The tentacles rose up out of the sea towards us. I felt the rain on my bare arm where my shirt sleeve had ripped. The icy drops burned my skin as they fell. I looked over at Elizabeth and Dante, who were standing beside me with a knife in each hand. That was my first mistake, as the tentacle grabbed my leg at that moment. Lucky for me, Adrian was prepared and lit his lighter and his hairspray, giving the tentacle a little heat. It withered and withdrew. 
    “Are you alright, Dominick?” Kate asked, not taking her eyes off of the side of the ship.
    “I’m fine. What are we going to do now?” I asked. At that very moment, though, the boat shifted greatly. Isabelle almost fell off the side, and while she was regaining her balance, she was grabbed by the tentacle. 
    I grabbed the sword that I found behind the stage and went towards the tentacle. I felt so right with it in my hand, even though I had never wielded one before. I reached the edge of the ship and dove into the water. It was cold, even though we were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
    I swam towards where the tentacle re-dove into the sea. I followed the bubbles left by its path all the way to the actual creature itself. It looked like an octopus, except it was huge, about the size of our ship, and it had green splotches all over its body. It was just like the other creatures we had seen. Its eyes had this blackness to them that almost darkened the sea around me. I swam closely to it, sword drawn.
    I swung my sword, but the creature seemed to have a full exoskeleton to where the sword could not pierce it. I swam towards its mouth, and in that split second, I saw Isabelle, hanging there, seemingly lifeless. I quickly sliced open the tentacle that was holding her, and it released its grip. She floated up to the surface. I knew the rest of the group could take care of her from there.
    I looked towards the creature, and it seemed to be smiling at me. I charged at it sword ablaze, and as I struck the creature sparks went flying (underwater!), and I found myself gasping for air. Except there was no air, after all, I was under water. I started to go black. My consciousness was slipping away from me bit by bit. I knew I was gone.
    I woke up in sweat, even though it was sixty degrees in the room, with the fan on. My nightmares had come again. 
    Ever since I was a little kid, nightmares seemed to plague my mind every night, rarely would I get a pleasant dream. Most of the time my dream had to do with losing someone I loved. 
    I couldn’t help but be afraid of the nightmare. But I never listen to my instincts. It didn’t matter what I dreamed, because I knew that something like that could never be real, there was no way that could happen.
    I fell back asleep for a few hours, and then I woke to the sound of the shower running. 
    “Hey, can you grab my pants? They’re on the dresser.” My girlfriend asked me. I had been with Elizabeth Norris with for over two years at the time, and I had never been happier. On August 28, 2097 I surprised her with already paid tickets for a cruise, which we were getting ready for as I begin this story. That had been our two year anniversary. We had been together since the start of our junior year in high school. 
    “Come and get them yourself! You act as if I’ve never seen you naked before!” I replied with a sarcastic tone in my voice that had annoyed her from the day I met her. Elizabeth was short, a little over five foot two, with long blonde hair, and gorgeous green eyes that I could stare into and literally get lost in. Every time that I saw her, she was wearing the same basic thing; skinny jeans, a t-shirt from our years in the band in high school, and one of my jackets, that technically was hers since I haven’t actually worn a jacket since middle school. She was the most beautiful girl in the world and I was ready to propose to her. 
    “Come on baby, please? You know I’m lazy!” She joked while she started to get out of the shower. Sometimes I hated how loud a shower could be, and there was seriously no reason for it anymore. Sure, maybe a hundred years ago when there were no such things as acoustic cancellers, or any possible sound distorter device that could be installed just about anywhere. But come on, it was 2097, and there were freaking robots with artificial intelligence that had already risen against the human race once, but there’s still no such thing as a silent shower?! Well, I guess that’s not exactly important, it just was one of those things that really aggravated me because it meant things could happen just outside of the shower that you wouldn’t know about.
