Forget all about the water. Forget how it tasted. She had known all along how it would taste. Coughing was better than swallowing it down. Eyes shut. That’s right. Shutting one’s eyes would save the moment, the moment that, she imagined he wasn’t able to enjoy. Because of that, she felt a tinge of pity, followed by the truest range of self-loathing, how one must feel when completely alone, silenced from all connection.
She shut her eyes from it all and enjoyed how this felt, how she felt: timeless and safe. Here is all she needed. Right now.
When his grip tightened around her chest, it was enough for her to notice that the moment had passed.
She could feel his shivers through his bloated belly. Though she couldn’t see the shark, the effect of its appearance seeped through him right into the pit of her stomach.
She bit her lower lip, tasting what he had tasted upon sipping seawater.
She could see the sun quickly rising. Its appearance brought not the beauty of a sunny day but rather what the ghosts had warned her about.
Love could be so blinding, it almost fooled her into thinking that she wouldn’t have a problem holding on. To think, forgetting the trajectory of the story, foolishly pretending that it wasn’t going to end the way this is written to end. Looking at him, she could see it plain as the previous day.
They finally have each other, where no one could ever judge what they had, and yet neither would be able to enjoy it.
Counting how many turns remained, she knew there wouldn’t be much time left. And then she saw
it
.
A shark fin.
Right on cue.
HIS TURN
Shortly after the shark fin, the sun gave its warning and receded behind a cloudy, darkening sky. The sun had no reason to remain. Gave them little more than a warning before it left him to fend off the drizzle that soon became a soft, delicate rain.
“Stay in my arms,” he warned.
It would be right to keep her safe. Whatever it takes.
He looked over the edge of the coffin. The darkening sky made it difficult to see much of anything. He wouldn’t be fooled; the shark was there. And indeed, soon enough, he saw it.
Worse: The shark could be seen in the water, the light grey of its body, the dead stare a reminder of his demise.
The inevitable demise.
How foolish must you be to hold on? Life has elapsed. It was time to let go. Pass on. The aftermath would be the afterlife, as dictated by blind faith. What waited for him over the horizon, past the words of warning that seemed to block his view? He wouldn’t be able to know without letting go, without letting the coffin float in that direction, the direction where only he can go, the direction where they part ways.
No. Words on the horizon read like commands:
KEEP HER SAFE.
CLOSE YOUR EYES.
SHE LOVES YOU.
LOVE HER BACK.
To which his replies were instant, honest, and true:
He would.
He did.
He does.
He always will.
The hero role took hold and the soft rains and darkened sky tore the moment, replacing it for the beginning of what would be a deeply-rooted fear of the sea, of the waters and what they hid from him, rising to the surface, building into a boil.
He saw it on the horizon, the one statement he needed most:
YOU CAN.
And it might have been new, what happened next; his actions, so admirable of a fight to pull her close, to live in this moment, despite the plain melancholy of this tale:
It is told in the past tense. Living in the past, there is no present to save you, no future to explore. All that can be merely was, and if it weren’t then, it never would be.
And this is how it will come to pass. It already had, now is merely a retelling of the tale. Not for the sake of it but for his sake, a hero in death, a simple man in life.
The shark ran its body into the coffin, pushing it to one side. Hold her. Hold her now.
“No!” he shouted.
The rain grew stronger. The softness of this rain concealed the true danger. What little hair he had left wilted. Skin burning, bubbling, and peeling. Not that he felt any of it.
There would be no feeling. It was only physical.
The pain, it had long since passed. A hero held on.
A hero must.
HER TURN
The shark shook the coffin, which shook her to the core. She couldn’t stop shivering, having failed to recognize the extent of her fear until perhaps that moment. Whatever she denied, they would spell it out for her.
Them.
They returned, right as the sun retired for good. For good, they said.
It won’t return.
Why is this happening? she asked.
It already happened, they replied.
A showcase of their own loss, missing arms, mouths, eyes, bodies in a state of wreckage from a continual plight against demise.
The fact that they are dead. The fact that they denied their death, turned every moment into a moment all its own, a moment of war upon the inevitability of the universe’s energies. Or…
Simply stated, it went against understanding.
They were dead, but...
How does it end? She asked though she knew.
The soft rains hid him from noticing that she cried, and continued to cry the more they explained, the more they pointed at the sea and the dozens of sharks, an army of shark fins moments before revealing themselves.
And him, holding her tightly, shouting to the sharks, shouting to the sky, the sky that had turned pitch black save for one circle, one all-seeing eye, a dark blue, a moon of missing hope.
She would need to illuminate the sky.
Her hope, a blind hope, would help.
They told her this.
They showed her how it would end, the ending of this tale, the one she knew more than the reader, at this particular point, but her fears kept her cradled in the fiction of a happily-ever-after kind of tale.
It could still happen, she told them.
