Overboard

Once, before their friendship had spawned the trust that had led to the love, which eventually gave way to the betrayal, and before their betrayal had broken hopes, broken skin and broken hearts…

Before all of this, there were two friends, a little boy and a little girl. One day, they decided to leave the island that they had spent most of their lives on, and travel out into the vast ocean on a boat. In this world, almost the entire planet was ocean, and it wasn’t like most oceans, this was one giant sea that was always stormy and always choppy. It was plagued by horrible storms and rarely was there ever a day when the ocean wasn’t churning or welling up violently. Even on days when the water looked still and the skies were silent, unsuspecting people would always be swept away by its fierce undercurrents. Knowing all this, it seems foolish that anyone would venture off his or her island, but there always were foolhardy adventurers ready to risk their lives traveling the ocean. No one knows why, but there has always been some mysterious force that tugs at the emotions of the islanders, making them run off from their safe shores to die in the violent ocean.
Some say that these two children were a bit different, and that their adventures across this ocean would always be safe and rewarding. But the only way to know for sure was to set off sailing, which they did one cold December night. Then, the ocean had quieted down some, and the currents were favorable, blowing them for a long time away from the shallow dangers that plagued most travelers. For months, they sailed on along the ocean, as happy as they had ever been in their entire lives. They would spend days together on the deck of the ship, laying in the sun or watching the water flowing around their craft. At night, they would lay in a warm bed that had been placed on the deck of the ship. Like most ships on this ocean, they could not get inside the cabin of their ship, and they had no idea what was hidden inside. The door leading into the cabin from the deck was locked, and the cabin had tiny windows that had been covered from the inside. This made life difficult, because whenever the seas became too rough or rain began to pour from the sky, they had nowhere to hide. On some of the sunny days, they would sit by the door and inspect in, trying to figure out what kind of a key opened its lock. Some days they’d make progress, and they’d get the door open a little, but never enough to see what was inside. Other days, the door was stuck so tightly, that they feared that they would never know what was inside.
After months of enjoying the favorable weather and calm seas, they entered a realm of the ocean known for it’s frequent travelers and rough waters. Now more than ever, they wished that they had the key to open the door to the warm, sheltering cabin. They knew that the secret key that opened the door was hidden somewhere on their ship, but they had yet to find it. After a few months of this stormy weather, they began to encounter more ocean travelers, some of them on ships and others brave enough to navigate the waters alone. Eventually, the boy had the idea to invite others onto his ship so that he would have someone else to help him open the door. This was something that most people did not tolerate in this time and his lover would have nothing of it. She became furious with him and refused to help him open the door. Confused, he decided instead to have some of his new friends open the door with him, since his lover had deiced not to help. But his new friends never stayed for very long and he never made any progress opening the door. This issue was becoming more and more pressing recently, because the weather had been getting much worse and sometimes the skies would darken, and the rain would pour down in buckets. He wished so badly he could get the cabin opened. At the same time, he was having more and more trouble getting along with the girl. She was still furious after watching him talk to other travelers, and they would fight frequently and spent many of the cold, stormy nights alone, on opposite sides of their ship.
During one particular cold night alone, he decided that it was time to give up on his attempts to get the door open with the help of others. He was determined to open the cabin with only the help of his lover. He was very lucky, the next morning he found that the key to the cabin door had been hidden in his pants pocket. He had been in possession of the key all along, and for some reason may have been hiding it from himself. He was so embarrassed and excited that he couldn’t even tell his companion about the key that day. He decided to wait a little while instead, and maybe figure out the best way to tell her. For now, he made her the promise that someday soon, they would have the door to the cabin opened, and they would be safe inside for as long as they wanted to travel the ocean.
Then something horrible happened. Late one night, they had a fight so bitter and confused that the girl decided to take her lover to the aft of the ship and throw him overboard. It was raining very hard that night, and the violent seas were made even more dangerous by the pitch-blackness. He struggled with the ocean for a few days, refusing to accept the fact that he had just been cast into the sea, and telling himself that maybe he was better here, but there was no denying the truth: he was overboard in a dangerous ocean and sorely wished that he could get back onto his ship with his lover. That day he began to swim after the boat. He made great progress and caught up with the boat in a day’s time, but when he tried to call out to his mate, she hardly acknowledged him and refused to listen to his cries for help. He tried to tell her that he had found the key to the door, but it was too late for that as well, because she had lost interest in the cabin now. She decided to sleep then, and ignore the boy swimming beside the ship, despite his desperate struggling.
