I Live On A Boat

• Natasha Wharton, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2016

I live on a boat.

An actual, floating, what-I-assume-to-be-real boat. And I live on it. All the time. Live on it as in I never leave this boat. I never have, and I never will.

This boat I live on is nothing but a microscopic dot in the middle of the world. This life I live is nothing but salt water, fish and general existence.

You may think me a hermit. But hermit crabs don’t tend to live this far out. So no, I am not a hermit, I am simply a person.

Who lives by themselves.

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

On an old, sea-worn boat.

You may ask who my parents are. I don’t know. I have never known. I was born below deck, but I don’t remember that. I grew up knowing only the lurching of the sea, the drip drip drip of leaking water, the musty darkness of bellow deck. I never saw anyone else, but every time I woke up in my little ship cave, the oil lamps would be lit, and a plate of fish and seaweed would be placed by my cot.

When I grew older, I was allowed above deck. I remember the first note they left, the one that read: You may go upstairs. There was no other information. No signature, no nothing. Only an unlocked trapdoor leading above deck, and the permission to go through it.

From then on, more and more notes came. I spent my days following the list of chores written on dirty scraps of worn paper that they would leave for me with my morning meal. I would clean the cabin, fillet the fish that mysteriously appeared in buckets of fresh water, collect the sweet, life giving rain that poured down from above, and scrub the red rust off the deck.

There was so much rust.

Only it couldn’t be rust because the deck was made of wood, and it appeared as crimson splatters coating the floor every morning. There wasn’t much I knew - but I knew that floors didn’t rust overnight.

I searched every inch of this boat, every nook and cranny, however, I never found anyone else. But I knew they were there; feeding me, keeping me informed.

That was the one certainty in my life, until the day the notes stopped. I woke and the oil lamps weren’t lit, the food wasn’t served, and there was no list of chores.

I was alone. But, of course, I was always alone.
However, despite the absence of any other presence, the red rust never stopped appearing.

This is now my life: I live on a boat. I don’t intend to leave, I don’t intend to search for more. I will just continue floating from nowhere to nowhere, filleting fish, collecting rain water, and scrubbing rust that is not rust. I don’t need anyone else. I don’t need help. I will never want more.

Everything is fine.