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The Houseboat



Estimated reading time — 2 minutes

In a private terminal at the Port of Boston, there is a houseboat. This houseboat has been anchored there, permanently, for at least 50 years. The eccentric owner has maintained all fees and taxes and is in good standing with the Port Authority.

Still, even if the owner wasn’t financially responsible, no one would ask them to depart. Despite the owner’s friendly, hospitable, if odd nature, there is a persistent air of unease around the boat and the area of the Port surrounding.

Very few people have taken the owner up on offers of hospitality, but those who do recount a wholly unbelievable tale: When you step into the houseboat, it’s as if you’re sent backward 50 years in time. Looking out windows depicts a cityscape of antiquity and the television receives live broadcasts of programs of the era (including news programs). If you look out the open door, you see the city as it stands today. When the door closes, you can see the 50-year-old skyline through the port opening.

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Some visitors who spend time with the owner notice something particularly disturbing: an almost uncanny resemblance to their host, despite obvious age differences. Though this is odd, the owner is friendly and trustworthy (ignoring the air of unease most feel), so it isn’t surprising if casual friendships build between a guest and the proprietor.

All this would, of course, be very strange and worthy of note, but dismissed as some form of elaborate hoax or illusion, if it weren’t for one additional detail. Whenever someone elects to spend the night in this houseboat after an evening of conversation and a few drinks, they are never heard from again.

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When the guest awakens in the morning, the owner is nowhere to be found and suddenly, the city skyline never changes back to its contemporary appearance when exiting the boat. Under the bed there is a briefcase full of $100 bills with a letter stapled to a list.

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The letter simply reads, “You have 50 years to follow these instructions if you wish to free yourself from this hell. The clock is ticking. Get to work.”

CREDIT: Anonymous

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42 thoughts on “The Houseboat”

  1. You all are talking about “oh yeah free cash, I’m gonna invest it in the market” but remember you have to follow FOR 50 YEARS some instructions. You will be bond to this premise a silent curse of someone you don’t really know who or what it is. I do get the creepy part, I’d be making things that maybe I won’t like, I’d loose all my friends and family and I would finish (If I can do all the tasks) in a year with a new set of people and maybe with things that are pretty different from what I was obliged to left behind… The creepy part is the losing of your willing and freedom

  2. Oh.. I get it! The owner resembles you because he IS you – you 50 years older. It’s like a continuous loop. 50 years have passed so the owner is finally able to get out of “hell”, only for it to start all over again with the younger you. 50 years later you’d be just like the owner and a younger version of you will come on the boat, just like you did.
    I love this :3

  3. So wait one minute. The visitor looks like the host. So that makes the host the visitor? But you never free yourself maybe? Bah. Time travel.

  4. isn’t it obvious that this is some sort of alternate 1950s universe? hence the Hell description. and you have certain tasks to complete within 50 years, more than likely referring to the money you were left. overall i liked this one a lot

  5. Living through the fifties and beyond?

    The fashion! The opportunities! The being one hell of a lot taller/skinnier than all the other girls! Yay. [:

  6. i know the answer !!!! peoples ,,, you have luer another person onto the boat and then they will be the boat ceeper freeing you!!……… well its just a theory….. take from this story what you will.

  7. @ Miss Nemo: If time just reset itself you could do a helluva a lot of stuff. Like what if you died? Would it just reset itself yet again? Like another chance to live? Hell I’d live in so many ways. ^w^

  8. You know….the only thing I can think of being hellish about this scenariois the knowledge that I’d have to trick my past self into getting stuck in the 50s. Because clearly my being in the 50’s wouldn’t have any bearing on past history (like somehow cause a butterfly effect-esque ripple that results in the Cold War exploding into a nuclear holocaust). Besides, getting to witness the evolution of rock and roll, witnessing the rise of civil rights (hell, maybe even taking part in the marches), and investing in the stock market during an upswing doesn’t sound toobad to me. Plus, I’d get to watch the Twilight Zone before it was reruns

  9. omg imagine if i went im black. me? black? female in the 50s? id be dancing with tracy turnblad trying to get tv intergrated oh noooo…. it is hell or….id be richer than oprah….yea buddy :D

  10. retardedsmurfunderyourbed

    @ person above me (anonymous) i agree be cause he sent you 50 years behind so you have to do that exact same thing creating a time paradox making it impossible to get out of so now you live forever making it a living hell
    and you have to pay boat payments for ever

  11. The owner of the boat is you, the instructions would surely say, “In 50 years time you will greet yourself, and invite yourself into the boat.”

  12. #4 no you dont get it. The “hell” is being stuck in the 50’s, which as many people have pointed out…isnt.

    Shit, with the technological knowledge and money and future knowledge, you could totally make a Fallout world.

  13. you know, I think it would be cool if in the last line of the story it says “On the list is every single major disaster or catastrophe that’s happened for the last 50 years…”

  14. You are the man on the boat, forever trapped in time, in 50 years the cycle will start again. Perhaps the note refers to inviting yourself to the boat, perhaps to getting something done before that time, I don´t get the ´hell´ part either.

    The dollars are there to pay the bills.

  15. i wouldn’t stay in a boat if when i looked out the window stuff was from 50 years ago.
    and if the owner of the boat looks like you only older, wadya think that means?!
    and thanks but no thanks boat owner but i don’t want to have tea or listen to your tales or spend the night…=\

    come on ><

  16. I’d be betting that if I started to go off and do my own thing, bad stuff would happen to me. I’d stick with the boat.

  17. I’d probably be dead in 50 years, with knowledge of past events I could be very powerful ala Back to the Future 2. Sounds like Heaven.

  18. you guys aren’t getting the scary. it implies something hellish in your future there- obviously not the money. u_u so what if you live like a king for 50 years- then what? what if time just resets itself until you complete the tasks? what if you’re punished, instead, at the end for not completing them?

  19. okay. so this friendly dude not only leaves me a case full of cash for free, but sends me back in time..hmm.. living through the 70’s and 80’s as well as being fucking rich seems more like heaven to me. if made that happen to me, i’d build him a statue!

  20. So let me get this straight? I get sent to 1950 with a briefcase full of hundred dollar bills? HOW is that hell? That’d be like several million dollars in “today’s” money, you could live like a king for 50 years and say screw whatever the instructions are, not to mention you could make a fortune on the stock market or sports betting. 50 grand invested in microsoft in 1980 would be 10’s of millions by 2008 I bet.

    1. Based off of the size of a 1950’s hundred dollar bill it would be more. The sizes of this at rough but a bill is about 6x2x.004 inches. Let’s say your breifcase is 2ft by 18 inches by 4 inches. Thats not unfathomably large. It takes roughly 233 100$ bills to make an inch thick stack, 932 100$ bills for a 4 inch stack. with that size breifcase you would be able to have 4 stacks across and 9 stacks down. 932x4x9 33,552 100$ bills, roughly equaling 3.3 million dollars give or take .2 or so million for error. That would be 3 million about in cold hard cash in 1950. Who needs to invest, you’re fuckin loaded.

    2. but no internet though… no portable phones either, thats a modern day hell, not traditional but still pretty bad, i mean what will you do? actually go outside? *Scough* or read a book ha!

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