“Some delicious soup might teach you at least one decent recipe too,” said Jane.
Dread, dread, dread. The forest is dark and full of autumn, chewed over by winter frosts and snows. There is a crunch to it as the sun sets behind the traveller making her way up the mountainside to the refuge and a warm, thick stew.
Some wolves are howling far away but still too close. Karen’s mountain hike dips, losing valuable ascent but she pushes on. The day is leaving. It’s getting dark. It’s been 12 hours since she set out from the town this morning. She walked out past the graveyard, the bar, the tourist office and the mayor’s house. Her friend, Jane, was walking with her.
The last time they’d walked together had been on the same hike but a year previously. They’d gone in the winter, in January, because that was the only time they could take off from their jobs: Karen in catering. Jane as a lawyer. They’d walked and talked about their lives. Long, involved conversations fuelled by the rhythm of their breathing, the steady beating of their hearts and the contentment of taking measured step after step with a destination and return planned and available. Ups and downs and winter birds singing around them. The pine trees’ scent, the wind in the needles above and around them.
Finally an ascent regained some of the lost height. They met a hilariously blond Swedish family coming the other direction along the sandy path: mother, father, teenage son and daughter. Tall, slim, smiling. They’d shared information about each other’s routes, drank some water. Apparently there was an ancient monastery carved into the valley side just a few kilometres ahead. A step ladder of sorts carved into the side too. The monks were the jolly kind, happy to meet and feed travellers with a vegetable broth that was absolutely delicious according to the nodding Swedes.
Jane and Karen had time. They decided to visit.
“Some spiritual enlightenment would be just the thing for a lawyer”, said Karen.
“Some delicious soup might teach you at least one decent recipe too,” said Jane.
They walked, and a few kilometres later they wandered down into the valley. Looking up into the wan winter sun they saw the monastery and carved stepladder. Steep. Steep. Steep. But the building looked amazing. White, vertical, calm, beautifully simple.
“After you”, Jane told Karen as the drizzle began to slick the steps.
“Let’s get in there before the rain really starts.”
As they climbed they chatted about the state of the world and how Jane’s marriage had finally turned the corner after her second, agonising miscarriage. She’d decided not to pursue children any further. Her husband, Craig – a teacher at an inner city state school – had taken that badly at first. He’d fought hard against it, looking for reasons and reason. Then he moved to self-blame and then to self-hate, then to hating her, then to hating everything.
They’d nearly separated after seven years of relatively untroubled togetherness because of the kids they never had.
Up they climbed. Nothing more than a dampening, slickening drizzle to mar the day. Half way up they stopped on a platform and looked over the valley.
“My god doesn’t it look brilliant from all the way up here?” said Karen. Jane nodded. She looked up. Not far now. Delicious soup. Maybe they might overnight with the monks?
“It’s not going to come to us. Let’s go. You first”, Jane prompted. They set off again in good spirits and then Jane fell.
On the approach to the foot of the mountain, on a needless detour to an ancient monastery carved into the valley side. Jane fell.
She fell maybe two metres onto the platform. Where she bounced due to her day pack. She bounced and then rolled, and she saw the platform disappearing in front of her. Terminal velocity in seven seconds. Jane fell and Karen didn’t realise for five seconds. Karen turned and stopped breathing as she watched Jane scrabbling to get a grip on the wet floor of the two metre-square platform.
Jane fell. She died. Right there. Right then.
That was a year ago.
Now Karen walks on with Jane beside her, inside and ahead of her. She isn’t going to the valley. There haven’t been any more pointless detours in the past year. She is completing the hike as they’d planned on the flight over and then the train journey to the small town where they’d stayed the night before the hike, and where they’d intended to stay the night after the descent.
In the left breast pocket of her technical top was a photograph, a piece of cloth, a tealight and a cigarette lighter.
She is going to have a small ceremony, find a memento and take it back: a pebble, a flower, anything, something. Karen keeps walking, thinking about her friend. She walks to the place where they’d met the lovely Swedish family and instead of taking a right turn a few kilometres later she walks straight on. Up and down. On up to the refuge. Thinking of Jane. Thinking of getting home and getting on with life. Not thinking about death.
She loves Jane and she always will. Jane is her sister. Jane fell and there was no reason for it.
The noodles would slip down and fill his stomach, taking away the humiliation he felt at being in debt to his own daughter.