    But this time, there was a pleasant surprise. Just as she was getting out of the shower to get her pants, I came in and pushed her up against the wall. Usually, I’ll admittedly say that it was the other way around, but I caught her by surprise. I loved the way that no matter where we were, our bodies fit perfectly together, and anytime that she was close to me, it felt like I was complete (yes, I am aware of how corny and cliché that is, but I honestly don’t care, I am a corny and cliché person and proud of that!). We kissed passionately, the way we had done so many times, and the way I knew we would so many more. I loved her and I couldn’t think of anywhere I ever wanted to be more than with her. 
    We continued kissing for a while, our hands exploring each other’s bodies. I could tell how badly we wanted each other, but I decided then that it would benefit me more to tease her, and not give her what she wanted.
    “You know as well as I do that we don’t have time for this. We gotta get moving if we’re gonna get on the cruise on time.” I told her with a wink. She gave me a look, the puppy dog eyes look that girls do when they don’t get what they want, and I always found it so hard to resist them… But I knew I had to, so I did. We got out of the shower and continued getting ready. We both got dressed, Elizabeth constantly complaining and trying to reundress me. We had packed the night before, and we were just packing up our last minute stuff when my phone rang.
    “Hey, Dante.” I said. Dante Rojas was my best friend since 2nd grade, well, he and Adrian Lowell. They had always been there for me, no matter what I was going through, whether it was the death of my father, or the drug problems of my brain injured brother, I knew I always had them, and eventually Elizabeth. I was truly the luckiest guy in the world. 
    I sat on the phone for about five minutes and that was all the conversation lasted, mostly because I would see him later anyway. We basically just talked about when we were leaving and such, because Elizabeth thought it would be a good idea to invite Dante, Adrian, Adrian’s girlfriend Isabelle West, and Elizabeth’s sister Kate, who we had hoped we could set up with Dante, since he was always complaining about being lonely. And that was partially my fault, but I’ll get to that later.
    We left the house at about ten, and we had a three hour ride to get to Port Canaveral in Florida, where the cruise was taking off. Truth be told, the only reason we could afford it was because the society I was in was the one setting it all up, so we got a massive discount. Whether being in that society made me a good or a bad person, I have no idea, but I was in a society called H.E.R.O. HERO stood for Humans Eroding Robotic Occupancy, it was a group designed to destroy all traces of robot existence. It came about soon after the great robot war ended. The cruise was to be humans only, and that technically made it illegal with the thirty-third amendment saying that robots had equal rights. But you know what? Screw the amendments, robots are nothing but trouble. 
    We arrived at the cruise ship at about one thirty because of traffic. Hahira had grown to a ridiculous size since my family first moved there. In 2009, Hahira Georgia was a tiny town of only two thousand people, but since then it overtook Valdosta as the largest city in south Georgia, and quickly became almost the size of Atlanta, to the point where there was five million people who resided there at the time of the cruise.
    We went through all of the lines where they checked the passports and everything within about half an hour, so we were on the ship at two, but the rooms wouldn’t be available until three. The ship left at five, and set sail for Bermuda with a full day at sea the next day.
    The ship was huge, it weighed thousands of tons. It was equivalent to the length of 10 Megalodon Sharks nose to tail (Megalodon sharks had been re-entered into the ecosystem in 2043, after years of cloning them and seeing how they reacted among other creatures. When scientists finally made them docile, they brought them into the wild. There had been a number of attacks since then, but they refused to recognize them as Megalodon attacks).  
    We went straight to the buffet since we didn’t have a room to go to. We wanted to unpack because we would be there for six nights. I had never been organized, but once Elizabeth came into my life, that changed quickly.
    If you’ve never been on a cruise, no matter what happens, you have to go to the buffet, the food there is amazing. I still remember my first cruise, when I was only thirteen years old, and we went to the buffet and they had lobster, and stuffed shrimp, and crème brulee, and everything else that you could ever want. I have always been a huge food enthusiast which I guess explains why I had been starting to put on a little bit of weight right before the cruise. I was still only a hundred and sixty pounds, which really wasn’t that bad for someone who was five foot eleven. In order for you to get a more concise picture of me, because I know how it is trying to visualize a person based off of such minimal information, I also had long brown hair (long as in almost to my shoulders, long for a guy), and these eerie blue eyes that seemed to change color from blue, to green, to gray depending on the light. I also wasn’t exactly very muscular, but I had what I needed.
