’t notice Faust walking up to her.
“Faust estimates that you have not slept for close to forty-eight hours. Please keep in mind that the side effects of sleep deprivation can cause lapses in reaction and weakness of the body, which in turn can affect your performances within our missions.”
Whatever Faust said, it went into one ear, and right out the other. She might as well have just been shaking a rattle beside her ears as noise that sounded vaguely like a smartass was all Ishmael could comprehend.
“Hngh…? Huh? Ugh…Hunh? What? Did you say???”
Faust sighs.
“Go to bed, Ishmael. Sleep deprivation will do you no good.”
“…I’m fine.”
“Your eyelids are closing and you are slumping as we speak. I will not ask again and I will use force if necessary. Please go to bed.”
Ishmael is too tired for this, knowing that she probably means ‘I will have Heathcliff happily knock you the fuck out’ by force, and so unwilling to argue with Faust any further, she reluctantly complied and left for their private quarters.
—
With much wobbling and difficulty, Ishmael arrives at her room.
Starting from the door, the corridor was as long as Meursault was tall, and so narrow that Ishmael scrapes and bumps her shoulders on the dark walls. At the far end of the corridor to her left, there was a cubby within the wall, half the height of Ishmael, containing only a plain hammock with a thin rag for a blanket. Above her, a flickering lamp oil swung from a hook, such paltry lights against the encroaching darkness.
Try as she might, her memories dig into her soul wherever she goes, like rusted, barbed wire all piercing and prodding her heart with the pain of her past.
It is no pain that simple, earthly vices can erase, let alone even let her forget for just a small, peaceful moment. Ishmael has tried, oh how she has tried. No alcohol, cheap wine or moonshine could get her to forget, no kind of intimacy nor bodily pleasures could make her forget, not even within deep sleep could she forget, nightmares arising every other day to haunt her in rest as it haunts her in wakefulness.
She tries to keep herself awake at every hour of the day, employing any means necessary, whether it be copious amounts of caffeine, or working until her body collapses within its tiredness. But today is one of many days where she cannot handle her fatigue a minute more.
Ishmael throws herself into the hammock, and as loathe as she is, closes her eyes and swiftly falls asleep.
—
Yes, indeed, a nightmare plagues her.
Such as it is, as it always is. There is water, thunder, fire, and the winds, oh the winds how they howl! Whistle they a somber tune for the poor fellows that met their ends here! Whistle they, for all but one, all but one. Oh, for the one, they whistle instead, a mocking tune of her survival;
“Wish ye that end?
Want ye thine death?
Do you wish us dearly
To take away thine breath?
Nay, says we!
Life we give ye!
This apocalypse ye see clearly
Live with it, go! Be free!”
And while the wind laughs and mocks, here the White Whale swims into her view, the towering leviathan that heralded the deaths of all but her.
Ah, the great beast! Oh, witness how its eye, deathly, pale and white as its hide, witness its magnificence! How it stares unblinking at the poor ship of fools beneath it as it enacts its service for Death! It swims the waters as if manned by the souls of sailors that it had long annihilated, deft in speed, daft in destruction, dismal and daring this darling of doom! Hear its call, hear its bellowing!
Around her, the melodious cacophony of the winds and the whale harmonizes with the dying and pleading screams of her crewmates, their bodies brutally broken, mutilated, beaten, mangled, disassembled into components of flesh and blood and bones and matter that could barely be called living or human, yet still they call, call for mercy, call for help, call for salvation as the maelstrom reaches its peak.
This nightmare she relives, time and time again. Always the same, always unchanging.
Maddened ambition calls the whale.
And the winds sing for the catastrophe.
And the whale destroys all she cherished.
And her crewmates plead for their lives.
And someone…
Someone…
Someone.
Someone is shaking her awake.
—
Ishmael jolts upwards and violently bangs her head on the top of her cubby, gashing her forehead.
“My apologies.”
