Tidal Rage

that her private area and under her arms stung intensely. She could not move her arms as they were tethered. At first, she could not work out why her lower regions were covered in blood, as she had only days ago finished her cycle. Clarity only came as her eyes adjusted to the dark room and she saw the shape of a man; he was eating. Several seconds later her terrified eyes achieved full night vision and she realized what the man was eating. No, not eating but eating and balking at the same time. His meal of the day was hair, her pubic offerings.
Not content with his meal, Sebastian moved over to her wriggling, constricted body. With all his strength, he grabbed a handful of hair and yanked it so hard a large piece of scalp came away with the entrée.
Frau Shultz was in agony and endured this torture for a further hour. When Sebastian could eat no more, he continued with the hair extraction, taking pleasure in the tears and terror reflected in her eyes.
Finally, Sebastian made her watch him as he placed his hands around her throat. He strangled her to the point of unconsciousness, and then relaxed his grip. This went on for a further thirty minutes until Frau Shultz’s brain could take no more and shut down again for several minutes.
Sebastian had been getting more and more exhilarated as she became more petrified and fought for her breath. He removed his headphones that were attached to his portable music player. Wagner blared out through the earphones. Sebastian placed the headphones several yards away from Frau Shultz, worrying that what he had planned may ruin the player.
Sebastian walked over to the bulkhead, where a fire hose was bolted to the hull. He pulled the hose and tugged it the two yards to where the naked, bloodied, spoilt body of Frau Shultz lay.
Sebastian ripped the gag from her mouth and slapped her several times to bring her around. As soon as she started to regain consciousness, he forcefully shoved the one-inch diameter hose deeply down her throat, while her teeth that had been knocked out by the force filled her cheeks like a gorging hamster. Her once immaculate, straight, white teeth were now dead bone. He turned the valve on, and high-pressure seawater began to flow, flooding both the lungs and the stomach as he destroyed the individual tubes within her throat.
Her eyes opened wide in absolute horror as she was jolted back into consciousness. The water being forced into her lungs and stomach was a terror too far. Mercifully, her heart gave way and her eyes rolled towards the top of the sockets as she died a most horrendous death, a death fit for no man, woman or animal.
Sebastian removed the hose just before it burst her lungs and pinched her nose with his fingers while covering her mouth. Her lungs were full of seawater; it looked like she had drowned. If her heart had not given out, it would be put down to drowning.
Sebastian’s emotions were running riot. He had such an intense high; Geraldine, the skier, the other twenty-odd bodies were nothing compared to this. He had found his path, his way. He had enjoyed her death. He was elated.
An hour, it may have been more, Sebastian was not sure, and the elation subsided. The burning heat inside his head began to cool down, and he returned to some semblance of sanity. As his logic returned, his first thought was about the clean-up. He redressed the body.
During the killing, the blood had pumped out of her when she was alive. It leaked out of her when she had stopped breathing. Sebastian was not worried about detritus—blood and faecal matter—on the metal deck, as this intermingled with the natural waste fluids from the waste bags. Sebastian knew you could, if you looked carefully, see human matter, but this would be diminished and cleaned before anyone would notice.
He slowly opened the small hull door, so it was open enough for him to see out, but not open enough to draw the attention of any tender boats in the area. The waterline was not more than ten feet below his position. On looking around, he could see there were no tenders bringing back early visitors. Although the tenders would draw up to gantries on the other side of the vessel to offload their human cargo. It was always a possibility when there were too many tenders for the available gantries that they would lay off on the other side of the hull until some of the tenders had departed from their positions.
On peering down into the crystal-clear water, Sebastian could see that the water extended well below the hull. However, even if he weighed Frau Shultz down, the water was so clear her body may be sighted or discovered if she floated out. The water was too clear.
He decided then that he would hide the body under the bags of rubbish and come back later when it was getting dark, but before the garbage porters started their nightly duties. By the time he had achieved this task he was matted in grime, blood, and a mixture of human and food waste. He washed himself down with the hose in the warm seawater and stood there with just his swimming shorts on. As he had done with his body, he rinsed his clothes in the seawater to remove the blood. He placed the clothes into a waste bag he opened and pushed it down amongst the pile of over a hundred refuse bags. Sebastian had retrieved Frau Shultz’s cabin key and washed off the blood.
After the exertions of hiding the dead weight and the warm flow of seawater over his body, he took a few minutes to settle his pulse down. Sebastian did not want to look flushed or overexerted on his way