Written by Nate
Based on some situations originated by James Cameron.
She’d turned onto her back, and
he found himself staring into space. He knew he was going to die, as surely as
he knew anything, and that Rose would live out the remainder of her life—if she
had much of one, something which was becoming more unlikely by the
second—without him.
Even so, even with his darling,
beloved Rose wasting away in the cold, he did not think of her. He did not
think of the cries, which were getting fainter and fainter as death stalked
closer and closer.
He thought of home. Though he
publicly declared himself a gypsy-like wanderer, yes, he, too, had once had a
family. A caring, loving one at that, for the most part. Jack realized then
with a sharp twinge that he had not seen them in years and would more likely
than not never see them again.
Mother. He wondered how she fared,
if she was still bearing children for that alcoholic Jack called father, though
in the past decade, not very willingly. Then Cindy came to mind, as she always
did when he thought of dear old Chippewa Falls.
She had always been physically
weak, from her very birth, but that had never stopped her mind. Bright, she
was. She could have been anything, done anything, if she put her mind to it.
But her body couldn’t hold a soul
like hers, it seemed, and his older sister expired at the ripe age of fifteen.
She had been his first inspiration, and he had always drawn her. Sick, well,
sleeping, eating, reading, however she felt, he made her immortal in his art.
To him, there was no female more beautiful, even Rose, no angel she could not
outshine. Now, though, the only remainders of her living face were either in
the hands of some obscure person or at the bottom of the sea with the fish and
everyone who had died with the Titanic.
He remembered her fine-looking
hands.
Soon after her death, he had
begun his wanderings. He couldn’t put up with it all with Cindy gone from this
earth. So he didn’t. Packing his charcoal, his paper, his few clothes, and a
necklace with this odd symbol hanging from it. It had been Cindy’s favorite.
She said the symbol meant life. Despite the fact this mere symbol had not saved
her, Jack treasured it beyond nearly anything else. Through it, Cindy lived on
symbolically, if not in any other way, and became his guardian angel of sorts.
But by this time, she must have
abandoned him, because here he was, drowning or freezing to death, but dying.
And it hurt too much to think, the memories painful to his soul, but if he
didn't think, the pain would seep through into his very core. He didn't want
that, not yet. He would have given anything to be in France right then, cold,
but not this cold, drawing those beautiful French whores.
Or drawing Cindy at her worst, at
her last minute, because he was at his last minute and there wasn't any pain.
He felt so numb it almost ached, but not quite.
It was eating at him. He was
dying, and all he could think of was how oranges tasted, because he loved
oranges. Sweet and tangy, the seed only a small nuisance compared to the
ecstasy of biting into it, with the juice spilling all over your hands and
face.
Then Jack died, his face pale and
blue from the cold, any semblance of handsome or beautiful gone from his
features, which were stiffening into place thanks to rigor mortis. He passed
from this world without a single thought to the woman he loved, clutching his
hand less than a foot away, for no reason other than the fact she had nothing
else to clutch to.
When his facial expression became
blank as death overcame him, Rose wasn't thinking of Jack, either. The screams
were more than faint and she had to concentrate to hear them at all. Her focus
was on neither Cal nor her mother, nor any person close to her. She was
thinking instead of Oscar Wilde, and his witticisms which won him such
applause, but guarded disdain at the same time.
She had had such a crush on the
writer, and this was what she thought of as the soul of her lover leaked away
from its physical confines.
Death and love are truly fickle
beings, it seems.
The End.