Subplanted
Captain Rosenbaum had grown to resent his plant. Despite repeated attempts on its life, it remained green and vibrant out of what could only be hate and spite. Each morning he would wake up, stumble out of his bunk, and swear violently at whatever gods he could think of of until the coffee perked. And each morning despite the constant and attentive neglect, lack of water, and persistent darkness the small artichoke plant remained among the living. Rosenbaum was considering taking away its soil next.
The good Captain was on day 387 of his tour on this forsaken u-boat and quite honestly he was finding it hard to give a crap about his job. Between the stench of the crew, the bad hours, and the executive officer’s Jack Benny fetish, it had worn away any sense of duty Rosenbaum might have once had. Now he spent his days prowling the Atlantic ocean trying to find an Allied ship with the balls to put him out of his misery. Other u-boat crews had life expectancies measured in weeks, but he was cursed with the luck of the damned. He didn’t care. Soon his tour will be over and he would be free of this existence and the damnable plant.
“Herr Captain?” asked the sailor who had knocked and then entered his commanding officer’s quarters. He was young but had learned that it was pointless to wait for permission that never was going to come. A bright lad, it had only taken him 3 days before he started coming armed with a shield of some type. Rosenbaum made a slurred attempt at the German language before throwing anything bottle-shaped in the poor sailor’s direction. After 15 minuies, the Captain gave up his attempts to repel the intruder and surrendered.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Breakfast, sir” said the sailor and set the tray down on the table before beating a hasty retreat. Rosenbaum groaned, scratched various bits of himself, and parked his carcass in front of this morning delivery. He was having brown to eat again. The drink was brown. The entree was brown with a somewhat glazey looking brown sauce over it. It wasn’t identifiable as anything in particular anymore. It simply tasted brown.
The food wasn’t the only brown that arrived this morning. Sitting next to the tray was a manilla folder left by the sailor. It was the same creased and abused folder that had been used to hold all official communications from the radio operator since they put to sea. He poked at it with his fork until it surrendered the lone piece of paper inside of it. A paper whose sole purpose in this world was to inform him that due to a shortage of experienced u-boat captains, his tour had been extended for another six months.
Rosenbaum pulled out his service revolver and shot his plant.
Copyright 2007, JJ Kahrs