The End and the Beginning [A Short Story]

New Company and a New Form of Loneliness

"You're awake!" I said, happier than I could ever remember being.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I don't know!" I said, still rather elated. "But I know you... somehow. You're the most vivid memory I have, so I must know you."

"I have no memory of you," she said. "You don't look familiar to me at all."

It hurt me just a little to hear her say that. My smile no doubt wavered as her eyes left my form to look for someone else in the crowd that was spreading out from the where the ball rested. It didn't make sense that I could have such a strong familiarity with her, but she had none with me. The only possible explanation was that she hadn't given me enough thought. "Wait!" I said, "Try again. Maybe... maybe you just need more time to remember." Out of some long-dead instinct, I reached out to grab her arm, passing through it without any hold. It gave me a warm feeling in my fingers—that feeling that I loved whenever she walked through me before.

But out of instinct, she pulled away from me and made a motion as if to hit me, her arm running through my shoulder. "Stay away from me," she said, "You work on this ship, correct? How could I know you?"

"I... I don't know, but I'm sure of it!" I held my arms out to show her I meant no harm.

"I don't know you," she said and walked away to find a familiar face in the crowd.

By this time, everyone was looking for someone they knew, or someone they thought they knew. They squinted and stared hard at each other's face before moving on to the next person.

I slumped down to the deck as I watched her do the same. It was a feeling even more lonely that what I felt when I was the only one awake on the ship.

A few others who wore the uniform I had came to crouch down in my face and look me over. "That's strange," one said, "I feel like I knew these two," he waved his hand at the others wearing the ship's uniform, "but I don't know you."

"That's okay," I said in resignation. "I've already checked all the faces of the other crew members and there's only one that I recognize."

"Oh?" he said, "Who's that?"

"I don't know his name," I said, "He's wandering around below deck."

"Did you check his name tag?" One of other crew members said to me.

"Name tag?" I said. I hadn't thought about a name tag. I had been so fixated on faces that I hadn't even looked for a name tag on my friend. Or perhaps he wasn't a friend. The way things had turned out with the woman in red, I was beginning to think that I had no friends on this ship.

"Yes," said the first crew member, "He should be wearing one like this." He pointed to his own name tag on his chest. It was a small thing that blended in with the pale tan color of his shirt—easy to pass over. Printed on it was the name Dale. "I'm Dale," Dale said. He smiled kindly. "Though I can't tell you that I remember ever being called that." His smile faded as he narrowed his eyes at my chest. "You don't seem to have a name tag," he said. "I wonder why."

I looked down at my own shirt. Sure enough, it was bare of any name tag. I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know," I said. "Maybe it fell off in the storm."

"The storm..." Dale said. "I guess I do sort of remember a storm. How strange..." He trailed off in thought. Then he stood up. "Well," he said, "perhaps we should go find this friend of yours. Maybe if we can figure out who he is, we'll know who you are."

I left the deck reluctantly, looking back one last time to see the woman in red searching through the crowd for someone she knew. It looked as if she hadn't found anyone yet. I hated to see her so desperate and alone, but, in a terrible way, I was relieved that she hadn't found anyone else. The thought of her walking off with someone else, leaving me behind, made me ache.

We found my friend in his usual place—the room he never left. "This is him," I said.

Dale and his fellow crew members examined my friend's floating form and the bones on the floor. "That's strange," Dale said. "It looks as if he doesn't have a name tag either. But I do recognize him—you know—in that strange deja vu sort of way." He turned and leaned on the wall with his hand on his chin. "So why don't I recognize you?"

I shrugged. "I don't know," I said. "Maybe if we could find a way to wake him, he could help us understand it all."

"Yes," Dale said. "But how could we do that? We can't move that float, can we?"

I shook my head. "No," I said.

"Well, how did you get the float onto the ship?" Asked another one of the crew members. His name tag read 'Thomas.'

"A whale had it," I said. "It was tied to its tail, but when the whale went through me, it shivered and shook the ball off."

"The float, you mean?" Thomas said. There was something about the way he looked at me that made me feel uncomfortable.

"Yeah, sure," I said.

"Tell, me," Thomas said. "What do you remember about this ship?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"If I asked you to show me to the boiler room, would you be able to do it?"

"I'm... not sure," I said. "What does it look like?" I didn't understand what he was getting at, but at my response, both Dale and the third crew member looked at me with that same scrutinizing look that Thomas had. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"Dale, you remember how to get to the boiler room, right?" Thomas turned to his friend.

"Of course," Dale said.

"And you, Silas?"

"With my eyes closed," Silas said.

"What are you getting at?" I said, shrinking back from them.

"Do you even know the name of this ship?" Thomas said.

I shook my head. "The only part of the name that shows is an S at the end. The rest is hidden beneath the shipwreck."

"Well," Silas said, looking at his two companions, "Should I just come out and say it? You're a stowaway."

"How can you be sure?" I asked. Even though there was nothing they could do about it, even though the sentence had no meaning anymore, it still felt as though they were sentencing me to death with the word. "Maybe I was just new to it all. Maybe this was my first trip at sea and this man here was my trainer?"

"Maybe," said Thomas. "Or maybe he just discovered you and you killed him and took his clothes."

"Killed?" I nearly gagged on the word. "I wouldn't kill anyone! How could you accuse me of such a thing? There's no proof that this man was killed any differently than the rest of us. What you're saying is just blind speculation."

"Perhaps," Thomas nodded, "Perhaps, I'm wrong. I suppose at this point, it really doesn't matter. The only way we could find a possible answer is if we found a way to get this man to the glass float and see if he could shed some light on who you are."