I had been walking around the back of the ship when I learned I was soon to be
terminated.
I hadn’t found any sort of documentation. I had seen it for others, but not myself. I’d just gotten lucky by overhearing it, which made me feel even worse. They didn't know I was working late; I just got lucky. I hadn’t even been just walking around, really—I was working overtime like usual to clean the mess Jim had made. I was doing a favor. Otherwise, I would have been in my bunk and wouldn’t’ve heard them talk about it.
After that, I wasn’t sure what to do. I felt really bad. Not so much anxious about when it
would happen, but anxious that they must’ve not liked me all along. That night, after finally
returning to my bunk, I thought long and hard about what I could have done to trigger this. I
looked hard and long at the ceiling, the lines in the wood. In each of them, there must have been
a reason. I stared very hard. If I squinted enough, I could see those reasons: I was boring, I had a dull personality, I couldn’t add any fun to the ship, and I was agreeable but maybe to a fault.
What would I really do when we reached our Destination?
I thought about it often. I guess it was only natural that others would think that, too. Nestled in the wood, it was all there—but was it true?
No, it wasn’t. Not when I was Something Other Than Myself. More often than not, lately,
due to certain stresses, I had to become SOTM. This state was very easy to accomplish when at
sea–the rock of the ship, the images in the mist, the loneliness and vastness of it all easily
conjured forth states of being which couldn’t be replicated on land. During these times when I
wasn’t myself, I was interesting and I was interested. Jovial. I cared. I recognized that we all had a shared mission and purpose together. I didn’t think of myself so much. I thought they all liked
me better this way. I liked myself better this way. Although I felt physically worse, I liked myself
better. It was the liking that mattered more.
When I saw I was to be terminated from the ship, it felt that everything was for naught. Whether myself, or something other than it, I could not succeed.

The next night, as we ate dinner together, I drank more than anyone else. I became
SOTM and we all had a big laugh about it. They laughed and laughed. I was laughing too, but I
had a very dark feeling. I could not interpret their laughter, but I assumed the worst. I felt even
more hurt.

Then, much later, I pulled myself onto the raft. My clothing, saturated with
water, added a tremendous weight, but I wasn’t too heavy; the water around me may
well have been nothing at all. In the darkness it seemed an unfamiliar substance, and I myself, my real, lucid self, seemed unfamiliar. I could not see my own hand stretched in front of me.
I took the oar and cut the water. I felt cold. I felt tired. And above all, I felt rejected. I couldn’t see the ship I’d just left. I realized that I had always known it would never reach its Destination and if it did, that I wouldn’t be there to see it. Perhaps I wasn’t meant to reach anything ever. I thought about it again and realized I felt very tired. Was I anything at all, though: could I be human?—there was no way to truly know, as I couldn’t even see my own hands. I felt, without knowing where to row to, that I had miles and miles to go. There was no destination to reach. The distance did not matter.
Somehow I slept.

When the sadness of separation waned, something very wonderful was revealed to me—a state very similar to that of when I am SOTM. The thought came: it was a possibility that my true self was always close to this state, naturally; it was just obscured by the anxiety which comes from the eyes of others. The meekness—that is what shadowed this truth. As the sadness of separation weakened, a mild joy came. Maybe if I had stayed and let myself be terminated, that could have been a joy, too; I would’ve come into a new state that I couldn’t’ve even imagined.
The true separation was between my heart and soul, their tie severed by those
around me. I hated them for it. I hated that I had ever even cared about working hard, about
being liked by those who had, frankly, been destroying me! It was all so easy to realize, now. So
easy that it was almost silly, that this, getting away for a little bit was all it took for the wool to
be removed from my eyes!

Yes, I’d brought some water and food with me. I didn’t really want to be dead, just
somewhere far away.
The sun wasn’t very bright when I woke up, and the water still looked unfamiliar to me. The oar lay beside me. The thrill of last night’s realization wasn’t so strong anymore, but there was certainly an afterglow.
How awful it had been to be on that ship. How soul crushing. There was always someone
else’s work to be done, and no matter how hard one worked it was always wrong in some way. I
could never cook or clean anything right enough for anyone—there always had to be a comment, and for what? I’d never even met the Captain. None of the people I worked with were my friends. How could I possibly share something as deep and touching as a purpose with any of them? How could I ever be fun in a place like that? How could I be likable in a place where people fundamentally disliked everything I did, no matter what it was? They must’ve all wanted me to feel that way. Little did they know, I was capable of doing something like this—of floating all by my lonesome, hating every single one of them!

When I eventually found something I could stand on, it was not land, per se. Into my
vision came a cavern of stone resting upon the water, a creation of volcanic rock that rose just
high enough to keep itself dry. Until meeting this rock, until standing upon it, it was impossible to tell the depth of the grotto; once a closer inspection was possible, the chasm seemed deep, but not as infinite as it had before. There was no telling what might have resided in its recesses, but that was of no import to me. I’d stay near the mouth—just deep enough to have shade.

