Jim’s last novel was a bust. It was a harrowing tale of humanity venturing to other realities to acquire the answers to solve the world’s problems and the vast underworld that thrives from it. His main character, Silver, was a man stuck between two realities because both of his parents were from differing ones which in turn gave him great power. Power that wasn’t fully explained in Jim’s self-published and very criticized novel because he was too busy setting up for the sequel. Critics had described the book as trying too hard, his main character, Silver, as an overpowered Gary Stu, and the writer as out of touch with reality as he claims his background characters were. To cope with the scathing criticism, Jim went out on his boat.

It was a boat of modest size that could fit at least two people. Usually, it does but his wife, Ruby, decided to leave a two-page letter on their dresser yesterday detailing that she's leaving him. She wrote the words, _You’re not the man I fell in love with_ so many times that Jim made a drinking game out of it. He woke up this morning with a hangover and a still empty house that paired so perfectly with his broken heart. In his youth, Jim had a head full of hair and a mind full of dreams. Yet as time went by he found his hair thinning and dreams dwindling.

Whenever Jim worked on an idea, it was like pulling a tooth, painful and leaving an empty feeling behind. Jim didn't know how he became so hollow. Did it start when he held his hundredth rejection letter or maybe after he was fired from his desk job and his finances became tight? Either way, Jim was tired of his cruel reality and the only place he could find solace was on his small boat.

This boat was a source of discourse for Jim and his wife because she was adamant that he sell the thing and called it a useless expense. She didn't understand how the peaceful scene he could sail off to made him feel at peace with himself. The beauty of the rising sun after an awful day and a night full of unrestful sleep always brought him to a tranquil state. His boat made life worth living which in his eyes made it inexpensive.

Yet, as he sits on his boat now the blissful feeling of watching the sunrise doesn't spread throughout him. Inside, he’s empty, the cold water around him is a tempting resting place. He looks away from the water and his hand reaches for the knife he brought. For a long moment, he stares at it, enjoying the tempting whispers and promises of escape it offers. The whispers quiet when his other hand reaches for the soap bar he has been whittling for weeks now for his soon-to-be ex-wife, Ruby. It’s a work in progress but the end result was supposed to be a rose. She used to love the handmade things he made her but he stopped after a while finding the things that he used to enjoy as a tedious bore as time went on.

The water is quiet, a quietness that Jim envies as his mind stays in disarray. He keeps his hand moving, carving into the soap bar as his other hand steadily holds it. Still, even with the distraction, Jim feels as weighed down as the anchor on the side of his boat. If Ruby were here she’d be gazing at the clouds while humming the song they danced their first dance to. No, she wouldn't. She’d complain about the overdue bills, the many failed self-published books, and the fact it felt like every word she said to him seemed to fly straight into the clouds.

How could love so easily die? Jim always remembered every anniversary, buying her card after card full of poems written by him promising undying devotion and yet her eyes stopped lighting up one year and he never figured out how to get them to reignite. His hands stop moving and he drops the soap bar from his hand nearly cutting his palm. He puts down the knife, picks up the soap, opens up the storage chest of the empty seat beside him and places the items inside. There’s a cooler full of beer that once drunk would leave him sobbing his wife’s name over and over. His hand lingers above the cooler but with a defeated sigh he stops himself and decides that maybe it's time to head back to his desolate home.

So he moves over to the side of the boat, leaning over he grabs the anchor but as he does so he spots something strange. A large ominous shadow in the water. A shadow that looked like a black hole of sinister desires that drew you in during your darkest moments. Frightened, he falls back hitting the other side of his boat. His breaths are heavy but soon they ease back to normal.

“It’s nothing,” he mumbles to himself in a voice so fragile it was sure to break. “Just hoist the anchor up and go home.”

