There’s a knife at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. You probably won’t find it if you go dredging, but I’m pretty sure it’s there—been there, in decay—since February 2005. It was then that I was an Ensign on the USS Barry, an Arleigh-Burke destroyer.
If you were in or around the Indian Ocean at that time, you would have been talking about the aftermath of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that wreaked havoc on South Asia. The Barry and the rest of the carrier group were there to help clean up.
You would also be getting a daily debrief on the location of and persistent threat from Somali pirates. In the Operations briefing, the pirate slide came after the slide about weather, wave height, water temperature, and the likelihood of sharks.
If you were a new sailor deployed for the first time (like me), you would have become a Shellback late January as the Barry crossed the equator, the traditional celebration delayed because of schedule and port call changes. That first week of February, you might be competing in an Xbox tournament. For Valentine’s Day, you’d be enjoying ice cream in the chow hall. But by the end of February, all anyone would be talking about is where that knife was. One of the sailors was shanked while off duty and sleeping in his rack.
Of course, they turned that ship upside-down and sideways looking for the knife, but never found one.
The ocean hides so many things.
We dive for some of them here in this 154th issue of Flash Fiction Online. In our July 2026 selections, we find undersea horrors in “A Perfect Light” by Laura Duerr. We find messages from the dead in “Seastrand Beyond” by Anna Clark.
In “Kingdom of Steve” by Nick Badot, castaways discuss politics and friendship in the wake of a shipwreck.
In “Fragments Recovered from the Wreck of the Seaglass” by E.M. Linden, the only thing that survives is a journal and mysterious botanical samples.
Finally, we close this issue with “End of the World” by Nick Ekkizogloy. While not taking place in or by the sea, it stays on theme with a triptych about travel, belief, and mortality.
All of these things I questioned and poked at when on that ship. Surrounded completely by water, the sunsets were so all-encompassing it was like ringing the event horizon of heaven itself. It truly felt like the end of the earth.
I had to leave the USS Barry early, ferried across the ocean with the stabbing victim to an oiler bound for the port of Jebel Ali. The sailor and I were both sullen about our deployment being cut short. I’m sure he had plenty to think about—who he angered, could his injuries have been worse, where the Navy would send him next, etc.
For me, I was heading to my father’s deathbed. From the end of the world to the end of a life, I hoped I’d get there in time to say goodbye.
It was on this last ship-to-ship jaunt in the small boat, I nearly lost my USS Barry cap. I just barely caught it in the wind, saving it from the next swell. The sea could have easily swallowed it, tucked it away deep in its innards where a knife sank deeper and deeper.
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Ⓒ Rebecca Halsey