    “So, what do you wanna do tonight?” Elizabeth asked me with a wink. She had always been a very sexually aggressive female. Well, I can’t say that. She was actually one of the most innocent girls I knew, and she looked that way if you saw her; fairly small breasts (the larger a girls breasts, generally the more they‘re going to get around), very confined in the way she dressed, never made dirty jokes or sexual references, she was an angel… Until I started dating her, and then she turned into the sexually aggressive person that you’re hearing about now. 
    “Well, I was thinking we could go to dinner, and then meet up with everyone and go to the newlywed show tonight. It is pretty hilarious.” I always seemed to take things out of context.
    “Not what I meant, sweetie.” She said with a sigh. I really didn’t know why she loved me half the time, not that I ever complained about it.
    I smiled at her, and she returned the smile. I thought about proposing then, but I decided to wait until formal night in the dining room. I knew that she was probably expecting it soon, she always knew that I wanted to get married early, so that we could do everything we ever wanted, but together, maybe even as a family if it came to that.
    “I love you.” I told her instead. She just smiled back, but I knew she loved me, whether she said it or not.
    We left the buffet and got our first real look at the lobby. It was decorated with all of these retro furnishings (retro being the period between 2010 and 2030 at this point). It made me feel comfortable, it was a time before everything became automated. It was a time when humans could simply be humans with no devices interfering in their sense of life. 
    To our right there was a bar in which every table was a giant champagne glass filled with bubbling liquid, which I figured was basically just an aerator, the same science as there was behind the newest hybrid cars, crossed between hydroelectric and carbon dioxide. Ever since the petroleum fields had been used up, every country had been in a race to find the most renewable renewable resource, but the United States came out on top, as they had in basically every field in the past fifty years, ever since the fall of Canada (except for video gaming, which has always belonged to Japan for some reason). 
    To our left, though, there was just a giant window looking out on the sea, and through it, I could see the expansiveness of the Atlantic Ocean. I stared through the window and got lost in the waves. Elizabeth came up to me and laid her head on my shoulder.
    “Are you ready to go to the room?” She asked me, having no ulterior motives on her mind for once.
    “Yeah, I just… I don’t know, something doesn’t feel right.” I told her as we walked away towards the stairs.
    We made it to our room and just kind of sat down on the bed.  Elizabeth’s OCD kicked in and she started to put away our clothes in the drawers.
    “Hey… Did I tell you about the dream I had last night?” I asked her. She gave me a strange look. Usually if I have a dream that bothers me, I tell her as soon as I wake up in the morning, but I hadn’t that morning for whatever reason.
    “Look, Dominick, it’s just a dream, right?” She asked me, but she knew better. Ever since I met her, my dreams had had hidden meanings behind them, and they often came true, not always, but often enough to make me worry when I had a nightmare.
    “Well… It was about this cruise, though…” I told her.
    “Then please don’t tell me. Not now. If it happens, it happens, I don’t want to know. Please, Dominick, this one time, just try to forget, please?” 
    “Okay… But only for you babe.” I said with a wink as I got up and kissed her. I knew that things would be okay. 
    As I thought that, though, I got a song stuck in my head. It was an extremely old song, that had never been popular. My great grandfather showed me the song, he was the one who gave me my interest in music, which really all I had ever listened to was rock, but it was any genre of rock.
    The song was called The Girl With Golden Eyes, and I didn’t know who it was by, simply because the name of the band has been lost to time. But the story behind the song was that the guy who wrote it was overcoming a heroin addiction, and it was the song about his final victory over it, and the basic message is that everything will be okay, no matter what the situation is.
    I decided when I heard that song that it was the basic philosophy for me to live by. Let me give you a new one here, now.
