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WHEN HALEY WOKE UP, Wes wasn’t in bed. The sun filtered through the jalousie and cut her up in horizontal lines. It was warm and in the sunlight coming through she could see the floating dust pieces catch the light just right. She moved her hand through it slowly to catch some but they were elusive so she quit. She presumed Wes had gone running and she checked the time on her phone. It was eight-thirty in the morning and she got out of bed and walked to the balcony. They were on the third floor and their room looked over the courtyard where they had been last night and beyond that she saw the beach in the morning sun. She could see P.J.’s kiosk from where she stood. She saw P.J. and his brother, the talkative one, and some others move the boat into the water. She stood there in the warmth of the morning. She was wearing small shorts and a small t-shirt and her brown hair was in a messy bun. She made herself coffee, a vice she’s had since high school, and watched P.J. work in the sunlight. She was attracted to him, and the way he worked and set up his boat and tied it to the dock seemed charming to her. Not like how a man does man’s work. But rather like a boy beset upon by errands he needed to finish. Were she single she still wouldn’t approach him. She was shy in this way and content with admiring from afar. In a few days she planned to head back to Gainesville with Wes and that’d be that and she’d be happy enough still.
She took a shower and put on her bathing suit and a dress over that and went down to the beach where she and her friends were yesterday. It was a couple of yards away from the kiosk and she could peer at it casually without being in the proximity where saying hi was obligated. The sand was warm and her friends were happy to see her. It was a beautiful day and showed to be for the entirety of it.
About an hour later Wes appeared in front of her. He was sweating and shirtless and had running shoes on. His brown body was shiny under the sun and his goateed face was handsome to Haley and she smiled a real smile at him.
“When’d you wake up?” he said plopping down in front of her. He landed on his elbows and the sand stuck to his sweat. He liked the feel of the grit.
“Like forty minutes ago. I didn’t even hear you leave,” she said blocking her eyes from the glare of the sand.
“Yeah that’s because you sleep like a log,” he laughed and the others there laughed too. “And you can’t hear anything through your snoring,” he pinched her ankle jokingly.
Then Wes did an impression of her snoring, which sounded like a wildebeest, and even Haley laughed at that. She smiled at him because he was being more talkative and fun than usual. He noticed her smile and knew what it was for and smiled back. He got up and didn’t brush the sand off.
“I’m gonna run inside and change,” Wes said and he bent down and kissed Haley on her lips. And then Wes walked up the path and through the gates and across the courtyard to the building.
Haley looked over to P.J.’s stand and caught him glancing back to her. She turned to the tide quickly and embarrassed and she continued reading her magazine.
––––––––
“BUT WHY SHARKS DO YOU think?” Dennis asked opening a beer. He was lying down on the couch. It was evening and in a few hours they were to meet T.J. and his friends again. The cold beer was refreshing to Dennis and grew to become a habit. Like a tired father every day after work he’d kick off his sandals and crack open a cold one. Maybe it’s because he felt like a father to P.J. or maybe it’s just because he liked to drink.
“I have no idea, man,” P.J. replied. “How would I know?”
“Do you think it has to do with the power?”
“The power?”
“Like the raw vicious power of a shark. How they just eat shit. No matter what. They just eat all types of shit.”
“Tons of people are into sharks. That’s why we have a whole week of it on TV. I’ve just never seen anyone this into them.”
There was a ponderous moment. And then P.J. started again.
“I’m glad he didn’t come today,” he confessed flicking at the tab on his own beer can. His gaze wandered across the tacky wallpaper of the apartment. He looked at his feet, still wet from when he washed them off in the shower.
“You know, that Haley girl asked a lot about you last night. Her boyfriend seemed oblivious,” Dennis said reaching over to the coffee table to eat some chips that had been open there all night. They were salt and vinegar and the bag had a picture of a boat in a storm on it.
“For real?”
“Who cares? You would never make a move on a taken girl.”
“Yeah because it’s not right.”
