The Woman in Cabin 10 Ch. 16 - 18

Hey, hi, sorry, so last week I just didn't budget my time well.

I write as a hobby and I've been in a slump of no ideas and just BLAH and then last Sunday I was struck and I wrote something for the first time in forever. Of course, I also felt like if I stopped writing it to a) finish reading the three chapters I was supposed to read and b) post about it, I was going to lose the muse.

So I made my choice. I regret nothing, because it's some good fic is what it is.

And then I was going to post on Monday, or any other day of the past week, but we're doing a lot of upgrades and changes at work and honestly I was too tired to even go to the gym after work all last week. I mostly just collapsed onto the nearest horizontal surface and watched really bad 'true' paranormal tv (I grew up watching A Haunting and I love it still) or those megalodon 'documentaries' from Shark Weeks past. Also the one they did this year where they had actual scientists talk about the megalodon just to make myself laugh. Those poor people.

Keeping in mind that I love the megalodon as a concept, I am also still really glad that it's extinct. It was a good, giant smooth ocean puppy, but that is a concern that I do not need.

I've also seen The Meg because I have trashy, trashy taste sometimes. I've also read all but the latest book in the series that it was based on and actually they improved the damn thing. Which would admittedly not have been a hard task. They're some awful books.

Some days you just want to watch a giant prehistoric shark eat all the things.

ANYWAY.

Here we go, a week late because I am not good at managing time.

Start off at the spa, where Tina is spying on the guest list or whatever else she can get off of the spa computer for reasons of being shady. I don't think Tina is the problem here - she's too obvious. I mean she might be up to no good, but I don't think it's related to the murder. Lady Bullmer shows up, all deathly and tragic, and then we get to discover that oh, hey, the treatment rooms are inside the ship which is going to go well for Lo and her claustrophobia.

She tries to get out of staying down below for a treatment, but there's no other options and she's determined to get through this so she heads off for her mud wrap which just sounds awful to me, I'm not going to lie. I don't have claustrophobia, but being stuck inside a little room with no windows and then being naked and wrapped in muddy bandages just sounds awful. I, too, would try to nope out of this.

We also get some sort of apology from Tina about her behavior the night before but I think it reads more like someone who doesn't want anyone poking around why she was so snippy as opposed to someone who actually feels bad about behaving badly.

Somehow, Lo falls asleep wrapped in all this mud, I do not know how except maybe she's just that exhausted. We get a bit that's reminiscent but not exactly the same as the beginning of the book, Lo dreaming of a body in the water, and it's eerie and beautiful all at the same time. Then, of course, Lo wakes up and also in an echo of the very beginning of the book, she hears the shower (still in the treatment room) running, goes in, and sees that someone has written STOP DIGGING in the steam on the mirror.

We get an inset from a newspaper article dated September 28th, claiming that Lo Blacklock's body may have been found by Danish fishermen. I mean we know that there's theoretically another body of the right age range floating around out there, but I hope it's not really Lo. I kind of like her.

Lo does her best, absolutely loses her shit, but gets it back together using CBT techniques which, apparently, is short of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Google CBT at your own risk, because it stands for at least one other thing that is not at all about meditative techniques for helping yourself through an anxiety/panic attack. In fairness, it's not so much the actual CBT that gets Lo through this as it is her rage at the smug therapist who tried to teach it to her. So....victory?

She's going to call Nilsson, but realizes that the words are vanishing because they're written in steam and that Nilsson will never believe her. She's on her own.

Lo talks to Eva on her way out, learns that the door she took down is supposedly the only way into the treatment area below decks, though there is an emergency fire exit but it's one way and alarmed so no one came in that way. So...unless there's a secret entrance (I rule nothing out) then the one who wrote the words on the mirror had to be one of the women that was down there with her. Tina, Chloe, Ulla, Hanni and Klaus. Also, Eva, because she had access.

I guess also Lady Bullmer and the manicurist. Would Eva mention it if the ship owners wife slipped below decks for a second? Maybe not.

ALSO FUCKING BEN.

Who was looking for Lo.

UGH.

Lo runs into Chloe and Cole up in the dinning room and they chat for a bit. She's playing detective, asking them both about the poker party that happened the night of the murder. They were both there, but poker is absolutely boring to watch, maybe even if you're into poker. Chloe went to bed, and Cole was there in the room for about half an hour. He does, however, remember that FUCKING BEN left to get his wallet at one point, which he conveniently left out of his story to Lo.

Cole offers to let Lo look at the pictures from the party and oh, hey, he definitely has a thing for Chloe. In case you were wondering. Lo does that thing we all do, when someone hands you their phone to look at a picture and you flip too far back or forward and see some other even that you're not interested in. Only in this one pic, conveniently for the plot, is a waitress (she's not the focus of the pic so it's not extra super weird) who Lo is certain is the woman from cabin 10.

Again, she does the smart thing and doesn't mention this to Cole or Chloe because hey, someone on the ship is a murderer and someone has made the only piece of evidence Lo had vanish so maybe don't draw attention to this other piece of evidence. Good, great, thanks.

Lo scoots out of the dinning room, asks for a sandwich to be delivered to her room, and finds FUCKING BEN. Who she proceeds to tell all about the incident in the spa room like she doesn't ALSO suspect him of maybe being the one to write the ominous words on the glass!!!!

But sure, yes, lets keep telling him things.

Jesus.

Ben, however, has been snooping, ostensibly on Lo's behalf, but who knows, and he thinks that Archer (the asshat who twisted Lo's arm at the first night's dinner) was trying to text a young woman named Jess who looks like Lo's description of the woman. Of course, the internet is still down, but Ben gives Lo a rundown of their movements, and the fact that Eva was not, in fact, at her station the whole time, so someone could totally have snuck downstairs if they'd really wanted to.

Lo panics, realizing how easily someone could have killed her as opposed to just writing threats, so she bolts up to the deck to puke. Ben follows her, probably out of a nice impulse, I'm going to give him that much, and Lo doesn't puke on him which I suppose is fine. Might have been satisfying though.

More importantly, we get a lot of maybe alibis and tying people down to a location when the murder happened.

Tina, apparently, was having a little personal visit from one of the room attendants. Cole was for some reason roaming Lo's end of the ship - his cabin is at the other end and Ben maybe had a young woman sneaking out of his. All of this information brought to you by the resident over weight foodie - Alexander. Who, I'm guessing, just likes spying on people.

I mean I think we can guess that maybe Cole was down there to visit Chloe. Because they are totally having a thing. And Ben is protesting too much about not having anyone in his room. Which is nuts because hey, Ben, Lo is not dating you and does not care who you're seeing.

I really wish Lo would stop telling Ben All the Things. Though she didn't tell him about the photo, so there's that.