    NEVER use a song’s lyrics as a philosophy for life, as you will always be let down, unconditionally. It will only ever lead to disappointment.
    But hey, I didn’t know that at the time of the cruise, otherwise I would’ve known automatically that everything would not be okay. I just really wanted it to be…
    “So, I wanted to ask you something quickly.” Elizabeth told me.
    “Sure, shoot.” I replied.
    “Um… When are you leaving? I know you don’t want to talk about this on the vacation, I just wat to know how much time I have with you before you go…” She was talking about me going off to college. The school I had dreamed of going to since I was 13 had actually accepted me. I would be going to MIT for a degree in biotechnology, and she was afraid of what would happen to our relationship when I left.
    “Elizabeth, I love you. And I have something to ask you in response to that question. I wanted to know if maybe, you would consider, I don’t know, coming with me? I love you, and I want to be with you. You’re the most important thing in my life, and even if you won’t come with me, then I’ll wait for you, or I’ll stay, whatever you want me to do, whatever it takes to be with you, I’ll do it.” 
    “Dominick… I can’t ask you to stay, that’s completely unfair to you, and to your future, and to whoever you marry…” She started sounding depressed.
    “And who’s to say that won’t be you?” I ask her.
    “The odds are so against us… Only three percent of people end up marrying their high school sweetheart, and only five percent of them end up staying together…”
    “I don’t care. We will do it, no matter what it takes. We will be in that five percent of three percent (technically I guess fifteen hundredths of a percent).” I told her.
    “You’re such a math nerd, and I love you.” Elizabeth came over to me and hugged me. 
    She went back to unpacking, and I realized that the ring I was going to give her was in the suitcase. I jumped up and she looked at me with a weird look.
    “What’s wrong?” She asked me.
    “Um, nothing, I think I just need some Ibeuprofin.” I reached into the suitcase and pulled out the medicine and the ring. I had a sneaking suspicion she had already seen it, though, as it lay partially open under only one of her bras. 
    She looked at me strangely, but didn’t question anything, for which I was thankful. She finished unpacking the suitcase.
    “So, you ready to go down for dinner?” She asked me. I gave what she said a slight chuckle.
    “Pervert. That’s not until desert!” She yelled at me with a wink as we walked out the door. As we turned the corner though, we heard an ear-splitting scream.

    We turned in the direction of the scream and were tackled on sight. It was Isabelle, Adrian’s girlfriend. She was always was very over emotional. Anytime that you would walk into the room and she saw you, she would let out a shriek of joy and run up to you and hug you. Adrian loved it. I personally would never be able to deal with that. It was just too much. 
    “Oh my god! It’s been forever since I’ve seen you two! How are you?” Isabelle was always like that; constantly talking in her high-pitched squeaky voice, acting as if she hasn’t seen you in years, you know, the typical high school girl to girl greeting on the first day of every school year. It got annoying. Quickly. 
    “Yeah… It sure has felt like it… But Isabelle, sweetie, it’s only been a week.” Elizabeth told her, trying to bring her down from her extreme excitement. 
    Adrian walked up to us at that point. He had a solemn look on his face, as he usually did. He was a big guy, coming in at a solid six foot four, two hundred and twenty pounds. He was a football player, and of course, Isabelle was a cheerleader, with the blonde hair, the bluntness to everything she said, the bitchiness, it all fit together. They were the stereotypical high school couple. 
    “Hey guys, how have you been?” He asked me. I looked at him strangely.
    “We’re good, and you?” I continued to look at him strangely. He looked somehow different. He was… Glowing, but not in the way someone usually means when they say that about someone. He was actually glowing. A bluish glow was all around him.
    “We’re amazing! Look at this!” Isabelle gave Elizabeth her left hand. On her ring finger was a ring with a huge diamond on it. I looked at Elizabeth with a sad look. I had felt like it wasn’t going to be as good, now that they were engaged as well, I felt like I should put off asking her. Luckily Elizabeth didn’t see my look. She was simply talking to Isabelle about it.
