Caught in the Cogs Volume One (2 page)

Jonah must have taken her silence as offense, for the smile left his eyes, but still politely stayed on his lips as he said, “Forgive me, Lieutenant Commander McCoy. I have overstepped my bounds.” With a slight bow, he turned and began to walk away.

Constance forced herself out of h er shocked catatonia and yelled after him, “Yes!”

He turned back.

“Yes,” she said, breathing a little more rapidly now than normal. “Yes, Jonah, I would love to have dinner with you tonight.”

He smiled and then returned to her, sweeping her into his arms and stepping behind the great foremast to block them from view of the rest of the crew. She felt his taut body pressed up against hers, and it was a good thing his strong arm, wrapped tightly around her waist, held her against him, for her knees were weak. They most certainly would not have held her weight if he were to let her go. She prayed that he would never let her go.

His grey-blue eyes looked intently into her green ones for a moment before closing. She felt his soft lips press down over hers, and she met the kiss in kind. Her hand found the bristly chestnut chops along his jaw. His tongue brushed hers ever so slightly, and it sent a wave of longing down her entire body, settling heavy in her deepest part. He withdrew his lips, leaving her breathless.

“Until tonight,” he said. He touched her cheek and let his hand slowly trail along her jawline before removing it completely. Images of quenched longings filled her minds and she thought that there was too much time before now and dinner. Would this day were done!

He stepped out from behind the foremast and she followed, a little wobbly, but before he could get too far away, Samuel called down to her from the Chart House stoop.

“Lieutenant Commander McCoy, get up here quickly!” he shouted.

The edge of panic in his voice caused Jonah to stop as well.

“What is it, Sergeant,” Jonah said.

“The night watch,” he said. “You had better see for yerself.”

Constance and Jonah rushed back up the stairs to find Airman Hannigan and Sergeant Fredricks on the floor by the supply cabinet, as if they and tumbled out of it. Both their bodies were twisted in unnatural ways, and their empty eyes stared out from their strangely angled heads at nothing.

Constance stifled a scream, but she could not look away from the horrific sight.

“Sabotage,” Samuel said. “That’s why we’re off course.”

“I shall alert the Captain,” Jonah said, touching Constance’s shoulder to show his concern.

Jonah turned and went down the stairs and Constance followed. “I shall come with you,” she said. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she ran right into the back of Jonah who had stopped suddenly.

“Jonah, what is it?” she said. He stepped aside and, looking past him over the port side of the ship, she saw a vessel, smaller than their own but no less armed, rising to their altitude. “Where did that come from?”

“It must have been beneath us, hiding. Waiting.” Jonah took off in a run toward the bridge, and Constance followed. But by then, the entire ship had been alerted. A steam whistle sounded in alarm, piercing the quiet of the morning. The sound of panic shortly followed as the crew members crisscrossed the top deck.

They were not prepared for this. They had been miles from anyone last night.

“Battle stations!” the Master-at-Arms shouted into the increasing chaos of the crew. Men and women pulled their goggles from off their caps and covered their eyes as they manned their stations around the main deck’s peripheral cannons. Others rushed passed Constance and Jonah trying to get to the lower decks in time for the fire command.

“Get back into the Chart House, Connie,” Jonah looked back at her, and his goggles were already in place, covering his grey-blue eyes. He gently took hers from off her cap and placed them over her eyes as well. After a tender kiss, he turned to follow the others downstairs, heading to the engine room. She started back toward her station as well to await orders.

The enemy vessel had matched their altitude, and simultaneously, what seemed like every canon on their ship fired. Jonah and Constance had but a moment to catch each other’s terrified eyes before the HMS Æther was hit.

Great booming sounds in rapid succession accompanied by a blur of motion filled Constance’s mind, and she was thrown against the side of the ship. Catching herself from going over, she saw several of her crew mates falling through the sky towards the unforgiving ground below. Frantic, she turned to see if Jonah had been one of them, but all was chaos. She could not see him. The wounded cried out from all along the deck. Smoke billowed up from the lower decks through the new holes in the floorboards and from portholes on the side of the ship. Even the huge engine cogs had been broken. The largest one was broken in two, and two of the smaller ones, still larger than a man, had been forced up through the now fragmented deck. She looked around for Jonah, trying to force her brain to catch up with what had just happened. All was but a blur of blood and smoke and splintered wood. There, she finally saw him, laying against the large capstan, bleeding. He hadn’t gone over the side, but he was hurt. She rushed up to him just as she heard the command, “FIRE!”

The HMS Æther rocked back as its canon’s fired back at the enemy.

“Jonah!” Constance shouted above the din. She got to him and knelt by his side.

It was not good. Several shards of wood stuck out from various parts of his body. His leg. His arm. His shoulder. His neck. All were bleeding. By far the worse wound must only have been inches from his heart. It was a metal rod, like the main shaft from some engine gears, and it was deep.

“Jonah!” she shouted again. She lifted the goggles from his eyes, which rolled over to focus on her. She lifted off her own goggles so that she could see him more clearly.

“Connie,” he said weakly. He reached out and touched her cheek. She felt the wetness of blood, and she clapped her own hand over his, holding on. “I guess I really should have asked you to dinner sooner. So much time. Wasted.”

“Shhhhh,” she said. “I’ll get the medic.”

“No,” he said, putting his hand on her knee as she began to rise. “Stay with me.”

She tried not to cry at the sight of the bright red blood dripping down his face and into his mutton chops. He had a head wound as well as the rest, and his breath was quickly becoming raspy. Gurgling noises wafted out from his shallow breaths. The shaft must have punctured a lung.

“I can’t see you,” he said, rubbing his eyes with his uninjured hand. “There’s blood in my eye.” He laughed and then coughed, splattering more blood on his already darkened uniform.