“It’s not like they’re married,” Dennis said, “and it could just be for this vacation. You guys couldn’t take your eyes off each other in the tub. I actually felt bad for Wes.”
“Get the hell out of here,” P.J. said and tossed the beer tab over the kitchen counter. It pinged in the sink.
P.J. hated talking to his brother about sex. It was the subtext of everything. Ask a girl out. Look at her. She’s looking at you. It was always about sex and it bothered P.J. Maybe it was the idea he had in his head, warranted by nothing, that Dennis had fucked a lot of girls. Maybe it was how he imagined his brother fucking. Sweaty and visceral and with the girl moaning in eye-rolling ecstasy. P.J. could never.
Despite all of that, though, the idea was too exciting to pass up. A forbidden love. A secret affair. Hushed whispers under the pier and sandy lovemaking too. He thought of Caroline again and then pushed that thought away. He felt it was an injustice to hold Haley and Caroline in the same light, and then he felt stupid for that because he hardly knows Haley and barely knew Caroline. And then the terrible notion dawned on him that he may just be an island of a man. He had no bridges to any love. But was that inherently wrong? Or just sad? He drank some more beer. And then he spoke.
“What kind of stuff was she asking?”
“Nothing specific. I just told her a lot about us as kids growing up. Seemed interested.”
P.J. nodded his head in silence. Did Dennis tell her how much of a coward he was and continued to be? About his nightmares and how in grade school Dennis had to fight all of his bullies scrapping and pummeling each other in the light blue hallways. From then on everyone knew that P.J. was chicken shit. Even the teachers probably although they’d never say it.
But maybe there was a moment of redemption in Haley. He hoped she’d be there tonight when they all went out to that cheap bar he mentioned to T.J.
When it was time to go the two brothers walked along the street because it was faster. The bar was north past the hotel but not as far north as Rory’s hut, and it was more inland. They walked in silence listening to the passing of cars and little beach bikes. Some people were already drunk and stumbling out of their own apartments. Some people walked together.
Along the walk he thought about sex. He thought about his first time. It was with his girlfriend in high school. She was thin and petite and mean to everyone, even her sisters and her own mother, a lonely woman who had her too young. But something in P.J. made her consistent roar quell and subside. And the sex was terrible. It was awkward and shaky and over way too soon and where she was overtly disappointed he was too happy to care. He knew the sex was bad but he thought there was a beauty in it. He thought there was a beauty in the young and naïve tangle they found themselves in. The trying to get things right. The asking if that’s okay. The wondering if you’re doing something wrong. There was a paradoxical purity in the act and when he tried to explain what he meant she just rolled her eyes and thought of another kid that could do things better. A year later she left him for that other kid and P.J. fielded no questions about it.
That was a time he hated. He was in utter despair for reasons other than the obvious ones. He worried he’ll never be old enough to when his heartbreak mattered. Mattered like the way they did in books or movies. He had a knack for seeing things from the other side and he knew what he looked like. Young love dashed upon the rocks in a true cliché. It happens. That’s growing up. You don’t even know what love is. He heard the gambit and half of him bought it while the other half just wanted to be validated. But as he walked on and fantasized about Haley, a girlfriend that wasn’t his, he understood that validation came from some obscure pocket of self. One he didn’t have or couldn’t find.
When they arrived at the bar Haley and Wes weren’t even there.
They wasted no time in getting drunk. They ordered plates of food and were getting hammered on well drinks and boilermakers. It wasn’t before long when the room was waving left to right for P.J. and he had to excuse himself. He splashed water on his face and looked in the mirror of the bathroom – a dirty glass streaked with crud and stains. The place reeked of piss and had markings and writings on the wall. He didn’t want to embarrass himself. He became insecure when he started drinking and he splashed more water on his face. It was cool and fresh. Then he watched the drops drain down the sink into the beyond of that small black hole.
Despite Haley’s absence, or maybe, fueled by it, P.J. knew he wouldn’t be going home alone. He had caught the attention of a different girl whom he didn’t see the night prior. Her name was Nina and she was beautiful and tan with large red lips. She was being sweet on him as they got drunk together and he found himself putting his arm around her waist as the night dragged on. She liked him.
