The silhouettes of cruising herring beneath my feet dwindled in and out of existence. The hour was 1825 and the day hung on to it’s last breaths of light as the sun departed into the Atlantic upon the horizon. Despite the embers of light dying out in quick succession, Galicia’s sky was illuminated with a blue that rivaled even Bob Ross’s own secret stash of beautiful colors. Great pelicans and herrings flew over head riding the shifting currents of the four winds. This was a deserted garden of eden that seemed to withstand the test of time that mankind had begun.
Upon a barnacled-barge, I sat observing this coast. I dared not keep my feet towering over the water for the unknowns of Galicia’s coast upon the Atlantic made me quiver in fear. Its a fear that is far from simplistic to describe and quite certainly antediluvian, but, nonetheless, present. The abandoned barge I sat upon was firmly beached some meters off shore. As the tides came up I pondered my escape route, and, in not finding one, stayed as my own self-proclaimed resolute captain on this sinking, but already sunk, ship. I enjoyed letting time chose my destiny. Shall I be saved in time or succumb to the crashing waves of the Atlantic? I did not care, and, so I sat.
Reaching inside the leathery embrace of my jacket pocket, I pulled out the metallic flask forged from the hands of Spaniards for a man who betrayed them in Gibraltar. The sun was setting and I was slowly, but surely, getting drunk. Many a time I’ve pondered wether this routine would get old. I’ve done it so many times before, almost every day. Almost. But by heavens I am no more an alcoholic than Hemingway. If it’s a nectar so cherishable yet truly full of respite that amplifies this view than so be it, c’est la vie.
The Atlantic gained in confidence and became a force upon the hull of this barge. I was drenched. “A drenched decrepit drunkard dreading time,” I said to myself. Fuck the last alliteration. Standing up upon the side of the barge, I contemplated diving into the meter deep water with the grace of an Olympian for my mere audience of swans and flies. Oh how beautiful and poised I’d look as I would torpedo through the sky into the Atlantic down blow. Another wave hit me in the face and dethroned me from my pedestal upon the barge. I fell back, crashing upon the unforgiving birch of the ship. “Is this what you do to your captain?” I screamed. “You’re meant to protect your debauched captain from the hellish conditions of the sea, not invite him upon me as I ponder putting on a beautiful show for our dear audience!” No response. Just as I expected, my ship is a coward and a half-wit.
In my angry tirade I forgot the desire to dive and took back to drinking with my back propped against the mast in the middle of the barge. Close to complete darkness now enveloped the barge and oppressed the waves of the Atlantic. All was quiet on my little Santa Maria. “Tell me oh boy” I patted the deck, “do you remember your late captain? The oh famous Columbus! Oh Columbus oh Columbus who art thou?” I stood and toasted my flask to the moon, “he who hath been named by history for stealing the work of my sweet barge! Oh you delinquent may you find four horses and a wife as you prance through the devil’s playground. Let me know when you circumnavigate the river styx!” Another wave leapt the hull of the barge and slapped me with the bitterness of sea water. “For alas you Atlantic are a salty one.” I preached as I slipped once more, this time with a searing pain breaking through the cuff of my shoulder. My great-great-great (you get the point) grandfather’s flask fell out of my clutch and began to skid across the lubricated algae-infested deck of the barge. In hearing it’s falling clangs and final bang as it slid through a crack in the deck and landed upon the inside hull, I looked up and cursed my luck, Columbus, and the Atlantic.
The wind began to bite at my fingers and neck. I pulled my vagabond’s excuse for a jacket tighter around my neck and regained my balance. “O’ old and new tis you who makes me feel blue! Leave me in peace or art thou fickle?” I spat over the side of the barge into the water, formalizing my war of a attrition with the Atlantic. Now that the water had ascended to an immodest level, the deck was covered in a few centimeters depth of salt water. I waded through it in search of my dear flask. The barge moved beneath my feet ever so slightly, and, with it, came a sound. I may have been drunk or deranged or some other d word, but this was not the sound of a barge whining for having been moved. It came again. A low pitched metallic clang. “That shall be my merry flask calling for papa! Come to me and drink from me so I may drink from you!” I opened the door to the underbelly and proceeded into the hull without a care in the world.
“O romeo romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” I sang for my flask. “O juliet my-“ there it was again, the calculated clanging of a mysterious force. This time my senses returned to me and my I stood in the underbelly of my barge peering through the darkness with dilated eyes. Shakespeare deserted me as Hitchcock took his place. Fear and drunk euphoria danced a waltz in front of me, as I stood trembling, peering into the unknown. The darkness was something unimaginable. No matter how hard i strained I could barely see my hands through the oppressing absence of light. It compounded my senses, not just sight, but also hearing. The darkness isolated and enveloped my teetering frame until the sound came again. It was not the same sound. It reverberated upon the walls of the hull and struck my ears as a baby’s shriek does through the night. The sound came in waves. It was metallic yet alive; pronounced yet gentle. I heard the metallic clinking of the flask’s tethered lid slapping upon the metal mouth piece, ringing in waves, one clink after the other. Louder and louder as the sound approached. Someone had my flask and was walking. I could not see, nor hear footfall, but it was unequivocally that. The back of my feet found the bottom step of the staircase that I had initially descended in drunk-naïveté. The sound clamored through the hull once more, this time there was footfall. I turned tail and ran up the stairs of the barge’s hull. Just as I reached the top, I practically jumped through the doorway whilst turning my head back to catch a glimpse of the unknown unknown. In what feels as though a mere few mili-seconds, the moon’s nocturnal light caught the reflective coating of the flask hovering in the air in the same place that I had been standing moments before. I ran for the door to the stairs in order to trap my barge’s beast in the hull. As I closed the door the moon caught the light of something else, a hand in the obscurity of the hull. The door slammed shut and I locked it quickly from the outside.