“I am here, Jonah. I am here with you,” she said, and the tears came, blurring her vision as well. She wiped them angrily away, wanting to see him clearly. Knowing there were but moments left, even if she could have gotten to the medic, this was not a battle one walked away from. Any of them.

“I have loved you for so long,” he said. “I should have asked you out sooner.”

They had finally found each other, and now this. There was not enough time, but she would spend every last moment with him. She would hold on to every last moment with her life. There just was not enough time.

“I really should have asked you sooner.”

And with that, he died.

“Jonah?” she said, shaking him, but there was no response. “Jonah! Stay with me. I’m here now. Stay with me!” But his eyes, still eerily fixed on her, were empty. Dark.

“Jonah!” she cried. “NO!” His head lolled to the side, so she pulled it close to her breast, steadying it.

“I’m here now, Jonah. Don’t leave me.”

The commotion of the surrounding havoc crept back into her consciousness as she held her lover’s dead body. It was so surreal. Just moments ago he had been kissing her. She could still feel the softness of his lips, his tongue. His cologne still filled her nostrils. Only a short time ago.

Tears streamed down her cheeks, and it made them sting in the cold morning air.

A frantic Airman rushed by screaming, “They’re aiming for the balloon! They’re aiming for the balloon!”

“No. The hydrogen,” Constance said to Jonah’s blank stare. There was no panic in her voice, for the pain she felt was too great. What she felt had surpassed pain. Surpassed numbness. There was no escape, but she would be with Jonah again soon. Forever.

She held him closely and accepted her fate. Letting everything else fall away, she felt the cool morning air sting the tears on her cheeks. She blocked out the screaming and chaos around her and just felt Jonah’s body pressed up against her. She looked down at his handsome, blood-stained face and brushed her hand over his jaw, feeling the roughness of his mutton chops, then with her finger she traced the place on his cheek where his dimple had been.

The blast came. It sounded faraway as if in a dream. Then she saw the cannonballs fly, and they appeared to be moving in slow motion. She saw them hit the great balloon, and she saw the beginning of the explosion. As the fireball rushed towards her, she felt as if she was being squeezed into a narrow tube. A horrible sensation of moving backwards, as if being yanked forcefully back into a room you had just left. A blur of brilliant lights filled her peripheral vision, forming a funnel around her and the entire ship.

Then she was standing on the deck looking into the sun rising in the East. She turned away from the brightness of it, blinking several times to clear the spots still flashing on the inside of her eyelids.

There he was.

She watched him move across the deck as she had a thousand times before. Every day, just before muster, he walked this way. And every day, she watched from behind the main canon, peering around the cascabel, hoping that one day he would see her. Notice her. Love her. If only Jonah would look at her, he would see.

Zeppelin Dreams

She lay on the floor, a zeppelin between her legs. That was what the ladies called it at tea parties, an inside joke, as in “My last zeppelin ride was quite the adventure.” It was code for sex, mostly, but it also referred to the machines doctors used to relieve a lady’s hysteria. Ever since a psychiatrist had first helped her ease her own hysteria with a zeppelin, she kept one around. They had greatly improved over the past twenty-years; the clockwork driven machine now lasted much longer. Lilah’s was the latest style of zeppelin, shaped more or less like its namesake. It was not for insertion, after all, just clitoral stimulation. Handy little gadgets, they were. Especially when one did not want to go through all the trouble of coitus. After twenty-five years of marriage, it was mostly just a mess to clean up. Her husband showed even less interested in sex than she did, if that was possible. And it must be, for if they ever made love, she went to him.

But she tired of that.

She wanted to be taken, dominated. She wanted to be longed for, desired.

She had rarely used her zeppelin of late. Her interest in such carnal delights had waned considerably over the past few years. That is, until she met him.

“Joshua.” His name passed through her lips in an after sigh as her hips rested back against the floor and her muscles relaxed. She could already feel a soreness in the back of her throat where she had screamed his name, moments earlier, into her handkerchief. She looked around, eyes wide, ensuring she was still alone in the darkened attic. Her husband had gone for his daily walk, so it had been the perfect opportunity to ride her zeppelin. Still, a servant could hear her, so she was careful not to be too loud, just in case.

The iron vibrator, cool against her heated thighs, slid out of her hands. As she lay there catching her breath, images of him on that night invaded her thoughts. She tried to push them out, but he haunted her. All these weeks later, she could still feel his nearness. The single kiss he had placed on her neck had kept her heated for days. His warm breath, body pressed close, the volumes left unsaid had sustained her, allowed her to go on, counting every moment until she could see him again. Longing to see his lips, wet with Scotch, and aching to taste them.

She had held on to every detail and used the lingering ardor when she pleasured herself. The unrequited desire between them to fueled her fantasies.

“Stop it.” She chided herself, knowing it was wrong. She pushed him from her thoughts once again, but he returned. Her every thought was consumed with him, perhaps because it was wrong.

She wanted more. More of him.

More. More. More.

More than he could give. More than she could give. The more attention he showed her, the more she wanted. The less attention he showed her, the more she wanted. It would never be enough. Not until their desire destroyed them both.

Her passion had become an obsession.

She sat up and pulled her skirts down over her knees in shame. From desire to shame. Back and forth.

Neither was ever far behind.

The silence of the early morning echoed her own emptiness. Middle-aged and aging further everyday. This entire business was far beneath her. She smoothed her skirts with trembling hands and sat up straight, feigning dignity for a moment before those hands covered her face. She wept. Her tears wet her cheeks and her palms, and she shook with her silent sobs. She longed to wilt into obscurity, fade from this world. Dissolve into a thin mist. Be as invisible as she felt.