I look at the deckhead above me. Dark wood pitted by the salt of a thousand trips, witness of many routes and captains. From my cot, I cannot reach the ceiling. Far from my hands, the boards cleave close to one another without any ornamentation. They are utilitarian. As serious as those joined to make coffins for peasants, in mujik burials that deliver the dead to that earth from which they drew their lives. Rough boxes, without personality or detail, whose purpose is found in the hidden spaces of dissolution.

It is bootless to think of my room as a coffin.

And it goes without saying that the last vision of those buried alive, just before asphyxiation, are those same slats suspended above them.

I cannot stop smiling.

The point of staying awake is to avoid my nightmares, to avoid Mikhail waiting under the sheets. Why, then, do I lie here thinking about the secret runes of wood that only the dead can decipher?

I get on my feet, repeating that it is logical that coffins be coarse, rough. If you awaken in your grave, you will need to hold on to something.

What are these morbid thoughts compared to what I fear I shall find in my dreams?

Mayhap there is something worse than the nothing to which we deliver the dead, than the heavy mantle of earth with which we drape their rotting forms.

The worst part is that they may not be alone down there.

How about that intimation to help one forget one’s nightmares, eh?

I laugh, thinking about some black thing knocking on the rough wood as if it were a door.

Knock, knock.

I hug, feeling myself shiver.

“Who is it?”

If Vlahutza has left the bridge to ask me why I am laughing myself to death, I could answer, honestly: It matters not what that hidden thing might answer underground. The loneliness of the grave is so vast that one would open regardless of the cost of that company.

Better than sleeping every night with an oneiric rat beneath the sheets.

Its disgustingly human hands touching my sex, its sickly fur pressing against my body, its twitching bald tail curling around my legs, slipping inside me.

Its black lips, full of insects and rot, pressing against my lips ….

And the fundamental fact that I am as hungry for those lips as they are for mine.

Isn’t it better to knock on wood, even that of one’s own coffin?

I cannot stop laughing. Not until I realize that someone is watching me.

A rat in a corner of the room.

My laughter fades till the cabin is silent. I stare at the animal without daring to do anything else.

A ship rat, gray and hairy, all wiry muscle beneath that dirty pelt. It does not move. Yet something shudders inside its flesh, its throbbing gristle.

It watches me with small, reddish eyes. I am also still. The way it runs its eyes over me makes it clear that I am not of interest. Just another object in the cabin, a piece of furniture casually endowed with voice, but nothing more.

It turns its head toward the entrance. Something there has caught its attention.

Its hair bristles slowly. The rat seems to grow, or mayhap each bristle of hair rises to hide the rat inside. It bares its teeth like a dog, spits a threat at something I cannot see, something out of sight in the corridor. It backs up without ceasing to growl, ready to attack if anything pounces on it. There is no escape, only one corner. It stays there, too scared to understand that it has cornered itself. It does not seem to care. Still it shrinks away, a throbbing mass of fear. Its growling is no longer a threat, not the whistling sound they make when we shoo them from bags of seed. It moans like when their backs are broken and they are nothing but sheer pain twisting and squirming till death overcomes them.

But this rat is unharmed. There is nothing on it that suggests injury or illness.

It frightens me not. How to fear something that is itself so afraid?

But it looks with such fear at the open door that I feel obliged to discover what awaits in the corridor.

It is not the wisest course of action, yet I cannot resist. I must check. I tell myself that mayhap I should grab my pistol, call the Second Mate.

I look out the door, ready for everything.

But there is nothing.

Or nearly nothing.

Something runs in the dark, small claws scratching the floor. A tiny figure flees in the shadows, a white and imprecise blur.

Another rat. An albino rat.

I enter my cabin again and the rat that has sought refuge there stares at me. I want to shrug and inform it that it can relax.

I lie down and reassure myself that the ship rat will also stay awake, afraid of dreams.