Back in the Seashell, Wes and Haley had just finished having sex. They had taken a nap that already set them late and when they woke up Haley insisted on taking a shower because she still felt the sea on her. In the shower, Wes joined her and one thing led to another. They made love on their bed on top of the sheets and they both climaxed beautifully in the embrace of the other. When he rolled off of her he smiled at her and she smiled back. She brushed her hand along the side of his face and then kissed his chin. They showered again and got dressed and made their way to meet up over at the bar. They had a smell to them.
They got out at the courtyard and walked along the beach. She held is hand and she was glad they had sex. She thought that if she loved him hard the idea of other men would leave. The idea of P.J. would leave. But not just P.J. Infidelity as a concept. She wished it was easier. She wished you just fell in love once and were done. You didn’t have to worry about it ever again. But she did worry about it.
The night was dark at this time and over at the bar the friends were drunk. The couple held hands and walked in the sand. As they made their way Haley admitted her growing confusion about where they were headed. She was sure that the bar was over by the pier and not as far inland as it actually was. Wes suggested calling T.J. but he didn’t pick up and so they decided they would walk to where they thought it was and if it wasn’t there they’d head home because they were already very late and they didn’t want to be the sober ones that had to take care of their drunken friends, nor did they want to play catch-up to their levels of slur. So they enjoyed their walk along the night sand just as they did the night before.
Haley thought of Gainesville and of the bat houses kept on the campus of the university. There was a night, around dusk, when she rode her bike to the houses –small roofed cottages on large stilts. The sky was dark purple and lighting up on the horizon, and even still, it suggested a crueler and warmer night to come. There were others that came to see the bats and like clockwork the squeaking and bouncing began. A deep rumble shook the various houses and soon swarms of bats flew forth into the night to feed and drink and hunt. Hundreds of them flapped and squealed into the night and paid the bystanders no mind. Haley watched and tightened her grip on her bike. There was something sinister yet provoking about the cloud of bats in how they soured and cannoned out with no rhyme or reason – and if they took a form of elegance or a shape like starlings, it was by accident and quickly disbanded. They were hideous, but that was their right and when the light disappeared past the Spanish moss and the drooping oaks, the land felt like it belonged to them. So Haley rode home chilled to have had her very land stripped from her feet. But then once home she understood and admitted that it was never hers and likely never will be.
On the beach the stars in the sky were few and far between. The ocean was oil and it lapped along the shore. Deep down there breathed creatures the size of buildings and monsters as long as fields, older than cathedrals and tombs, white and boney like sepulchers half wrecked. Chaos in the fishtailing speed and snapping jaws of something unfathomable.
Wes held Haley’s hand in that moonlight and they walked quietly and occasionally he would look over to her and study her profile. She lightly kicked up the sand when she walked and her gaze always bounced around, looking at everything, taking in everything. They had a smell to them.
Rory paced in his small hut back and forth and intermittently peered out the windows to the passersby. He saw Haley and Wes walk past and he remembered them. He grew antsy, crouched beneath the windowsill, like a depraved simian, or some Neanderthal freshly thawed out to serve and kill, and he peeked through his closed blinds. The lights in the small shack were all off and the little building looked like a square headstone sticking out of that dark ground. He watched Wes’s large black figure protect Haley’s small frame and he cursed to himself. If Haley were alone he knew he would be able to get her easily. He didn’t feel strong enough yet to take on Wes, or both of them, but as he thought it about it longer and longer his palms started to sweat. He gripped the windowsill tighter and took the book out of his back pocket and read the first lines over and over again:
The great fish moved silently through the night water The great fish moved silently through the night water The great fish moved silently through the night water The great fish ME moved silently through the night water HERE AND NOW, the great fish, ME RORY, moved, NOW, silently, NOW, through the night water, HERE NOW RIGHT NOW. The great fish ME ME ME ME ME ME ME moved silently through HERE NOW. Me, the great fish.
