Upon learning, right before lunch, I was scheduled to stand the afternoon watch, I hurried up to the mess decks, only to find a long line. So I grabbed an orange, to tide me over till dinner, and raced up to the bridge where I was told to relieve the starboard lookout. Once up topside, I was informed by the last watch to keep a sharp lookout for any torpedoes—dummies, that is, of course—headed our way, for we were involved in an antisubmarine warfare exercise with the other ships in the fleet. Having donned the microphone and headset, I quickly scanned the surface of the water with my binoculars. However, I saw nothing that even remotely resembled a torpedo. Instead, I felt as if it were going to be just another one of those long boring watches, I had grown so used to standing by now.

How quickly I found myself sitting out in the middle of the ocean in a rowboat, or daydream, without any means to propel it. Suddenly, from out across the water, I heard a young girl scream for help, as she struggled to keep her head above water. Without thinking, I leapt out of the boat and ran across the surface of the water to save her. Having pulled her from the water, I carried her in my arms, back to the boat. As I stepped into the boat, it dawned on me that I’d just walked on water. Astounded, I put her down in the boat.

“Are you all right?“ I inquired.

“Yes,“ she replied. “I’ll be fine as soon as I catch my breath.“

“What’re you doin’ way out here, by yourself?“ I asked.

“I’ve been waiting for you to save me,“ she replied.

“I don’t understand,“ I declared. “Who are you, anyway?“

“I’m the little girl you left to drown some years ago,“ she answered. “Don’t you remember? You told your high school counselor about me.“

“Why that was just a story I made up,“ I responded, “to help me explain what I was feelin’ at the time.“

“No,“ she screamed. “It really happened—you left me to drown, choosing instead, to go off ’n’ play with your self.“

Momentarily struck speechless by the truth of her words, I wondered how what’d started out as make-believe could end up being so real.

“May I have a bite of your orange?“ she asked after a long pause.

“What orange?“ I muttered, for I still couldn’t believe all of this was really happening.

“The orange you have in your pocket,“ she replied.

“Of course!“ I exclaimed as I grabbed the orange and started to peel it. “How’d ya know I had an orange?“

“I’ve been waiting for you to peel it,“ she replied with a smile.

As I did so, I tossed the peelings over the side, completely unaware that, in reality, I was bombarding the Captain and the Officer of the Deck with them.

Suddenly, I heard the Captain scream, “Why hasn’t the starboard watch reported the torpedo approaching the Davidson off the starboard bow? I want that man relieved of his watch, immediately, goddamn it!“

I looked at the little girl in the boat, as she smiled at me with the most sympathetic look on her face. “You set me up for this, didn’t you?“ I demanded to know before she vanished.

As the rowboat sank beneath the surface of the water, I realized she had just torpedoed me again. If these were the sort of tricks the little sprite was going to play on me, no wonder I had been so reluctant to rescue her in the past.

“Are you all right?” inquired my guide.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said as I tried to regain my composure.

But I wasn’t all right, for I definitely heard what had sounded to me like a woman screaming out at the top of her lungs. And I hadn’t just imagined it either, because I heard the screaming again as I rounded the ASROC launcher, on the heels of my guide, to see one of the ship’s five-inch gun mounts. As the screaming increased in intensity, I felt as if someone were standing right next to me screaming in my ear. And since the others had not heard it, I reluctantly concluded the screaming had come from within my head, as a product of my imagination, I supposed, even though it had sounded so real to me.

The whole experience left me with more questions than it did answers. Who was this other within me, that she could manipulate reality in such a manner as to get me to hear screams which no one else heard? Why had I been the only one who had heard her screaming?