BLACK SOUL

The sea was wet.

The sea was silent.

The sea was as flat as a plate of piss and almost as yellow from the scorching sun staring down at the tiny dinghy I was lying in, dying in, thirsting for a glass of water. The only time any movement occurred on the sea was when I changed positions. As the dinghy rocked, the hungry waves' watery lips slurped, sucked and licked their way along the keel as if awaiting a feast and I was the main course. Salt water sloshed, slid and slithered inside the bottom of the boat like a slinking snake caught in the open with no where to hide. My eyes burned, my skin burned, and my mind burned.

The name of my sloop, Slippery Slope had surfed its last wave and was lying at the bottom of the placid sea. I don’t know what went right or what went wrong, only know that one moment, I was standing at the helm holding on for dear life in a raging sea, when a shaft of jagged lightning hit the mast, and the next moment, I was flat on my back in the dinghy that the little sloop had been towing behind it. Why the boat hadn’t been swamped, turned over or pitch-polled ass over teakettle in the gargantuan waves was beyond me; perhaps the last toast, a gram of grog to Poseidon while crossing the Equator had something to do with its survival or should I say, my survival.

How long since the sassy storm subsided, I did not have a clue, only knew, that when I awoke, I was as thirsty as a dying man crawling across a parched, dried up dusty desert towards an unreachable obscure, obstinate oasis. And why was I out there in the middle of the ocean on a single-masted sloop called the Slippery Slope; a solo sailor, alone on a vast sea of misery it turned out to be? I was like the cursed ancient mariner, “water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink”, except, I never slew an albatross. Some sail alone to break records or make a record to become a mariner extraordinaire but that was not my intent, when, without any hesitation, I slipped the mooring lines and sailed towards the indomitable sea and as it turned out, the sea of my destruction.

I was what one would call a novice sailor, hardly a wave or a nautical mile under my belt when I set sail, the port soon just a smudge in the wake of the Slippery Slope. Soon, porpoises or dolphins, I know not which, since I can’t tell them apart, became my mates as they dashed, darted and departed through the whitecaps, like wild white stallions vanishing into a white fog. To think the sea is naught but salty water can be an enormous mistake. To me, it was like a liquid giant that had no beginning and no end and while the weather was fair, I could feel it breathe as the wee sloop slid down one big roller and then up over another. But when awakened by an angry gale, it roared with madness and flinging frothy foam afar, was anything but friendly.

For days, the weather was fair, the sails were set, and the course was southwesterly and true. An island or land unseen must have been near because gulls were soaring high in the azure sky of tranquility on the starboard side as Slippery Slope cut through the waves as easily as a red-hot dagger through a hunk of lard. I dozed, I slept, I napped, why hell, I even sunbathed lying on the deck au naturel. Dreams as smooth as a lullaby infiltrated my thoughts as the music of the sea enveloped me; its notes of pure delight enrapturing my being. The romance of the sea, a hypocrisy as far as I’m concerned, since I spent many a day before attaining my sea legs, on my hands and knees puking yellow bile overboard.

In a world of only sea and sky, giant denizens of the deep exist and on more than one occasion, an enormous crusted whale would surface alongside, its huge eye eying me, before plunging back down into the dark depths below. On moonlit nights I could see their phosphorous trails as large as landing strips cutting across the bow, the countless stars, a sea of sparkling diamonds strewn across an indigo sky.

The weather had been so serene, as casual as can be, that I had forgotten how quickly it could change. As I lay back on the aft deck, my head propped up on a cushy bag filled with a spare sail and enjoying the white popcorn clouds overhead, I felt a gentle zephyr tugging at a lock of my hair that was lying across my brow. I was mesmerized, no, hypnotized, as if my body had been becalmed. And it wasn’t until I noticed the cat-paw ripples suddenly change into wavelets, an occasional whitecap breaking and heard a loud clap of thunder within the darkening clouds, did I begin to worry. A storm of significant magnitude was on my ass, just aft of the dinghy and gaining with every puff of wind. I battened down the hatches, dropped the main sails and once the storm sail was in place, tightened up its sheet. The north-easterly was blowing like stink as I tossed the sea anchor overboard and began pulling the dinghy closer by its painter to lash it on the port side of the scared-as-shit Slippery Slope.

I could see the monster wave behind the boat climbing higher and higher, when the lightning struck the mast and I guess that’s when all hell broke loose and I found myself drifting aimlessly in Slippery Slope’s tender, alone on a sleeping sea.

My mouth is as dry as an unwashed armpit and probably just as smelly as I drag myself up and slouch like a snail on the dinghy's center seat. The oars are gone and even if they weren’t what would be the point of rowing purposely on a sea filled with futility. Off in the distance far away where the sea meets the sky, if I’m not hallucinating or it’s not a mirage, I see the silhouette of a ship on the horizon at the edge of my consciousness. At this point, I can’t tell if it’s coming towards me, going away or just a figment of my imagination. And then, yes, it’s definitely turning, it’s heading in my direction.

At first, I’m joyful but then, as blurs become clarity and I see the black tattered sails flailing in the breeze, the skull and crossbones fluttering high above the main spar, the bowsprit sharp as a cutlass and a carved naked woman wrapped in a serpent with scorching red eyes clinging to the prow, I’m horrified. As it draws alongside, I see a big glass of water sitting on the gunnel near a rope ladder that is dangling down from the deck until it almost touches the water. There isn’t a captain wearing a black-patch covering his eye, a furrowed scar from cheek to chin nor any scurvy crew aboard and why would there be, because the ship’s bottomless hold is stowed with the dead and its name Black Soul, tells all.