A man sat in his boat. The boat raised and fell with the waves of the Pacific Ocean. With every rise, a heartbeat dropped in worries the ship would too. As a rich man once said, "with money comes loneliness and distrust in those around you." Though this yacht sailed large, only a few traveled upon it. Four men and two women.
Of the four men, one went by the name Ryan. There also was the captain, a bartender, and the brother of the two women who were picked up as associates of Ryan, and nothing more. Ryan owned this yacht. Ryan was an elusive man. A man of wealth that was affected by deep-rooted alcoholism.
Ryan was a white man, tanned along his arms and legs as he lived along the west coast in constant sun. With no hair on top of his head, Ryan wore a red bandana to avoid sunburns and to prevent blinding someone with its glare. Equipped with cargo shorts and flip-flops, Ryan ventured to one of the women on the boat.
"I'm looking for a wife, maybe she will do." Ryan thought to himself.
She had blonde hair and a short chin. But physical appearance didn't matter to Ryan as his dunk mind could find a Vagas drug addict attractive.
As he approached, she stared into the sky which was blue only minutes ago. The air had been thickened, as a grey mass consumed the light. Ryan stood a foot from the woman as he mustered the drunk courage to start a conversation.
"It sure looks like it's going to rain later." Ryan turned to the woman, cocktail in hand.
The young woman turned to him with a grin. With the staring of a smirk on his face, Ryan looked out to the horizon and pointed.
"A wind storm is definitely going to rock the ship." The confident man then looked into her eyes; her right eyebrow raised to the obvious attempt at flirting.
"Maybe you ought to keep me warm tonight during the storm."
Though Ryan would have loved to take her by her hands and drag her to the closest cabin, that was a stretched attempt. Ryan was instead met with a bright flash of white and a pain in his right cheek. The woman had stomped off after unleashing a slap upon the face of the young millionaire.
Ryan stood, staggering for a few minutes. He managed to sway his lifeless body toward the bar. Ryan had left behind a grey sky, darkening to a black mass by the end of the night. Rain and wind had shoved into the yacht, awakening Ryan at the bar that he had passed out at.
His face which was clobbered was now swollen at the cheek. A crash echoed from the floor. Ryan looked up, thinking it was himself that fell. But in relief, it was one of the nine-shot glasses from the table. Ryan picked himself up carefully to avoid the broken glass.
The boat tilted left to right adding to Ryan's drunk, wandering vision. Rain pounded the yacht, soaking the floor. Every step Ryan took led to a splash onto his already soiled flip-flops.
Ryan wondered to the edge of the yacht, moaning and grunting in a drunken rage. He had begun to dry heave over the edge, drowned by the smell of rising salt from the ocean.
It could have been that Ryan was drunk to the point of no return, or maybe the dark horizon line was playing with his eyes. Perhaps he had gotten his own throw-up in his eyes. Ryan had spotted something in the water during his rageful vomit.
A shadow with a yellow glare emanating like a pair of eyes. Small shadows flew around the mass like a swarm of bees. The shadows moved in unpredictable patterns. They swayed against the wind, something the yacht wasn't even able to accomplish.
The yellow tint in the figure's top was raging and intimidating. It left Ryan with a sense of unease and paranoia.
That is when a beautiful set of chords from a recognizable piano rang through Ryan's ears. It was as if the water and storm had gone mute. The chords played slowly, one every few seconds, as if taking turns fading away
It brought weight to Ryan's legs. The sound of a caring bird, taking care of its young chicks in the nest. As each note played, one of the chicks fell from the nest, down the tree to the yard 20 feet below. The mother would not move a muscle. Then it all went silent for Ryan as he fell to the yacht's floor….
Minus the darkness of a tunnel, there is the light at the end. Is it theoretical light? Not only has the light not been seen in others' eyes but the light could not be there at all. To an extent, a person or creature could never witness the tunnel. If one doesn't live long enough to see it, has the light at the end of the tunnel ever existed?
What if the tunnel had no end to it? Has one truly seen the end of a hypothetical tunnel? Is the tunnel just a metaphor or is the light? Is a person that changes a life or introduces a person to love? Are the hardships of life the tunnel? Is the tunnel the adventures along the way?
Perhaps the light is to be the death that seems painful and scary, but a sense of relief because of the path you laid for the next generation.
Ryan awakened sluggishly with tunneled vision. The sway back and forth brought a sickening feeling upon his body. A deep voice with a cold tone spoke out loud.
"So, what! Take his god damn wallet and dump him to the sharks!"
Footsteps swiftly stomped toward him with anger.
Soon a woman's voice filled the room.
"You think some millionaire keeps that money in his wallet? You really are an insane old man!".
Ryan shifted his head to the left. His arms numbed as if they were never there. Ryan nudged his ass over and up the wall he leaned on, just to be met with a sharp pain in his right thigh. A woman's voice came from his side, muffled in shock.
"Shit! Shit! He's awake! What do we do?"