Standing breathlessly in front of the door, the moon’s light turned dim behind a dark cloud. My eyesight cut off once more, the last sound I heard emanating from the hull was the sound of soft footfall descending the stairs. These steps accompanied with the soft clinking of the flask’s tethered metallic lid upon the metal mouthpiece as it the unison of both sounds descended further and further down into the hull.
I fell backwards upon the deck of the barge. The water level had not risen since I had descended into the bowels of my dear barge. I lay there for a few moments, staring up at the sky as the moon, once more, went to hide behind another cloud. The sound from the hull was no more, yet, strangely, this made me shake even more. Was I truly that drunk to be hallucinating things? No. I hadn’t even finished the flask. I was tipsy, of course, but not to the point of inebriation. The barge had its own beast for sure.
In all my cowardness I gathered up the strength to mount my own two feet and walk to the side of the barge, hoping for a true escape route. As I peered out into the ocean, the metallic sound came again through the cracks in the deck. I shivered. Sitting upon the wooden side of the barge, I waited for the moon to peer out from it’s hiding place once more. After a few minutes, it did so and I began to cry. I should have noticed it before, but in all my fear my senses had been numbed to the movement of the boat, dislodging itself from the sandbar that it was beached upon. In all my unfortunateness, my precious barge, the Santa Maria, my blessed virgin, had drifted out to sea, and the only passengers were but a mere man and an unknown beast.
“O romeo, romeo... wherefore... art... thou...” my voice trailed off into the waves and winds as I sobbed great tears into the waters of the Atlantic. This water of human produce falling into the great expanse down below, forever destined to be lost and sink for centuries. It was at this time that I remembered my desire to dive off the side of the barge. No flies, birds, nor sun would bear witness to my great leap, but, in all my distraughtness, I knew that at least I would have an audience of one: the beast of this barge.
I stood and contemplated my decision. If I should jump into these frigid waters I would run the undesirable risk of death. Who knows if I would even make it back to shore. Which way was shore? Why had I stayed? What was the hand I saw? Too many questions. Too many to answer, too many I did not want to hear the answers to.
I decided to jump.
The frigidness of the water almost knocked me out. I felt the cold clutches of hypothermia immediately enthrall my limbs, heart, and mind, so much so, that I almost forgot to come back up to the surface for a breath. The Atlantic was a cruel demon that had claimed the lives of many, but I wouldn’t be amongst them. Not today. Breaching the surface, I gasped for air out of necessity, not for my desire. With half my head submerged underneath the cold, black waters of the Atlantic, I peered about for the direction to swim in. There were no shore lights, no lighthouses, no moon to orient myself. I had made a brash mistake. The barge was the only sure thing I knew, yet even it was not welcoming, for the fear of what lay in its hull quaked my heart stronger than any hypothermia could. Treading water for as long as I could, I thought about my decisions. I had seen a human hand, or so I think, peer out through the void, illuminated by the moon. It was just a hand, one that must be connected to a body, but a hand nonetheless. It did not grab for me nor run for me, it definitely had the chance. On the other hand, the cursed sea of the Atlantic, upon which I had just an hour ago waged war on, was expanded in front of my eyes. No end in sight, nor any hint of salvation or absolution. My option was clear. Death in the Atlantic was a known. The temperature had fallen below 10 degrees and the water felt Arctic. I couldn’t survive much longer here. Death upon the barge was unknown; I still did not know what unknown known was beneath the deck. It could very well be a drunkard, a fellow brother, a vagabond, such as I, or, honestly, any number of things. I ruled out the supernatural in this case just because I desired to return. I wouldn’t let abstract fear of the unknown drive me to staying in this frigid hell world.
I swam around the barge and came up the back. There was a ladder there that served all intents and purposes quite well, although it was quite antiquated and I doubted it’s usefulness if I were to attempt another dive and return expedition. The wind bit at my skin as I boarded my dead man’s boat, blood frozen beneath my skin as the frozen grass stalks of the tundras of Siberia. I had finally made it aboard my vessel of isolation and fear. Soaking wet, I removed my shoes and impaled my feet upon the dark oak of the deck.
All was the same upon the ghoulish barge. The moon still hung in the sky, the stars still suspended their ethereal glow, and the sound of the barge’s beast fiddling with my flask echoed from down below. Sighing, I walked towards the mast and sat down with my back pushed against it. Sitting upon my floating hell was better than swimming in the hellish waters of the Atlantic.
Ahead of me not some ten meters, stood the towering mast of this barge. It’s haunted brown contrasted the unforgiving darkness of the night sky. I walked towards it in search of a back rest. The night was going to be long.
“O romeo, romeo, wherefore art thou?” I said jokingly searching the night for my potential usurper.
It was then that I heard the creek. The sound of a door on its hinges being opened and closed, flayed in the wind. I looked to my right and noticed it… the door to the hull was wide open. A wave of intense dread filled my chest and sent my heart plummeting. Never had I felt so utterly alone in the company of someone else.
The deck of the ship became the ever-large mouth of a feeding whale, and, I, but a small krill trapped between its baleen. Sooner or later the mouth that feeds will take me to ensured death in the pit of its stomach: the unforgiving hull, the birthplace of my beast, the place which holds the answer to possibly my last question.
From the top of the steps I called down into the pit of my despair, “show yourself! be damned if I have to drag you out.” But this voice of mine was barely a voice. It was a whisper I’ve had in dreams of times before. Dreams where I’ve been calling out into the unknown, but could barely make a sound. “show yourself!” The wind whipped around the barge and flung the door closed before I had time to brace before the door swung shut and threw me into the barge’s hull. The whale had finally swallowed.