February 9th #1
Finding the bird was easier than Leeland had imagined. He’d picked it up by the war memorial near the park. He’d taken it from its nest to replace the one he’d bought the day after his daughter’s conviction. He called it Lucy-Doosey the Third. Once he had got it back to the house, he looked after it as well as he could.
There was, of course, only one way to steady the old hands: a shower, then some noodles and a mug of something. He sorted the first, quick and cold, scraping away a week’s worth of night sweats and smoke from his hard, inflexible, old self with a rough cloth and some dishwashing liquid.
He waddled to his bedroom where he packed an old, off white Adidas sports bag with two shirts, a pair of khaki shorts, three passports, and an oilskin (the first one that came to hand). He wrapped a parcel and a block of cash. He’d buy a phone and some new clothes on the way to the airport.
Throwing the main fuse – the stuff in the fridge and the freezer didn’t matter any more, he stood on the top step outside the front door and looked back into the room. He sniffed and pulled the door shut, locked it, threw the keys under the mat and turned away into the mist and traffic of another October morning. Despite the mist it was bright out there. Then again, he thought, most everywhere was bright compared to that apartment.
He planned to eat noodle soup. Pho they called it, pronounced ‘Fa’. He’d learned after having called it ‘Foe’ for years. He would eat it on a formica-topped table in a Vietnamese cafe around the corner. It was run by a tall, tall man. It was up a flight of stairs. He would be seated at the table at the back near where an old man sat next to a massive pot in which they made the broth base for the Fa. The tall man had told him about this one night as they both sipped from cheap, bottled beer and the lights outside in the street came on.
Lots of basil, he thought.
Lots of fresh chilli.
He sped up, going nearly as fast as his chubby legs and smoker’s lungs would allow. Lots of chilli, lots of meat, some lung, some tripe and lots of fat noodles.
A mug of rum and coffee, maybe even a glass of that salty lemon/sour plum drink. Stuff to look forward to. He’d be fine after that, not only would his hands stop shaking, so would his view of what he’d agreed to do.
That bird had died, of course it had.
The noodles would slip down and fill his stomach, taking away the humiliation he felt at being in debt to his own daughter. Something to look forward to indeed. Finally being free of a debt that he shouldn’t have owed. Whichever way he looked at it – and as a man of zero honour, he had to have plenty of viewpoints – he should just have moved on.
He opened the door and stepped into the cafe, salivating and ready. Once he’d consumed this rich and sustaining breakfast he’d go about getting a gun.
Feb 10th #1
Lucy walked around the kitchen. She walked and walked. She walked around the lounge room. It wasn’t her room in her house any more, it was just a room in a house with two big, ugly capital “AYs”.
Changes had been made, to increase salability maybe? It was cold and impersonal, without things in sight. No books or magazines or things. There were photographs at strategic points. To her it felt temporary, not the home it had once been. It offered no clues as to why she had been summoned.
She made do with one of the warm, cheap bottled beers she had brought with her, and went into the garden where she sat waiting for them.
Finally, two people came out. They had fitted doors to the garden from the kitchen. What an idea. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Lucy. We had a lot of preparation to do.” It felt to her as if they were saying it in unison like a well rehearsed choir. Sickening.
She studied them closely as they walked towards her. They looked much the same as they had last time they’d all met. Perhaps a bit weathered but it had been years. Her ex-husband, Bob and his new (not new) wife, Pauline.
The beer helped take the edge off her anxiety and anger.
“Why have you asked me here? What do you want?”, she asked, feeling for the key and vaping pen in her skirt pocket.
Bob put the plates on the table in front of her, gave her a, “Are you okay?”, look. As if. As if she was and he cared.
Pauline sat down in the slatted, beautifully pre-battered summer chair and smiled. She had a large, dimpled wooden bowl of salad on her hands. She put it on the table. She reached out for Bob’s hand and Bob looked happy.
For no possible reason other than spite, Pauline said, “We’re so happy together”. So weird.
Lucy balled her hands in a tight fist on her lap. She smiled. Then she actually said, “It’s nice to be happy”.
The other woman’s reply didn’t matter. Lucy drank some more beer and wondered idly what the first best way of hurting Bob might be: a bullet in the back of Pauline’s head maybe?
“Yes it is”, Pauline replied not having expected that response from the dried up, bitter and obviously lonely and unhappy woman.
Lucy felt weary all of a sudden. Old memories like jellyfish tentacles, liable to sting, nearly visible, horribly long, coming up from the depths.
Bloody Bob and Pauline. Bloody happiness. Fuckers.
