Castaways
This was while I was in the engineroom onboard this one freighter, a while ago, a lifetime ago. What had happened was they’d pressurized the aft sanitary tank while the vent was still open. There came a low whistling, an ominous rumbling to which Jansen, the operator stationed locally at the san tank control panel (STCP), hadn’t given much thought. To his credit, the two guys right next to him didn’t think about it either, but, to their credit, they were working on something completely unrelated (cleaning feedwater system wye strainers). This ominous rumble prefixed a breeze wherein one could parse the foul smell of shit, the ammoniated undertow of urine, the distinct fabric-penetrating malodor of these elements working in tandem, and yet no one batted an eye.
Must be comin through the pump packing gland, one dipshit said. But there was no packing gland, because there was no pump at all. Indeed, it turned out that he’d conflated this ship’s MSD system with his last vessel’s, which was a MAERSK E-class. This ship’s san tank was not capable of being pumped, and was instead routinely discharged overboard (when the vessel was outside domestic waters, of course) via pneumatic pressurization from the amidships reserve air reservoirs (ARAR), but no one thought to think on what he’d said because everyone had done this a thousand times, could do it with their eyes closed, and everyone trusted everyone else, and so the blackwater in the tank stirred and bubbled and came to pressure and, completely uninterrupted, began issuing from the vent.
It was a slow and undramatic issuance, at first. Jansen even looked over at the vent and noticed a trickle of fluid running down the piping, falling in persistent droplets into the starboard frame and collecting in the bilge below. He did not think to say anything. It coulda been from a completely unrelated-ass thing, was his excuse. To his credit, there were freshwater and seawater systems galore in the vicinity of the aft san tank, because it was located in Hydronics: Engineroom Lower Level (HELL), which also housed the chillwater systems for the ship’s refrigeration plant, certain feedwater components for the ship’s steam plant, and demineralized water systems which were effluent of the ship’s desalination plant. And below all of the tangled pipes, the gatevalves whose oiled and threaded stems were thornlike and sematic, below the mess of lollipop gauges, below the permadamp deckplates fettered to the skidframe by ill-fitting screws of varying size and pitch, which often jutted from their metal perches to trip any unsuspecting mechanic who walked by—below all of this shit was real, human shit, lurking predatorily in the unlit gloam of the san tank, never meant to see the light of day. And yet—
When the HEPA filter blew it was as if someone had popped a cork. I was just above them when it happened, working on a hazmat inventory. I heard screaming from the starboard ladderwell and so I ran, I jumped, I slid down the ladderway. I smelled the commotion before I saw it.
What I saw was a geyser. I saw fluids and solids and all those variable states between in which matter could be dichotomized. Jansen was covered in it. He was wiping it off his glasses and screaming and some of it had gotten into his mouth. The two mechanics who were working in his vicinity had scrammed and run for cover. The scene was total pandemonium. I had to act fast, but I didn’t know what the fuck was happening. Jansen noticed me and yelled, gesturing to the vent:
Iss blown! Iss blown!
And all of a sudden it made sense to me, and I ran toward it.
The vent was isolable by means of a ballvalve located upstream on the line, and to approach it meant getting directly in the line of fire, for lack of a better word, but I did, and then I, too, was subsumed. The valve’s rubberized handle was hard to grasp because it was covered in a slurry of ruined toilet paper, and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to turn it clockwise or counterclockwise, so I struggled with it for a few seconds before it gave.
And then, all at once: silence. And in the wake of this newfound silence, there we were, mired in the smell, weighed down by the brutal cold of soaked coveralls.
I turned to Jansen. We stared at each other with our arms suspended in front of us like mummies.
Jansen! All I could say was his name.
What, he said.
And then he laughed, and couldn’t stop laughing. To his credit, it was funny, even then it was funny, even as it was happening, and I laughed, too. When I laughed he would laugh harder, and this would make me respond in kind, until we were doubled up, slapping our knees, laughing and then heaving for the smell, redeyed and laughing and crying, and, y’know, ultimately vomiting. And it was good.
Eric Angal was born and raised in Seattle, and he still lives there and works there. His work is published or forthcoming by Nut Hole Publishing, Don’t Submit!, and The Argyle Literary Magazine. His short story collection Defiler is available for purchase through Nut Hole Publishing. He can be found on Twitter: @MrZoris, and on Substack: @erickangal
Eric writes: Spiritually, a ship’s engineering department is effectively comprised of the crew’s castaways/fucked losers. When going underway aboard any vessel, engineering department (aptly abbreviated: ED) is the first on and the last off, they’re perpetually overworked and underfucked, and they’re never really considered by anyone. When was the last time, in any movie with a ship in it, that the camera spent more than five expositional seconds inside of an engine room? With the exception of maybe K-19 widowmaker, or Das Boot (which is 7 hours long—also their vessel was maybe like a hundred feet in length from stern to bow, so how are you not gonna spend time in the ‘engineroom,’ if you can even call it that.)
‘In Hell’ is the sixth featured piece in the Urban Pigs Press CASTAWAYS callout, which celebrates the release of the latest Urban Pigs title Robinson Crusoe Maybe by guest editor Colin Gee. Colin is founder and editor of The Gorko Gazette and author of several books.
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