The next day, she noticed that the boy had fallen behind the ship a ways, but was trying very hard to keep up. Again, she ignored him and continued sailing the ship away from him. Later she happened upon another traveler, whom she immediately invited onto her ship. He seemed very happy to be there, and she was glad to have him there; they almost immediately began working on opening the cabin door so they could get off of the deck, the clouds looked as though they would start pouring any minute now. When the boy in the ocean eventually caught up with the ship, he was furious to see that his lover had taken someone else onboard. He screamed and cried and trashed around violently in the ocean for a long time, making himself so tired that he almost gave up on staying afloat, nearly drowning in the cold, stormy ocean.
For two weeks, the boy swam behind the ship, begging and pleading to his lover to take him back onboard, but she refused and told him that she had someone new to help her get the door open. Other times she told him that she would take him back, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she had a new companion. And, later she told him that she didn’t want to throw her new friend overboard, because he was dry and the boy was already wet. To her, there was no point in making anyone else wet, when she had already gotten him soaked. Eventually, she told the boy to stop chasing the boat. Miserable and dejected, the boy stupidly refused to stop chasing the boat and swam after it for days, calling to his lover whenever she wasn’t totally occupied with her new friend. The chasing frustrated her, and she eventually gave in to his pleas and forced her new friend overboard. Both boys now sat in the ocean, neither one refusing to give up on the boat. With people on both sides of the boat calling to her, and the rain coming down, all she wanted to do was hide in the cabin and she tried as hard as she could to ignore both people calling to her.
One evening, after a terrible rain she went to the side of the boat where her old lover was swimming along side the boat. He was suffering so much. He wasn’t used to the cold water and was getting tired after chasing this boat for nearly a month. They talked a little, and she told him that she wanted to help him back onto the boat. Overjoyed, the boy swam for the ship and tried to scamper up the side. But it was no use, he couldn’t climb back into the boat, and even if he could have, it seemed to upset her that he was trying to come back onboard from over one side. She told him to stop, but he refused. The only thing he was thinking of was getting back onto the ship. But it would never work this way, and eventually the boy gave up. For a minute, he let go of all his strength and decided that if she wouldn’t let him get back onboard now there was no use in trying at all. He let himself slowly sink into the waters to drown. After he had gotten far enough away from the ship, the girl decided to throw him a life buoy attached to a rope. At first, the boy did not know what to make of the device, but once he learned to trust it, he latched onto it desperately. Soon however, he began to realize that the girl was not reeling in the buoy and rope, but just letting him sit there. He tired pulling and climbing along the rope, but whenever he tried to get closer, he just made the rope longer, and drifted further away from the boat. He decided to give up on getting closer to the boat. She called out to him and told him not to worry, because she was soon going to help him onto the boat. He told her that he didn’t want to find out that she was helping her other friend, who often would swim close to the boat and talk to her. She said that she would do her best to get rid of him.
Now, the boy has been dragging behind the boat for nearly a week. The cold ocean water has been throwing him around for nearly a month now and it has recently begun to rain and blow more violently than ever before. He called out to the girl on the boat as often as he could, and sometimes she would call back and talk to him for a bit. She would even pull in a little of the rope, but never enough to really make much difference. Sometimes, too, she would call out to her other friend whom had once been onboard with her, and talk to him for a while. This made the boy very angry, because she had told him that she would try and get rid of the other friend, but she wasn’t. He wanted to yell at her and fight, but in doing so, he may lose his grip on the buoy or she might cut the rope that was keeping him with the boat. So there he stayed, and in the horrible damp cold, he floated limply behind the boat. After it had been raining for a long time, the girl called out to her lover grasping the rope and told him the following. She said that she really wanted to pull him in so he could get back onto the boat, but she was safe now under a tarp she was wrapped in and she didn’t want to go out into the rain to pull in the boy. Maybe, she said, if the rain stopped coming down, or if the ocean wasn’t so rough she would save the boy, but it was too much trouble and far too dangerous to try right now. The boy listened, but said nothing. He remembered that he had kept the key to the cabin door with him in his pocket and wondered if it was still there. He thought to himself, if she would only let me back onto the boat, we could open the door and be safe from the storm. But she wouldn’t, not until the rain stopped, or the ocean calmed down. The boy began to cry; it could rain forever and the oceans may never be calm enough for her to try and pull him in. A disgusting sick feeling swept over his body as he realized that he would be left alone in the freezing cold, violent ocean for a long time. Why wouldn’t she just let him onboard? He could let them into the cabin and they would be warm and safe. He wanted to talk to the girl, and glanced toward the boat to see if his lover was awake. He saw her leaning over the side of the boat calling to her friend, the same one she had promised to ignore. The boy, frozen and weak slowly let his grip loosen and slipped away to drown in the ocean.