He goes back over to the side and his hand’s grab the rope that holds the anchor once again. This time the shadow passes moving from the underside of the boat. With this view, he sees the shadow is slender with a snake-like shape reminding him of tales of serpents and monsters of the sea that destroyed everything one had without a thought. All Jim had to offer was his lackluster life and this marriage destroying boat. For a second, Jim is fascinated by the hair-raising, heart hammering , breath stifling, view but then the shadow moves back under his boat causing his boat to shake this time around like an animal stampede shakes the ground as they run from impending danger. He scrambles to the center of his boat unsure of what to do. Face as pale as the bed sheets on the bed in the guest room his wife and him never used. His body feels covered in heavy drops of sweat that were enveloping him in thirst-inducing fear.

All of his years of sailing, he’d never encountered something so large…so odd. Even on the occasions when he fished here which was rare, the fish he caught were always medium-sized at best. The boat shakes again like a voice tired of arguing, a voice forgetting what they were even trying to defend.

He had to pull the anchor up and try to run but would it be so bad to let the creature feast? Jim pushes the thought away like a man so trapped in his mind he can't see the good in front of him. He moves to the side where the anchor hung, clammy hands out, and grabs the anchor’s rope with slippery hands.

As he does so, the creature’s head bursts out of the water. Its white eyes glow with hatred and judgment, mouth agape with rows of sharp teeth, skin slick like butter and it has a colorful gleam similar to the body of a fly. It comes right at Jim who ducks in an instant and he hears the sound of it crashing back into the water from the other side of his ship. Jim bolts up with the strength of a thousand men in his hands. He wipes his clammy hands on his shirt, soaked with sweat then on his pants. He once again grips the rope. The creature, the serpent, the beast, on the other side of the boat is battering it with the intent of making this place Jim’s final resting place.

Jim pulls on the rope as images flash in his mind. He sees himself as a child, writing a slew of stories. He sees the moment he first saw his wife Ruby, which was on a sunny day in the park, her dark hair pulled back as she read a worn copy of a sci-fi novel he was obsessed with. There’s the image of their first date where he held her close as they danced to no music in the middle of a restaurant to a horde of strangers' ridicule. And then there’s the image that sticks to him like a blood-sucking leech. Him, in a robe, messy hair, empty bedroom, holding onto a letter that proclaimed the dissolution to a story he didn’t want to end.

Jim didn’t like abrupt endings. He preferred ones that always lead to the prospect that more stories could unfold. Yet, here he is trapped in an abrupt ending. His wife had blocked his number. Within a night, it seemed all of her stuff had vanished from their home and there was also no trace of their undying love and devotion that Jim had spent years dedicating himself to. Although, maybe that had died so long ago and Jim just never noticed he was clinging to its rotting corpse.

Jim could feel the boat tipping over so he pulls harder on the rope and soon the anchor is up. He bolts over to the front of the boat, key in ignition, he turns it and drives off. The creature does not follow and Jim does not dare look back. Minutes pass, and Jim docks the boat and is back on land. He drives back home back to his house that’s haunted by the memories of happier times. Before he gets out of his car, he leans forward, head against the steering wheel as he takes a heavy breath.

His heavy breaths get shorter and shorter as tears fall from his eyes. His heart thumps against his chest, hands sweaty once again, and he feels himself crumbling on the inside.

It takes a long while for him to get out of the car. When he does, he takes slow steps to his house and once he’s inside of it he takes off his jacket and boots. He walks into the kitchen, hunger stirs in his belly so he makes himself a sandwich. Once it’s done, he heads to the kitchen table where the letter his wife left behind lies.

He doesn’t touch his sandwich as his eyes linger to his side where he expects to see Ruby reading the paper and wearing the gray reading glasses she insisted she doesn’t really need. Of course, she isn’t there but the ghost of her is a cruel haunting. He reaches past the sandwich and grabs the letter she wrote him off the table. He stares at his wife’s neat script. His eyes dwell on the last line reading it over and over.

_You’re not the man I fell in love with._