Third World Cruise

You stand on the deck of the "India Star", a hulking dilapidated moribund vessel, the lead ship of a rusting flotilla of refugees. A floating slum, the ship has just departed the city of Calcutta ferrying a barefoot swarthy horde conditioned to squalor, superstitions, and fatalist sloth. The mass of passengers aboard this ancient ship numbers in the thousands with hardly an inch of space between bodies. A horrible miasma persists in a thick layer, gagging you, smelling just like shit. You take a deep breath but the putrid reeking cloud burns your lungs. Fortunately, there is plenty of rice and water, for now. The thousands of teeming souls are constantly boiling rice in tin pots, cans, and anything else they can find. Even now, barely underway, there are already dead in droves. Mostly the very sick or elderly, and their corpses are being cremated in mass, releasing another noxious stench. Lacking a traditional fuel source, most are using turds as fuel. A team of children works to process the feces, squatting and using their hands to knead and shape each batch of turds into little logs, wringed out and then rolled into briquettes before drying in the sun. Some of their comrades are patrolling the deck, keeping their eyes peeled for anyone squatting or straining. Quick reflexes permit snatching the dung before it even hits the deck, enabling a quick delivery back to the turd-rollers.

There is not much to do but eat and sleep. Such a long, arduous, odyssey to reach Europe. But, soon enough, the mass of flesh begins to writhe, everywhere a mass of hands and mouths, phalluses and rumps, with white tunics billowing over fondling exploring fingers. Young boys are passed from hand to hand and young girls barely ripe are lying together cheek to thigh asleep in a languid maze of arms and legs and flowing hair. Waking to eager lips, male organs mouth to hilt, tongues exploring scabbards of flesh, men shooting their sperm into women's nimble hands. Everywhere, rivers of sperm streaming over bodies, oozing between breasts and buttocks and thighs and lips and fingers. Bodies together not in two's, but in three's or four's, whole families of flesh gripped in gentle frenzies and subtle raptures. Men with women. Men with men. Women with women. Men with children. Children with each other. Their slender fingers playing the eternal games of carnal pleasure. Fleshless old men reliving their long lost vigor, on every face eyes closed, the same smile, calm and blissful. No sound but the ocean breezes, panting breaths, and from time to time a cry or groan, a call to waken other sprawling figures and bring them into the communion of flesh.

Deep in the lower decks of the ship, you commune with a small band of other foreigners, who were all previously in Calcutta but joined in during the hijacking of the ship. Some are still enthusiastic and interested in what will happen in the future while others are panicking and desperate to devise survival strategies for the rest of the voyage. A few others have already fallen to despair, suffering some abuse from the masses and have lost hope, regretful now of many things. One of the men gives you his best attempt at levity and asks you with a weak smile "Hey, hows it hangin'?"