A New Direction
Flash Fiction (280 Words)
Jerking awake, Jake felt the whole sailboat roll to port as a massive incoming swell lifted the wooden vessel over thirty feet straight up, the bow dipping briefly then recovering as the strain on the anchor chain caused it to snap clean off. The sound of the tortured metal apparently summoning a fog and rain on the instant.
"What is going on?" He wondered aloud as he struggled to regain control of the vessel they had anchored in Nanoose Bay the night before. The cloud cover had settled in last night, but there were no major storms or anything predicted. As he fired up the motor to bring the old boat back under control, he glanced down at the compass, noting that it was spinning first clockwise then counterclockwise. Completely useless.
Figuring that they had anchored facing out of the bay, he kept an eye on the depth-sounder and steered Pandora's Slipper towards the open water of the Straight of Georgia.
Praying that he remembered correctly, and that he hadn't been turned around in the chaos, he locked the wheel on course and set about dogging everything tight on the boat, trying to keep as much of the rain out as possible.
Hours and miles later, soaked and tired, he saw the sails of his schooner start to shift from gray to blue as the sun cleared the horizon, illuminating the purple depths of the ocean around him and the blackened mountain ranges. The sky was a dirty sulfurous yellow, and the smell of charred timber drifted on the wind.
Going below to wake Katelyn he said to her, "I think we have a problem, nothing seems right this morning..."
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