Originally published via Substack:
A short story:
Billy had inherited a boat by fortune, which came with a life preserver and an SOS flare — a handheld, comforting SOS gun to call for help with. If things went wrong, at least he had that.
Alone at sea, Billy had spent a considerable amount of time contemplating his gun. After the shoreline had disappeared, and Billy was left with the endless green-blue expanse and his mind and nothing else, the SOS gun seemed to be his last connection to the world.
If all else fails, Billy thought, I’ve still got the flare gun. I can shoot that flare into the sky, someone will see it, and I’ll be saved.
None of Billy’s mentors had ever expounded on the limitations imposed by such a device. All he had ever heard about was what it could be used for — saving crews from drowning at sea etc. All the common, decent things people think about with an SOS gun.
As Billy sat alone in his boat sailing to the edge of the world and beyond that, out of three dimensions if it were possible, he knew already he had no need for a compass. That much was obvious.
Leaving civilization behind, why then, he wondered, do I cling to this flare gun?
Billy imagined some terrible fate he had steered himself into, even on purpose, of an entangled mess of rocks and calamity and whore mermaids singing siren songs of death, and then that, poof, all would be made anew and set aright with a shot from his SOS gun.
The device mocked his resolve. Each time he looked at it, and considered what it meant, the unspoken fear that represented he faltered. What had he come all the way to the End of the Earth for, if only to reach back when it all gets too hard?
If I do it right, then no one is ever going to see that flare anyway, Billy concluded.
He threw it overboard and set sail, in the warm embrace of fate.
Ben Bartee is a Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via his blog, Armageddon Prose, Substack, or Patreon.
