Living Conditions

[Arabella Porter]

So, I don’t think I’ve ever explained the living conditions of the S.S Silver Widow. Here’s the deal. One fifth (that’s an uneducated guess) of the third lowest deck is for residential space and the only people with their own room are me, captain Bennet, Mercurian, Roderick, and Dominique due to some sort of deal with the captain that was made when she first joined the Widow. I know nothing about it and she doesn’t say anything about it so, therefore, I don’t ask.

When you walk down the hall, there’s one living suite to the right. This is the Captain’s living quarters and no one except for Mercurian has ever been in there. She walks in all the time but for some reason (we came to this realization a year ago) no one has ever seen her walk out which has brought upon rumors of secret passageways or even a private transportation system from her quarters to her study which we’ve seen her walk out of all the time as well as in. No one has ever proved this before but at the same time, no one wants to get caught snooping around her study for a secret lever or maybe a door. Anyways, if you walk across the hallway you’ll find a big metal hatch with a bloody mad security system. This is Mercurian’s room and lab. You’ll find your death in there if you are anyone other than Mercurian. So that’s all I can really say on the matter.

Then we go diagonally across the hall where you will find Roderick’s room. It’s covered in maps and pointy instruments and books. He replaced his small hammock with a bigger one that actually has quite the storage space underneath the mattress with a wooden board he installed so that he could have a flat sleeping surface.   He doesn’t really put much in there considering all of his clothing is kept in a little dresser of sorts that he bought in Ireland and there’s not much else he has with him besides his books and toiletries which he keeps on the surface of his dresser. 

Then across from Roderick’s room, you’ll find a wooden door with an “N’entrez Pas” sign nailed in, the “pas” having been scratched out to be replaced with a violently carved “JAMAIS”. In case you are very unfamiliar with the French language, you’ve probably guessed that this is Dominique’s room. It’s a smallish space but still manages to have a desk at the back wall and two hammock spaces in case she ever acquired a roommate which, in my opinion, is impossible considering that we’ll never find anyone brave enough to put up with her shit.  There’s a black chest in the far left corner of the room that seems moveable to the naked eye but when opened, one will notice that it is in fact an installed compartment that, pops open after a key has been inserted into a small lock in the back of the chest. After you’ve inserted the key, the chest opens but when you turn the key, a shelf of firearms clicks slowly up. This is Dominique’s stock. She’ll take her weapon of choice and then she’ll push down the shelf, close the chest, take out the key, and it’s locked. There’s a mirror next to the door to the room and a shelf unit she put in herself. She may be fiery and act like she doesn’t care but Dominique won’t leave her room looking like a mess. There’s also a line of photographs decoupaged to her desk. Some of the photos have black ink splotches covering the subject’s forehead. Shit happens, right?

Anyways, we now get to my humble dwelling which the men sometimes call “the lad lair” just to be assholes. I don’t have anything on my door; wouldn’t want it to be easily described if someone unwanted came looking for me on the Widow. I love the crew but in piracy you look after yourself in case of death and I can’t call you out if you have to throw my ass to the dogs to save your own. So inside there’s the white hammock made up of a big canvas, yeah? And then you have one hole in each of the four corners near the top. Then there’s a wooden plank, each corner of the wooden board fits into the four corners and then you put your mattress on top. It’s quite comfy and there’s a fuck ton of space under the board for storage space. Did I mention that Roderick has the same setup? On the sides of the hammock, I’ve sewn in pockets to keep random stuff in that I can access easily. This can be a hairbrush and ties for when I plat my hair at night, or some sort of key that I need to look out for. But my hammock is only in the far left corner of the room. Next to it is my desk. I stole it from a scientist in Quebec. He wasn’t doing anything with it so why not, right? See, I thought it was an ordinary desk but it turned out that it’s absolutely covered in secret compartments and in Mercurian’s opinion, I probably haven’t found them all yet. I mean, it looked like a regular old wooden desk but I suppose life has its surprises whether they’re big or little. Maybe l’homme de science will be missing it after all. I also have a full length piece of mirrored glass that I broke off from the bathroom in the parliament building. It’s a long story and the broken mirror was an accident but hey, there was that huge piece and who am I to let a perfectly good self-made mirror go to waste? It’s pretty much just leaning against my right wall next to some shelf cubbies and a closet taken from an upstairs room at the Ten Bells Tavern. Besides this, there’s a chest full to the brim of tea light candles and matches. The electricity went out for a week once on the widow and we were still in the air. I spent a whole day huddled in a corner, my eyes, by the way, staying perfectly dry and non-teary. I’m afraid of the dark, I’ll own it but it won’t make me cry. So now I have precautions.

That’s enough about my room though. A few paces after it,  the hallway stops to a single metal door. This is where the rest of the crew sleeps. It’s a huge hall that was used to host ally meetings by Captain Bennett’s grandmother.  Now we just use her study for that considering she invites only the captain and not the whole other ship, it’s one of the biggest rooms on board and if it wasn’t being used to hold 17 men, then it would be used to hold a hella ton of pirates for a hella ton of parties. Inside, the whole room is wooden and the perimeter is lined with canvas hammocks and shelves or cubby units. In the middle of the floor there are pillows, mattresses, blankets, tobacco cans, shisha pipes, knives, flasks, a guitar or two, maybe a few books, and whatever other shit they keep in there. There are also a few mistreated firearms lying around. I seriously don’t know why they don’t keep that shit in safe locations.  When there’s nothing to do and no one’s in the galley, you’ll find us in the main room. That’s what this is actually. This is basically the main room of the ship, socially at least.  We have four showers, all with hot water for the first day in the air and then cold until we land again which can be any length of time spanning from a day to even a month or two depending on how well stocked we are and sometimes we can’t get hot water when we land. It all depends where we are but it’s a goddamn treat when it happens considering its already cold most of the time on deck so a hot shower would feel nice after long hours up above. Flying is never warm in case you sea farers and ground rollers were wondering.