“Writer's block comes naturally, you know what I mean?”
Gilbert nodded helplessly. The boat he and the old man were on was heading for an Omi-nous ship that stood apart from the others.
“That's why you're here, looking for inspiration on the Island of Dreams," the old man's nickname was Arquimides. “A lot of people think it's an easy job. Just standing guard, but it's not. You know what I mean?”
The boy nodded and looked at the ship that called itself the Island of Dreams. A tanker was abandoned by the government company 20 years ago. Since they had nothing better to do with the ship, they had assigned a 24-hour watch to any sailor who volunteered. They paid well, the job was, as the old man said, to do a 24-hour watch and the next day they were replaced by other sailors.
They boarded the ship while the old sailors went down to the launch. They did so in a hurry as if they wanted nothing more to do with the ship. Gilbert looked at the metal island, it was frightening. Every pipe was too rusted to work, even the quarters looked like that. Although he had already been told that there was no light on the ship, they had to walk around at night with candles or, failing that, their cell phones or personal flashlights.
“Well, boy, they're gone," the old man said, scratching his chin.
They both watched as the boat left with the old crew members. Only he and the old man remained. They took their luggage to their respective cabins, it was not much. Just enough for one day. Each carried food, bread, and canned goods. Because nothing, not even the dirty kitchen, was working.
“So you're looking for inspiration," the old man said, trying to make conversation when he didn't want to talk at all. “What you're going to get here is a good scare.”
Gilbert walked away. He had only mentioned that he wanted to seek inspiration on the high seas, and what better place than a haunted ship. But since he had mentioned it, the old man insisted on talking about it.
Rudely, he left the casino and headed for the bow. It was still 13:00 and the night was far away. Walking on the deck was dangerous, it almost seemed as if he would open a hole and fall into one of the cargo tanks.
“You should leave me alone," he finally said when he saw the grey-haired old man approaching. “I want inspiration to find me alone.”
The old man shook his head. There was no sun that day, and the clouds seemed about to spit water in their faces.
“If I were as young as you, with so many opportunities around every corner, I wouldn't be here," he said. The wind barely let them hear what the old man had to say. “I am old now. The things that happen here at night will no longer be able to break my soul, but yours... It will be shattered.”
Gilbert did not ignore his words. He weighed them as a writer and kept them for himself in the corner where writers keep the most wonderful ideas. But if he avoid the old man. There was nothing he could do now, he was on board and the night was waiting. Meanwhile, he explored the ship carefully, he had never been on a ship before.
The Island of Dreams was once a tanker that sailed the seas, bringing economic stability to the country. But corruption and mismanagement of resources had taken their toll. Lack of maintenance had led to everything Gilbert saw. High-quality equipment in disuse, forgotten, filled with saltpeter, and forgotten. Twenty years the ship had endured, until two years ago the generators could no longer provide power, just a few months ago a link in the anchor chain broke, and it wandered until they were able to bring the starboard anchor back in. But what brought Gilbert there were the events that happened at night.
As night fell, the young writer was on Monkey Island, looking up at the stars.
“Let hell begin," said the young man.
He expected something strange to happen. A beam of light would take over the ship, or the sea would rise above them and drown him. He had heard of such things from sailors, but nothing of the sort happened. The breeze kept whispering in his ear how stupid he looked lying there looking up at the sky.
“So you're looking for inspiration," the old man suddenly appeared at his side, looking out to sea. “Well, you are the first person to come to me with such determination that I can only admire you, human.”
Gilbert stood up. The voice was not the same, it sounded deeper and more overwhelming. Then he saw that the ship was drifting at sea, he had not heard the anchor chain break. The strangest thing was the stars that danced in the sky without stopping. The old man's eyes were not human, they were empty.
“Ready?”
“You're not the old man, where is he?” Gilbert described the creature in front of him, paying no attention to the stars in the sky, nor how their brightness let us see the vast ocean. “What are you?”
“I am the ship, the sea, and your greatest fears” continued the creature, looking at the stars. “Mr. Archimedes is down below, living his nightmare. Are you ready to live yours?”
“Show me the old man's nightmare," said Gilbert, determined. “I want to experience his nightmares.”
“And you think that's allowed? You think I'll obey your orders as if I were your vassal?”
“Well, you have no choice. What are you going to show me of my nightmares when I already live them every day? I have the urge to kill myself every day because of an unjust life. Will you show me, my girlfriend, leaving me for her boss and cheating on me for a year? Or will you show me how I lost my job at the refinery because I was bored? Will you show me my dying mother dying because I have no money to help her? Please, I don't think your nightmares will be any worse.”
Gilbert cried, but he still waited for the mystic being's answer.
The mystic being looked at him with empty eyes.
“Never confuse fears with nightmares," he said.
Gilbert was in an tiny office, writing on parchment with an antique quill. He wrote incessantly and his hands were so battered from writing. Without stopping to write, a tentacled creature gave him a whiplash on his back. There was no window, but millions and millions of parchments. The boy tried to see what he was writing, but it was letters he did not know. He did not know where he was.
He could not stop. If he stopped, he would hear, besides the whip in that room, the cries of his sick mother, the words of his boss, who fired him again and again, and the moans of his girlfriend, who was doing it with her lover. He wanted to write, he would rather write than listen to them, but it became harder and harder to write. There was nowhere to escape to in this place, not even a door, just thousands of shelves where the tentacled creature kept his parchments.
“But here it says, "I must write," Gilbert imagined in horror, imagining his blood in the ink of the parchment.
It was a simple sentence that had been eroded by the boy's writing weakness. He stopped writing and got up from the small table, but the sounds manifested themselves. He tried to escape, but the whips bent him against the table.
He wanted to scream, but the sounds overwhelmed his thoughts.
Gilbert found himself on Monkey Island, alone and burned by the strong sun. He could see the shore and the boat coming to pick them up, but he was too burned to move. He needed water and to write, he wanted to write to stop the sounds in his head. He could still hear them in unison.
Cover and Banner made in Canva; Author's own image taken with Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 S, Separators made in photoshop