“Hey ho,” they sang, sailors all, “the wild winds blow.” Barton was on the brink of marrying, so he led the group, bellowed the loudest, smiled the widest smile. He had the most hope and so was also earmarked by fate as the first to die. A squid leapt from the darkest deep and put its devil-beak around his head, snapping it cleanly from the stalk of his neck. Kevin, the second-loudest singer, felt in his heart that there was no hope, that in fact there was no such thing as hope, only a constant forgetting of the inevitable, and thus he was spared. The rest of them weren’t even really trying, just mumbling along, and after they had mopped up Barton’s incarnadine and the oddments of numbles scattered on the deck, they went below and watched TV. The host of the game show was cheery to a fault and everyone knew who he reminded them of, though no one said. At midnight or so Kevin snapped off the TV set and sent them all off to bed, and they went, drained and docile. Dreams were sweetened by the gentle rock of the boat. Wild winds had never actually shown up, despite the song.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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