The Bermuda Triangle

We’d been studying the Bermuda Triangle for what seemed like an indefinite amount of time, which is no irony for some claim it is an actual wrinkle in time—a place that one enters only to be buoyed elsewhere, immediately albeit years later in their lives; an instantaneous time warp, here; one in which one ages prematurely despite time itself. Victims have reported from jumping age gaps of age forty to ninety at the whim of a wrong turn at sea…but this is just one theory.
Some prefer to believe there is a chimerical, mythological being, nameless, responsible for the disappearance and paranormal phenomena that the Bermuda Triangle has incited. The strata of mist settled over the Triangle at this point in time remains of inexplicable origin to me (its permanence), but it certainly adds to the eerie, haunting quality of its atmosphere. Any survivors that have crossed the Bermuda Triangle alive have been reported a wistful, desultory condition of “drifting” that they cannot eschew.
All the disappearances do not correlate and surpass the boundaries of human error, piracy, equipment failure, and natural disaster. These disappearances have been diagnosed paranormally to the extent of extraterrestrial interference. It is located in the North Atlantic Ocean and is also referred to as the Devil’s Triangle. Most accidents have been reported as to having occurred along the southern boundary around the Bahamas and the Florida Straits, which is one of the most heavily trafficked zones in the world.
I refuse to believe that these supposed accidents are simply accidents. Flight 19. I’m not going to delve into specific “accidents” to prove my case. I haven’t so much studied the Bermuda Triangle so much as I am preparing my voyage out to explore it for my own eyes.
Drifters?
Our voyage consisted of a crew composed of federal agents and members of central intelligence. They are all wearing tinted glasses. I do not trust my first mate, as he is writing a field report about me at this very moment. I have never met the Devil, I tell them. I am not a drifter.
As we set off on our dingy, ramshackle ghostship, I sneak my own crew on board. First-mate Jailbait, the rest are inconsequential. They are the drunken shadows in the mess hall prone to mutiny, for its own sake. I watch their drunken shadows mingle, fight, settle down.
We are headed straight in the direction of the Bermuda Triangle; there is nothing that can stop us and I have scheduled there to be no cessation until we reach the dreaded isosceles.
The federal agents and members of central intelligence keep to themselves. They take notes and document everything. They are always watching, behind their tinted glasses, adorned in their rakish, suave suits.
“I feel documented,” Jailbait nudges me in the ribs.
“So do I,” I mutter, impatient to reach our destination.
“What do you think of drifters?” she asks me. I tell her I know nothing about drifters. Never heard of them. “You know, innocuous, earnest, even promising at first, then they become contaminated by other drifters, drifters who were once innocuous, earnest, even promising at first, like them, and they drift, no longer innocuous, earnest, or the slight bit promising. They work minimum wage jobs and sleep on kitchen floors and converse with cockroaches.”
“Does conversing with cockroaches necessarily designate someone as a drifter?”
“It’s a blatant symptom,” Jailbait grins. She has the whitest teeth. Teeth so white they make onlookers proud of their own, yellow teeth.
Upon finally reaching the edge of the triangle, the ship is immediately doused by an emulsified, opaque mist, so thick that one of the federal agents nearly suffocates. My crew, refusing to remain below deck, pornographic and mumbling rigmarole stand watch; they are preparing a mutiny in case something is to go wrong. Jailbait stares at me with unctuous eyes, waiting for my next command as the federal agents and central intelligence members document the situation.
Have I become a drifter? I wonder. What other symptoms designate a drifter? Varicose veins, hypertension, pudginess. Jailbait, I’m going to nuzzle your breasts.
The funereal umbrage became increasingly ominous and atramental; the diurnal process was arrested: it became very clear there was no night or day as we tread the waters apprehensively, anticipating the worst, thinking in the back of our minds if something can go wrong, it will—unless you don’t know what can go wrong, which sends the imagination reeling with aberrations.
The further the groaning, creaking ship progresses throughout the triangle, the deeper the federal agents and members of central intelligence burrow themselves within the ship. I had surmised that we would become lost, and it wasn’t before long that my prediction came true. The ship’s navigational devices all simultaneously went haywire. Jailbait quickly settled down the crew before they had a chance to stage a mutiny.
We, the ship that is, drifted for what seemed like years. I often checked the mirror to assure myself that I wasn’t aging at an accelerated rate. The drifting was nauseating; the crew was jaded, no longer indulging in the possibility that the Bermuda Triangle was something out of the ordinary. I suppose part of me wanted to get lost. To tell this crew: if you really ever want to get lost, welcome aboard. I wanted to be lost at sea at the hands of something I didn’t understand. I wanted to drift with a purpose.
“Captain! Captain! Hurry, there’s something rising starboard, at the rear of the ship!” I sprinted, guilelessly refraining from smirking, to the voice of my fellow crew member who was pointing at a bulbous swell, rising in the water not half a mile off. It appeared to me some sort of shell at first glance, like that of a tortoise, and as it continued to rise I realized that its expanse was probably beneath that of the ship. As if curious, it paused from rising up from the water, scrutinizing the ship.
“Captain, what shall we do?” Jailbait glared at me attentively though I could feel how terrified she was by the rigidity of her composure.
“Sail onwards. Full speed ahead. Let’s see if it follows, whatever it is.” Could it too be a potential drifter? Was there a place beyond death for drifters? Loitering vagabonds with tidbits of information that has been washed aloft from episodes of spatial drifting, no use to anyone. Minstrels with oppressive, megalomaniacal dreams.
The ship soon lost sight of the cabalistic shell, which upon collapsing back into the water sent near-tidal ripples towards the rear of the ship. One of the federal agents, austere and wraithlike, took position on deck, leaning against the wall next to the door that lead to the intestines of the ship. He was not procuring documents or scribing observations. He had one foot propped up against the wall like a teenager, and often nodded his head in response to his ear.
We continued to drift. The crew, growing restless, staged a play of them performing a mutiny. Jailbait, huddled beside me, awaited further orders. She too was even more roving than normal; I spotted an increased amount of heart palpitations and myoclonic jerks from her, probably the result of unruly stress, intense anxiety, and intolerant expectancy. Expectancy of what?
I regard the drifters. It is easy to spot them in large crowds. They have a sense of languidness and sloth to them, a hulking, hunched, sulking clay pigeon, swept away in their wanton tide, oozing from tryingly-seedy bars to their parent’s houses to derelict subway stations. Wherever they go they take a part of where they were with them.
“Let’s play a game,” Jailbait smiles fickly at me. “We can go anywhere in the world. We’ll each pretend we’re there when it’s our turn. Whoever’s turn it is: they close their eyes and blindly try to impersonate what it would be like to be there.”
“But this is where I want to be,” I sighed. Jailbait pleaded with my bicep. Jailbait wanted to go somewhere, somewhere far, somewhere else; Jailbait was a drifter in the making. She had the love handles, curdled, the overslept eyes.
“Captain!” one of my crew shouted to me above deck. I scampered towards the voice, harpoon at hand, Jailbait scuttling behind me. “There’s something I think you should see.” Above deck, I looked up in the direction my crew member was pointing. Above us there was a floating craft of some sort.
“That must be an Unidentified Flying Object,” Jailbait whispered conspicuously into my ear. I nodded, wondering if it, too, had stumbled across the Bermuda Triangle.