So this is how it ended – me in a jail on a ship. The first days I had not cared much, being sick from the neverending up and down of the waves. I cannot quite remember how I ended up here, but this is not important anymore. The important part is that I need to get out. I am sharing the cell with a skeleton, at least it is only one. It might be fake but I am not too interested in knowing the truth. In the beginning, I tried to speak to the prison guard but he was not interested in anything other than eating, drinking and sleeping. Given the amount of his eating and drinking, the sleeping might not be coincidental. A fat cat was always resting on his legs. Optically the two belonged together but the cat did not seem to be too attached. When I arrived the cat had been interested in me, but as it could not fit between the bars petting it became quite a challenge for me. I had been wondering if the cat became fat because of a lot of rats on board – and if so if those had been a reason for the skeleton in my cell – but the more I watched the less I got the feeling that this creature was capable of killing a rodent unless it fell on said rodent and suffocated it. 

I know we had landed somewhere, the evermoving waves had decreased a little and the movement of the ship was like a cradle. It was relaxing and, exhausted as I was, I would have liked to sleep a little, but I knew I would never get a better chance to escape. The ship was empty and had been for a while. If I was going to make a move, it was now or never.  The guard was sleeping as usual, but he was too far out of reach. I would not have been able to grab the keys that were hanging from his trousers. The fat cat caught my eye and I came up with a plan – in hindsight it might have been a bad plan but it was a plan. Born with the ability to mind control I barely had used it which made the plan rather bad. But I was out of options if I ever wanted to get off the ship. The cat’s mind struggled a bit when I was trying to take her over – I had not been expecting such a strong will from such a lazy creature. The struggle was real and I was seasick and tired but in the end I won.

The world from outside the bars and through the cat’s eyes made my human body convulsing but there was nothing left inside that would have needed to get out. Moving a cat’s body was odd, I could feel the muscles shift and needed to concentrate to address the right muscles for the task. However, cats are playful and I was hoping for her wish to play once she saw the dangling keys. Unfortunately, the cat was not the playful type and I needed to force the muscles to go for the keys. Clumsy, I used the cat’s paws to reach for the keys and pulled. The keys were stuck but the guard woke up and smacked after the cat before directly closing the eyes again. The snoring was hearable within seconds. I could feel the cat’s rage and anger after the smack and the part of me that was connected to the creature wanted to take revenge. Now that we were aiming for the same goal it was way easier to control the cat. It jumped on the man’s lap, climbed on his face and rested on it, covering both mouth and nose. The human part of me wondered why the man would not wake up with the heavy cat on his face. The cat part hoped he never would. Soundly there was an odd voice from the man and he went limp. ‘Shit’, I thought, ‘I suffocated him.’ That had never been the plan. I forced the cat from the man’s face. It was too late now to feel bad for what had happened and now I really needed to get out.

Realizing that the man did not pose a threat any longer I used the cat to pull on the keyring again. It slipped out a little. ‘Shit’, I thought again, ‘It is attached.’ With my cat eyes I looked at my cat paws. As I had been expecting it did not have thumbs which would have been rather useful at the moment. I left the cat’s mind. The cat directly strolled to me and wanted to get a pet. While I did I let my mind wander through the ship. The first mind I found was a parrot and while they are quite agile I could not convince myself that the claws would be capable of opening the mechanism to detach the keys from the trousers. I needed to find something else and preferably fast.

My mind wandered further and somehow I found a chimpanzee that was stuck in a cage. I wondered what kind of ship I had ended up on, but for now I needed to get the chimpanzee out so it could get me out. The animal proved easier to control which was odd. The first thing I could see was total darkness and it took a while to figure out the cage and how to open it. 

I was lucky, it was a lock with a latch that I only needed to push up while at the same time needed to push the door. If the chimpanzee had seen the system he would have been able to open it by himself without my help but I was faster. When the little ape left the place, something behind him shrieked. The little monkey startled and turned in a real human way – I did not know how it would have behaved naturally. Behind it was a gorilla that was not happy that it was stuck in the cage – I personally could not let it out because I would have preferred to leave this ship alive. It needed to stay in. The gorilla’s shriek had woken up the other apes that were lodged with them which were now screaming.

Wherever we were I needed to move faster because the ship’s crew needed to hear that infernal sound. Luck was on my side – some idiot had forgotten to lock the storage room to the apes. As I wasn’t familiar with the ship I needed to navigate my little helper blindly – getting him lost three times on the way before I being able to find my cell. The thumbs proved helpful as I had guessed. The monkey brought me the keys and I let go of his mind – another error on my side.

As the monkey saw the cat it got aggressive and tried to attack it. Somehow I felt responsible and took control of the monkey again while trying to unlock the door with my human hands – a task that was harder than it sounded. After realizing I was not able to control both bodies I used the monkey to unlock the door. Unfortunately, I was not able to make any steps as long as I was controlling the chimpanzee – as said, my plan was error prone. I sent the monkey away, got hold of my own body and stepped out of the cell. The cat was on me while I checked the guard. As I had guessed he was dead, some cat hair still on his mouth and in his nose so the murder would be clear. I looked down on the cat that wasn’t aware of his own fault. ‘Shit’, I thought again and picked up the cat that was as heavy as it looked.

I tried to get outside with my heavy load. Once on deck I realized another mistake in my plan – we were not close to shore and there was no boat at hand. I had about 100 m to land. I knew I could swim that distance if the fat cat would not push my head underwater and drown me. I took a rope and attached it to the cat’s paws so I could lay it over my shoulders – the cat was not too happy with that idea nor with my other plans and scratched me heavily while fighting. I knew this would be burning once I was in the salt water but I was out of options. When I heard people screaming I looked up – the owners of the boat were coming back attracted by the screams of the apes. And they had seen me. I needed to distract them from me so I could escape.

Somehow the little chimpanzee jumped into my vision – and I remembered the room with all his friends. I took control over the animal again, which was still willing to let me in. I helped him open the cages that I could open and immediately heard the screams of the apes. The loudest must have been the gorilla. The people started to increase their efforts to reach their ship as both they and I realized that the apes would wreak havoc in a bit. I was not willing to stay and watch. With the fat cat attached to my shoulders, I jumped off the boat into the sea. My clothes got wet. The cat got wet. Now I had a wet fat cat attached to my shoulders that was still trying to get away and scratched me bloody – I had said my plan was never good. But I was off the ship and started swimming trying to ignore the screaming from my shoulders and the shrieking from the ship.

No one noticed me. I swam a little detour so if the man would have noticed my going they also would need to go a little detour. The 150m swimming would not have been hard at all but against waves and with the fighting burden on my shoulders after my seasickness I felt how it was draining my last energy resources. Somehow I made it and climbed out of the water on a little beach. I took the cat off my shoulders and when I opened the rope it scratched me heavily again before looking at me reproachfully. I kind of deserved that. Only after the blood was not rushing through my ears could I hear the sounds from the ship. I turned around to see that the gorilla was throwing a man into the sea. My survival instinct kicked in and I decided to leave the shore and find another place to stay. The cat, still looking pissed, followed me. 

Some days later I got hold of a newspaper that said that a huge smuggler ship was destroyed by their carriage of stolen apes. I told this to the cat that was still with me. It looked at me lazily and jumped on my lap. I really need to put this cat on a diet.