Bones in the Ocean

Jason Moor, aged 45, stared heavily out into the distance, elbows on his knees as he sat next to death itself. Who was telling him to live. He felt the cold ocean of that day, the fire inside the submarine, the explosion, the blurry underwater sight of blood and bodies and faces and—

He sighed and ran his hands through his hair, pressing his palms to his eyelids as his throat choked up. He felt death stand up and leave as he looked at his hands. More scar tissue than anything else at this point, but so was the rest of him. He looked up with a question, but the black cloak was nowhere to be found.

Just a mother pushing her stroller with twins. A group of kids across the street playing a game of pick-up basketball, someone walking a dog. Life around him, in front of him. This whole time seeming to mock him.

The kid missed the next one.

Jason watched the ball arc wide and clatter off the rim, watched the kid shrug it off with a grin, and felt something loosen in his chest that he didn’t have a name for yet. He wasn’t ready to go inside.

The delivery truck pulled up before the light was fully gone. He didn’t register it at first, just a white shape in the peripheral amber of the evening. The driver hopped out with a box under one arm and crossed the lawn with the purposeful disinterest of a man who’d done this ten thousand times.

“Moor?”

He nodded, struggling to find the words. He signed. The driver handed it over and was gone. The truck pulled away.

Jason stood on the porch steps holding the box and read the return address once, then again, and then stopped reading it.

United States Navy.

It wasn’t heavy. He didn’t know why that hit him the way it did, he stood there in the last of the evening feeling the lightness of it in his arms, like an accusation. Twenty-three crew members. Everything they’d left behind. And it weighed almost nothing.

He’d been told it was coming. Same phone call as the discharge papers, the commendation, on behalf of a grateful nation. He’d written it down somewhere and then not thought

about it, the way he’d not thought about a lot of things because not thinking was the only way to keep moving forward in a straight enough line that nobody came to check on him.

He set the box just inside the front door.

Went back to the porch. Sat down. The swing creaked under him like always.

The kids were still playing. Someone’s porch light came on across the street, then another. The dog-walker was long gone. The evening was doing what evenings do, quietly and without asking and Jason sat at the edge of it with the empty bottle beside him and the box at his back and tried to find whatever it was he’d been feeling ten minutes ago.

It was gone. The box had taken it.

He sat until the street was mostly dark and the basketball game broke up with shouts and laughter fading in different directions, and then he sat a little longer.

When he finally went inside he didn’t turn on many lights. He set the box on the kitchen table and stood over it for a while. Then he went and found the bottle he’d put under the sink two days ago, the deliberate kind of putting away, the kind that means something, and poured two fingers and told himself that was all.

He opened the box.

The inventory sheet he set aside. Below it, each item wrapped in a small square of paper. A name on each one in official font, the same font as the return address, the same font as the discharge papers.

He unwrapped the first one.

John’s watch.

He sat down.

Whatever feeling had loosened in his chest from getting the box shattered at the sight of the timepiece.

It lay across his palm as he hunched over the table heavily. Heaving with sobs he hadn’t felt in himself since childhood. He tried to take in every detail that he already knew by heart, his vision blurring from tears.

A blue and gold astronomical watchface, a small window of visible gears, a fabric strap that had been replaced after the leather one gave out. And a small engraving around the rim. Nothing fancy, and nothing that would ever be overt to anyone but them. Four letters and a small heart.

‘JM ♡ JF’

They’d loved their jobs. John kept a meticulous engineering and maintenance crew, and Jason ran a tight ship no matter if they were stationed separately or on the same vessel. They’d loved each other just as much. Quietly, and in their own ways, but both of them were as deeply in love as the sea they both felt called to.

Jason wept. Howled in pain like his soul had been ripped out. Out of all the things recovered, he didn’t know if he’d wanted to see this particular item again or if he’d have preferred it lost to the ocean. He wouldn’t know for many years after this.

He knew why the box was so light. Why, despite having a crew of over a hundred on that submarine, only the remains of 23 were found. Why even despite that, all of their remaining personal effects fit into a parcel that was smaller than a housecat.