And with that, he took off his shirt and his pants and his underwear and moved barefoot out into the hot night naked and primeval and born from and for destruction.
He crouched out of his house and crept to his pick up truck. From the truck bed he grabbed a large wrench, red and heavy in its length, and moved back to the corner of his house. The couple was already past his direct property and he knew that if he wanted to catch up before they were visible by others he’d have to run. He started moving quickly and low and silently and before he knew it he covered half of the ground. No one was around in any direction and he knew that his masters would be hungry. He hadn’t served them the meat he usually did. He picked up his pace and the sand silenced his feet but then he stopped. He ceased out of worry and danger. He was nervous and he felt the metal wrench, about a foot long, grow moist in his clammy palms. The silver and red metal shined in the moonlight and as he turned the tool in his hands it never felt heavier than it did at that moment. He didn’t have it in him and his knees began to shake and his bottom jaw tightened and quivered and he dropped to his knees and started sobbing.
Haley and Wes walked hand in hand only about ten yards ahead of the defeated acolyte. His sobbing was barely audible over the sound of the tide. Sounding like a myth or a legend fishermen share out in the seas. A crying that comes on the mist, haunting but beautiful. Haley turned around. She kept walking but then stopped. Her eyes tried to focus on the hunched over shadow and eventually when they did she became cold with fear. She saw Rory naked and crying on his knees. She couldn’t see the wrench because it was covered with sand. Haley was nothing if not compassionate. She was the girl who stood up for the little guy. The girl who passed out flyers for the helpless. She pulled away from Wes’s hands.
“Something’s wrong with that man,” she said and took a step towards Rory.
Wes turned around and grabbed Haley’s hand again, pulling her back. “Haley, he’s naked. Let’s leave him alone,” he insisted and pulled her back to his side. His grip was strong and the force of his pull surprised her.
“He could be hurt. He’s crying,” and she turned to him to search for empathy in his eyes, but she found none.
“He could be a crazy person,” he implored.
“Sir,” Haley said, breaking away from Wes’s grip, “Are you okay?”
Nina danced for P.J. and he had all but forgotten about the other girl. Nina would describe herself as a grown woman. She lost her virginity when she was fourteen to a friend of her cousin. She matured faster than the other girls, physically, and if you asked the cousin, emotionally too. She wasn’t there with T.J. and his group. In fact, she went alone. She wasn’t afraid of men and she wasn’t afraid to drink.
She had seen P.J. studying her from across the bar. She bought two Mexican beers and handed him one saying, “You can buy the next round.” What attracted her to him was the way he stood. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but he didn’t stand like he was trying to impress. In fact, he leaned on the table a lot, keeping his head low, watching more than presenting. As though he couldn’t be bothered to fight for her. She liked that.
When they left together the beach town was spinning around and P.J. was slurring his words. He held Nina tightly. Her hair was dark and thick. She kept closing her eyes when they walked because she was getting dizzier and dizzier as they went.
“Call a cab?” P.J. said slowly pulling Nina close by the waist. She started kissing his neck and he decided that was an agreeing gesture.
Haley took her steps in the sand toward the crying man. Wes was close behind. He was sure the naked fool wasn’t hostile by nature and he was right. Rory didn’t start out violent, but now he was, and Wes knew too little about him to realize that. When Haley crouched down beside Rory and tapped him on the back the first thing she felt was the leather. She then realized that his skin wasn’t gray because it was dark out, but that it was naturally gray like it wasn’t supposed to be. She saw the lumps of his spine valley through his back and halfway through asking him what was wrong he looked up at her. His eyes were black and offered no reflection. He was frowning and he had been crying so his nose looked swollen and reddish. Struck by his heinous face, she let out a yelp and fell on her butt, looking at him. He then stood up fast, to his full height, well over six feet tall and he looked down at her. Then the moonlight revealed the wrench.
