Baked Scribe Flashback : Shipbound
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Louis dropped another log on to the fire and looked out over the raging surf of the ocean, for the return of the ship that thus far had only returned to him in his dreams. There was no reason for him to believe that if it would come, that he would see it but staying here and getting nothing was still preferable to leaving and wondering what could have happened.
She had been gone for two years now. Two years on this night, the accident had happened. He had been left behind to face the unspoken accusation in the eyes of her friends that he had been drinking. The reality was that she was the one who is drunk, otherwise she would’ve been driving.
Was he alive because she had been drunk? It made no difference now.
You need to move on, let go of her. It had been the advice everyone had given last year, when he came out to this place, to watch out past Nelson’s point to see if he could catch sight of the ship.
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“Slow down!”
He could barely understand what she was saying beyond hysterical giggling and shrieking. She wasn’t even looking at the road to know how fast they were driving. In fact, her eyes weren’t open at all.
Louis looked over at her as she swayed from side to side in her seat, her hand reaching down to fumble with the belt.
“Wait!” He said, reaching for her hand.
He trailed off at what he saw out on the water, rounding the corner from the adjacent bay and turning towards him.
It was a ship.
Sitting tall in the water, the vessel was making its way towards land. The color all around it saturated as if in a black-and-white photograph set into motion. It looked like one of the massive sailing vessels from ages long since extinct. There were no lights or people visible on the deck but it plowed through the waves as if controlled by some unseen force.
His moment of confusion was shattered by the air-horn of the truck. The last thing he saw was the headlights before the shattering of glass and then darkness.
As soon as he had woken in the hospital, he had known that she was dead. He had felt his newborn isolation in the world. She was gone and he had been left behind with no longer any idea what to do with himself.
But he did remember the ship. He remembered the sight of it as it’s massive girth gliding across the water, as if part of a dream. In the weeks following the accident, he tried talking to people about it but got pretty much the same response. He could see the disbelief in their eyes and realize down deep that he was only further contributing to the conclusion that he had been drinking.
He resigned himself to silent torture as the memory punished him more than any of them ever could have. He kept the secret to himself and told no one else about the ship. There would be an answer out there and he would find it, but in the meantime it was important to put on a front of composed sorrow and regret. The spiteful anger that drove him onward was what he kept to himself.
On the first anniversary, he sat there, up on the cliff, looking out over the water, half drunk and more than half contemplating jumping to a painless death blow. The ship never showed itself and he woke up in the morning with nothing but a sore back along with what was left of his resolve. He was still alone.
It was the absence of her that he felt more keenly than anything else. The feeling was like what he imagined it would be to wake up missing a limb. Like in Kafka, experiencing a moment of such sudden, trans-formative change that nothing would ever feel the same again.
He didn’t know if his problem could ever be fixed but, like someone who had been wronged, he sought recourse as the only salve left available to him. The ship was the key to everything, the core of all that had caused the bottom to drop out of his life.
The local history books at the library offered no clues or explanation of what the ship could be. He thought about questioning some of the locals or the fisherman, but he was already getting a reputation of being a bit of a nut.
All he could do was wait.
He had no reason to think that the ship would ever appear again or that it only showed itself on that date, but something told him that it made sense. A tiny voice in the back of his head seemed to both encourage him while at the same time warning him off.
Month ago, he had been let go from his job. The manager had given him as many chances as he could to fix the problem, but in the end he was just too preoccupied to focus on his day-to-day responsibilities. He even caught himself handing in paperwork with little sketches of ships in the margins.
The second anniversary came along like Christmas morning. He set up his shrine at the cliff-top, eagerly waiting the possibilities of what could be. His night had started with such hope and optimism and now at this late hour, it seemed on the brink of bitter disappointment.
As his head began to dip and drift off toward sleep, he began to hear the vague sound of bells. His head snapped up now, fully awake.
The ship was gliding in from the distant horizon.
Even with two years between, he still recognized it as if he had been carrying a photograph with him. It cut through the water with the sails dancing crazily about, even though there was little wind that night. All the detail seemed exactly the same. All save for one.
There was now a lone figure standing atop the deck.
He was too far away to make out many details, but it was clearly a woman, the simple white dress fluttering all around her. He can also tell that she was barefoot, his eyes tracing back up over the somehow familiar body, to the shoulder length hair.
It was her.
He couldn’t explain how he knew that, but it was the undeniable truth whispered to him in his head with the voice he heard for the first time in two years. She had been waiting.
A sudden pain intruded into his head and he had just a moment to reach up for his forehead. Everything went dark and he felt himself lolling forward, weightlessness overcoming him as the sea grew louder. The last thing he saw before darkness was rocks and water rushing up at him.
He was standing on the deck of the ship. She no longer stood there but he still sensed her presence as the boat drifted through darkness. All he could see on all sides was water, roiling away into every horizon, and from all around, he could hear the murmurs of the dead.
Louis turned his back on the world, pulled his coat tighter around himself and headed below deck to join the rest of the crew.
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