I work on a death cruise. We don’t call it that publicly, of course, but that’s what it is. Officially, it is “The Heavenly Escape Cruises,” and we are the Paradise Express, but there’s also the Westward, the Hellfire (I questioned the board’s judgement in naming this one, but it has a surprisingly high booking rate, mostly rich goths I heard), and the Godspeed (the more economic option).
I got this job six months ago. I saw the ad on the corner of the street as I stopped to rest after carrying my suitcase down eight flights of stairs. I was just kicked out of my apartment. The cruise job didn’t require much previous work experience or even any specific skills. It just said, “Work needed on board, housing and meals included, get to travel. Service experience preferred, bring your luggage for the interview.” After the interview, I understood that they were a cruise company starting a new line of business, so many positions were open, and having no place to stay at the time, I accepted the job. I was to start as a waiter, and if I did well, I would get promoted to restaurant manager due to my college degree. I did not believe that it would be a long employment. I didn’t think anyone would pay to die. It was absurdly expensive, almost double the price of a standard cruise just because you got to die at the end. I assumed that it would last at most two months, till the company lost too much money to continue trying.
The facilities on board were worth part of the extra price though. The ship I was assigned to, the Paradise Express, had 3 water slides, 2 pools, a surfing experience, climbing walls, an arcade, 2 ballrooms, 3 all you can eat buffets, 5 restaurants, 2 coffee shops, a bowling alley, a skating rink, a theater, a movie theater, a sauna, a mini-golf course, and 2 spa and beauty centers. There were double bedrooms, king bedrooms, apartment style suites with kitchenettes, apartment style suites without kitchenettes, presidential suites, rooms with a balconies, rooms without balconies, room with bunk beds, and joined single rooms.
We employees mostly stayed below board, and you could hear the constant hum of the engine and the whirl of the propeller in whichever room you slept in. To escape the sound, I even slept with the married (but separated, as he always stressed) butler, who lived in the room farthest from the engine room, but it was still there. I felt it in my toes as I sneaked around for some chocolate after he fell asleep.
The first guests arrived on board a week after my training ended. Those first seven days went much smoother than we had expected. No one had seemed ready during the training, yet the guests left quite a large number of five-star reviews.
It seems strange that they would leave reviews when they were supposed to have died, right? Well, in truth, for the months that I had been on board, no one had actually died, except the old man who was too old to eat eight plates of foie gras in one sitting. Weirdly, on the last day of the trip, everyone checked no on their “escape ticket”, signed the document, and paid $100 to give up their “death experience” (this fine was part of the contract they signed as they got on the cruise). All these documents were then scanned and brought down to be shredded. I was on “shredding duty” during the third or fourth month, and there was always a mountain of paper to be discarded every time we stopped at port.
I wasn’t sure if this was part of the company’s plan, that no one would actually die, and I realized it was not really in my training to deal with the “dying” part. Life on the cruise became almost like any other life on a cruise. My favorite part of each trip was patrol duty on the last two days of each trip. It was a tiring job, patrol, and the staff dinner food got cold when your shift ends, so most people were glad to trade with me to wait tables in the Red Dragon, a wildly inauthentic Chinese restaurant.
I liked to walk the deck on the second and third levels of the ship. There, the sea winds were softer, and you only tasted the salty air if you stuck out your tongue. On the second to last night, you would mostly see people sitting or pacing, silent or in hushed conversations. If you listened carefully, you could make out their conversations. They would question death and each other, as if daring the other to back down from the destiny they had so determinedly chose, just to give themselves some leverage to back down too. Those who are alone would either start calling their friends and family, who almost always, relieved, talked them down from dying, or they would talk to me. I deliberately walked slow, smiling at each and every one leaning against the rail or sitting on pool seats. After a few rounds around the deck, they usually motioned me over or just started talking.
“…just a quick question…”
(Yes madame, how can I help you?)
“…hmm, you, can you come over for a sec..”
(Alright sir, what do you need?)
“…you must have seen this a lot huh…”
(I beg your pardon miss?)
“…oh, it’s nothing…do you think it’s possible to realize you love life even if you wanted to die?”
(Of course, madame, what’s not to love about life?)
“…actually, is there a way I could return, you know? I’m not sure I’m ready for that final activity, if you know what I mean.”
(Well sir, of course, if you could just tell me your room number, I’ll ask them to get you the form right now.)
“…well, just like people who get a bit of cold feet in the end, like at a wedding. It is normal to have cold feet now, isn’t it? I got cold feet at my wedding too, isn’t that funny?”
(Of course, miss, we all get cold feet. Would you like a hot cup of tea inside?)
