Titanic: True Love Forever

Chapter 21: Let Go

We went back to the chase mode we were in earlier, me jumping down the stairs as I saw them, Carl following behind me as I struggled to catch up. We ran from the E deck back to the G deck, and I wondered if he wasn't tired.

I found Carl Hockley's running speed to be amazing, he followed me with a horrible look on his face that would not break my bones and skin me, many times his hand almost fetched my hair, if he had grabbed it I have little doubt that he would have ripped it off just to stop me from escaping.

This was not a gentleman who favored women, but a violent man in tuxedo skin.

As I descended the stairs I couldn't run and grabbed the handrail at the bottom of the stairs, bending over and covering my stomach to catch my breath, it was stomach abuse to engage in an intense game of running when you haven't even digested the food you've just eaten. Carl stood on the stairs, also covered his stomach and grabbed the handrail and bent over to catch his breath.

We half-heartedly watched each other gasp for air, our eyes so hard they almost burst into sparks in the air.

"You think you can escape? Unless you jump overboard, you're bound to get caught." Carl pulled at the corners of his mouth in a sneer, his eyebrows knitting together menacingly, his eyelids drooping even more.

"Don't bother with that, sir." I flashed a perfunctory smile, feeling nothing but bad luck; it was just a matter of coming aboard to inform the hero that he could run for his life, and it had been so hard to lure Jack Dawson off the ship that it was my turn to be tired of playing hide-and-seek with someone instead.

I should be glad to throw the damn watch to a third-class passenger, otherwise the watch in the pocket, once on board the ship will be searched out I may not even have the opportunity to hide with people here. Will people believe that I didn't steal it, but that it was accidentally hung on me?

Don't be ridiculous, kid. Civilians in this day and age are nothing but sewer rats, and those so-called superior people who have a reason to seize you when you don't have a watch in your pocket will still listen to your ludicrous defense?

We looked at each other viciously, and slowly the panting lowered and finally became a kind of quiet breathing. The air seemed to have a string that was particularly taut in this silence. I mentally recited one, two ...... Carl jerked out of his stillness and moved, he rushed down the stairs, and I just turned and ran forward after him on the count of two.

Running to the bottom, I saw a hatch open, a worker wearing a fedora wearing a dirty dark shirt just walked out of that hatch. I ran over to the worker and brushed past him and jumped into that hatch, the worker shouted in surprise, "Wait a minute, Miss ...... No sir, you can't go in there."

Carl cleanly pushed the worker out of the way and barked a low, "Go away."

I rushed through the hatch only to realize I was in the wrong place, the vertical steam turbine rumbled into motion, the huge three-story-tall engine running at full speed. The chief engineer in a seaman's cap stood in front of the car clock, keeping an eye out for orders coming from the pilot control room above. Up the iron ladder, there are iron runways running in all directions, and the workers in charge of each part of the engine room, some of them watching the dials, some of them standing by the railing at the bottom of the steam engine, are watching the condition of the crankshaft.

There were no bright colors here, all the cold gray of bare ironwork. The coldness of the steel combined with the full-throttle operation of the hot steam engine combined into an unexpected harmony of contrasts.

For a moment I was tempted to swear, I was simply driven to my doom, I couldn't find a way out of this hellhole other than the door I had just entered.

Carl ran in and almost laughed when he saw it was the engine room, he looked smug and triumphant.

The engine room was busy with more work than any guest on the upper deck could imagine, and no one even noticed my arrival when I first ran in because everyone was so dead focused on their work that they didn't have time to look around. Even the chief engineer kept his eye on the air-pressure needle on the dial, and his hand on the throttle to control the amount of steam.

I looked around and then up at the runway, which resembled a high bridge overhead, and decided almost instantly to run for the high ground and then turn back again via the stairs on the runway. If I ran fast enough, Carl could only watch as he followed me back out of the engine room. Hands gripping the hem of my skirt, I lifted my feet and sprinted up the iron stairs. The chief engineer just happened to look up over the cacophony of mechanical noise and saw me running up. He yelled in a forceful manner, "Stop, ma'am, you can't go up there."

Carl followed me up the iron ladder, and he had room to admonish the wheelman below, "Why don't you grab her, how do you do your job."

How could there be such an obnoxious rich kid, no wonder you were cuckolded, you deserved to be cuckolded.

"Sir, get down here right now." The captain of the wheel roared at him with even more vigor.

Unfortunately Carl couldn't listen to anyone else's orders, he looked more like he was itching to go back down and grab the wheelman by the neck and say to him, "Do you know who I am? You laborer."

Better to argue, I ran up the nearly ten-meter-high iron roadway, with the heart of Titanic's engines running right under my feet, the huge flywheels and connecting rods whirring away. Just beyond the railing beside me was the huge connecting rods rumbling and shaking, you don't have to be dead or crippled to get hit by one of these things.