    “Come on, let’s go down to the dining room and talk on the way. I’m hungry.” Adrian said, with a slight grin on his face. The glow had disappeared. 
    So off we all went, towards the stairs. Isabelle and Elizabeth both took an early lead, while me and Adrian held back to talk.
    “So when did you propose?” I asked him.
    “I didn’t… She did. It was crazy. But I felt bad about that so I bought her a ring anyway and took back the one she got me. I felt really awkward about it.” He told me.
    “You shouldn’t have felt awkward, it happens more often than you would know nowadays. Things are different now. It’s not how it was a hundred years ago, anyone can do anything they want, and it’s all acceptable. You know that. Hell, guys can marry robot strippers, but you’re worried about your girlfriend of what, 4 years now, proposing to you?” I replied. He saw my point, but he was as stubborn as a mule. You know, no, I’ve never come in contact with a mule, so I don’t know how stubborn they are, he was as stubborn as an alcoholic when you tried to take his bottle of rum. THAT I’ve come in contact with, so that’s the metaphor I’m using.
    “Well… Anyway, on a different note, are you still going to propose to Elizabeth soon?” He made sure she was out of earshot before asking that question.
    “Yeah… Tomorrow night in fact.” I told him. “I’m just kind of worried about it though, because I don’t know if she’ll come with me to Massachusetts. If she doesn’t… I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m wondering if maybe I should ask after I find out her answer to that…” 
    “Look, Dominick, does it really matter? I’ve known you two for most of my life, and I know how much you love each other. Nothing can change that, even three thousand miles between you.” He tried restoring my confidence. It worked somewhat, I suppose. I decided that I was definitely going to do it.
    We caught back up with Elizabeth and Isabelle who didn’t even really notice we were gone. 
    “So where is your guys’ table?” Isabelle was asking Elizabeth.
    “On the fifth deck. Yours?” She answered.
    “On the fourth…” Isabelle sounded really sad. The over-emotional facial expressions were killing me.
    “Okay, then we’ll just meet up in the lobby after dinner, like we had planned originally!” Elizabeth always could lighten anyone’s mood. If I was depressed, she could start talking about the most boring thing in the world, and I would see her smile while she said it and it made everything better. Her smile kept my world turning. Literally at one point.
    “You’re always so happy. Stop it.” Adrian said in a somber tone. He was always such a pessimist, yet he seemed to make every day more enjoyable, maybe due to the fact that his pessimism brought out the optimists in the rest of our little group. Elizabeth scowled at him, and I must say, it was quite a terrifying look.
    “Stop being such a downer, Adrian.” I told him, with a huge smile on my face. I really liked being around everyone, especially when they were having their normal banter, or when someone rants. It was quite possibly the highlight of each day. 
    We continued to talk about Adrian’s lack of happiness on the way to the dining room, and we split in our different directions when we got there. We got to our table, sat down, the waiter came and took our orders, blah blah blah, normal restaurant stuff.
    “So, how’s your first ever cruise experience starting out?” I asked Elizabeth while we were waiting on our food.
    “Oh you know, it’s great, just… Isabelle… She needs help, big time.” She said, chuckling at the last part. 
    “Yeah, I can tell. Did you notice anything weird about Adrian? Like, was he acting any different than usual?” I asked her, thinking about the glow that I had seen.
    “Well, I mean, he did seem more… I don’t know, out of it I guess, than usual. I didn’t really pay much attention to it. Why do you ask?” 
    So I told her about the glow that I thought I saw. She didn’t seem to find it very strange. 
    “Don’t worry about it, you probably just ate a bad mushroom or something.” She said. For all I knew, she was right, I had a lot of mushrooms at the lunch buffet.
    Our dinner had arrived by that time, and the dinner in the dining room on a cruise ship is even better than the buffet’s. That night we had prime rib, shrimp cocktail, and grilled asparagus, followed by a dessert of tiramisu. I could spend hours even to this day explaining in extreme detail how amazing the food was, but I know that gets boring, quickly. 
