The scratch of pens and the crisp rustle of stationery filled the lobby. After dinner, the guests had gathered for the "Choosing," a tradition to determine the theme of the night’s performance.
Alistair watched John fold his slip of paper with neatness. When John tried to lean in and sneak a glance at Alistair’s choice, Alistair leveled the tip of his fountain pen at John’s face, a silent threat to leave a permanent mark. John retreated defeated, and Alistair quickly scrawled a single word— Trust —before folding his slip.
The steward moved with ghost-like efficiency, carrying a bowl of dark plastic. He approached each guest individually, ensuring only one slip was cast. In a display of transparency, he counted them out loud as he transferred them to a second, empty bowl. The count was perfect. He draped the bowl in a heavy black cloth and locked it in a nearby cabinet. From the same cabinet, he produced a glass bottle and handed it to Elena.
The guests formed a tight, expectant circle around Elena, who placed the bottle on the floor and closed her eyes. As the guests shuffled and swapped positions, the rhythmic thud of their footsteps filled the silence.
"One. Two. Three," Elena counted.
She spun the bottle. The only sound was the hiss of polished glass against the hardwood. Alistair felt a sudden, sickening wave of vertigo and wrenched his eyes away. The result didn’t matter to him. He waited for the world to stop tilting, but his ears remained sharp. Beneath the primary friction of the glass, there was a secondary sound—a faint, ghostly sliding sound—an echo of a vessel on wood.
A sharp tug on his arm snapped him back. It was John. The bottle had slowed to a crawl, its neck drifting toward them. John wore a smug grin, certain he’d be the one, but the glass neck gave one final, agonizing rotation to the left. John’s face fell, and he released Alistair with a heavy sigh.
"Mr. Maurice," Elena said, her voice cutting through the silence. "Please do the honors."
She sank back into her chair, massaging her temples. She looked drained, her eyes heavy with a drowsiness that seemed out of place since she usually writes late in the night. Should I just sleep the next hour away? she wondered privately.
The steward cleared the bottle and brought forth the star of the game, the covered bowl. He shook it rhythmically before presenting it to Jonathan Maurice. Jonathan rolled his sleeves, plunged his hand beneath the black cloth, and shuffled the papers for a few excruciating seconds.
He pulled one out. He held it up for the room to see, then slowly smoothed the creases. His brow furrowed. The silence stretched until the guests began to murmur.
"Forgive me," Jonathan said, looking puzzled. "I seem to be having difficulty with the handwriting."
He held the paper out as a gesture to the room before walking it over to the host. Elena took the slip and removed her glasses.
Before she could speak, John sneered. "What a special skill. I can't identify a single letter. Is it a foreign language?"
Alistair discreetly pinched John’s arm to silence him. His own eyes drifted to the paper, and he felt an approaching headache. He understood now why John, usually the considerate gentleman, had spat such a poisoned compliment.
Elena’s gaze met Alistair's. Without her glasses, the energy radiating from her seemed to change the trajectory. The layer separating her from the world, the lenses she used to scrutinize everything, stopped getting in the way of her venomous eyes. She had perfect eyesight, but she had worn them for years; he vaguely remembered it was around the time he got sick in his adolescence and was bedridden. They were the frames she watched the world from, always a spectator.
"Is it that bad?" she asked him, her tone flat and unreadable.
"No," Alistair lied instantly. "I can read it. He’s just exaggerating."
"Then what is the word?" she pressed, handing him the slip.
Alistair’s eyes fell on the jagged, red scratches. He hadn't seen a single red pen in the room earlier, but he kept that observation to himself. He cleared his throat and announced it to the room.
"This year’s theme is... REVENGE."
Alistair hated the spotlight, yet Elena had dragged him into the center of attention for the entire room. How childish, he thought, considering her reasons. But still, the "REVENGE" written in red was ominous.
A warm smile formed on Elena’s face as if she were genuinely happy he could read it—as if she were still the caring older sister he once thought he knew.
Everyone dispersed to different parts of the yacht; they had only one hour before the performance would begin. The artists immediately set to work, wasting no time trying to figure out whose suggestion had been chosen in the end.
Returning to her cabin, Elena placed her glasses on the desk, as if finally discarding the frame that separated her from the outside world. She prepared herself to become a character in a play unfolding in the dark. Reaching into the desk drawer, she pulled out a notebook. She wiped a layer of nonexistent dust from the cover, then flipped through the pages. The first page was blank, but the others were filled with the same incomprehensible script seen on the slip of paper earlier.
She scanned the room to ensure everything was in its place, then sat in the armchair facing the painting Alistair had noticed earlier. Taking a deep breath, she studied the brushstrokes on the canvas. Cruel and unforgiving, they dragged her back to a past she didn't want to remember, yet one that clung to her nonetheless.
Revenge in crimson red was not a foreign concept to her. It is only natural for humans to want to inflict equal or greater harm on those who caused them pain. The sting of an injury seems to lighten slightly when justice is served—a satisfaction that can only be achieved by delivering that justice with one's own hands.
Leaving the weakness, the nightmares, and the hesitation behind required immense courage. It was one thing to survive; it was another to fight creatures like sharks in an aquarium when you were a fish smaller than a single one of their teeth. They fed on your kind by the ton. It was tempting to simply close one's eyes and hope to be spared, but the only way to reach the goal –the Revenge – was to seek help from those higher in the food chain, beings closer to the sharks, the ones even the predators avoided.
Perhaps , she mused, it would be better still to befriend one of the sharks: an ally to the others, but attached to no one.
Elena wrote a few more sentences into the extensive narration in the notebook, The pen in her hand began to drag, the ink fading into thin, ghostly scratches before stopping completely. She changed the ink capsule, but didn’t write anything further. She carefully tucked the pen into the notebook’s elastic loop to ensure it wouldn’t fall out, then set the alarm on the nightstand for 10:30.
The room fell into darkness. The steady, calm rhythm of her breathing didn't match the surge of events unfolding inside her brain, events that others would call a nightmare. But for Elena, it was a sweet dream. In the silence, she relived the turning point of her miserable life: the day she finally set herself free.