Robert Blackwood sat in the rocking chair of the captain’s quarters in his ship, attentively planning the ship’s route to the West Indies on a faded, stained map. Deep in focus was he on the rocks, seas, coasts, and ports; crossing the North Atlantic from Britain to the Caribbean was no easy feat. On top of the dark, wooden desk to the upper right of the map sat an hourglass, nearly full, the sand quietly slipping through its torso like the sound of rushing water. 

In the captain’s quarters, the world was so quiet. It would never be silent, being on this creaking wooden ship sailing its way through harsh winds and crashing waves. Still, the deep focus that the isolated small room provided drowned out any noise completely in the self-centered whirlpool of thoughts swirling in the waters of the mind. It was not a peaceful focus, but one much like a long laundry list of chores to do every day resembling the somber monotony, and yet familiarity, that Sisyphus must feel as he pushes his boulder eternally uphill. The stressful rush brought on by the impatience of a busy life did not allow for complete thoughts to form, for there was no time as long as the sand in that restless hourglass kept dripping.

Captain Blackwood groaned and rubbed his temples in exasperation as he realized his crew would have to traverse a minor storm—his small, mildly-experienced crew. The storm was no real danger, but a pain that he did not want to deal with without more experienced sailors.

A British naval captain late in his middle ages, Blackwood himself wore a red uniform coat curving around his plump belly and had a bushy white beard around his face that mildly resembled a frosty bloom of mold. He used to be a hearty sea captain commandeering his sizable crew in awe, even winning a few medals from his motherland for winning a battle or two—now collecting dust on the shelf behind him. He never found himself in many important battles that might alter the course of history, but he had more than his fair share of fights with other ships nonetheless. Now, he was a washed-up old man with an outdated boat and a mountain of stress going back and forth between the colonies, the West Indies, and Great Britain for trade. Blackwood’s crew had none he shared his youth with—all his compatriots dead from battles or disease or even the skilled, young men who were relocated to powerful ships. Now, aside from a ragtag group of hardened sailors, he had only two kidnapped prior indentured servants, strange lads who didn’t mind leaving their cruel American masters even under these somewhat brutal means for a life of seafaring, as well as some dozen mildly experienced British sailors and seamen who were recruited onto his ship.

Captain Blackwood began to enter his fifth migraine of the week, congesting the inside of his brain with what felt like a growing, pain-inducing ball of cotton, and it was only Wednesday. “Cap’n Blackwood,” the two indentured servants, John and Oliver, abruptly emerged from the large, wooden door of Blackwood’s office, “We’re headed’ for a storm. Should we change directions?” Startled, then settling down as they spoke, the captain responded with a tired growl, “No… No, don’t change directions, we’ll take the storm head-on.”  Satisfied, then suddenly curious, the two sailors looked around the captain’s quarters which was filled with a variety of books, a globe, maps, and medals. “This is probably the first time we been’ in here… You sure have a lotta medals, cap’n,” Oliver said, eyes wide, then suddenly amused, “Consider us… Impressed.” The two snickered, signaling the captain it was time to shuffle them out of his quarters with a wave of his hand, and they did so promptly. The two were strange, and not the brightest, but they were somewhat loveable—and the only two kidnapped men who did not mutiny a few months ago. Blackwood had lost a decent chunk of his small crew that day, where his loyal British crew fortunately had been able to overpower the seven hostages, but not without their own losses as well. The mutineers had been hung onboard then dumped into the sea, or forced to walk the plank shortly after their failed rebellion.

This was one of the few times, Blackwood figured, that his thoughts had been able to stray from the map or other such duties for a while. He was burnt out, and his thoughts were taking him to irrelevant things. He shook his head and reminded himself he couldn’t take a break.

