Death Ship: Part -2

Melicertes wakes to the sight of an unknown room.

The window had been left open the night before, the curtains undrawn so that the Sun washed in on its first tides of light echoing the seawater gathered in rockpools along Limassol's shore. The light makes everything seem fresh and awake; the large wooden wardrobe, the red floortiles, the green flaking paint of the old chair.

A gentle rumble of traffic mixes with birdsong. A line of clay-brown buildings stand close against the window, falling away softly as they follow the slope of the land toward the sea. A slow road winds between them, a haze of heat plays upon its surface.

As Melicertes slips quietly out of bed he sees two other men asleep in the room. One, a boy about his own age asleep in a bed next to his, the other, a man in his mid forties, sleeping on what seems to be a pile of coats, one of them pulled across him as a cover. Melicertes remembers the boy but not the man.

He dresses quietly and leaves the room, tip-toeing the two flights of stairs, waving a good morning to the man at the reception desk. Outside He shields his eyes against the sunlight. The morning is cool and bright and as refreshing as plunging into the sea on the first day of summer. He walks along the shadowed side of a street, making his way down toward the sea. After two or three blocks the road widens to become a square. Melicertes spots a cafe with a terrace of plastic furniture and takes a seat beneath the shade of an umberella advertising Orangina. A girl in a blue and white apron brings him water and he orders a coffee. She shrugs and drifts away to wipe the other tables with a cloth.

Melicertes sips his water and tries to piece together the events of the night before. As he allows his mind to wander, to sift through its collection of pictures, he is interupted by an image he recognises as part of a dream he had woken from that morning. In the image his mother drags him toward her car, a red Fiat 500. He is maybe six years old. He is crying and refusing to get in. In his only other memory of the dream he is sat in the front seat of the car, his mother driving silently and the sea rising in front of them like a tidal wave, a wave rushing toward them as quickly as they are toward it. He hears himself scream.

The waitress brings him coffee and refills his water glass.

He remembers meeting three other boys the night before, each about his own age. He remembers walking aimlesslessly around the town. He remembers two English men trying to convince them to take a taxi to a nightclub in a neighbouring town. At some point they were sat outside a cafe not unlike this one and were each drinking Sambuca. The waitress' boyfriend appeared wearing a police uniform and began waving a gun but he can't remember whether it was to show them the gun or whether he was trying to scare them with it. They left shortly after and must have made they way back the hotel.

He drinks the last of his coffee and the waitress brings him the check. She asks if he's Greek and he says yes. He explains that he is here for work and points to the cruise ship bobbing lazily at the dock. She asks where he's from and he says Orchomenos. After looking out accross the empty square she shrugs and turns back to the cafe and this seems to end the conversation.