“Have some salad, Lucy.” Pauline gestured towards the bowl she’d placed on the table.
“I’d rather not,” she replied. “I have an intolerance.”
Bob’s face made an insipid, “Oh poor you” expression.
Pauline shrugged.
“Look Lucy, this isn’t easy for us either. I know you probably still hate us,” Bob’s already pathetic voice tailed off as she looked to Pauline for help.
“You said it”, Lucy.
Bob piped up, ”But we have to come to some sort of arrangement regarding Charlie.”
“You’ve got the bloody house Bob, what more do you want?”
“Charlie needs a stable family, Lucy”, stated Pauline as a fact that she considered no one else had yet noticed.
“You’ve been in prison, you need time to reacclimate to the modern world”, said Bob.
“Fucking hell, Bob, it was only five years. I’m not the Count of Monte fucking Cristo. And I was in there for you! For our family.”
Bob drummed his fingers on the table. Empty wine and water glasses rattled.
“That’s not the issue now though. Our son is. His well being is. That’s why Pauline and I want to formalise things.”
“That’s why we are adopting Charlie”, said Pauline.
“And Pauline will be another of his mothers”, simpered Bob.
Pauline nodded like artillery.
Feb 10th #2
Lucy had ended up in jail because she was stupid. That’s the word she used. White collar, fall for it, protect your man, stupid… jail.
Jail? Don’t fuck with the fine language. Stupid. Prison. She breathed in. She took some salad. She hit Pauline full in the face, she hit her with her balled fist. She wanted to cave her head in.
Bob, as usual, did not know where to look or what to do.
Meat started smoking on the heat of the barbecue.
Lucy waited for the other two to do something.
“You fucking whore!” screamed Pauline. She jumped up, spoon in hand, ready for action. Lucy hit her in the throat, flat of the hand. Bob was in what he would have called “a tizz”. This had suddenly become very untidy indeed. Pauline fell like a city centre tower, clawing at her throat, trying to breathe.
Five years for him. Now out of prison and it was a cold and shitty world. Lucy, looked at Bob who was kneeling over Pauline. Lucy spat down, turned on her heels, went indoors, upstairs, and into Charlie’s room. Of course, Bob had made sure that Charlie wasn’t in this house.
Lucy went into what had been their bedroom, shut the door, leant a chair under the handle and sat on the bed. This wasn’t helping. She looked at the phone by the bed. She looked out of the window onto the wide, safe, road. She removed the chair and felt in her bag for what she knew was in there, just to make sure. Where the fuck was he? He wasn’t there. Again.
She threw the keys out of the window so that they landed on the driveway.
9th Feb #2
Leeland woke up from a nap, he coughed. He’d been coughing for days. Too many cigarettes, too much booze, too many drugs, and all that interminable time on his hands. Cancer probably too.
The phone rang. It never rang.
His hands shook as he pushed away the bird feed, bottles and pornography to locate the receiver.
“Yeah?”
“Dad, it’s Lucy.”
He was only mildly surprised.
“Lucy-Doosey the first”, he said. “Well now. I hoped you wouldn’t need to call me.”
“I know,” her voice sounded shaky, “I need to call in that favour.”
He laughed. Then realised what she wanted from him. What he’d promised to do but only if she asked him.
“OK Lucy-Doosey, OK.”
“Tomorrow. My house. Our house. His house. Their house”, she hung up.
Leeland drank deeply from the bottle and turned his thoughts to the task ahead. He picked up the bird feed and opened the cage. He’d leave as soon as his hands were steady enough to drive.
“Can’t leave you to starve,” he muttered and reached for the bird, shaking fingers snapping its neck like a winter hawthorn twig.
He’d probably be gone a while.
Feb 10 #3
Lucy came down to the kitchen. Bob was, as usual, looking for God to descend and make it all better.
Pauline had recovered and was looking so pissed off. Lucy had to laugh.
“Pauline, you look absurdly fucked up.”
“I will kill you, girl. I will – Jesus this hurts.” She felt her throat and grimaced. She was scared, Lucy could tell.
“Bob, why don’t you do something?!” she screamed at him. He sat down in a damp mess looking more like a bag of washing than a man.
“What? What should I do?”
Lucy thought of her child, thought of Charlie, as she looked at the couple. Then she thought about the hell-strike she’d just called in. She almost fainted, at least she imagined that’s how almost fainting probably felt. It was quite pleasurable. In prison if you fainted, well, the cycle of gaining your self-respect started again. She’d only ever seen two women, only one got up. She’d seen one thousand girls faint though.