    After dinner, Elizabeth and I went to the lobby to wait for everyone else.
    “You want a drink?” I asked Elizabeth, pointing to the bar.
    “No thank you.” She said, simply. 
    “Are you alright? You’re never that polite with me unless something’s wrong.”
    “I’m fine, I promise.” She didn’t sound very convincing in my opinion. 
    “I guess I’ll be right back, okay?” She just nodded her head as I walked off towards the bar with the champagne glass tables. 
    I went and ordered a rum and coke, and it took them forever to make it. In the year 2037, a law was passed giving the right to 18 year olds to drink. This law was passed following the repeal of the second prohibition, and it also followed the discovery that alcohol was not the main problem in society, it was the people themselves. It turned out that alcohol actually allowed you to access parts of your brain that remained dormant otherwise. At least, that’s what we learn now. It may have been different before the prohibition, but I would never find out. 
    I got my drink and saw all of the little nano-particles floating around in it. As much as everyone on the cruise hated the robots, their nano-counterparts made some pretty damn good alcohol. The theory was that if you consumed the nanobots, they would flow up into your brain and insert themselves into the crevices between the sectors of the brain, causing better communication among the various areas, as well as augmenting your capacity for whatever that sector performs. This idea ended up giving you a different sensation every time you drank, but that feeling would only last for about 2 hours, and it took about 6 drinks to get you there, so it was a process. Sometimes it would be violent, sometimes, you’d burst into tears, and other times, you’d set other things on fire with your mind, all on accident. Pyrokinesis (the previously stated setting things on fire with your mind) was my personal favorite, and it seemed to be triggered most often from rum and coke, making it my number one choice of alcoholic beverages.
    I went back into the lobby to see Elizabeth still standing exactly where I left her, with her still looking out at the ocean through the window, almost lifeless.
    “What’s wrong, babe? I know it‘s something, so please don‘t lie to me.” I told her.
    “Dominick, I’m…” She was cut short because she was tackled at that moment. Her sister got up off of her and stood up. I helped Elizabeth back to her feet.
    “Kate! Besides the tackle, it’s so great to see you!” Elizabeth finally seemed to snap out of her other-worldly glare.
    “I personally thought the tackle was a nice touch.” A voice said from behind me. I turned around and there was Dante, sitting there holding hands with Kate.
    “Well, when were you planning on telling us about this?” I asked him, knowing he would know what I was talking about.
    “Right now, actually.” Dante said in his smart-assy tone. He always had that tone, no matter who he was talking to.
    I rolled my eyes. I wanted to know what Elizabeth was going to say, but I knew that she wouldn’t say anything about it around other people.
    “Well, Dante, all I have to say is it’s about time. And that it means we have a lot less work to do on this trip!” Elizabeth was so excited for the two of them. Elizabeth’s face lit up any time the people that she cared about were happy, and I was happy whenever she was happy, so basically, the two of us had never been happier than during that time in our lives. 
    I looked out the window for a minute. No, more like five seconds. When I turned around, everyone was gone. Elizabeth, Dante, Kate, and every other person that was in the lobby with us. It was just me. I glanced at my watch, and it said it was eight o‘clock. I didn’t think that could possibly be right, judging by the fact that we left dinner at six thirty. I figured it could very well have been around seven, but no way it was eight. I glanced back at the window and it was in fact darker out than it was the ten seconds before.
    “Hey, are you coming?” Elizabeth appeared behind me. 
    “Where?” I asked her.
    “To the show? You were telling us how amazing it was going to be. It starts in literally two minutes. We need to hurry.”
    “What are you talking about? I never said anything about the show… And how is it eight o’clock already? We just got out of dinner half an hour ago!”
    “Dominick, are you okay? You’re starting to scare me…”
    “I’m fine, it’s just…” I sighed. “I guess I was just being weird. Come on, let’s go to the show. Is everyone else there already?”