Despite his resistance, he found himself gazing out the porthole of his quarters into the open sea. Gray skies going into a gradient white over the perfectly-cut line of blue that was the sea. Small ripples provided an unstopping, calming sight reminiscent of the relentless force that was the ocean. This sterile view seemed like a higher plane of reality. Just two colors and their variations, endlessly extending in all directions. Deceptively so, for below there was an ocean teeming overwhelmingly with life none of the sailors on this ship could begin to fathom. It almost felt like some kind of heaven, but the same kind of heaven you feel in church with undertones of a certain anxiety or uneasiness.

On the desk, the hourglass sand kept slipping and this oceanic view—this anxious peace—made the hourglass go faster, slower, and come to a complete stop simultaneously in Blackwood’s mind. Time didn’t feel like it existed anymore and the captain’s only attachment to time anymore, he felt, was the hourglass’s sand still rushing and now half full on both sides. As he moved his chair closer to the porthole engulfing his field of vision completely in the sea, to feel as if he were standing on it, his small and quiet room suddenly seemed so claustrophobic—so detached from reality. All the books on philosophy, science, biographies, cartography, and such subjects started to seem like just ink on paper. The globe and maps were only wood pulp, and the medals trinkets. Blackwood was losing his grasp on anything solid, anything man-made.

This old and tired sea captain in the middle of the ocean, on a lovely but gloomy day with nothing special in particular going on, was beginning to lose his sense of thought. He wasn’t sure why it was happening to him, of all the interesting or important people anywhere else in the world. Why did he get the sense that this supposed distance from anything artificial was not detachment from reality, but reattachment? Surely this wasn’t meant for him to stumble upon. The fates must have accidentally focused their energy on the wrong spot on earth, the wrong person.

Lightning struck outside and Robert swore he could not hear it, only he could see the light bathe the dark room in piercing white. His head was spinning so much that he didn’t realize how dark it had gotten outside. He did not even realize how windy, for he could not feel the boat rocking as much as he felt his own brain swaying back and forth violently holding onto dear life against the vicious waters of confusion.

Lightning struck once, twice, thrice more; the final time seemingly the tipping point as crashing waves knocked the boat so far to the side that the hourglass fell onto its side. It looked like an infinity symbol now, and the sand had genuinely stopped moving, bearing no connection to Robert’s delusions.

“Cap’n, we need help!” Oliver shouted using all the air in his lungs from the steering wheel. Robert walked outside in an eerily calm, disoriented manner. It seemed though, that processing Oliver’s shout had used the last of his energy, for the sailor’s voices all melted into one ambiguous loud human noise. Robert found himself unable to stand on his feet anymore and basically threw himself to the floor of the deck, taking in a deep breath. Seamen that would have hounded him were too busy trying to drive the boat out of the storm. Somewhere in between the human noise, Robert could make out the word “hurricane.” It seemed they’d been a lot closer to the Caribbean than he had thought.

Robert wondered about a life of indentured servitude. Maybe not a life, because it was only seven years, but at the same time a whole seven years. How one could wake up impoverished and sore from labor but still have full trust in a wealthy future once they regain their freedom was beyond his current thinking capabilities. What unwavering persistence, but also, what helplessness. But he concluded it didn’t matter what they did, because the time passed anyway.

The captain noticed, in his hands, he had been twiddling with the hourglass which he had no idea he had brought with him until this moment. Wind was blasting against his face with awesome force and cold rain pelting him like bullets, but he couldn’t feel any of these. As long as he was on wooden planks and not something more real, like the ocean, that could crush his lungs from the inside, no external forces existed. His mind was completely shielded by the shell of his skin, and right now he was completely in the center of his mind like the very center of a nation with three circular walls enclosed within each other. That center wall enclosed in the other two was the safest, and that’s what the center of his brain was to him right now—safe between the enclosure of skin and skull.

The amateur crew was headed even further into the hurricane, Robert noticed, but couldn’t find the will to open his mouth—the will to care. He had always wanted to see what the eye of a hurricane looked like; the calm in the center of chaos. What a strange thing, he thought, for a storm to have a heart.