Jack didn’t consider himself to be crazy. He was anti-social to an extent, sure. Knew some people who were crazy, certainly. And he definitely had odd sleeping patterns. But he felt his grasp on reality was fairly decent, most of the time. Well, at least half of the time. So what the heck had just happened? Less than two minutes had passed since his “tour” of the “theatre” with that bizarre fellow who called himself Odysseus , a tour that felt like an hour but lasted less than a minute. Jack knew he imagined all of that nonsense, but he couldn’t quite remember falling asleep or anything that would even hint at a loss of sanity. But what he had experienced was simply too strange to be considered real.

Jack smirked, at least his dreams/delusions/panic attacks were interesting, even if his job wasn’t. The Fop(by which he meant Travis)’s dreams probably involved winning an employee of the month award, or staring in a tv show. Something stupid and self-promoting for sure. The fop had told Jack to wait for him, but Jack felt like if he waited any longer he’d have another dumb-ass dream or something similarly retarded. So Jack headed back to Borter Hall or whatever the hell that place was called. The front entrance was locked shut, to Jack’s irritation. He’d seen the Fop just stroll in with that smug grin on his face only minutes before, so why did he have to be poor the sap locked out? Jack gritted his teeth, this little obstacle would not deter him.

He walked around Porter’s perimeter until he came across a door at the bottom of a staircase leading into what appeared to be the basement area of the building. The door was slightly ajar. Figuring this was as good of an opportunity as he was going to get, Jack pulled the handle of the door towards him, then tried turned the handle. The handle wouldn’t budge. It was no big concern to Jack however, because the door still opened. Jack went inside the building and the door closed behind him with a click. Jack tried opening the door once he was inside, no such luck. The entry way led into a lobby of sorts, it was about as large as an average bedroom. The basement of Porter was gaudy, even gaudier than most of the facilities at Bensen tended to be. The floor was, of course, shiny marble, and the wall’s had a pretentious blue and white pattern to them. In fact, looking at the wall from the vantage point of the door, Jack could almost see a boat sailing on the wall. Jack blinked his eyes, no, there was definitely a small boat located on the far side of the wall, set far in the background. He scanned the lobby to find another door, but he couldn’t find one. He was surrounded by three walls with tacky paint and a door behind him that wouldn’t open, no matter how hard Jack pushed. Jack was irritated now(well, moreso than he usually was.) In his anger, he made a fist with his left and punched the wall to the right of him… or at least he attempted to.

To Jack’s immense disdain, he put a bit too much force into his blow and tumbled towards the wall. Jack winced and shut his eyes, at this angle his face would make contact with the tacky paint of the wall, which would chip both the paint and his teeth. But Jack’s face didn’t fall into a hard wooden wall, what he felt hit his face was cold and damp. His eyes shot open, and he realized, to his immense confusion, that he had fallen into a large body of water. His clothing was quickly rendered heavy by the icy water, severely hampering his efforts to stay afloat. Jack tried to say a bad word, but all he could manage was a “MDRFUGHER” before the water, apparently salty, got into his throat. He spluttered the unwelcome liquid from his mouth, using all of his leg strength to kick himself above the admittedly tepid liquid. Still, as nonviolent as the water was, he needed to get to land quickly.

Maybe there was a way back into the lobby? Jack looked behind him, there was no lobby to fall back into. The scenario made no sense, it was utterly absurd, but Jack was more concerned about not drowning than he was about the logical implications of being caught in a vast ocean that shouldn’t by any means exist. Then, out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw something that hopefully wasn’t water. He squinted his gray eyes, and noticed … a ship. A wooden one to be precise, as if it were fresh out of a cheesy pirate film. Heck, it even had a set of black sails with skulls and crossbones on it. Jack lifted up his right arm and pushed forward, and with a bit more effort, proceeded to do the same with his left arm. With some additional frantic kicking and five minutes of sweaty busy work, he reached the hull of the ship.

Unfortunately, Jack hadn’t worked out how to get on the ship, he figured he’d work that out at a time when he wasn’t drowning. Shockingly, Jack found that being near a ship while treading water took exactly as much effort as treading water away from a ship. A bit of water splashed into his face, making Jack blink his eyes involuntarily. When he regained his vision, he saw a rope had been tossed down from the hull. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Jack climbed up the rope onto the ship. He collapsed on the floor, and coughed up a decent amount of salty water. As he was catching his breath, he felt something tap his right shoulder. He turned around as quickly as his muscles could manage, and found…. Odysseus .

Jack groaned.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, what the hell are you doing here?” Odysseus, who was wearing a blue and white sailor’s uniform raised an “eye”brow.

“You’re honestly asking what a guy named Odysseus is doing on a boat?" the cyclops thing asked. "Seriously?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Jack looked Odysseus in his weird spherical eye thing.

“Alright, allow me to rephrase my question. Why am I on a boat when I should be in a college dorm building?”

Odysseus giggled. “Oh come now, you’re not honestly expecting a rational answer to that, are you? Just be glad I picked you up here.”

Jack shrugged his shoulders. “Alright, y’know what, screw it. I’ll sort this out later with my friend John Daniels.”

Odysseus looked at Jack quizzically. “Don’t you mean Jack?”