    “Yeah, they’re saving us a seat.” She told me, still seemingly unsure on whether or not I was okay. Honestly, I felt fine, in fact I had felt better then than I had in a long time before that, due to the stresses of regular life. I had no idea what had just happened, but I refused to let that affect my mood for the rest of the night.
    We went off to the show, which was a spin off of the newlywed game, which had been a tradition for cruises and weddings for over a century. It ended up being very entertaining, and very sexual, as it usually is. Dante ended up laughing so hard that he accidentally hit Kate in the face. She was extraordinarily pissed off at him after that, but she seemed to get over it quickly.
    After the show, we all went to the sixth deck, where they had a piano bar, which I loved, just because it was real music unlike the main bars played. They only played pop music, which I was never much of a mainstream listener. My favorite band was and forever would be a classic rock band, oldies they consider it now I guess, called Avenged Sevenfold. They had some of the best, and surprisingly most popular, rock songs of all time. We did a show based on their music in marching band in high school.
    The piano bar, though, played all classic rock, from Avenged Sevenfold to Pearl Jam to Bon Jovi to Rolling Stones, the pianist played it all, even if it was just blues improv for every single song.
    We stayed in the piano bar until around two in the morning. Dante ended up getting drunk, of course, and ended up grabbing my hand with his mind and shoving it onto Elizabeth’s breast. I mean, I’m not complaining, completely, but it was still a douche thing to do, especially for my “best friend.” So in return, I set his underwear on fire (the rum did in fact give me Pyrokinesis, which made me so freaking happy). I was kicked out of the bar for the night for that one, so Elizabeth and I took that opportunity to walk outside onto the deck.
    “This is amazing. I love being able to spend time with you, and I love the fact that we can do this, just sit out here, everyone else in bed, just us alone together. I feel so free, and so alive, no matter how cliché that sounds.” Elizabeth said. I grabbed her hand and pulled her close to me. She laid her head on my shoulder, her long blonde hair covering my chest.
    I stared out at the sea. It was quite possibly my last good memory of that trip that wasn’t fogged by the events that followed. 
    “I love you, Elizabeth, more than I could ever express in any way.” I said, in a somewhat solemn tone. 
    “What’s wrong?” She asked me.
    “I don’t know. Something just really doesn’t feel right. I just feel like there’s something really bad about to happen.” 
    “Don’t worry about it, hun. Nothing bad is going to happen. Don’t let your nightmares ruin your good time.” She said, with that beautiful smile on her face. 
    I couldn’t help but believe her. She had a way of getting anyone to believe anything, even if it made no sense in the world. She got Dante to believe that New Orleans was a real city. Everybody knew that it was just a legend made up by our ancestors, and that nobody ever discovered any proof that such a city existed.
    I kissed her on the cheek. We walked back indoors, and as soon as we did, we heard a splash, but when we looked back, there was nothing there. We ignored it and went on with the night.
     We went back to the piano bar, not to go in, but just to see if everyone was still there. They were, so we yelled goodnight to them and we left towards our room. When we got on the elevator, which looked out onto the ocean, which was an amazing experience, we pressed the button for our rooms deck (deck three, which had the cheapest rooms).
    We gazed out upon the sea one last time for the night. We looked down at the bottom of the elevator, and there was something there. We decided to get a closer look, so we went down as far as the elevator would go. When we saw it, I didn’t believe my eyes. It was a tentacle, just like the one from my dreams. At that moment, the captain came on the loudspeaker.
    “For those of you still awake, we have just passed into the Bermuda Triangle. Enjoy the rest of your cruise!” He said.
    We looked back, and the tentacle was gone. We decided that it must have just been the alcohol, making us hallucinate. 
    We went back to deck three and went to our room. We made sure to place the do not disturb card outside of our door, and we went in and we carried over the romance from the upper decks and brought it to another level. I’m not even gonna dream of going into the details of that night, so for all necessary purposes, that ended our night. Day one of the cruise was over.