Nautical Nightmares

Had a queer dream, just a moment ago. If my communication seems broken or foggy it’s because I’m fresh out of bed, and haven’t quite gotten all the post-sleep feeling back into my hands and mind. What a nightmare. I dreamt I woke up in some sort of….place, after drowning at sea. It was like an island; rocky, inhospitable…and the ocean beyond was as black as the sky. I couldn’t even distinguish any white caps or shimmering reflections anywhere on it’s surface. A woman was with me, and we were talking casually…there was no fear, or feeling of any kind, on this island beyond the barrier of death. I knew I had drowned at sea, but I couldn’t remember the experience…so I asked the woman, and that’s when things suddenly got terrifying.

She said she’d show me, and suddenly I found myself alive again, standing on the deck of a very large shipping freighter that was making it’s way across a body of water, towards a port that was just barely visible on the horizon. It was dusk, and the water was as gray as the overcast sky, but there was no wind or storm of any kind….only this terrible lingering knowledge that I was experiencing a flash-back sort of vision, that something horrible was about to happen and I was helpless to stop it. Despite the port growing nearer and nearer, with that small twinge of hope that comes with watching a tragic movie you’ve maybe seen dozens of times; that feeling that this time maybe it will be different. But no. Just as the harbor seems almost within striking distance the world vibrates, and the ripples on the sea expand and grow…enormous waves now rocking the ocean, and breaking against the side of gigantic boat I’m riding. I feel an intense nauseous sensation in my stomach as a large wave lifts the monstrous vessel high in the air, and drops it…rolling it on it’s side in a frothy mess of thundering water. I linger in the air for a moment, lighter than the boat crashing beneath me, feeling the cold metal railing slip sickly beneath my fingers…and then I too fall into the churning mess, and it’s all over.