Jack shook his head. “When you know him as long as I have, you call him John. Keeps things simple. Anyways, I ain’t even going to attempt to rationalize you, or this ocean, or this ship. But I am going to ask you how to get back to Porter Hall.”

“Oh, that’s easy enough. We’re heading there right now." Odysseus said. "We just have to navigate through an ocean of a different kind first.”

“An ocean of a different what?”, Jack asked.

“Well, right now we’re in very still waters. Easy enough to understand and pass through, but if we don’t move on to another body of liquid we’ll be as stationary as this ocean here is. We need to head into an ocean with flow, with movement, with … and… dare I say it, excitement!”

Jack shook his head, he had no clue what the flamboyant man was saying and had little desire to find out. The ship suddenly lurked to the right, throwing Jack roughly against the starboard bow.

“Son of a bit-“ was all Jack managed to say before a bunch of water splashed on his head and the rest of his body, making the last few minutes spent in the sun absolutely useless. Jack groaned and stumbled back on his feet. He blinked his eyes a few time. The waters had gotten a bit rougher, but more to the point, the ocean around the boat was now crimson.

“Beautiful, isn’t it? The color red that is.”, Odysseus said. "So much more true than the color gray."

Jack tilted his head. “Red’s nice enough I suppose, but certainly not as a color for water. It looks creepy and out of place.”

Odysseus turned his head to face Jack and stopped the mast in place with one of his gloved hands. “Oh come now. Red is a primary color. It, like Blue and Yellow, can’t be produced any way els-“

Jack chuckled. “Fraid you’re incorrect there. The primary colors are Red, Green, and Blue. You’re stuck in the days before modern color theory."

Odysseus bit his left pinky and pouted. “I’m talking in terms of painting, my dear lad. Red, Blue, and Yellow. Those three colors make every other color under the son. Without them, you can’t have anything else.”

Jack shook his head. “It’s semantics I suppose, but that’s pigment theory, not primary color theory. I don’t understand too much of it myself, though I do know that what art teachers say are “primary” colors aren’t objectively “primary” colors.”

Odysseus sighed. “It is semantics. You focus too much on the details in a painting and you lose sight of the overall meaning. Of the theme."

Jack shook his head. “I can see where you’re coming from, but you’re off the mark. Only by knowing each individual part of something can we truly appreciate the whole of something.”

Odysseus chuckled and spun the mast wildly. “Hahaha, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that my vertically challenged friend.”

The ship spun ninety degrees to the right, and while Jack stumbled a bit, he did not fall over this time. In addition to the red sea, which was becoming more violent, there were rows of statues lining either side of the boat, forcing the progress of the ship in a straight line towards the horizon. The statues were like the ones one would see at a Roman exhibit in a museum, lifelike and proportional to human beings. They were nevertheless spooky to look at, their gray stony exterior being dyed somewhat pink by the constantly splashing red waves.

Jack tugged at his red tie nervously. “Uh, hey, Odysseus , you sure it’s safe to be steering the boat this way?”

Odysseus smirked. “Sure? Not in the slightest! But these waters, while odd and spooky, are usually harmless. They’re unstable to be sure, but… hm. Perhaps I should show you?”

Before Jack had a chance to object, Odysseus flourished, and from some pocket or cranny in his sailor uniform, produced what looked to Jack to be a shiny yellow diamond. “Violent and unusual waters exist all around us. But they’re not inherently dangerous. You need a –push- (and here Odysseus tossed the yellow object in the crimson water) to really make things risky!”

Jack gulped down some air while he looked at the water, staring at it for about a minute. Nothing happened, the boat just continued. Jack let out a sigh of relief. Then the boat lurked backwards, tilting at about a forty five degree angle. The flamboyant man clapped his hands together and started giggling loudly yet again. Jack’s gray eyes squinted. Heading right towards the body was a GIGANTIC crimson wave. Jack sprinted up the boat, and tied himself down with the rope he used to climb up on the ship. Just as he knotted the rope, the wave hit. The boat went flying, and even Odysseus ’ hysterical laughter was drowned out by the roar of the waters pouring on everywhere. Jack was drenched instantly, and once more his vision was obscured.

The powerful force of the wave pushed his body off the boat, but Jack clung on the rope he was tied into. The knot held as well as his grip did, suspending Jack’s body in the air. For thirty long seconds Jack desperately held on to the rope, but eventually his right hand’s grip faltered. His left gloved hand’s hold and the knot at the end of the rope was all that prevented him from falling into the sea. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw another crimson wave heading towards his position, this one twice as big as the one he had been hit with before. The statues were no longer pink, but dark red, and the crimson liquid flowing off of the statues gave the impression that they were crying blood. The second wave hit the wreckage of the boat, and both Jack’s left hand and the knot gave way. Jack was sent tumbling through the air, his trajectory heading right towards the third variation of the statue. He closed his eyes and braced for the impact. The impact never came. Jack didn’t feel wet anymore, and he wasn’t moving any more either. In fact, he was standing up straight. When he opened his eyes, he found that he was in a somewhat narrow hallway. He looked behind him and found the lobby he was in not too long ago.

With a sigh, he continued moving down the hall. Maybe he’d lay off the John Daniel’s for a while.