When Wes took the scene in, his stomach plummeted, but his brain did not cower. He knew he had weight on the guy and he knew he could at least scrap with him in the sand for Haley to getaway. He yelled for his attention before he charged Rory’s left side, but Rory felt the vibrations of his movement before he made them. Wes closed the distance between the two quickly but Rory was faster with the wrench. He moved the tool to his right hand and pivoted to his left and, with the newfound strength of some unholy monster, he brought the wrench fast across Wes’s face. There was a shattering sound as the heavy metal broke his jaw and his teeth flew out far into the sand to be swept in by the tide, and Wes went limp and spun downwards in a heap, crashing into the sand, with only a tuft puffing up like a welcomed celebration.
Before Haley could scream for help, Rory turned back to her. His face was stuck in a distorted frown like the mask of Buskin, gut-wrenching misery, dolorous in the night, and though his eyes were pitch black they still looked vulnerable and scared, although willing and with intent. Then Haley screamed but Rory kicked her across the face and her head jerked back into the sand. She moaned and blood ran from her face and the naked acolyte stood high above her. He looked back at the black heap of a man folded over himself in the sand.
“Please,” the girl begged as she tried to focus on the nightmare before her. Her blurry vision slowly getting definition. The taste of iron slick on her lips.
“Leave her alone,” Wes gurgled up, now lying on his back.
Somewhere on the road about a mile from where they were a taxicab drove by with a drunken boy and a drunken girl all over each other. They would go back to his place and they would have sex on his bed. She would laugh as he kissed her and undressed and they would laugh as he struggled to open the condom wrapper. Then she would put it on him and then mount him and they’d kiss and fuck and he wouldn’t be thinking about Haley’s voice or smile or anything until the following morning when none of it existed.
Wes struggled to get up, his brain still tremoring from the impact. And Rory bent down and picked up Haley and tossed her over his shoulder. He swayed with the weight for a moment and then regained his footing. The servant walked towards the water with his sacrifice and soon the dark black waters reached his knees. Haley swayed left and right over his shoulder and her hair started floating in the slick black and the waves rose high against her forehead. She opened her eyes briefly but water splashed into them, upside down and dizzying.
Wes crawled towards her in that darkness. His hands started sinking in the wet sand and he began coughing up blood and crying her name. Haley. Haley, he cried and coughed and Stop, too.
When the water was up to Rory’s skinny chest he flopped Haley forward and she disappeared in a big splash of water. She sunk to the bottom and feeling the cold envelope her, her heart began pounding and she gained a second wind but it was all for naught. She swam to the surface and saw Rory’s image distorted and reflected just beyond the ripples of the water and she swam and her hand broke the water but she could go no higher for a vise clamped around her ankle. A searing hot pain shot through her leg quick and sudden like lightning. She was pulled deeper and then she felt teeth rip into her arm and yank her sideways and then more teeth, feeling two inches long, bit into her shoulder, taking up all of her arm, and that yanked in the other direction, ripping that arm from her small frame. She screamed in the water and the bloody bubbles from her mouth reached the surface and popped.
Wes watched on his belly and cried and screamed. The only image he saw was a flurry of huge leathery black fins and massive snouts and whipping tails and the water splashed around in a frothy mess of Haley’s blood and guts. The stars in the sky sunk deeper towards that whirling maelstrom at the bottom of the universe. The moon seemed so small. He looked for Rory but he disappeared among the tumult of the water and nothing made any sense to him. He screamed and cried and Rory was gone and when Wes would wake up the following morning, he would doubt the man even existed. His brain would have convinced himself that they were just the victims of some freakish shark attack. He watched the massive monsters thrash in the water and then he closed his eyes and lost consciousness on the wet sand, the great cosmic chaos of it all proving too much for him to stand.
Quickly after, the ritual ended. The massive monsters swam away in all different directions. Some dorsal fins were twenty feet from their tails and some were much closer and smaller. But after the water calmed and Haley was no longer, Rory couldn’t be found either. But he would be back. Oh, how he would be back.