A car pulled up outside the house, coughing its guts out. A car door slammed shut. Slow, unsteady footsteps, and the front door was unlocked and pushed open. Then the door into the kitchen opened.
She was reminded of prison and her sacrifice for Bob. She smiled and said, “Goodbye”, as her father walked in.
“Charlie’s in the car, waiting”, he said as Lucy walked past him. She pecked him on the cheek.
“You don’t look so good, Dad. We’ll fix that”, she shut the door behind her and went to wait with Charlie in the car.
Good old snake-hips, author of Confessio, and a much more nervous man than you’d expect.
He stole the car. He stole the car and crashed it into the fence and died and went to heaven and came back because it wasn’t his time or because there wasn’t enough room there or in the other place. Whatever the reason Tom ‘Bopper’ Keys came back, yes.
Tom ‘Bopper’ Keys was returned unto the earthly Earth. That much was certain.
“You will find it all rather difficult I’m afraid. Going back will be confusing, but we’ve decided that, as most of this was our fault, we’re going to remove your sense of fear as a bonus”, explained his rather forlorn and embarrassed spirit guide. No names, no pack drill.
It was St Patrick, of course. Good old snake-hips Pádraig, author of Confessio, and a much more nervous man than you’d expect.
“Oh, righto, no worries then, cheers”, said Tom looking from purgatory into the world and not seeing much of it.
“Is it working yet?”
“No, not yet, it won’t start working until you’re back on earth.”
Then Boom! There he was, inside a box, under the ground, with only foetid air. He was returned again but not born again.
“Bugger it,” he considered as he began scratching languorously as his new ceiling panel, “Bugger it, this is going to take some time,” he continued.
“You’re not afraid though, are you?”, queried Saint Pat.
“No, no I’m not.”
“Right-ho. No worries then. I’ll look in on you after tea. Take care now.”
I’ve heard of thousand dollar bottles, dug from a Napoleonic cellars over which a shopping mall was soon to rise.
The thing about expensive wine, by which I mean wine that costs more than $200 a bottle, is that I can’t imagine anybody slooshing its dregs down the sink at the end of an evening.
To my mind, $10 worth of Château De Plume du Plom at the bottom of a glass heading for the waste disposal of a stainless steel kitchen sink is an image of pure sadness.
Of course, wealth, real wealth is all about surplus. It’s not about what you keep; it’s about what you can afford to throw away without a second glance. The after-thought boys might chipping the crystal the enforced guests might be gurning over the latest piece of art, their fingers stained with labour about the stain the frame, but the wine doesn’t get a thought.
I’ve heard of thousand dollar bottles, dug from Napoleonic cellars over which a shopping mall was soon to rise. A thousand dollar bottle of plonk? How? Do you drink it? Do you share it with friends or save it for yourself? Is anybody rich enough to slob out on the couch, dressed in silk boxer shorts, crackling sea-salt and basil-flavoured fried oyster snacks down their fronts watching bad television and drinking the thousand dollar bottle in $50 swigs straight from the bottleneck?
This is what I was thinking as I looked out into the bright rain from the sweated front seat of a cab that I could barely afford, heading down the Paramatta Road in Sydney, Australia. My driver was a German who looked frighteningly like my maternal grandfather. So I immediately assumed that he was a gutter-bastard with no concerns for humanity other than how they were getting at him.
“You are Australian?”, he asked without moving his gaze from the bus in front?
“No, I’m English.”
“Did you find it easy to get into Australia?” His head was gently spiked with a fine blond crew cut, his eyebrows were translucent and I could see no other evidence of hair aside from the tufts that came like tendrils out of his ears – showing him to be at least sixty years old.
“Not really, not a problem, no.” I wanted to continue my train of thought, to work out why my visions of wealth had ended up sprawled alone in a room watching television.
“It was hell for me, forty years ago, so much paper, so many problems. Not like these Asians today coming in like drones. The drugs and the gangs now. Sydney is not like when I was first here.” He smiled and finally looked at me as we waited at the lights that turned the Paramatta Road into Broadway. It was a genuine smile, one that begged me to agree with him. Had I been in another mood, I might have forgiven him the tattered rhetoric and predictable spew that had already turned my day into a cliché. I would have looked into his speech and discovered a man with a past, and a few bricks to build a safe house in a confusing world. That day, however, I was in no mood for it. I needed a fresh day – a fresh afternoon at least, it was already two o’clock in the afternoon – and here I was mired in rain and a cabbie who could have come straight out of a left-wing agit-prop production.