They watched from afar, from their own coffins in the sea. They watched, a silent vigil, as they too held on for their own reasons.
Help me, she implored.
And they would. They will. They already did.
For reasons all the same yet different, they held on. One held on because it never said goodbye to its child; another held on because it didn’t believe it really died, its death so quick the transition was seamless; and then there was one that held on out of vengeance, wanting to haunt every corner of its enemies. And maybe did, for a time. Now they were fragments of their bodies.
They borrowed from memories that were once theirs, now strange residual flickers of something that happened in between the onslaught that never passed.
Here it comes, one said.
And she saw five sharks swimming straight for the coffin.
Hold on. Tell him to hold on.
But she hesitated. She wouldn’t, though she could.
HIS TURN
The coffin nearly tipped over that last time. One shark had turned into five, five sharks turned into a full army. He couldn’t stand up he was so fearful of their next attack but still he held onto her. He searched for a weapon but the words on the horizon told him that SHE IS YOUR WEAPON and that was enough.
One shark did not move.
It positioned itself right in front of the coffin, its face jutting out of the water, eyes piercing his; it opened its mouth, showed its teeth. Though very little would be said, he had begun to understand how this would end.
The shark’s presence made him realize that, maybe, she understood too. Maybe she kept this from him. Understand that she will play this part. She played it in life and she will play it on the passage into death. It is up to her whether or not she can grapple with her own demons. They speak to her now, much like they tell him what he wants to hear, clear that he will end the same as he began.
They tell him THEY ARE JUST TRYING TO SCARE YOU.
He believed it. He will always believe the words hanging on the horizon, the words out-of-reach and therefore desirable.
Shark perched at the front of the coffin, as a reminder. It set up as foreshadowing for the familiar sort of end, familiar for one and merely a hero’s departure for the other.
Its army circled the coffin, enough present to change the direction of the waves.
He could see nothing above and nothing below, nothing near and nothing far, but he didn’t need to:
Nothing had changed. Nothing will change.
Her in his arms and him holding off the onslaught, he cannot bear to see anything change. He turned coffin into warship, imagining the words as weapons as the sharks took turns ramming the coffin. First from the right side and then from the left, the coffin creaked and began to take on seawater.
This water could be seen, a dark murky seawater that stank of decay. He held her with one arm as he fought off the water, small, useless handfuls of water, but he would never let go.
A hero’s fear is that he is really the enemy.
YOU SAVED HER. It was what he wanted to see, needed at this very moment, and what he would have heard, if the soft rains hadn’t entered his ear canal, hadn’t taken his hearing while he paid attention to a more visible enemy.
By the time he noticed the rain, it had burned most of his skin too. He glanced down at her and saw that she was whole, unaffected by the rains.
He believed it was due to his embrace.
A hero is blind to the truth.
HER TURN
The rains continued, steady and localized above their coffin. She watched as he started to waste away, the rain burning him apart, just like they had said. She squinted out into the water, avoiding the fact that the rain had no effect on her. Instead they floated, every memory floated in the water, the onslaught to which would be forever her unraveling.
Why?
It was stupid of her to ask but they gave reply.
Why not?
Admit that it hurts.
She couldn’t admit it. For this to work, admission came after fear and her fear had only begun to really surface.
How fickle then for her to refuse.
The sharks, did you not recognize, are not here to feast on you; the body that you use is not the body that you were. The physical is an offshoot of misunderstanding, of the impossibility that you bother to remain at all.
Ghostly and ghastly, they told her that there was nothing physical about this.
Affection transcends the turn.
Each turn is his or hers to employ.
Timeless, there is only this, this trek.
The rain wasn’t hers to feel the harm. Instead, the sharks ate at every single one of her memories until she saw the fins return to the perimeter of the coffin, circling once more.
This time they swam faster, causing the coffin to spin.
She looked at him, hoping, dearly hoping, that he noticed; when he did, she felt relieved. At least it was still theirs—
This coffin, this casualty. This chaos.
She watched as the ghosts turned their attention to another coffin. Sitting alone in the coffin she saw her mom, arms wrapped fearfully around her knees.
She wasn’t seeing this.
She couldn’t be seeing this.
They made sure that she did. The coffin floated up to theirs and when her mom seemingly noticed her there, she could do nothing but scream a bloodcurdling scream, a scream that burrowed deep into her stomach and forced up the fear.
Reaching out toward her mom’s coffin, he pulled her close, wouldn’t let her go. Her mom saw him, saw him
with
her, and as fleeting as it was, the coffin that carried her mom close pulled away, the shark fins trailing after.
She could not have both and really she could have neither. Her fear is being alone. The ghosts, her demons, made it clear that her fear wasn’t something implied.
It was something true.
Her fear is real. It is here, part of the pulling apart that would soon be their letting go. No amount of affection could abstain the inevitable acceptance, the fact that she would be alone with her demons. Alone with the ghosts and therefore more alone than loneliness could provide.