Friday, November 4, 2016
12:07 a.m.

The blare of the foghorn woke him with a start from a dream that seemed all too real, until he saw the glint of steel in the corner and he realized it wasn’t a dream. The past few days came slamming back into his memory. Sometime around the middle of the second day, Cooper Scott awakened to being prodded. He remembered being lifted up and people speaking in a foreign language, and then not much else.

The air was cool, but his skin was radiating heat from overexposure to the sun. His throat was raw and dry. He looked around; he was in a small room, barely large enough to fit his cot and little else. No windows to discern day or night. A bottle of water was on a shelf that was connected to the wall. He reached over and opened it. It looked and smelled like water. He sloshed a little around the inside of his mouth. Tasted like water. Not that water really smells or has a distinct taste, just that there wasn’t anything else that was easy to spot in the water. Perhaps getting blown out of a submarine had made him a bit paranoid.

He set his feet on the ground and stood up. Cooper was a bit shaky and he wasn’t going anywhere fast, but he didn’t collapse straight to the ground, so that was something. He slowly shuffled to the door and found that there was no handle. Cooper pushed; it didn’t budge. He tried again, putting his full weight behind it, but it stayed solidly in place. Cooper slumped his shoulders and leaned his head against the door. It was hard not to feel totally defeated. He was tired of feeling helpless, but what could he do?

Cooper lay down on the cot and stared at the ceiling. Waiting, but for what? Shouldn’t he be celebrating? After all, he was alive. A second chance at setting his life back on the path it should be on. What path was that, though? Staying alive had seemed so important while floating in the middle of the ocean… so impossible. Yet here he was, alive and kicking, and he had little to no motivation.

Sometimes, it seemed like the keys to unlocking some kind of meaningful life were so close, and yet when you really focused on it, they faded away like mist. Cooper shook his head. No time to get so philosophical now. Time to rest, get ready for whatever was going to happen next.