“The reason I found it so easy to get in was that I flew in from Timor under cover of darkness last Tuesday. It’s simple if you know the right people. I paid about $10,000 US and had some papers forged by a man I know in Bali. The problem with these other queue jumpers is that they don’t have any style. No flair.”
“And too many children! The fucking Asians!” His smile had broadened and I thought for a moment that he was going to try and shake my hand. Maybe he’d got the gist that I was joshing him, or maybe he was simply so bitter that it didn’t matter. Either way, we were edging towards the lights that turned Broadway into George Street, just in front of the Central Station Bus depot and, looking at the meter, it was my time to get out.
As I left him, his smile reframed itself to a blank stare – no tip – and he headed off into the CBD. I was standing at the small crossroads that lead down into Quay Street, on into the Exhibition Centre and down to Darling Harbour or straight on to George Street. Quay Street – Sydney’s plaguey, rum-roasted past sliced back into sanitary futurism.
I decided instead to head into the crumbly, up and coming, old fashioned main street. George Street is bullied by an architectural gangbang where the old Empire arrogances of thick rock “establishments” more fitting of Manchester or Liverpool or Leeds battle it out with rorted high rises to shame the venerable old thoroughfare into their way of life.
Maybe I am an escapologist and this is a show? Seems unlikely.
All I can see above me is a blur of someone else’s holiday-blue sky. This should not be upsetting but it most definitely is. The reason for this is that between me and that sky are two fathoms of cold, salty water. Now three fathoms. Soon four.
You see, I am sinking fast and there is no way I will ever be able to remove the chain from my legs. That chain is also connected to a pair of heavy truck wheel rims. I should be panicking more than I am.
The chain won’t come off because the person who put it there does not want it to come off and, to ensure it stays on, my hands have also been cuffed behind my back. I have no memory of how this all came about. In fact, the further I descend, the less breathable oxygen I have, the worse my memory gets. Right now, for example, the only thing I can remember with any clarity is my dog, Dapper Dale.
Dale would most certainly have come to my rescue by now but Dale has been dead since we were both 11. I wonder if I’ll see Dapper Dale again when this is all over?
Talking of animals, a shark just went past my nose, a patient shark. Just circling me. Hello shark. The shark wants no part in socialising. I wish I’d been like that. I wish I believed in Heaven. I wish I didn’t believe in Hell.
Do sharks eat live meat or is it just carrion for them? I wish I’d learnt more about sharks and less about… less about what? What did I learn in my life?
Money comes to mind. Yes, I feel in my soul that I knew a great deal about money and the instruments of money: stocks, bonds, cash, bundled futures, bulls, bears, sub-prime mortgages, Ponzi Schemes, all of those things resonate very deeply with me. I feel sure footed and clear, on firm ground, confident and even happy when I think about those words. So, I was or I am a money man.
I’ve been executed for something, haven’t I? Murdered. Bound up and thrown into the ocean deep. I must have cheated some pretty bloody hardcore types somehow. I wonder what I did? Can you defraud a criminal? Maybe it’s an honour thing? I can’t even remember my own name let alone what I might have done to a gang prepared to do away with their formerly trusted accountant and fellow gang member. Gang leader, I feel that I was probably the leader of the gang and this is the result of some kind of coup from Lefty Schmidt or One Eye O’Driscoll or Tonio Sabrini.
The sky is disappearing now and I don’t really know if I am alive or dead yet. Maybe this is Purgatory?
I can’t feel myself descending any more but I’m sure I’ve not stopped yet. I imagine this part of the lake? The sea? An ocean? Wherever it is, I reckon it must be deep because why would anybody do this to me in shallow water? Makes no sense. You’d have to be stupid psychopath. You never seem to read about stupid psychopaths. Psychopathy must be related to intelligence.
The shark is back. I know that sharks don’t lick their lips, I do know this, don’t I? But,well, I’m sure that one just did.
Why aren’t I more scared? Not of the shark particularly, I don’t know much about sharks and this one doesn’t look very large, but why aren’t I scared about what I’m about to become?
Maybe I’m already dead. How do you judge that? I think therefore I am? Really? What if there is an afterlife after all?
Is ‘do I think therefore I am’ even pertinent if you’re dead? What about in Purgatory? I must still be high on whatever they gave me to knock me out.
