Weekly Drabble #235: Found Footage (Patreon)

This week's drabble prompt is 'docking and boarding' from Burning Desire, wherein a handful of youngsters (with their damn rock music) find something most peculiar...

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Found Footage:

“Is it on?”

“Christ, yes. For the ninth time.”

“Try third.”

“Whatever. Camera’s on. Remind me again – why am Ithe one stuck doing this?”

“Because someone needs to stay behind to make sure everything’s working. Doug’s doing that, so that leaves the two of us. You’re the strong, powerful man and I’m just a weak, helpless woman – hey, don’t make faces!”

“Yeah, yeah. Weak and helpless, got it.”

“Damn right. It’s rude to contradict a lady.”

“Sure it is. I’ll make a note of that under Shit Chelsea Just Made Up.”

“You’re such an ass.”

“And you’re here with me, so what does that say about you?”

“That we’re a pair of perfectly matched asses?”

“When you two are finished with the foreplay, how about we get this show on the road?”

“Yes, mother.”

“That’s ‘Mother Doug’ to you pal and don’t you forget it. Chelsea, move a little to the right... yeah, there. Perfect. That gets the ship nice in the background.”

“How’s my makeup?”

“Your makeup’s fine.”

“My hair?”

“Hair’s good.”

“Are my tits in the shot?”

“This is amateur video journalism, not the Amsterdam weather report, Chel.”

“But are they in the shot?”

“Yes.”

“How do they look?”

“I’m your brother.”

“I was asking Julian.”

“They’re spectacular.”

“Damn right they are. Play your cards right and you’ll get to see them again tonight.”

“Promise?”

“Enough with the tits. Jesus tap-dancing Christ you two. Can we have one conversation where I don’t have to hear about my sister’s sex life?”

“No.”

“I hate you, Chel.”

“No, you love your big sister.”

“Hate. Hate. Hate.”

“Before Doug descends into madness and decides to leave us behind, how about we get started?”

“For the love of God, yes please.”

“Okay. Is there anything in particular I should say?”

“Let’s see what you have. We can do more than one take if we have to.”

“All right, just let me loosen up. Got some jitters here.”

“We know. You get bratty when you’re tense.”

“Right. Okay. Okay. I can do this.”

“You can. It’s just like another of your videos.”

“Yeah, but I have like... three thousand followers and I just do stupid everyday shit for them. This is kind of a big deal, you know?”

“You can do it.”

“Yeah, sure. Okay. Right. Just another video. It’s just, like, totally normal, isn’t it?”

“Whenever you’re ready, Chel.”

“Okay... and.... My name is Chelsea Allan. I’m here off the coast of California with my awesome boyfriend Julian Lensing and my super-helpful little brother Doug. We were just taking our parent’s boat out and a storm came up. It blew us pretty far off course and the radio is kind of fucked at the moment, but we found something. Behind me, you can see the Xue Ioffe. What is that and why does it sound like a sneeze? Good question! It was the first Chinese-Soviet scientific research vessel, the start of a pilot project between the two countries that fell through, even before they started mistrusting each other. Why do I know this? I didn’t, but Doug is a huge smarty pants and is totally obsessed with maritime history – see, that’s what we call a shoutout, Doug – so as soon as we saw this spooky grey blob on the horizon, he was totally freaking out, ‘cause this is, like, a modern-day kind of Marie Celeste, I guess.

“Doug says that the Xue Ioffe was sent out for some routine ocean mapping in the Antarctic before it completely disappeared. No distress calls were ever sent. In the last seventy-odd years, the ship has been spotted on several different occasions, but never successfully salvaged. About thirty years ago, after the fourth sighting, a recovery mission was launched. They reported finding the Xue Ioffe, but after that all contact was lost and no trace of the salvage team was found. There were rumours that the Xue Ioffe wasn’t just doing ocean mapping, but was up to some kind of weird-ass research but there was no confirmation of that. When it went missing, the Soviets and the Chinese buried the whole program, ‘cause that’s the kind of thing you totally do when an ocean mapping ship goes missing. Doug says that this incident might even have led to relations souring between the two countries, but no one knows for sure. Super-weird, right?

“But! What all this means is that we have, right here, a bonafide, totally real ghost ship, ladies and gents. And since we’re on-scene and as long as there’s no crew, the law of salvage means that this – how big did you say it was? Sixty thousand tons? – giant-ass, spooky-ass ship is all ours. Ya girl Chelsea is going to be updating her feeds with a literal nautical mystery, bitches. Like, I know this is totally different than the stuff I usually post, but you gotta admit this is fucking raw as hell. Like, history raw. And all of you get to see it with us!

“And yes, we have seen all the movies. We are going to be, like, chickenshit cowards about this, or at least I am. We’re going to try and get to the bridge to confirm the ship is abandoned and then maybe do some exploring. It’ll probably take us three or four tries, because I am totally going to run back to our ship whenever I hear something weird and if Julian doesn’t keep up, well it was nice knowing him.”

“Hey!”

“But there’s probably not going to be any monsters. Doug says on something this old, we should be more worried about rusted-through walkways and decks, fuel or chemical spills and flooded compartments. You know, the nice normal ways of killing yourself on a ship close to a hundred years old. But we’re still going to look around anyways. This is, like, the first record of whatever happened to this ship and whatever we see – no one has seen it... or at least, they didn’t live to tell about it. There’s still no knowing what happened to that recovery mission and this ship has been at sea a loooooong time, right Julian?”

“I like how you said there’s probably no monsters.”

“So! We’re docked to the ship and we’ve got the gangplank lowered – you can see that here. Julian has a GoPro on his head and Doug is sitting nice and safe away from the ghosts in our ship’s cabin, keeping an eye on the weather and all our techie stuff. For those of you who might wonder why Doug is sitting back, it’s because he has shitty sea legs. During the storm, our boat bucked and he twisted his ankle, so he has to sit this one out. But we won’t explore too much without him, ‘cause he is totally jonesing to get on this weird, creepy wreck.”

“See, I still say we should bring him along. That way if there are ghosts, we don’t have to outrun them – just him.”

“We are not feeding my brother to the ghosts, you ass!”

“Thank you, Chel.”

“If we get chased back here,that’s when we’ll throw him to them and while he’s getting eaten, we’ll cut loose and escape. You have to plan ahead, Julian. GAWD.”

“Aaaand you ruined it.”

“No comments from the production staff! Okay, so. Signal here is, like, totally shitty. Radio’s still all fritzed and since I can’t livestream this, we’ll try and upload it whenever we can. Let’s get this show on the road. Uhm. One small step for woman, one giant leap for influencerkind.”

“Doug, can we feed herto the ghosts instead?”

“Ssssh, you’re not supposed to say that out loud.”

“You two know it’s wrong to bully girls, right?”

“Is it?”

“It is?”

“You two are such dicks. All right. Let’s do this, boys. We have a ship to explore and history to make. And if you’re watching, make sure to like, subscribe and check out my other videos!”