Then, on the last day before we arrived on shore, the front desk would get really busy. Every few minutes, a guest would sneak to the front desk with their head low or adorning dark sunglasses to ask for the cancellation form, and the busboys would go around the cruise putting slips of paper on the guests’ tables. It was not a fun job, so again, I would patrol the deck.
The guests would show the funniest expressions. They would start out lying about how much they couldn’t stand living and the burdens they have, sneaking careful peeks at their neighbor’s expressions as they sipped on their pink drinks and martinis. Then, one slip of the mask, or sometimes, by our push, they came out. One thing I loved to do was to go over to the guests who had already signed the cancellation form secretly and whisper, not so quietly, that we had received their form and were processing the cancellation, reassuring them that we would sort it out speedily. This breaks the bubble. They smile awkwardly at their neighbors, saying, “Well, it’s out now, I guess. We weren’t ready.” Then, they would see the relieved faces of their neighbors and laugh, high-pitched and a bit forced, at their mutual deceit. It made me want to laugh each time. They hold on to their dignities like a life jacket, which is something they will definitely wear, every time.
They always claimed that they had a newfound respect for life when they got off the boat. The cruise company did receive some backlash about its unorthodox ending at the start. People judged the legality in such business modes, but I guess the company had a very strong legal team. Then, people were being interviewed in the papers as “Survivors of the Death Cruise”. They always posed in front of their unused swimming pools, with their families, or holding their tiny dog, and talked about the profound impact this experience had on them, how they now respected their life and everything it entailed. That they needed something to bring back their “lust for life”. That life was without meaning and monotonous but being on the verge of death brought them “back to life”. These interviews were popular for a while, and for a few weeks, our bookings were always full. Then, people stopped questioning survivors or why is it that no one actually died from these cruise trips. They just moved on.
I wondered sometimes if this was what the company had envisioned, that no one would want to die. That this was just a media stunt. Did they have the paperwork worked out if someone decided to really die? I asked my manager once, when guests were retiring to their rooms after the Eden Ball; she told me it was above my pay grade to worry about this, and that I should clean the spill at table eight. So, I asked my friend Sammy, who cleaned the rooms. He always had the best stories, because the guests would leave all sorts of things behind. He once found a 3-legged stocking. He told me they were “too rich to die.”
Our next trip was bound for the Islands, and we had two days of rest before the new guests arrived. We were actually quite close to the city I was staying in before, so I decided to stop by my old block. The streets felt familiar, and I could easily trace the steps to my old apartment building. There was the same old chip in the sidewalk from when the drunk man living two floors below me crashed his car into the curb. The same advertisement was still there on the street corner, but it was faded now. A new superfood bistro had opened across the street, and their screen played the ad for the Paradise Express (Leaving in 2 days, LIMITED TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE). It had been a while since I had gotten off the boat, and the soft hum buzzed in my ears, following me, even in the empty street. It was almost dark when I got back to the cruise, and I didn’t leave the ship the next day, deciding to play card games with other members of the crew.
The guests usually arrived onboard around 11am. This was so they could put their things away, marvel at the cruise, and be on time for the welcome lunch held in our biggest ballroom. It was always quite crowded, with chairs bumping into each other every time someone tried to stand up, and the noise was overwhelming. The captain screamed her welcome speech, but she could have been swearing, and no one would have known.
The trip continued as usual. It was my third trip to the Islands, so I was familiar with the daily programming. We would arrive at the Islands on the fourth day, put the anchor down for a day, and return to end the seven day trip. I was assigned the night shift for some reason, which I assumed was because the butler hated me. Night duty was usually not busy. It really was just helping some of the drunk guests back to their room and checking the decks for any safety issues. Sammy had said that the previous night there was a woman on the second-floor deck around midnight, and that she had marvelous hair. So I stopped by the second-floor deck around midnight just to take a look.
She did have marvelous hair. But I sensed that she did not want to talk to anyone, so I took a route far away from where she stood. Her hair was easy to spot from the crowd, so it became my unconscious mission to look for her every time I scanned the crowd. She was always at parties and at restaurants, laughing with her teeth out, so she faded again into the background.
I went looking for an escape from the engine hum. I tried sleeping in the lounge chairs by the pool once, but I was caught and shooed away by the deck manager who came out for a smoke.
The days were long on the cruise. We had to give the guests the best time of their lives, (“Live everyday like it’s your last, because it really can be!”).
The Eden Ball was the last party on the return journey, held in the late afternoon on the second to last day. It was never announced early, but the guests always seemed to have something ready to wear for the occasion. People dressed up like Adam and Eve, or the snake, or an apple, or just wore ball gowns, saying they were religious. I doubt that anyone there was religious. It was usually after this party that people started to act on their second thoughts, and the cowardly ones (or brave ones, actually) started asking for cancellation forms.