I dragged the wooden raft onto the stone and into the cave, placing the oar beside it. There
was no plan towards survival, but I was so happy that I could have died right then, anyways. How proud I was! I had gone off on my own, somewhere far and unknown from all those who I’d hated so much. This was a respectable thing to do and as such I could finally look upon myself with true pride. I had the feeling that everything would work out for me, that this would all be a wonderful adventure.
I had the foresight to bring a good deal of freshwater with me, several liters worth
within a heavy canteen. Yet inside the cave there were small pools of freshwater I couldn’t
explain the existence of. I’d found these puddles by the light of my fire: after a great deal of
effort due to the wetness of everything, I’d started one with a flint I’d brought from the ship and
pieces of wood from the raft.
With the fire, the freshwater, and the rations of food, I felt very comfortable for the time
being. Of course, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life there, and burning a small part of my
raft would make exiting more difficult. The important thing, though, was that I’d
done this all on my own; I had made a choice for myself independent from the thoughts and
comments of others; I was living for myself now, answering only to myself and my needs.

Yet as the tar blackness of night came, too soon after I’d arrived in the grotto,
another joined me. When I woke up to its sounds, I was terrified.
“Go away!” I’d called.
A figure continued to splash and slosh forth.
“Go away!” I called again. Yet it did not go away, and forward it came, mumbling. My fire had gone out several hours ago, with no embers remaining to provide any light. The moon didn’t shine bright enough to identify the creature, either; it was eventually the voice which led me to recognize what it was, as it mumbled and wailed and gasped over and over…
“Jim? That’s you, isn’t it?!”
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness and the figure moved closer, I saw that I was correct. There Jim was, sopping wet. There we both were, still wearing our ship uniforms as it was our only clothes we owned in the world.
“What are you doing here?!”
He continued to gasp and sputter. I couldn’t understand how he’d arrived here; I couldn’t see a raft or an oar or anything besides his silhouette, the vague outline of his face.
“They—threw me—over. Thought—I killed—you” came the guttural, watery reply.
“What? Why! Why would they care about me?!”
Jim, close to me in the cave, lowered himself to the ground to lay. His breath slowed and
deepened. He swallowed air more intentionally. I watched him for an answer.

“They terminated me and they knew that I knew it. Thought I got rid of you so they’d have to keep me,” he eventually answered.
“That’s not true at all. Who terminated you? Who threw you over?”
As I waited for an answer, I began to feel awfully vindicated—they had liked me all along! No! No, it didn’t matter—it couldn’t matter anymore.
“The Captain,” Jim said.

The Captain! The Captain had known about me?

“How did you get here?” I asked.
“Boat.”
“Why do you sound like you were drowning?”
“Wine in the boat. It’s there.”
“Why do you have a boat if they threw you over?”
Jim did not answer. I raised myself from my little raft and walked down the stone, closer
to the water to see Jim’s boat. It was a modest one I recognized as being one of the lifeboats that
lined the perimeter of our ship. Jim had pulled it out of the water and onto the stone table once he
arrived, which must have taken a considerable amount of exertion.
“They let you take a lifeboat? And wine?” I asked.
No answer from Jim. My arms fished in the boat, feeling for its contents. He’d
been truthful, as I found several larger bottles of wine—one empty. I took one and opened it by using a rock to hack off its neck. I poured it over my lips, careful not to slice them on the broken glass. It was difficult to drink, and I eventually cut my lips and chin some, but how wonderful the wine was!
As Jim slept, I downed it. Of course, once more, I became SOTM. I spoke and sang to
myself. I was once again jovial. As it went down and I felt the blood form on my bottom lip, my
joyous spirit soon soured. It’d been Jim all along who was to be terminated, not me. I didn’t need
to leave the ship. They didn’t hate me, they hated him, and yet they’d been so kind as to let him
leave on a boat, all while I left clinging to a dinghy raft! I was the one who’d done his work for
so long, trying in the spirit of camaraderie to keep him a part of the team and see that all
necessary duties on the ship were completed. Here he was now, in my cave, taking advantage of
my hospitality. He may as well have killed me. I had been a part of something, and he tore me
away from it.
The rage blurred, and, as soon as the bottle was empty, into his neck it went. I repeated
the action over and over, going in, in, in. All this time I’d felt so ostracized in the ship, when all
along I had been wanted. Jim obscured this, ruined everything for me. I’d never be able
to meet the Destination with all the others.

In the early morning, before I awoke, the ship came by, close to the grotto as planned.
The Captain and chief mate looked ahead at the mess of wine and blood.
“I knew I was right to terminate him. What a shame that he got to Jim in that way,
though. I didn’t think he had it in him,” the chief mate said.
The Captain sighed and shrugged. “I had a feeling that he might. Oh well. He was tested and failed. Poor Jim. At least we didn’t lose any good men. Look at it this way—we’ve likely saved a few. Look at the mess down there.”
The ship forged on, sans two men, but without any losses. The Captain and chief mate
separated and began their respective work for the day as the rest of the shipmates rose, all
knowing, as they did each and every day, that their eventual Destination would be different than
they all could ever imagine—and better.

The End of It

by Kay Baus