The Voyage Out | farsight
it bores into you with a single murky eye. But you do not see.
You cast your rod into pooled sunlight, peer over the waves and imagine that the ocean swells up to greet you. Her gentle apathy. The rise and fall of currents clashing against the creaking hull — you breathe and take in the brine. Your lungs expand against your ribcage, and you imagine her eyes darting like shoals of incandescent albacore beneath the glimmering white sheets. Tumbling. Heaving like lovers. Restless and warm blooded. Muscling against the submarine headwinds, they move in a choreographed harmony. Dashing flecks of light. Bodies dissolved into water and lapping over scales and scales innumerable, they melt into the face of the sea. Like a single gigantic organ. A single strand of muscle twitching on the face of the sea. Her eye closes. The shaol returns to the depths. But you brace on starboard side. The bobber dips and a jolt flies down the base of your neck. The reel screams. The skin of the water erupts to birth something writhing. A single albacore lands on the stained wooden deck. Ripped from the shallows, it thrashes. Chromatic skin bruising away against wood to reveal a deep and pulsing red beneath. Muscles convulse and shudder. Mouth agape, gulping in the cold. And now it is still. In peace, it bores into you with a single murky eye. But you do not see.
The sea changes. The clouds obscure. Your headlights scour the dark but there is no distinguishment. You are an island of light. Tossing against the whispering tides. There are no crests. There is no horizon. The obsidian expanse is impenetrable. The skiff creaks and keels, the slush of water drowns your foghorns. You collapse in the cabin. The planks resonate as something dashes against the starboard. But there are no stars in this sky. All along, your ears are sounding with the lambent wail of the alarm-bells and the ringing ocean depths. You clutch the lantern and watch as it dies in your arms. Now your heart clamours in the cage of your chest. The waves have claimed your headlights. Where is the light? And you imagine their myriad eyes, just beyond sight, blinking across the waves and behind your back. You claw with your hands, creeping along the damp and briny planks. All is gone. All is gone. You touch something deathly cold and muscoid. You try to breathe but the putrid stench of flesh chokes you. Brushing aside the rotting albacore, your hands feel the smooth glass of the porthole and you push you face against it. There is a deathly calmness in this blackened chasm. This is the void below the vessel, but it might as well be the void above. A blackened chasm formless and featureless. A new sky cradled beneath sloshing waves. You are an island of reason. Your breath fogs the glass, but you do not resist the impulse to peer closer. The moon rises in the dark sky. It parts away from the shadow. This moonlight unravels the darkness. You lean in, mesmerised by that soft glow. You watch as your moon blinks.
