Dead in the Water Read Free

a piece of paper inside. A message in a bottle.
    And because your hands are shaking, and you’re already getting tired and trying to keep floating; and you’re becoming giddy because you can’t believe this is actually happening—that you’ve drifted out to sea and no one’s come yet—
no one’s come yet
!—because it makes for something to focus on, a diversion from the fact that you’ve just realized you can’t swim or float or tread water too much longer—
    —because you have nothing else to do but be so afraid you want to vomit, you pry off the coating, which is wax, pull out the cork, and tip the bottle upside down.
    A piece of thick, yellowed paper slides into your hand. Decorated with an anchor—or is it a skull and crossbones?—the elaborately scrolled letterhead reads:
    The Captain, H.M.S
. Pandora.
    Beneath it are engraved the following words:
    The Captain respectfully requests your presence at the Captain’s Table for dinner this evening
.
    And something rings a bell. Something in the local legends concerning messages in bottles.
    And death warrants.
    Because no one can swim for very long, and you certainly can’t hold your breath forever.
    And when the drowning itself begins? Your actual last few minutes?
    You have some final throes, of course. You do not go gentle into that deep ocean. You tire, and so you struggle harder, which tires you more. You tell yourself to float, but you can no longer manage it. You’re hyperventilating. You’re crying. You wet yourself, and the warm stream reminds you how cold you are.
    You sink, fight back to the surface, sink, surface, and so on, until you find yourself mindlessly reaching for a gasping, terrified gulp of air. It hurts when you inhale, feels better when you exhale. This seems to go on for an eternity, but ten, perhaps fifteen minutes elapse at most.
    Your body is heavy and numb, and clumsy. You can no longer see because you’re blind with fear. You can think of nothing but the next breath.
    And you can no longer make your way to the surface. Down, down, you go, and then you struggle against your fate again, but to no purpose. Your eyes bulging, you stare up into the dazzling glare of the sun as it strikes the surface above you; and it looks unbelievably far away, that surface, that sunshine. Conversely, you can see nothing past your feet as they helplessly dangle.
    Unbearable pressure pushes against your lungs, so you let the air out a bit at a time—a puff at a time, a slow leak, until your body aches. It feels thin and flaccid, like an empty balloon. Your throat tightens and aches. Your muscles tense and strain.
    The surface above you dances and glitters.
    Your lungs are almost drained, and you are hovering in the water, and that damn bottle knocks into your head once, twice, and you shut your eyes tight and hope it does the job. But it drifts a few feet away, suspended and unmoving as if it’s waiting—and it is waiting. For your RSVP.
    And you oblige. Because you are completely out of air, and now there is only one thing left for you to do.
    Inhale.
    And just as you do, and your eyes begin to roll back in yourhead, the shadow of a ship’s hull casts a large, gray net over you and you think, Thank God, thank God, you’re saved.
    But you’re wrong. More wrong than you can imagine.
    And that is what it will be like. And, more or less, how it will happen.
    And it
will
happen. Sooner. Or later.
    So nice you can join us.

I
UNDERTOW

1
Spinning
the Bottle

    Glenn Boelhauf slipped his snow-white 1965 Mustang into the parking lot across the street from the Long Beach freight docks. The white sidewalls crunched over gravel, the shatters of a Bud Light bottle, the remains of a dark blue sneaker crusted with dried blood. Across the quay, a long line of semis snaked along, engines rumbling. Air brakes hissed beneath a blast of Willie Nelson on a radio. At the front of the parade, a bright yellow cab airbrushed with a mural of a sunset drove between