Knowing something logically is a far lesser experience than feeling it. Seeing, hearing, touching it.

Jason had devolved into dry heaving. Body still trying to expel the wave of grief the mind had yet to catch up with, and he stood on shaky legs, clutching the watch as if it were his only lifeline left.

He folded the package closed, not ready to face the rest of the items. He patted the box as if to apologize for being unable to face them all just yet, and dimmed the lights. Locking up and getting ready to sleep almost on autopilot.

His eyes burned, his limbs shook, and he couldn’t take a full breath without shaking for the life of him. Not once did he let go of John’s watch. The only thing Jason had to prove he existed outside of cold and impersonal paperwork.

He laid the watch on the pillow next to him, and Jason pretended it was John lying next to him under the covers as sleep claimed him almost before his own head hit the pillows.

“You know I won’t leave you forever, right?”

Jason looked up from fixing his uniform, confused.

“What’s this about, John?” He turned to face him. Both of them fresh-faced cadets in this dream. As handsome as he’d remembered. John looked sad. Why was he sad?

“Jason, remember that—” He cut off.

The dream cracked like ice underfoot, Jason grabbed at it, at him—

“John—”

He woke up with his hand outstretched across the empty pillow.

The watch was still there. He pulled his hand back and pressed it flat against his sternum instead, staring at the ceiling while his breathing evened out. The room was dark in the particular way it gets just before morning commits to anything.

He didn’t sleep again.

At some point, the ceiling became intolerable, and Jason got up and made eggs. This was not a decision so much as a default — his body knew the kitchen, knew the pan, knew two eggs and black coffee and standing at the counter because sitting felt like giving in to something.

He ate standing up looking out the window above the sink. He thought about John’s hands. The way they moved when he was explaining something mechanical — always drawing it in the air first like the invisible version of the thing was more real than the thing itself.

The box was still on the kitchen table behind him. He could feel it the way you feel a presence in a room. He’d left it neatly closed, the inventory sheet sitting on top. He hadn’t counted how many wrapped squares were still inside. He hadn’t let himself.

He turned around.

Twenty-two left. He knew it without unwrapping a single one—he’d memorized that crew the same way John memorized gear. Name, rank, face. He could do all twenty-two right now if he wanted. He could do it the way you pull a loose thread, all at once, and see what comes apart.

The morning was already warm and going warmer. He sat with the mug between both palms, and he was thinking about what John had been trying to say in the dream when the swing creaked under a weight that wasn’t his.

“You slept.”

“Barely.” He didn’t look over. He already knew—the cold that arrived with it, the particular quality of silence that followed Death around like a shadow. It was wearing the hoodie again. “You going to tell me that’s progress?”

“He was trying to tell me something,” Jason said. “In the dream. He didn’t finish.”

Death was quiet for a moment.

“I know,” it said finally.

“Do you know what it was?”

“That’s not mine to carry or to give.” A pause. “But he was not in pain, Jason. When it happened. I want you to have that.”

Jason’s jaw tightened. He nodded once, short and hard, because if he did anything more than that he was going to come undone on his own front porch at seven in the morning.

“Some of them had kids. Martinez had a daughter starting high school this fall.” He stopped. Started again. “I knew all of them. I made it my business to know all of them.” His voice was controlled in the way a man controls something that would otherwise control him.

“Yes,” it said. The acknowledgement alone.

The sun rose above the neighborhood houses, the golden hour casting both long shadows and honeyed light bursting across yards and sidewalks.

He set aside the empty breakfast plate, eggs long gone, and John’s watch face caught the light. He didn’t even remember putting it on in the morning. He turned back to look at the sunrise, gently thumbing the watch with his other hand—a feeling of indescribable lightness, awe, pain and relief, washing over him as he watched the light slowly crawl over a dandelion sticking up out of the concrete.

Death tilted their head in his direction after a time, the sun fully crested into the sky, and the golden hour quickly fading. “Would you tell me about them?”

