The End of Everything

The end of everything The master of the old tank ship that resembled a schooner sat fretting in his cabin; for twenty years he had been the master of the ship, a friendship between the animate and the inanimate had developed. During the war years, the ship delivered high-octane plane fuel from the USA to Britain, with him on the bridge in storms and calm; they had seen ships blown up by torpedoes both on the starboard side and the portside, it was as the ship and he breathed in unison. For five years, they had traversed across the Atlantic except for a few times when she was in dry dock for maintenance and when everyone had gone ashore, he stayed onboard, keeping her company. So many faces, too many to remember, had crossed her decks no one stayed long, she had no comfort to offer, narrow cabins the shower units were connected to the cold sea; didn’t they see she had kept them alive? It was over now she had been sold as scrap, he, homeless. Once the king had given him medals, he and the ship had been extolled in the papers that said she was a lucky ship and him they called a great seaman. Soon enough, he would go to the mystic island were sailors and Nirvana’s Ocean cleanses the memories of the departed.