The Boat in the Church

I walked the streets headed to see Mark's new acquisition: an old wooden fishing boat being fitted out for a final expedition. Sixty feet long, he'd found the old beast somewhere, and had it moved (somehow) into a giant church- more a Cathedral than a church. She sat dry docked where the pews had been pulled from the floor, and men were up on scaffold scrapping her boards when I first saw her. Time passed with only occasional word on the project.

Then the rains came. The rains. The deluge. We weren't forty days in but it looked like we'd get there, and the streets were knee deep to head high depending on where you stood. In the dark of the night I felt the call of the Cathedral. I knew what was happening, couldn't be, wouldn't be, but most definitely was directly related to me.

The city was largely abandoned by then when it was clear we were accursed. Forgotten by God, or worse, finally noticed by Him. I climbed the steps of the Cathedral with the wind screaming and the rain sluicing off of me, streaming like a fish as it leapt from the sea. I could hear the rending sounds of the lightening as it blasted, was nearly deafened by the thunder- would have been were it not for the damage done already by weeks of the same.

I climbed the steps and could feel the booming of the breakers as I laid my hands upon the doors, and fought them open against the weight of the winds. The doors swung open, torn out of my grasp as the winds changed their minds and shifted to help (as it seemed at the moment) not hinder.

That moment passed and the winds were again at my back, vicious like a hammer, like the weight of a bully as he strikes you high between the shoulders and rides you to the ground. But the ground isn't there. The transition from hard marble steps to raging waters is so shocking I do not see at first what is in front of me. I slough off my coat lest it drag me under and keep me and as my head breaks the surface I know that what I see now will be what I see last.

For the ship is off it's moorings- the Cathedral filled with a raging torrent of water- the salt air redolent of fish and rotting kelp. The space is filled with an unnatural light as she smashes back and forth between the walls, one side pounding at the shrine to the Blessed Virgin, the other the Stations of the Cross. Of Mark and his men I see no sign, dear God let it not be them hung among the rigging like bright glass balls along her nets. I'm caught in her wake and dragged along as she ignores Christ Jesus' imploration to go no further, and bursts through the nave taking Him with her.

I go under.