Das Boot

The story of a Caribbean boating excursion in the age of the American Reich

“Papa, can we go boating?”

“It’s dangerous, son, there is murder in the air.”

“But the weather is perfect. We can borrow Jose’s dad’s boat. I asked him.”

“He’ll want to bring about twenty more along for the ride.”

“So? It’s his boat.”

“That it is.”

“If we go fast enough, they can’t catch us.”

“Not true.”

“It only happened one time.”

“Eleven people dead, son. Including your Aunt Isabella.”

“I miss her so much. I loved her arepas. And her laugh when I hid her baseball cap.”

“Let me tell you a story about your Aunt Isabella.”

“Will it make me sad?”

“That depends on you, my son. We tell her stories to celebrate her life, not grieve her loss. It is our way of standing up to the cursed Reich of the North.”

“Okay. Tell me.”

“It is part of the story of how I met your mother.”

“Then it can’t be a sad story.”

“Indeed. That part of the story will be for another time. Well, then. Back in what we call the Before Times, I worked in a kitchen in the Reich. You know, before it was the Reich. Your aunt, she was a server at the same restaurant. This eventually led me to your mother, which, again, I will tell more about another day.”

“I didn’t know you lived in the Reich, Papa. Or that you met mother there.”

“I lived there for just a few months. We left when my brother, your Uncle Hermano, sold his salvage business in Key West. Oh, he has many salvaging stories about his days scavenging the Marquesas Keys, where he salvaged sunken ships, but I will leave those tales for him to tell you. Your Aunt Isabella, you know she had many gifts.”

“Yes, Papa.”

“One day, she served a restaurant customer — twitchy, with eyes, your aunt said, that looked like they were attached by a spring, bouncing this way and that. Well. She knew something was wrong, but of course, she had nothing to say to that. Not in a restaurant where she was tasked with simply presenting a plate of enchiladas.

“So, of course, that is what she did. But when she returned to collect the bill, the man’s friends were surrounding him as he lay on the restaurant floor. They were the only customers in the place at that hour. I guess it was late afternoon, before the dinner rush. I don’t know. That is how I remember the tale, though.

“She said that the man seemed to be snoring loudly, as if in a deep sleep, but his eyes were open, with pupils, she said, that looked like one of the tiniest black beads in her favorite bracelet.”

“Was it the food, Papa?”

“No, no, of course not. It was a heroin overdose. You see, the citizens of the Reich have an uncontrolled drug problem, so they blame us. This has always been so. Only recently have they chosen to randomly target our private pleasure craft in response to this epidemic of theirs.”

“Are they our enemies, Papa?”

“I hope not, my son. I hope they are merely experiencing a deep sickness from which they can recover.”

“Like an overdose?”

“Something like that. Well, anyway. Your aunt, she always carried Narcan spray. She never told me why. And I’ll never be able to ask her, now.”

“What is Narcan spray, Papa?”

“It is a medication you administer through the nose to an overdose patient.”

“Was she a drug user, Papa? She did not seem so.”

“No, no. Not at all. Perhaps she just knew that by living in the Reich, Narcan was something someone who works with the public should always have on their person.”

“And bulletproof vests, right Papa?”

“Indeed. Well, then. She saved the man’s life. If the Reich had blown up their boat before that, the man would have died, because your aunt Isabella would never have been there to administer the Narcan.”

“He lived?”

“He did. And he became the head of a big government agency.”

“Wow, Papa! That’s amazing. Which one?”

“Oh, I don’t know the name of it. Something to do with health and vaccines.”

“Papa?”

“Go on.”

“We are all connected, aren’t we? Can we go boating now?”

“Yes, my little genius, we can. We shall brave that great undertow created by the menace of the North.”

— Isabella Gutierrez: 1990-2025

Notes

Das Boot is German for “The Boat.” It’s also a movie about a German World War Two U-boat.

This is a work of fiction. We don’t know who was on that boat when the Trump regime murdered 11 people that it claimed were transporting drugs. We can’t know the veracity of the claims because there was no arrest, no trial.

Just an execution.

On September 15, 2025, the regime boasted of another extrajudicial murder.

There will be more.

In the 20th century, the United States created generations of terrorists through its forever wars in the Middle East. The murderous Trump regime is trying to do the same thing south of the border.

The United States has become a rogue state run by a cabal of child and sex traffickers. They won’t stop unless we make them.

Check your voter registration. Let’s win every seat in Congress, including the gerrymandered ones, and overthrow these monsters.

Thanks for reading!