Blue Rage

It was the storm of the century. The waves rocked the old boat back and forth, up and down. The sky could not clearly be distinguished from the sea. It all looked like a chaotic swirl of black ink. Down below it was peaceful. 

Lightning streaked the sky. Wind howled all ways. The tiny boat looked like a mote of dust as it made it's way across the grey enormity. The small boat belonged to a small fisherman. He heaved his body across the soaked planks and terror marked his face. He was 5'3". His rubber boots squeaked. All his surroundings fell to total darkness. He could not even see his hand any distance from his face. He thought he had gone blind. The wind kept howling. And howling. The ocean growled. The fisherman held tight to his boat. He felt his stomach drop, meaning that an enormous wave had caught his boat and was lifting it higher and higher and the wind bellowed and cracked angrily, with the anger of Greek mythology and being surrounded by darkness he felt disembodied, he was having an out of body experience and he yelled and yelled. The sky finally broke and revealed a grey hole. The black was accentuated. The black clouds spun in demonic halos. He could feel the angry finger of death grazing him and grazing him and desperately dying to touch him and grab him and sweep him into the beyond, or perhaps swallow him. He felt a piece of his boat break off and jab him in the torso. He was knocked down and slid across the deck. His foot wrapped around a rope entangled around his boat. He shouts obscenities at the abyss. 

Scraps began to rip from his boat. Slowly it shattered and splintered and was disintegrating in the throng. Slowly and slowly. He could hear his boat straining and about to split into two pieces. He tensed and waited to drown in the darkness. He opened his eyes and decided against death. He got to the steering wheel and maneuvered around the waves according to no particular observation or logic or reason, the will to live cast his soul upon the boat. He fought back. His small hands grew unimaginable vitality as he pushed and heaved against the strength of the ocean and it's depths and it's ruthlessness. 

And suddenly he was bathed in light as the torrential showers subsided into trickles and then mist and there was a rainbow and he smiled. And the wind hummed. And the wind that just a moment ago wanted the small fisherman dead in the water now entrenched him in lovely cool rhapsody. And his boat swayed from side to side. It squeaked and puttered forth dumbly. The ocean was flat. The distance gleamed with a gold ring. The fisherman was cold to the bone. The fisherman reached into a waterproof sack he had and pulled out some tobacco and paper and rolled a cigarette. He smoked it and the smoke seeped through his yellow teeth. He smoked it then rolled another. Then he smoked that one and rolled yet another cigarette and smoked it. He sees an island. 

The boat is petering towards it. The engine is shot, perhaps two pistons are working as they ought to, and perhaps a hose had snapped and he'd burn out his engine before arriving. Yet after such a precarious victory he was not perturbed. However, despite his glow, the boat is moving by inches and it might be a full day before he would be close to the shore and he feared, deeply and hiddenly, that he would never reach it. Optimism, however, runs deep in his DNA. It trumps almost everything else. Reason and logic and thoughts fell victim to his strain of optimism. 

The ship bobbed and made little and uneven waves. He coughed because he smoked too many cigarettes. He spat. It flew into the ocean. He removed his shoes and socks. He began pacing. His toes felt strange against the cold and wet wood. The water ran between them and made him uncomfortable. The night began to fall on the ominous scene. The island is still but a blurry splotch beyond the porcelain flat waters. 

He sits on a bench that was nailed down and closes his eyes and sleeps. As he slept he dreamed of hamburgers. He ate about twenty hamburgers. When he woke his boat was washed up on the shore and he jumped off of it and fell into the sand and ran away from it and towards a trail he could see that ran through the dark, tall, dense trees and he ran and didn't put on shoes. He walked through the winding forest trail. His feet made deep impressions in the mud. The trail went deeper and deeper into the island. 

Finally he came out, in front of a strip mall. He walked down the promenade, many stores lined it's street. He wanted to go in, but his feet were muddy. He cleaned them in a fountain as people stared in disdain and disgust. He stared back at them. 

Finally he found an outdoor bar. A pretty, young brunette with shoulder length hair tended it. He walked up and sat on a stool next to a 300 hundred pound frightening man in a silk button up shirt. He sat down and ordered a beer, she poured the beer into a glass and slid it to him. He drank it. He mused of his love of beer, and regretted leaving his tobacco at the shipwreck.