Jason looked up from the sidewalk, surprised. Even though the hood concealed much of any expression, they still read as apprehensive. He was almost at a loss for words at the request. “Don’t you… know them already? Didn’t they send you?”

“I guide people to where they’re going. I see everyone at some point, but—” Death shuffled in the swing a bit and this was the first time it really hit how small the figure was compared to him, how childlike Death acted at times. “I only know what they tell me. Which is precious little of their actual lives. Few are happy to see me, and many try to escape or fight me.” They stood, and leaned heavily on a walking cane that blended in perfectly with their hoodie.

“But I’m not a fighter, or a vengeful demon, I’m a shepherd.” Death stood next to Jason’s front door, waiting for him. “And I care about every member of my flock, for everyone steps into my care at one point or another.”

Jason thought that must be incredibly lonely as he headed inside and sat at the table, holding the door open for Death to follow him inside. He ran his thumb over the watch strap and the rim of the face. Feeling the tiny engraving under his fingerprint, he felt a sliver of courage, and he reached for the box.

He unwrapped the second item and swallowed thickly. He can do this. A chain with rusted and crumpled tags and a heavy, non-regulation pendant charm.

“This was Ike’s,” he started, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Ike Muñoz, one of my Chief Petty Officers.” He rolled the charm in his hand, it felt heavier than you’d expect. “He kept this actual silver bullet on his tags the entire time I knew him. I asked about it during shore leave one year, and he told me he was scared to death of werewolves.” Jason chuckled to himself at the memory. “I didn’t believe him at first, until he told me that’s why he enlisted because ‘there’s no werewolves underwater.’” He laughed.

He spent hours with Death, slowly unwrapping each memory, and sharing them out loud, and laughing. It felt good to remember them out loud, with someone else.

He unwrapped the last one.

A small laminated photograph, edges soft from handling. Three people squinting into the sun on some dock somewhere; Martinez in the middle, one arm thrown around a teenage girl, the other around a woman who was clearly her mother. All three of them laughing at something just outside the frame.

Jason held it for a long time without speaking.

“She starts high school in September,” he finally said. “Elena. Martinez used to show me her report cards.” He set the photo down flat on the table, carefully, the way you set down something irreplaceable. “She wanted to be a marine biologist.”

“She still does,” Death said quietly.

Jason looked up.

Death had pushed the hood back slightly—not fully, never fully—but enough that he could make out something like a face in the shadow. Young. Tired in a way that had nothing to do with age. Eyes that had seen every ending there ever was and somehow hadn’t gone cold from it.

“You’re allowed to reach out to them,” Death said. “The families. You’re not intruding. You’re the last person who knew him whole.”

Jason’s throat worked. He looked back down at the photograph.

The table was covered now—twenty-three small unwrappings, twenty-three lives laid out in the morning light. A silver bullet. A watch with four letters and a heart. A Saint Christopher medal. A folded drawing in crayon that someone’s kid had made. A guitar pick worn almost smooth. He hadn’t known about all of them. Some he’d had to sit with for a long time before the words came.

Death had not rushed him once.

“It’s a strange job you have,” Jason said.

“Yes.”

“Does it get easier? Watching people carry all this?”

Death considered this with the seriousness it deserved. “No,” it said. “But I have found that the carrying gets easier for them. Given enough time. Given enough mornings.”

Jason nodded slowly. He began, carefully, to rewrap each item. Not to put it away—he understood now that there was no putting this away—but to tend to it. The way you tend to something that matters.

When he was done, he closed the box and left his hand resting on the lid.

Outside, the neighborhood was fully awake. He could hear the distant percussion of the basketball game starting up again, the bark of someone’s dog, and a lawnmower two streets over. The whole ordinary machinery of a Tuesday in motion.

He became aware that the cold had lifted from the porch.

He didn’t look up. He didn’t need to.

“Thank you,” he said. “For listening.”

There was no answer. There was only the creak of the swing going still, the sound of the street, and the warm morning against the windows.

Jason picked up the phone and looked up Martinez’s wife.

He dialed before he could think better of it.