An Hour

The ship in the distance attempted to navigate the treacherous rocks of the cape. I rested my sword down onto the short grass and pulled up some of the short growth. Keeping my focus shifted toward the struggling vessel, I let the loose blades slip through my fingers and matched their path on the wind with the ship behind them.

They wouldn’t be making it through. I sat down and watched as over the next five minutes they listed into the rocks, another five minutes breaking up some of the lower portions of the ship.

It had taken it about an hour to sink nearly completely. An hour of deckhands abandoning ship for the shore, taking their chances against the surf that would no doubt dash them against the rocks mercilessly. An hour of crew members trapped in the hold as the water engulfed them, the layout below deck that they knew so well suddenly becoming a maze to them in watery panic.

An hour of the crew dying while I pondered what went on in their minds. An hour of me watching while they frenzied to and fro in an hour that stretched out into an infinitude of fear and panic. I’m sure those who still retained their sense still lost perception of how long it took for it all to play out.

For an hour nothing existed for them but their dilemma, there was nothing else to the world but the waves and rocks that pulled them to their doom. For an hour all that comprised of humanity was them and those they soon realized they would never see again. For an hour their imagined importance in this world vanished and any material wealth they may have possessed was suddenly worthless.

That hour removed even the importance of their hunger, their sleep, any sicknesses. If there had been heartbreaks, they were rendered trivial. Dreams had become the nightmare, and any other nightmares were drowned under this single one.

For an hour death claimed them and for an hour I watched.