reichblr-ficathon:

Nowadays I only look in the mirror to shave, which is an unusual habit aboard a submarine, but I can not stand having a seaman’s beard. I have tried. It’s itchy and scratchy and I hate the way it makes me look, like a mangy mole. Sometimes I fail to recognize the man staring back at me out of the mirror. He looks like a stage actor, covered in white powder, devoid of any colour except for the red around the eyes, which looks all the more sickly for the contrast. I brush my teeth, I spit out blood, I shave, I go to my bunk and I can not sleep. I calculate the amount of water over my head. 182 metres, 182000 litres, 18.86 bar, 192.33 tonnes lie in wait for a mistake, a malfunction, a crack in the hull, waiting patiently to cave my brain in. I can not sleep. Johann and Fritz and Wilhelm are playing cards 1.43 metres away from my cortex. Johann talks about his father’s farm, green fields, white sheep, the shore and the sea. I can’t stand his nasal voice, I can’t stand his inflection, or that he laughs like a goat, and when he combs his fingers through his greasy hair, scratching the scalp with a grating noise. I turn around and face the wall. Behind it is an endless ocean and I can hear it. My bones hurt. The bed is too hard, the walls are too close, I can not sleep. I get up, squeeze past my lounging comrades and I work my shift. There is surprising strength still in my body. I feel better than ever, exhilarated. I follow my orders, I work the engine. The pistons resound through my body. My bones vibrate. Their rhythm becomes my heartbeat, going faster and faster, speeding at 17.2 knots. Afterwards I make a poor job of washing the oil off my hands. Although I am not hungry I eat. I get reprimanded for the dirt under my nails and wash them again, scratching, scratching down to the flesh. I watch that hollow fellow in the mirror. I brush my teeth, I spit out blood, I shave, I go to my bunk and I can not sleep. When I put my ear to the hull I can hear the sonar echoing through the ocean. When will our calls be answered? When will they rip this casket open and sink us to the dark depths? What a great relief it would be if the hull squeezed us to a pulp and spat our juicy remains out into the salt of the sea. I still can not sleep.

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