#TheQuackin

[eternallyrecurring]

A cold wind blew over the harbor the day we released The Quackin. Smitty lit a cigarette next to me and took a long drag, the kind that left a lingering burn.

“It’s going to be the death of us all,” he said, spitting on the ground. Cigarette smoke hung in the air between us. “Mark my words. Death of us all.”

I didn’t have the heart to speak my agreement. The bastards designed The Quackin as a last ditch effort to create the dankest boat-related meme.

I imagined some scientist in a lab somewhere asking, “What two things can we combine to make tug boats seem relevant?”

To which another scientist, perhaps someone with the wispy beginnings of a combover, replied, “It needs to be something majestic--something that gets a lot of attention.”

“Rubber ducks,” said the first. “If you combine cats and rubber ducks you get something vastly more than the some of its parts. It defies the laws of conservation of energy, like a perpetual motion machine.”

So those sumbitches did it. They combined tug boats and rubber ducks.

Smitty pushed away from the boathouse overlooking the river, shaking his head. “Giant rubber ducks, man. The hubris.”

As he walked toward the quay to board his own small fishing vessel he tossed his butt into the water. “You comin’?”

I took one last look at The Quackin, never guessing that I’d never see that harbor again.