Six Months in the Dark

Petty Officer Brent Young stepped out into the sunshine.

It was like hitting a wall made of light and fire. Six months underwater had turned his skin pale, his eyes sensitive, and his soul a little darker. The sky—obnoxiously bright and impossibly blue—offended him. He shielded his eyes, squinted, bared his teeth, and hissed like a vampire climbing out of a crypt.

“Whoa!” laughed Gonzalez behind him, emerging next from the sub’s hatch. “We got a Dracula over here!”

“You alright, Young?” piped up Henders, already halfway down the gangplank. “Should we throw a blanket over you before you burst into flames?”

Young flipped them both off and muttered, “I wasn’t ready for this level of aggression from the sky.”

The jokes kept coming as the rest of the crew disembarked, sea bags slung over shoulders, boots hitting the pier like thunder. Submariners were a strange breed. You had to be, to live in a pressurized metal tube miles beneath the surface, breathing recycled air, eating rehydrated slop, and never once seeing the sun.

But stepping out of the darkness… that first hit of daylight after half a year felt almost religious. Like resurrection.

Even if it came with teasing.

“Someone get this man a pair of vampire shades!” yelled Salazar, one of the sonar techs, tossing his extra pair of sunglasses in Young’s direction.

Young caught them clumsily, slid them on, and sighed in relief. “Better,” he admitted.

They had docked at Pearl, their final stop before dispersing. Half the crew would head to the mainland, some back to Norfolk, others to family in California. Young had nowhere urgent to be, so he booked a few nights in Waikiki. He needed air. He needed space.

He needed to remember who he was before months of “Battle Stations,” “Lights Out,” and a monotonous chorus of “Hey, did you eat the last pudding?”

His first night back on land, Brent ordered a cheeseburger the size of his head and ate it at an open-air bar under real stars. No filtered periscope. No sonar pings. Just the ocean’s whisper and ukulele chords drifting from a nearby hotel band.

He closed his eyes and let the salt air wrap around him.

And for a moment, he didn’t feel like a ghost.

It took a few days to fully shake the sub off.

The first morning he woke up in his hotel bed, he sat bolt upright, heart pounding, thinking he'd overslept for watch. In the mirror, he caught himself scanning corners for water leaks and circuit faults. He even caught himself knocking on the bathroom pipe to check for corrosion. Old habits died hard.

It was on the fourth morning—after a jog down the beach and a spontaneous plunge into the Pacific—that Brent finally exhaled.

“I’m not under anymore,” he whispered.

His phone buzzed in his shorts pocket. It was a message from Gonzalez:

“Luau at 6. Wear the loudest shirt you can find or be dishonorably roasted. No excuses.”

He grinned.

At the luau, they drank too much, laughed too hard, and danced poorly. Gonzalez wore a shirt with flamingos surfing on pineapples. Salazar brought a date—someone he met at the coffee stand that morning—and wouldn’t stop bragging about his “civilian game.”

Henders got up to do the hula and sprained his pride.

Young just sat back, taking it in, letting the music work through his limbs, uncoiling knots he didn’t know he’d been carrying. It was strange how little things felt extraordinary after so long underwater—wind in your hair, strangers laughing, fresh food.

He looked at his friends, loud and alive. He saw how much they needed this too. Not just the sun or the surf, but the freedom to be fully human again.

That night, alone in his hotel room, Brent stared at the ceiling fan and thought of what he hadn’t told anyone.

He’d been having the dream again.

It started in the control room, always quiet, always wrong. No sounds. No creaking hull. Just silence. Then the water would come—slow at first, then crashing. And he would be the only one to notice, the only one to scream. But no one moved. They never did.

The dream always ended the same way: Brent floating in the dark, not sure whether he’d drowned or just drifted away.

He didn’t mention it during the post-deployment psych eval. He passed all the boxes, cracked all the right jokes. But that dream gnawed at him.

Because it wasn’t just a dream. It was memory.

One night, three months into deployment, something had gone wrong. A coolant leak, fast and dangerous. They’d sealed it off, patched it up, and reported it as “resolved.” But for five minutes, Brent had thought they were going to die. He remembered the look in the XO’s eyes. That silent prayer.

No one talked about it again.

And maybe that was why it haunted him.

The next morning, Young joined Gonzalez for a hike up Diamond Head. The trail was steep, the sun relentless. But the view from the top—God, that view.

“You ever wonder why we do it?” Gonzalez asked, wiping sweat from his brow.

“What? Hike volcanoes with raging hangovers?”

Gonzalez chuckled. “No. Submarines. Why do we keep going back?”

Young took a long sip from his water bottle, then looked out over the sparkling blue ocean.

“Because somebody has to,” he said. “And because… we’re the kind of people who can.”

He didn’t mention the dream. But Gonzalez didn’t ask either. Maybe he had his own.

The last night in Hawaii, the crew met one last time—those who hadn’t flown out yet. They found a quiet beach, built a fire, and passed around a bottle of whiskey they weren’t technically allowed to have.

Salazar played an acoustic guitar. Gonzalez roasted marshmallows with military precision. Henders fell asleep sitting up.

Young stood apart from them for a bit, feet in the surf, head tilted to the stars.

He wondered if the ocean missed them already.

“Hey,” came a voice behind him. It was Lieutenant Commander Park, their XO. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” Brent said, not looking away from the waves. “Just… enjoying not being inside a can.”

Park gave a short laugh. “I get that. It’s weird, isn’t it? How fast we forget how unnatural it is. Six months down there and it starts to feel normal.”

Young nodded.

“Listen,” Park continued, “I know what happened during the coolant leak. I know it rattled you.”

Young’s jaw tensed, but he didn’t say anything.

“You handled it. You kept your head. Not everyone did.”

“Doesn’t feel like it matters,” Brent said. “No medals for not panicking.”

“No,” Park said, stepping up beside him. “But it matters to me. And to the rest of the crew. You were solid. And I don’t say that lightly.”

Brent looked at the XO then, saw the sincerity in his eyes. Maybe that was enough. Maybe that was what he needed.

“Thanks, sir.”

“You planning to re-up?” Park asked.

Brent hesitated. “I don’t know yet.”

“Well,” Park said, “whether you do or not—don’t stay in the dark too long.”

With that, he left Brent to the surf.

Three weeks later, Brent was home in Seattle. His apartment was exactly as he left it—dusty, quiet, a little too still.

He opened the windows, let in the air. He donated the old couch, repainted the walls, and even bought real food for the first time in ages. Fresh tomatoes. Eggs. Milk that didn’t come in a box.

He went to the VA center for a follow-up. Signed up for therapy. Told the doc about the dream.

He didn’t reenlist. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

But he did take walks again. Every morning, rain or shine. Just to remind himself there was a world above sea level.

And on one such morning, when the clouds broke and the sun finally peeked out after a long stretch of drizzle, Brent stepped outside, tilted his head up, and smiled.

He didn’t hiss this time.

He let the light hit his face.