I did my usual patrols around the second and third level decks, had the same conversations with the people sitting or pacing, in thought. I saw the lady with the marvelous hair again. I knew that she had came alone, but she was not one of the guests who spoke to me.
It was the last day, and I met Sammy walking briskly down the corridor. Sammy never walked briskly, so I asked him what was wrong. He told me that there was a room without a cancellation form, and he had to tell his manager. I had just finished my shift. My feet felt heavy and pinned to the ground, but I followed Sammy. His manager shouted at him to check again; he said he checked three times; his manager said why not four times, or five times; he said it was not there, and that he, the manager, can go look for it himself if he still didn’t believe it. They stormed back to the room; he checked again; his manager was irritated and checked again himself. There was no cancellation form.
“Whose room is this?” I asked Sammy, taking in the clean room with pink toiletries and slippers. He told me it was the room of the lady with the marvelous hair. His manager saw that I knew who it was and asked me to go find her. He didn’t care that I was on break. I was there, so I had to go find her.
I found her at the third-floor cafe. It was the first time I clearly saw her face, and she wore bright orange eyeshadow. I told her that we had some trouble at her room and asked could she please come with me to sort it out. I was not sure how they would approach this. The guests were not required to sign the cancellation form. The manager brought the lady to the butler, who was in charge of guest services. He then brought the lady to the captain, saying they had a special experience for those who decided to go through with dying. The captain had no one to bring the lady to, so they all stood in her cabin. The captain tried to be empathetic at first. She tried to get the lady to talk about her troubles, saying that she was there for her. The captain was ignored. Then, they tried to get the lady to speak with the executives, who promised free tickets to any of their cruises. She wouldn’t listen. They asked me and Sammy to grab her a mimosa from the bar and “whatever it is they serve in the buffet”. When we came back, they had left. I placed the food in her room.
The butler told me to follow the woman. I didn’t know where to find her, so I went to the pool. There I saw Sammy; they made him follow her too. We didn’t know what to do, so we just watched her. She seemed quite at peace, not fidgety like the others, and it was clear that she did not wish to speak to us. The others came out of the woman’s room after about twenty minutes, all with smiles of fake sincerity. The captain had phoned the company board. The board was calling their lawyers, but there was nothing they could do to stop her. They tried to call her family, but the line was empty. They ranted on and on about the wonders of life, which I can’t seem to recall. There was nothing they could do to stop her. She was doing what she signed up for. They debated amongst themselves, sometimes stepping forward to offer her something, just to walk back shaking their head.
The lady said she needed a refund because she was promised more dignified methods than whatever we were offering. I thought of the man who ate eight plates of foie gras, and how the room had a faint rotten smell within the few hours after his death. I wanted to sneak away because I was never taught how to deal with this situation during my training.
I was irritated by the nervous state of the captain and the butler and felt like a hypocrite for spying on her. She had made a choice. I respected her decision. Their groveling seemed to be just the opposite.
We were sent back to our duties. My break had ended five minutes ago. The guests got off the boat an hour early, and every room was cleaned except for the lady’s. She didn’t leave with the other guests.
Her marvelous hair floated on the water. It was a wig. Later that day, her body floated up, and she still had traces of that orange eyeshadow.
We heard that she jumped from the highest level of the cruise. No one wanted to clean up her room. Sammy pretended that he had stomachache.
The Heavenly Escape company faced terrible backlash, and a media frenzy was built around the lady who drowned. The Paradise Express was mocked as the “Para-dies Express”, and our next trip was indefinitely postponed. We stayed on the cruise for a week after the incident. Most of us played cards in the ballroom and drank some of the leftover champagne. The company didn’t announce that we would be let go, but everyone knew that it wasn’t going to last. After seven days docked at the harbor near the city I was staying in, we were gathered and fired. They gave us a month’s pay and told us to quickly pack our bags.
It was not hard to say goodbye to the cruise.
I used my remaining money to lease the apartment I had before, but now I had to share it with someone else. Still, sleep was nice without the engine’s constant hum.
One day, as I walked around the corner, the ad was still there. Some kid had graffitied over the slogan. Had crossed out Paradise Express with Go To Hell Express. No one thought about taking it down.
Now, I work as an Uber driver. It pays well and it’s not a tiring job. It is a bit like deck patrol, I guess, as I sometimes get to talk to the passengers. But it is also, in some way, fulfilling, after the cruise. There is always a set destination. People are always sure of where they want to go, and they stick to their choices. It is the smallest decision, but it is a sincere one, nonetheless.