The voice belongs to Faust, who is kneeling beside Ishmael with a fairly antique candle holder in her hand that within it held a simple candle of wax, lit and flickering, the only source of light within her room as the lamp swinging from the ceiling above had long exhausted its fuel. She puts it down next to the cubby and leans closer towards Ishmael to examine her injury.
“...What in fuck are you doing in my room?”
“Faust was checking up on whether or not you indeed went to sleep or if you hid somewhere. She entered your room and noticed that you were violently convulsing in your sleep.”
From a pocket hidden within the depths of her coat, Faust pulls out a small pack of disinfectant cloths, gently wiping away the blood pooling in little pinpricks on Ishmael’s forehead. Then, she stuck a bandage on her wound.
“Ishmael. Do you refuse rest because of recurring nightmares?”
“Aren’t you a genius? What the hell do you think?”
“Faust thinks that you should be sleeping uninterrupted. We do not need you waking up as tired as you were when you slept. If you are in need of medication, then we can provide th-“
“Don’t need it. Doesn’t work, I’ve tried. You should be happy that I even hopped into bed and didn’t spend my time walking up and down this miserable room.”
“I see. Faust is familiar with other ways to soothe one's nightmares. She used to suffer from them too, tormented by dreams of demons, unable to suppress them through scientific or medical means. Someone had shown her another way long ago, though.”
Faust takes one of Ishmael’s hands into hers.
“She had shown me how human touch could soothe one’s psyche.”
Ishmael’s hand twitches slightly in Faust’s gentle grip. She will not deny it, her hand is warm and soft as wool, and would be calming and comfortable if Faust were holding anyone else’s hand. But no, it is hers, and it brings back a memory from long ago, when the seas were particularly rough, and the lashes on her back rougher still. Someone too, had once held her hand like this, as she lay in her hammock convulsing from the stinging pain of fifty cracks from the captain’s lash, and a burning fever that came shortly after. A precious memory of a minute comfort amidst days of suffering.
Ah, how vividly she remembers. She wishes to tighten her grip and beg her to stay, to watch over her, to savour this familiar little warmth that her heart ached for. But she knows, she knows. That life is dead, those memories of warmth are all now buried deep within the unforgiving sea.
Faust is not one of her fellows, whose visages inscribe themselves in her memories. She would never understand. Nor would she let her understand.
Ishmael shakes away from Faust’s grip and bats away her hand.
“Stop. Don’t. Just… please don’t. Stop here and give up. Whatever the hell else you were thinking up in that genius brain of yours, anything you think of, it’s not gonna work. Get out and let me sleep like this. There’s nothing you, or anyone, can do to fix this shit.”
Faust almost looked taken aback by her words. But nevertheless, she complied.
“…Alright.” She reluctantly says, taking the candle holder with her as she stood back and walked towards the exit. Faust opens the door to leave, but hesitates to take even a single step out into the hallway. She turns around and looks at Ishmael one more time, who has swiftly fallen asleep, and just as swiftly is she now being plagued with a nightmare that has her twitching and mumbling sad little whines like a pathetic kicked dog.
Something pulls Faust back towards her.
For the nightmare plagued woman before her, of which she could offer no solace in her wakefulness, she offers instead a paltry little comfort in her terror laden rest.
Faust kneels down and presses a light kiss upon Ishmael’s forehead. (For just a moment, a few fleeting milliseconds, Faust could swear that tension, just a tiny little bit of it, dropped from Ishmael’s face.)
Once more Faust walks toward the exit, and once more Faust turns around. She brings the candle holder close to her lips and snuffs out the flame with a quick puff of her breath.
“Goodnight, Frau Ishmael.”
—
When Ishmael awakens from her fitful rest hours later, she finds a long, heavy coat draped over her. It smells of machine oil and light perfume, and with it being so close to her she can see the tiny rips and frays in the fabric and loose strands of stark white hair near the collar.
It is warm.