Drowning Iron by Megan Mader
She sits aboard the Iron Maiden , a ship not meant to cross the seas that rage and ravage with a flag waving breeze . When the winter storms come , the bolts creak and the iron masts lean . Waves send themselves over the bow ; salt water courses down her face and drips off her chin and splashes the back of her throat . It flows through the cabins and bilge and everywhere around her feet , dragging her perilously close to the sea that laps at the edges of her sanity , drowning it . Clinging to the rigging that ’ s been singing of a sinking fate , water assaults her . Bolts break free and masts snap into iron splinters .
She descends , the Iron Maiden pulling her along by its own gravity . Past jellyfish and sharks , down into the caverns and chasms of the ocean floor . Darkness and icy water push at her chest threatening to crush her like a fish snapped in half by the beak of a giant squid . Past the creatures that stalk the depths , and through the sediment , she sinks . Unhindered by layers of fossils and tectonic plates , straight through the mantle and to the center of the earth . Curled around the core , rests the Iron Maiden .
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