The Psychic's Disappointment

I looked into his mind, and saw a calm sea dotted with scores of ghost ships. The unmanned derelicts rocked or spun languidly in the utter, windless silence. They had not been broken by whatever apocalypse had emptied the world; the weathered planks and tattered sails had reached their state of distress in a preceding age. All the stranger, they had not been abandoned long ago, no--smoking cigars and dropped straights and flushes all indicated the exodus was new, swift, and merciless in efficiency. They were a child's toys left to bob in the dusk after a mother has called him home. They were New Year's corks slowly bloating in the sink. I had not even the will to ask why. And did not foresee his alien knife, trained for my moment of deepest meditation.