Ryan stared forward as the old man became clearer. Ryan had recognized the old man to be the captain of the yacht. The old man had a bright red face and a bird shit-colored beard. His hands had hard wrinkles and veins, pulsing from age. The captain had turned his full attention to Ryan.
The captain screamed in rage.
"I'll knock his ass with me' gun, we out here far for no one to hear it!".
He reached into his raincoat to pull out a black pistol. The woman ran toward the captain with her hands waving hastily.
"You can't shoot a gun! My siblings will hear it, stupid!".
Ryan instantly recalled who the woman was from her blonde hair. For a moment, Ryan could feel soreness in his cheek. He managed to rise to a kneeling stance.
His throat was very dry, yet his clothes seemed to be the opposite, completely soaked from the rain.
"How long have I been here?" Ryan thought to himself.
The captain waved his gun next to Ryan's face.
"Where is it!", yelled the senile man.
Ryan wobbled with the yacht, the waves still crashing against the boat. The woman reached for the captain's shoulder.
"Ryan gives us your money so this doesn't have to get any harder!". The woman was serious, and Ryan knew that.
Ryan had begun to get a grip on his reality. He was being robbed. He has little to no chance of surviving this altercation if he struggled. Ryan has never been a fighter. Hell, he had never been in a real fight before.
"Run. Run. Run. Move. Move. Move." were the only thoughts rushing through his brain.
But his body wouldn't listen, sitting in a soaked puddle on the yacht floor. The gun was fumbled in the old man's hands. The captain had turned off the safety.
"You have five seconds Ryan!", the captain yelled with his dry and raspy throat.
Ryan opened his mouth to utter the words, "the safe downstairs."
The woman stood in awe. "Of Course, the safe! It's right behind the bar! That has to be it!".
The captain looked down at Ryan. "Ryan. Is it a key or a code?" The gun pressed into Ryan's temple. Ryan slurred his words, mostly in fear. "Co-code. One, one, seven, four, nine.".
The captain looked up toward the woman.
"We tie him here. We go with my plan. Do not kill him!" explained the woman.
The captain sighed, backing up from the helpless millionaire. His gun pointed toward Ryan as he reached for a cord on the table next to them.
The captain handed it off the woman. Ryan sat uselessly as water dripped from his hair. She tied the cord around his chest and looped it under a desk leg. Both the captain and the woman fled out of the cabin to open the safe.
As soon as they were out of sight, Ryan turned his right shoulder to the ground. With his leg, he forced the desk up and the cord out from under. Ryan staggered up, only able to walk due to the panic in his bloodstream.
He pushed out the double doors into the harsh rain. Ryan could feel the harsh breeze push him around.
Ryan turned toward the bar where he heard angry mumbles, then a woman screaming.
"Why is the code not working?".
The woman's voice cut in and out by the crashing waves. Ryan panicked, knowing that they would be back shortly and angry. With a swift motion, Ryan ran toward the edge of the yacht where the emergency raft sat. He pulled the large tarp off which covered it. A crash of thunder clapped the sky, numbing the air of its rain for a split second.
A simple click came after. Ryan turned around to come eye to eye with the old man and his gun. Everything was silent. The captain was screaming but it didn't matter, Ryan could not hear him.
A single piano note played, fading into silence. Ryan saw the light at the end of the tunnel. He wanted to step forward. His motivation was now clear on the brink of death. He wanted to live.
To Ryan, the light at the end of the tunnel wasn't his death, or some message, or theoretical idea of love. The end of the tunnel was progression into the next sunrise. Ryan was a selfish man. So, into his final moments, Ryan jumped off the yacht, raft in hand.
Is it the ocean moving or is it you? It is a simple answer. So, when you hear a piano chord play in the distance why does it move your heart? Don't you also feel a wave of emotions fly over you, or are you drowning in the tears sitting at the edge of your eyes? Why is it that some simple cords are so powerful?
Showing me something sad is the definition of sad. Showing me someone who has lost a loved one will make me think, "I feel sorry that they lost a loved one."
It is all one-dimensional sadness. But when you play the chords, one by one, patiently waiting for the previous one to fade. It makes you ponder.
The first chord shows me someone sitting on a bench, alone in the rain. The fading shows me a train passing by in one, quick swoop. The second ring shows me how empty the man sitting alone truly is. It forces this sensation behind my eyes.
I'm not going to cry, but if I were to blink it would be the loudest thing in the room.
The silence between chords two and three shows me the young man's past.
The fourth chord never plays in my ears, but plays in the weight of my shoulders. The thought hits me that this young man is me. Not physically, but not emotionally either. It's as if we share the same space, but have never been in the same room.
The fifth cord yells at me to wake up. This young man is on his way to a funeral. The sixth cord points out the empty casket, as the body of Ryan Seikatsu was never found at sea.
The young man drops a bouquet of flowers onto the stone which stood above an empty hole. No one else is here. Maybe if the many woman and distant relatives knew his belongings made it to shore, they would be by the young man's side. Maybe his name was forgotten because he was so alone with the power of everything. The young man walked away with no sense of joy.
That is when the seventh chord played. The dirt from a world he once stood on was being shoveled into his empty grave.