We all spread a part in the small room and eventually everyone starts to argue about what a cruise ship engine will sound like. It goes on for way longer then it should have and I finally have had enough and yell out "Shut up! Charlie is right, the ship is not moving!"
"The-the boats not moving!" Dennis agrees, knowing I'm right to stop the four hour argument on engine noise.
Dee spits "so, what? No one comes down to say anything like, "Hey, guys, there's something wrong with the ship!""
"No, they've forgotten about us!" Charlie yells "and we're gonna die in here! Oh, my God, I'm freaking out. We got to get out of here." He runs to the door to bang on it "Help! Help!"
I try to get him to relax "calm down, Charlie."
"Help us!" He yells further.
"Charlie!" Dennis also tries to get him to calm down.
He goes on "you got to help!"
Dennis then goes over to him, tapping him on the shoulder "hey! Hey! Oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi!"
Charlie eventually responds "Mm, yep, yep, yep."
"Mm. Whoa." Mac responds to this weird interaction.
Dee also comments "Yeah?"
Yep." Dennis goes on "Oi, oi, oi."
Frank questions "what-what was that, dude? You sound like a soccer hooligan."
"Uh, yeah, that's just something I've been doing with Charlie lately when he gets a little wound up" he explains "you know, it seems to work."
"Saying yup, yup, yup?" I question.
Frank replies "oh, that's good. The most important thing for us to do now is to keep our wits together. We got to occupy ourselves."
"Mm-hmm." Dennis nods "why don't we play a few games?"
"No, no!" Dee yells "I just wanted to get away from you guys, just for a few days. Now we're stuck in a box, and you're gonna play some games now? You know what? I'm out."
"What?" I question.
"What the hell do you mean you're out?" Dennis pushes.
"I'm out." She walks to a bench no one else is on "nobody talk to me."
Mac argues her "no, Dee. That's not a very good idea. You know when my dad was in solitary confinement, I used to write to him every day to see how it was. He never wrote back, but if he did, he would've said, "Son, you've got to keep your mind active. Also, I love you."
Dennis tries to hide his chuckle "uh, are you sure he wouldn't say, "Remind me who you are again?"
Everyone but Dee, even myself holler out "Ho!" while laughing.
"that was great!" Frank says, as the same time Charlie says "That was Luther!"
"My-my-my dad knows who I am." Mac argues back. We then try to get Dennis to do impressions, causing Dee to come back to the group to do her own impressions. Once it's decided her impressions are terrible and racist, Dee and I move aside and the other guys all start to pretend to have a meal and then go off on some fighting argument before splitting up and coming back together again. Eventually, we all split up and at some point we spend a few minutes making some crappy music with the shit we have in the small room.
I can't believe how many hours we've been in there, maybe even long enough now to almost be a day. Somehow, Charlie catches something the rest of us miss and he calls out "Hold on, Dee. That-that bench, you opened that bench. What's inside there?"
"Oh. That opens?" She asks, standing up.
"Yes." He says, basically pushing her out of the way.
Frank yells out "maybe there's food in there." He runs over to look over Charlie's shoulder "is there food in there?"
"Uh, no, just... Just this water gun." Charlie pulls out an orange flare gun.
Dennis returns "that's not a water gun, man, that's a flare gun, which I'll hold onto for safekeeping."
"Uh... Why?" Charlie asks, pulling away as Dennis tries to reach for it.
He tries to explain "well, because I'm the most responsible person."
"Uh, guys, guys, I-I don't think any of us should have a gun." I say, really wishing we didn't find that under whatever bench Dee was on.
"Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of us does, so... the end." Charlie spits back, eyeing us all cautiously.
"Charlie, Charlie, let me have the gun." Frank tries to step up to his friend to get the weapon.
Charlie yells "back up, Frank." He waves the gun around at all of us "ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh. Don't come close to me. Whoa."
"Charlie, calm down." I try to encourage him, hoping he'll listen to me. We've become good friends, maybe I can convince him to hang the gun over.
He yells "calm down, Charlie"? We're trapped on a sinking ship, okay? We're gonna die in here. I don't know what you guys are capable of. I will hold the gun, thank you very much."
"Wait a second, Charlie, the... the boat's not sinking, okay? It's-it's just stopped." Dee tries to explain to him.
"Right. Right, it's okay." Dennis adds on "everything's gonna be all right as long as everybody remains calm."
"What the hell is that?" I ask, hearing a loud rumbling.
The lights flicker and everything rumbles and moves as if we've just had an earthquake on the ship. When I stand up, everything looks off and different. Dee comment "oh, my God! What's going on?"
"Wh-What was that?" Dennis questions.
Mac adds, looking around "oh, this is bad. This is really bad."
"Let's think." Frank says loudly.
Charlie says out "if the room's on its side, does that mean the boat's on its side? Or..."
"Yeah, that's what it means!" I yell to him, bewildered this is actually happening to us, to me.
We spend the next fort five minutes fighting over how gay Mac is and if he's a bottom or top as he try to form a human pyramid in order to see if the door was locked loose when it turned over. After we learn it's still locked, Frank freaks out "we're done for! We're gonna die in here!"
Dennis tries to calm his fake dad down "hey, Frank. Frank, get yourself together!"
He goes on "we're gonna die in here!"
"Stop losing your shit!" I yell to Frank, not wanting to hear everyone yelling.
"All right, relax!" Charlie yells louder then me "nobody's dying!"
Dee agrees "that's right. Just listen to Charlie; he seems to have his head straight."
"Calm down." He goes on "'cause we're already dead."
"Come again?" I ask, not sure I heard him correctly.
He goes on, as if in a sort of daze "I figured it out. We're dead. We died. And I don't know when it happened. It might have... might have happened on the cruise ship. It might have happened on the drive to the cruise ship." He looks to the man sitting to his right.
Mac says to Dennis on his left "you were going awful fast, Dennis."
Charlie goes on "I don't know. Maybe it happened weeks ago in the bar, in some sort of colossal and awesome event, I would imagine, but we're dead, and we're in hell." He looks between all of us as he speaks slowly "we're just being toyed with here. Or-or m-maybe we're not in hell yet. You know, maybe this is purgatory, and we're on our way to be judged. And soon, oh, boy" he chuckles at his own thinking "yeah, soon, we'll really be in hell. Won't that be something."
I try to relax him "charlie, calm down. It's-it's gonna be fine, okay?"
Dee adds "we can't be freaking out every five minutes."
Dennis agrees "now, look, if we work together, everything's gonna be fine. We're gonna get out of here."
"Nah, we're already dead. I'll prove it." Charlie pulls the flare gun and cocks it.
He puts it to his head and the loud sound echoes "No!" I yell, as I assume some of the others do, not able to hear anyone else over my own scream for him to stop, then my screams of the aftermath.