Just something I whipped off a couple weeks ago for a writing workshop. The challenge was to incorporate the following elements in one story:
--cruise ship
--hot dog vendor
--holiday(s)
--tire swing
We also had to have a surpring ending or a twist, and it all had to be under 1500 words.

For the holiday, I was just trying to go with a general Halloween mood. My version of the cruise ship is based on the "hulks" of 19th century England (see Iain Lawrence's "The Convicts" and the first few chapters of Dickins' "Great Expectations"). And the unexpected/unclear twist is based on a loose idea I've been carting around for a while.

Gan Against the World

The man has his hot dog on a stick and he is holding it over the heat in the bottom of the barrel. Gan watches, fascinated, as the man turns the stick this way and that so that the flames touch the entire length of the meat. There is a smell in the air, like hot dog, but stronger. Sickeningly stronger. Gan's throat tightens. He coughs to keep himself from gagging.

The man starts so badly that the stick slips out of his hands, but with a word that he never says to anyone-only to things-he plunges his hand into the barrel, repeats the word, and retrieves the stick.

"Why the hell do you always sneak up like that?"

Gan shrugs. He feels guilty, but he cannot seem to stop doing this…this 'sneak' thing.

The man growls the way the dogs do. "Suppose you want this, then?" He reaches behind the barrel for the plastic bag and tosses it toward Gan's feet. Several plastic-encased packages of hot dogs slide out onto the dock. One is open, with one hot dog missing. Gan gathers the contents back into the bag and turns to go.

"Don't forget about today," the man calls at Gan's retreating back. "They'll be coming to get you real soon!"

Gan hears this and hurries. He had forgotten. It was all he seemed to do. That and sneak. Sneak and forget.

He reaches the end of the dock and does not stop. The guards watch him struggling to reach the ship, their hands playing along the lengths of their guns while the hot dogs weigh Gan down and drag in the water. They watch, but they say nothing.

Others are watching too. When he finally reaches the ship, they are waiting at the open hatch to pull him up out of the water.

"They never help you," Evi says.

Gan shrugs. He does that, too.

"You shouldn't let them treat you like that."

Another shrug. Oln taps his back impatiently. He helped Gan. He wants his share, and he does not want to wait. Gan reaches into the bag and wiggles two hot dogs from the open package, handing one each to Evi and Oln. They scarf them down at once, but Gan does not wait for them to finish before he leaves. He must remember just a little longer, just long enough to find someone who can share the memory.

He picks his way through the scattered furniture, avoiding the drips falling from the leaky pipes overhead and ignoring the excited calls that come when others see the hot dogs. He has to hurry…he struggles to remember even as he senses that a crowd is beginning to follow. He cuts across the open area where the kids go to play, dodging the tire in his haste. The kid who was swinging joins the crowd.

Up the stairs, down the hall, and on to the back room. The hum of the engine is stronger back here, and vibration is good for old bodies. Gan scans the room, looking for the pile of pulled-up carpet and torn-down curtain where Kes is folded several times beyond comfort, shivering even under all the wrappings.

"Ah, Gan!" Kes cries, delighted as always to see a young face. "Come here, bring word. Let them come to you."

Gan obeys, settling on the water-warped floor beside Kes to hand out the rations, but speaks before he forgets.

"They're taking us off today," Gan says at last. Kes and several others shift nervously. Soon everyone will know. It is no longer for him to forget.

Kes receives the offered hot dog and nibbles thoughtfully. "Do they want us all?"

Gan shrugs. "The man just said to be ready."

Kes stares at him. "Do that again."

"Do what?"

"That. What you just did."

Gan readjusts himself, trying to remember exactly. Gan shrugs. "The man just said-"

Kes laughs with delight. "Oh Gan, you simpleton. They rub off on you so easily!"

Gan swallows. He hates being reminded.

Gan knows he should take something for the hot dogs he gives, but there is not much left for anyone to exchange. The guards don't like it when he trades for memories or shiny bits of things that the children find in the ship. They prefer metal. Gan accepts pieces of pipe, fragments of rails, rusty chunks of something or other, and puts them in the bag once the hot dogs are gone. He carefully moves the bag back to the hatch, afraid that the plastic will rip, as it has done before, and that he will have to carry everything piece by piece.

No one follows him now. They are all getting ready.

"What do we look like?"

"Where's little Mir?"

"We must get to the hatch."

"Come now, two and two."

"Hurry."

"Do what they want."

Gan watches them fuss all they can in the moment. No one knows what to think about the future, so they do what they can, and all they can, which must be enough. Gan hopes the guards don't expect more.

He waits in the hatch, standing on the puddle he made when he came aboard earlier, watching his people gather one by one. Kes even comes to see them off.

Time passes quickly for them, though it crawls for Gan, who worries. Some of them laugh at him for his quietness, for his thinking ahead, but he cannot help it.

At last, when the sky begins to grow dark, the guards come in their boats, guns in hands. Today they don't care about the metal.

"Off the ship, now!" one calls. "C'mon, all of you get off the ship!"

Gan swallows his rising nerves. No one behind him objects. No point in being the only one frightened. He lowers himself over the edge, slapping the water to stay afloat, and helps others down.

They want Kes, and all those too young and too old to float, to come as well.

"Gan, tell them I can't," Kes says. "Tell them I'm too old and I'll sink." Kes laughs at the absurdity and the guards raise their guns in alarm.

"No!" Gan waves his arms to attract their attention, then points to Kes, then to the water, and mimes swimming and drowning. They stare at him, as though it is his fault they do not understand.

"C'mon now, we haven't got all night!"

"We can't leave them alone. They'll escape."

"We're wasting time. Just get rid of the ones that won't come."

A guard raises his gun to Kes.

"No!" Gan shouts again. The guards hesitate long enough for him to convince his people to support those who cannot handle the water alone. Pairs of strong youngsters move to support the kids and the old, but their garbled complaints make the guns rise in their direction.

"Move it already!"

At last they are all on the water and the guards' boats begin herding them along, some circling, some floating beside. The motors make the water choppy, which makes keeping afloat even more difficult.

Gan grows nervous at how long they travel. The others are too focused on staying upright from moment to moment to realize how long they follow the docks, how they turn into a cove that has a building spanning the water. There is light inside, and so much noise, and that smell of more-than-hot dogs. Gan hears some of those behind him groan as they approach this building with its stench and its sound.

They enter at last. Someone retches.

Gan stares up around him at the sea of people, men and women of all sizes with children who seem to be neither, crowded together and jabbering away. His mind throbs with the voices.

"Walking on the-"

"-tentacles?"

"-mouths like blenders-"

"Why's that one sinking?"

"Why don't they talk?"

A door closes, trapping Gan and his people inside, and the guards' boats make the confined water so choppy that some of them slip. Gan himself has to splay and splash his five lower limbs to steady himself on the surface.

"Gan," Kes pants from between two strained-looking supporters. "What are they saying?"

Gan does not face her. He is still taking everything in, though he realizes that he will not be able to see each individual. There are so many of them…so many strange, four-limbed creatures with those gaping, loud mouths.

"Ladies and gentleman," a voice booms. "Coming to you live from the Los Angeles Port Authority, this is CNN with our Halloween special. You saw it here first-Earth's first extraterrestrials. Though these aliens seem to prefer the water, don't they Barb?"

"And in just a few moments we're going to have the current expert join us to explain just what those things are…"

Gan folds himself in half, to the delight of the unwanted audience. He knows what it means. For the first time, he knows that even without sharing, he will not be able to forget.

His back to Kes, he simply shrugs.