It made their life easier. Not much of a lesson to me though. Not if I can’t even remember what I did. How is this a lesson to others? Maybe the perpetrators videoed it? Maybe my death is on YouTube or Vimeo or TikTok or Facebook or Insta? I bet it’ll get taken down though. Maybe it’s on the Dark Web? Maybe I’m Internet Famous?
Does the fact that I’m thinking mean I’m not dead? Am I thinking? Or am I just firing off random electrical signals?
This is frustrating. Hello again shark. Really. Not knowing. I thought death would be a great deal more clear cut than it seems to be: one second you’re alive, all systems go, feeling things: hunger, pain, love, full bladder, empty heart, elation, desolation, frustration, and the next second you’re dead. A very definite barrier is crossed and things change. That’s what I thought would happen. That’s what every single thing I’ve ever read or seen or been told leads me to believe would happen. It appears not to be the case.
There goes the shark again.
I wish I’d done more research into drowning but that’s just not one of those areas of learning I really considered. I’d like to know what’s happening to my body, or what happened. As it is I’m sinking, weighed down, hands bound with no idea about me. That’s a first. I’m quite the narcissist or I was.
I’ve just realised something. This is a time dilation thing. I could be inhabiting the very last second of my life and it might just go on and on and on. This is why I can’t feel myself descending and why I can hear myself think. I’m just caught in time. In which case, that shark is moving very fast or very slow because here it comes again. Hello shark.
The existence of the moving shark would indicate that this is not a time dilation thing at all. What is it then? I don’t feel cold, my lungs aren’t on fire, I’m not struggling to be free.
How did I get here? If I could remember that then everything else might fall into place. How did I get here, in deep water, shackled and cuffed?
Maybe I am an escapologist and this is a show? Seems unlikely. I base that entirely on the fact that I’m still shackled and cuffed and I’m fairly certain that I’ve stopped trying to hold my breath. It’s getting dark now.
Am I a crap escapologist? A first timer? Can’t see it. I’ve not tried to escape.
Oh, for fuck’s sake (excuse my language, God, if you’re listening) does this darkness means I’m very deep beneath the waves or that I’ve finally died? All I want is some clarity here. That’s not much to ask is it?
Am a suicide? Once again, I doubt it. The chain-work doesn’t look like something I’d do. Not my style as far as I know. That’s just a feeling in my, what would I call it? My soul? That’ll do. Also, I can’t see me going to all this trouble, especially not the handcuffs, when a load of pills and booze, or a quick jump off a tall building would have done the job. I mean, where’s the performance here? No one’s going to find my body, not with the weights and the deep water and this shark.
Hello shark.
That definitely doesn’t feel in my soul like something I’d want. Christ, I would have wanted mourners and a story on the news, and traffic stopped in the streets and ambulances and sobbing. Not this anonymous drop to the depths and eaten by a shark? Devoured!
The shark’s just nudged my back. If sharks don’t eat carrion then maybe I am not dead. Honestly though, I can’t see any shark worth the name ignoring a relatively fresh piece of sitting duck meat like me. I’d actually prefer to be devoured by a shark than to be nipped away at by crabs or, God forbid, hoovered up by prawns and mussels.
That strikes me as ignominious.
Hold on a second, I can feel myself being pulled up! Maybe this is a time dilation thing after all and I’m just being taught a lesson by a nefarious gang, by my own gang!
Maybe this is what passes for banter in the underworld?
God, I don’t think I do want to die actually. Not that I’d really thought about it. My soul tells me I’m more of a “go for it!” than a “go with the flow” type of guy or gal.
There’s a definite tug, a pull, a wrench, a sharp one too.
I’m not actually tethered to anything that could bring me up to the surface. That tug is the shark, I think it’s taken a bite. It has. It’s taken a bite out of my back. Ouch.
Seriously, that’s painful. At least I imagine it would have been had I been able to feel anything any more. I wish I could get Google down here then I’d be able to work out if sharks eat carrion or not because that would tell me if I am dead or alive.
Oh, there goes a leg, and here come some other sharks. Big ones. My old pal has moved off quickly. Run! Run! Run! Swim! Oh, here they come, the black-eyed brutes. I wonder if once they’ve done with me I’ll still be able to think? What if one of them eats my head, not whole, but crunches down on it, swallows my brains, turns my skull into flour. Do I just stop then?
There are six of them, bickering, circling and, and, and here we go!