A laborer with an oil can in his hand came running from in front of me, and as he ran he said with a cold face, "This is no place for you, get down there, young lady."

Carl had caught up behind me, the runway was narrow with only room for one person to walk across, and I was just caught in the middle turning into a meat sandwich. I didn't even stop I turned around and grabbed the iron railing on the aisle, my feet lifted up and stepped directly outside the railing, the connecting rod that could knock someone into a meatloaf almost grazed my flying strands of hair, the worker watched in disbelief at my desperate and thrilling maneuver, and the oil jug in his hand fell to his feet.

Carl had reached over and grabbed the corner of my gauzy skirt, and I was on the wrong side of the worker beyond the railing, my whole body back on the walkway with one push of my hands. Before I could stand still, I felt a forceful tightness at my thighs, and then heard a rip as my skirt was torn wide open.

This was not the worst of it, but the torn skirt tripped the worker who was in the middle of us and stepped on the oil coming out of the oil can.

Then it was Carl who couldn't gather his strength and fell backward with the ripped skirt in his hand, and for a moment he looked like he couldn't figure out what was happening. Behind him was the railing, and the force of this backward movement sent him tumbling over the railing, and beyond the railing below was the great steam-returning machine, which would have churned up the bones of a man who could have started a liner of nearly fifty thousand tons.

Without any time to think, I had already jumped back and grabbed his arm with both hands, and was pulled downward with too much force. Carl's entire body hung out in the air as the connecting rod swung over his back, nearly shattering his spine.

He finally realized what he was in for, and panic appeared on the man's face as he grabbed a rail with one hand, the other being pulled by me in a death grip. Half of my entire body was dangling out after him, one of my feet dead against the bottom of the railing to keep from being dragged down by him, and the pain was so intense that I even broke out in a cold sweat.

"Don't let go." Carl said in a shaky voice, his grabbed arm backhanding me in a death grip. At the bottom of his feet was the horrible engine machine, and a fall could have saved even a funeral, as the bodies were too fragmented to be collected.

I grabbed his arm so hard that my nails snapped into his flesh and helplessly told him, "Shut up." Save your strength and climb up, or both die together. I didn't trust him to let go of my arm when he fell, for the sake of me saving him.

We were both so close that our hair got tangled together, the sweat from my face falling onto his forehead as Carl froze, his amber eyes reflecting my face in clarity.

We hadn't been this close, except for the moment we'd bumped into him at the pier.

"Hurry up and pull them up." The chief engineer shouted anxiously to the workers still on the iron ladder walkway, and he himself rushed down the car clock side of the ship in a desperate rush toward us.

The worker who had slipped on the engine oil half sat up and put out his arms around my waist, afraid that if he was late we would both go right in and feed the machine.

Several workers on the aisle scrambled over to Carl's hand, dragging and pulling him back from the outside, a chaotic and thrilling scene. During this time Carl had a death grip on my arm that was so strong it was about to crush my bones. I shouted at him angrily, "Let go of me, you're safe."

"It's just chaos, too much chaos, how did you get here. Mr.! This lady, don't you know it's dangerous." The captain of the wheel thumped up the iron ladder, he looked as if his hair was on fire with rage, and his black whiskers trembled under his nose.

Carl sat down on the walkway, his grip on my hand trembling; he'd almost fallen and been run over alive a moment ago.

"Let go of me, Carl Hockley." I told him in excruciating pain, the fear of almost dying together earlier still not completely gone.

He only barely managed to compose himself, looking particularly humiliated and embarrassed by the fact that this had happened in front of so many people, he suppressed a slight twitch at the corners of his mouth and glared with a menacing look at the workers who had surrounded him.

"Let go." I finally couldn't stand it anymore, and angrily said to him in a loud voice.

Carl was reflexively startled by the sound of my voice clamping down even harder on my arm and I grimaced in pain. He let go again in a heartbeat and I snatched my hand back with all the force I could muster, any more pinches from him and I was going to be Yang.

"Is anyone hurt?" The captain of the engine managed to squeeze over, and he inquired worriedly.

I brew for half a second, and with a piece of genuine fear sandwiched between my earlier moments, I change the demeanor of my face almost instantly. Reaching up to cover my mouth, I let out a warbling, panicked gasp that looked like I was about to faint, and then turned around and said to the welcoming wheelman, "My brother's foot was hit, I'm going to go get a doctor, please help him."

The captain's face paled and he rushed to Carl in a few steps, crouching down to hold Carl down who was about to get up, "Let me see your foot, sir."

"I'm fine, go away." Carl pushed his hand away and tried to stand up.

I was already running down the iron stairs with my ruptured skirt in my hands when I turned around to see Carl only just getting to his feet, his hands gripping the railing above him looking down at me in death.

I casually gave him a flying kiss, never see you again, Carl Hockley. Then never looking back I ran out of the engine room and stepped up the stairs as soon as I saw them.