Short Stories

Nine: Boat

"Hello? Hello? Is anybody there? Please! There was a storm, and my boat was last seen at coordinates 20 Latitude and 40 Longitude." The only sound responding from the radio to my desperate cries was gurgling. I let out a scream of fury and chucked the waterlogged radio onto the soggy red couch.

"Hey, hey, hey! Don't break the radio! I can fix it!" My partner cried out. She weakly smacked at my tan arm. Her bony hand reached out for the small, black radio and wrapped its spindly fingers around the cold encasing. She pulled it towards her and cradled it in her chest. Suri stood up and pocketed the radio into her green pants and started rummaging around for her tools. I sighed in frustration and wiped my hands on my black long-sleeved shirt, which was no use seeing as it was wet with ocean water. Shivering from the cold, I stood up from the red couch and searched around the bunk for some scissors. After proving my search useless, I reached for the pocket knife in the pocket of my brown cargo pants.

"Hey, Suri. Could you cut my sleeves off? I'm going to catch a cold in the wet shirt." My partner stopped fumbling around with the innards of a wet, metal cabinet and nodded at me, "Sure." She walked towards me and I placed the red pocket knife in her steady hands. Suri flicked out the shiny, steel blade from its enclosure and took my left sleeve and carefully hacked away at the wet cloth sticking to my body. When Suri finished with the cutting, I silently thanked her with a nod of my head. We stood there, silent and unmoving, staring into each others eyes until Suri broke eye contact and went back to looking for a screwdriver. I stared at her slim form before turning around on the white, wet, and squishy carpet under my rain boots and exited the bunk. Walking on the metal floor of the deck, the sun's rays beamed onto my back, warming me up immediately. I wandered around the deck aimlessly, not really doing anything, before deciding I would look for the flare gins. They would be of good use. Entering the control room, I found everything soaked and tossed about the room carelessly, unsurprisingly, but found the box full of flares and flare guns almost instantly, surprisingly. I grabbed the bright red box and carried it under my arm and walked back to the bunk. I walked into the bunk and found Suri dismantling the radio and emptying it of the rest of the sea water.

"Hey Suri. I found the flare guns, so if we do find help, we can alert them." A smile spread across her face and her green eyes widened.

"That's great!" Suri exclaimed. "Can you see if you can find a way to dry our clothes and the bunk?"

"Sure." I thought about how I could dry out everything when an idea popped into my head. I walked out of the bunk but left the door open to let in the warm ocean breeze so the room could warm up a bit. I walked around the boat and collected any large wide parts of the ship that broke off in the storm. After collecting and putting them in nice little columns and rows, I let the sun do the rest of the drying. Then, I walked around the boat and collected anything that could be used as a drying rack. I found places to hand the poles and soon enough, I had essentially created a drying system. For the rest of the day, I went back and forth from the bunk to the hull of the ship, putting anything wet on the ship parts, which acted as hot plates, and hanging clothes on the poles to dry. Flopping onto the almost dry ground of the boat I let out a sigh of exhaustion. I lay backwards and spread my arms and legs and closed my brown eyes to bask in the warm sun. Unsurprisingly, I fell asleep in the warm sun.

Fluttering my eyes open, I groaned at the feeling of someone shaking me. I rubbed one of my eyes and looked at Suri's excited expression.

"What?" I groaned.

"I got the radio working!" Suri almost screamed. If I wasn't awake before, this certainly had me up.

"Really?!"

"Yeah!" I squealed in happiness and hugged her tightly against me. She hugged me back, and we stayed in each other's embrace, jumping up and down like little girls, before I pushed her away from me.

"I need to call a station!" I scrambled towards the bunk and found the radio lying innocently on the small dinner table in the bunk. I picked it up and turned the dial to a station.

"Hello? Is anyone there?"

"Yes. What do you need?" A kind voice asked on the radio.

"My friend and I are stuck on a boat! A storm hit us pretty hard from the west side, and we were last seen at coordinates 20 Latitude and 40 Longitude! Please send help!"

"Okay. A rescue team is on the way now. Please be patient." The voice said.

"Yes, yes, yes! Thank you so much!" I exclaimed. The radio slipped from my shaky hands, and I sobbed with relief. Warm arms wrapped around me. I swore to myself that I would never sail on a boat again after this.