Through the Fog

I should have never gone out on the boat with Ron. 

I laid in the lower deck of his small sailboat listening to him laughing on the phone with his jackass friends about the latest Joe Rogan podcast. My face was smushed against a plastic life preserver as I tried to focus on the hollow sound of waves lapping against the hull. It smelled like chum and varnish.

I was sick. Really sick. I should have known better. Every fishing trip I had taken with my father as a kid inevitably ended in me blowing chunks of tuna fish back into the ocean where it belonged.

Dad would always give me a cup of my favorite rose petal tea, pat my back and say, “It’s okay, honey. Maybe next time.”

And, for some reason, there was always a next time. Dad never pressured me, but I think I wanted to prove myself to him. Eventually, I learned that, when I was feeling sick, I should pick a spot on the coast line and focus on it. After a few moments, the nausea passed.

My life has taken a considerable downwards turn since his death. It started with a little shoplifting and sneaking liquor from the various bottles laying around the house, but it soon progressed to much worse things.

Mom hoped that college would put a little order in my life. Instead I discovered cocaine and proceeded to bounce from one toxic relationship to the next. That’s how I landed with Ron. Fuckin’ Ron. I knew it was a stupid idea to go out on the goddamn boat with him.

“Hey, June! June! Come up here! You gotta see this!”

Ron stuck his freckled face through the companionway.

“I’m sick.”

“Stop being a brat. Come. Now.”

I shakily rose and followed him up the stairs. Surrounding the boat was the thickest fog I had ever seen. I couldn’t see the shore and was hit with a wave of nausea that caused me to vomit off the side of the boat. Ron snickered.

Then we heard him.

Faintly, a man’s voice seeped through the fog. It grew louder and louder, but I couldn’t make out the words. It was like a tape being played in reverse.

The fog thickened and Ron disappeared. I could barely see the hand in front of my face. I tried to go back downstairs but tripped. A hand emerged from the fog and I grasped it.

“I want to go home,” I pleaded.

A chill shot down my spine when I heard Ron respond from underneath the deck. I looked down at the hand in my palm. It withered before my eyes until it was nothing but bone. Their skeleton hand slowly overturned mine and placed a handful of rose petals in my palm. Before I could scream, I heard Ron’s footsteps behind me and felt a violent whack to my skull. 

Everything went dark.

I awoke to the sound of seagulls crying overhead. A baseball bat lay on the ground next to me which explained the knot on my head. I searched for Ron, but couldn’t find him. 

I opened his trunk to find an assortment of hidden knives, duct tape and polaroids of dead, naked women on the floor of the boat. I was shocked but not surprised. Fuckin’ Ron. I took a knife and continued to search the boat thoroughly, but he had vanished.

I returned to the top deck as the fog was clearing. Beams of sunlight broke through the gray veil and shone down on the rose petals. I could see the shoreline off in the distance and my nausea passed. I pulled the anchor and started to make my way back to dry land. I’m lucky my father taught me how to drive a boat.