Strange Noises Fiction by Rachel Greenham

I sit alone in the cockpit. The night sea is calm and glimmering in the light of the moon. It is peaceful, but the air full of sound. There is the wind, gentle though it is; there is the slight flutter in the sail that tells me I need to adjust the sail trim slightly, so I do it; there is a creak from the wood as it takes up the tension; there is the rush of water along the hull; and there is the immanent sussuration of the sea itself, almost not a sound at all, but a sense, a comfort, the feeling that I’m coming home.

“This is a nice dream,” I say quietly. My voice is light and clear. I know without looking that my body, too, is light and agile and graceful. I know it from the way I’m sitting: alert but relaxed at once. I have a poise I don’t think I have ever known. I can tell, even sitting still, for now I hardly dare move in case I break the spell and wake up. Even with the sea and the wind and the little sounds of the boat, my own breathing comes to me loud and pregnant. I don’t want this to end. I don’t want this to end. My body. I can feel it. I can feel what it is. I don’t want this to end. I don’t want to wake up in that lumpen shroud of flesh. Ever. Ever. Ever. My breath is a mantra.

There’s a change in the wind. It stirs the charms braided in my hair and flutters the sail hard, and if I don’t do something the boom will come over and the boat will turn and stop with uncomfortable haste. Quickly, without thinking, I haul on the line and turn the tiller and the boat comes back on course. Hopefully the sleepers below won’t have been disturbed. I make the line fast, satisfied.

I’m standing in the cockpit. I knew how to do that. The wind changed and I knew exactly what to do; I, who has never been on a vessel smaller than a cross-channel ferry, and that only once. But I can feel the texture of the deck under my bare feet. I can taste the sea air, I can taste how it changed with the wind. The boat rocks slightly against the gentle waves and I move with it automatically.

I couldn’t name more than a fraction of the things I can see on this boat, but I know what they do, and I know that this is a good ship. Or boat. I remember reading once there’s some question as to what precisely constitutes the difference between a boat and a ship, so I don’t feel so bad for not precisely knowing in which category this one resides. I guess that it’s about ten metres long, and I can feel that it is well-made, to a solid, classical design. It’s fast and smooth and it’s been well looked after by the smugglers from whom we stole it.

My hand… Upon my breast. I can feel the warmth of it through my linen tunic. The bump of my nipple. Half emboldened by the feeling that the dream won’t end so easily, half terrified by the simple, tactile reality of everything that it might not, that it feels so unlike a dream, I move my hand down. I have to, even though I know this is always where dreams like this end. But it’s never been so full, so real, so detailed before. Still I wonder: How can I know that? Maybe I just forget, and all my dreams are this real. My hand goes down; under the tunic, outside the loose canvas trousers, to discover what I already know, because I know this body, like I know how to sail. There is no surprise, just the quiet confirmation of something long known; but still; upon discovering through the canvas a smooth curve of me, and not the horrible outgrowths of flesh that always, always felt to me like a hideous deformity; I grin, I sigh, I giggle a little and stop myself, my hand on my mouth, surprised by the sound again, and afraid to wake anyone.

I sit and I let my head tip back to look at the stars. My hair, with its little burdens, falls back around my neck and I bring my hand up, this time, to my face, to feel the smooth curve of my jaw, how sensitive my lips are, my cheekbones, and back to my ear, tracing the line where it begins, a clean, short curve to a slight cartilaginous point. It’s sensitive there, and very intimate. And down the other side, around to a small unpierced lobe. No surprise, but a tiny reminder that, although I am female, I am not human.

I find I’m sitting still again, as if waiting for it all to end. But time passes slowly, with no dreamlike elisions to the next main event. The night wheels on with every gust of wind, every wave, every breath of my own in its natural succession, and more and more I begin to believe that this is not a dream, and despite my wishes that it’ll never end, now I’m scared, because this is something impossible, and if I’m not dreaming I must be hallucinating, or delusional or something, and if that’s not true, then I must be here. And that’s impossible.