The happy shrieking of birds filled the air, the warm sun shone off the blue surface, and the calm endless expense of blue was heaven. The man gazed out across the ocean through his piercing eyes. He was heavily tanned, the reflection off his shirtless chest made him look like a bronze statue. The sweat dripped from the tips of his short black beard. It was a fine day, but the man sensed something was wrong, something unusual. He was an experienced sailor, the scars from his navy battles showed it. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. The deep blue desert was too calm. Then he noticed there were no birds shrieking. The silence had an air of death around it. Something was very wrong.

He climbed up the sails to get a better vantage point. His hawk eyes flew across the expanse of the ocean and spotted something he had never seen before. Blackness covered the horizon, a black death was coming. He froze; never had he frozen when bullets flew past his head or when cannon fire shook the ground underneath him. But he froze, and he felt a feeling that he never experienced before… fear. It was coming and he had nothing to do about it. He was a sitting duck. The battle torn sailor stood at stern of his fishing boat and stared at the demon that was coming. Fear and awe kept him rooted to the ground with an open mouth. By the time he woke up to his senses the storm churned over him. Ice water shot threw his nerves as the waves pounded up against the ancient boat. He looked at the sky one last time and swore.

His muscular body heaved at the sails to get him facing the waves to prevent getting tipped over. He was a one man crew, everywhere at once. Then rain came and flew through the air at the speed of bullets. They stung at the man’s bronze skin like bees. Nothing he wasn’t exposed to before. It was hard to keep the eyes open. Wave after wave shook the boat like a rocking chair. Gallons of water poured over the sides and hit the man. But he stayed up, not shaken by the deadly wind or the stinging rain. He stood alone against the elements and hoped for the best.

Then rays of light broke through the clouds and gleamed off the boats hull. A rainbow appeared through the mist. The water calmed down to a flat surface and reflected the light into the man’s eyes making him squint. He opened his piercing eyes and gazed up. Open sky, not a cloud. Then he looked back down with a face of intense sorrow knowing exactly what was happening. The eye of the storm. He looked ahead and saw a wall of deep blue, accompanied with its comrade, the lightning filled storm clouds. The wall of blue flew toward the little boat with such intense force that people on the moon would have heard the crack of the boats hull. The man just stood there and stared at his death with his piercing green eyes. This time he would be taken by his old friend Death, never to elude it again.