Charles needed this trip. His mental issues were causing chaos at his home and his parents were going insane trying to care for him.
Charles had just been released from the mental hospital a few weeks ago. He wasn't fully healed from his problems but he was well enough to go home. And now, that he was causing hysterical problems with his parents back at his house I took the liberty of taking this shaken man a cruise ship so he could take some time away and clear is disabled mind.
Charles was the same age as me -late twenties- but he didn't know it. Being mental and all he acted as though he was 60 years old at some points and 7 years old at other points.
I'd been working to make Charles better for years now, trying to help him get back his normal self. And somewhere during that point I fell in love with this mental human. He couldn't even possibly know what love was but I did. I knew that Charles would never love me back, and that he would never know the way I felt and I could never live a normal life with him but I felt like the deep connection between us was growing stronger each day and if I tried to brake away now it would be lost forever.
This Cruise would help him. Charles needed this. It would help clear what was left of his mind. Or so I thought.
I had just settled Charles into his cabin that was connected to mine through a small door. I was heading back to my side of room when I heard him scream. I ran back to his room and held his hand while he lay shrieking in bed. I brushed his dirty blond hair from his face while he shook and ached. "Charles, Charles, whats wrong? What happened?" I asked anxiously.
Charles eyes opened wide and he pointed to the porthole above him. Between mumbles and shrieks I heard him say, "Sink....Sharks....No more...." That was all I could make out while he threw his fit.
I tried to convince him that everything was alright and that nothing was going to happen with sharks or sinking but he wouldn't listen. He just held his ears tight with his hands and rocked back and forth on the bed.
Suddenly, the boat shook wildly and I heard a loud crunching noise followed by a bang, "Charles, I'll be right back. You stay here now I'm going to see whats going on up there alright?" I raced out of the room not bothering to close the door.
On the lido deck I looked out over the ocean and saw it. We hadn't been going anywhere at all and we still in pretty shallow water but it was deep enough to sink a bout half way down I knew this. It would cover most the cabins in the boat and everyone would be crowding on deck.
Then I saw it. A pointy gray piece of flesh was sticking out of the water, then another and another. Sharks.
Charles was right!
I raced back through the hundreds of people trying to make their way to the upper decks. I had to get back to Charles before the boat sank too much. I had calculated in my head that when the hole in the boat got far enough in the water and the water got far enough into the boat the sharks would come into the boat with the rest of us. With Charles, who was still shrieking in his cabin.
He wasn't. When I reached the cabin, no matter how hard I screamed his name and slammed chairs to the ground Charles was gone. No where in sight. He had left his room and was now somewhere on this boat. Somewhere that the water, and the sharks, would soon be.
I shouted his name as I chased down the halls trying to find him through the groups of people making their way up the boat to the lido deck.
A few levels down I found water. I was wading in the salt water when I saw Charles. He was holding onto a pole attached to the wall of the boat and he was crunched up on a service cart shrieking at the water.
The mental man had managed to get himself into trouble.
I could leave him. Save myself I knew I could. But no, I couldn't. Because no matter how hard I tried not to I loved this mental man. I loved him.
I walked faster through the water and Charles saw me. He began shrieking more frantically and waving his hands at me to motion me away.
I didn't realize why he was doing this until it was too late. There was the shark, swimming around me; preparing itself to attack.
Charles started crying and hiding his face. I tried to swim to him. Maybe I could climb up on the cart with him. I grabbed the cart and tried to heave myself out of the water onto the cart but then the cart was unstable. I looked up to see Charles diving straight at the mouth of the shark. Blood streamed through the water and I swam away as fast as I could back up the way I had come. My face was flooded with tears as I made it to the lito deck where they were loading people onto another boat.
Then it hit me.
All this time I had thought that in Charles' mental state he would never find the love for me that I had for him. But he could. He had sacrificed himself to the shark so that I could live. He had loved me enough to do that for me. To save my life.
No one is too mental for love.
I hearled myself into the shark inhabited waters.
wow
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