(Why are you so quick to ask the impossible question of the self? What about you is so interesting?)
As the Captain keeps describing ways he’ll kill you, you only half-listen:
a memory emerges: you were on a beach, a sort of family vacation.
A drive to a coast, you dangling your face out a car window, the wash of cool sea air upon your closed eyelids, the flickering shadows of gnarled cyprus trees as the car wound between sand dunes. Music played, your father drove, singing along, happily off-key. (Neil Young, maybe.)
Your father. Can you remember him? His face? His touch? His smell? Not really, no.What remains is smudged outline.
And your mother. There, in the front passenger seat; you can’t see her face, either. Just the warm reassuringness of her voice, like a gathered quilt when going to bed. Good night, sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite, my angels.
Angels. Plural.
There were two of you.
This is the meaning of the memory, the reason it has risen now from the depths of your murky past: there was another one there in the backseat of the car, pinching your arm, your leg. In the bedroom, too, how you’d awaken at night to that face peering down at you. Or daytime, on the beach. The other who when no one else was watching would gather you into his arms and press you down beneath the waves. Until the color of your mind went away, until your lungs would burst with tears, and pain, and anger.
A transitional wave crashes, the ship shifts, candles flicker, & the postered madman yet leers at his reflection.
“—you are telling the truth,” the Captain continues, “we would be helpless to resist. No one can stop the Company.” He presses out the cigarette. “We sail for Antibes. We must offload our cargo—it’s not safe for the crew. We’re two days out. You have the upper-hand here. I am tired,” he admits. “Death comes as it will, when it will. It doesn’t need my assistance. But I must ask: does it need yours?”
When you remain silent, he nods. “Two days,” he repeats. “Then we unload that terrible burden no man should ever reckon with. I’m sure you know that once we’ll have delivered it, certain structures in the world will change. We are the first domino. The match to light the powder keg. You don’t have to fight me. Maybe you don’t want to. Listen: if you want to share in this, I actually have a mission for you.”
Getting a little bored with this guy?
Rather if you’re on-board with the Captain because you care deeply about things like socioeconomic equity and equal rights and universal basic income, well here you go!
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