Sea Monster

It was a moody week in ole SD.


Untitled
Ed Chaney
1
Rip's finger depressed the garage door opener. The motor lurched and began to winch the door up. The landscape was bathed in grays and dark shadows lay like oil; under cars, against walls, even in the small cracks between the sidewalk. The lawn lay in stark contrast, a violent emerald against the concrete.
The thin surfer slunk into the garage. He stood quietly for a moment, appraising the unfamiliar weather. He looked down at his watch, the gloom making the glow-in-the-dark backing show. It read only a few minutes past three in the afternoon, though it seemed much later.
Rip quietly changed into his wetsuit. He zipped it up slightly, but didn't put it over his arms or chest. He stuffed his keys and wallet into his jacket, tossing it about his shoulders. A bitter chill had slid gently into the garage, and Rip expected the same down at the cliffs.
He turned to the back wall and grabbed the surfboard closest to him. It was a Firewire he had bought a few months ago. He looked it over, running his hand over the beaded wax. He zipped the board back into its bag and pulled it out to his truck.
The small gray pickup sat in front of the house, also gray, in the midday light. Rip slid the board carefully under the toolbox attached just under the rear-facing cab window. He lowered it into the bed and pulled bungie cords across it, in case it should bounce.
Rip made a quick trip back inside the garage, claiming a towel and closing garage door. He hopped deftly over the laser beam meant to save a person from being crushed by the small humming motor, and cut across the lawn to the driver's side of the little pickup.
His hand reached underneath the toolbox for a moment. His fingers traced the small black box, which held his spare truck key; before withdrawing to grab the original. He unlocked the door and dropped himself into the seat, the door following behind him.
He started the little truck and put it into gear. The radio clicked on.
“... surf looks to be dangerously high with the storm surge making it's way up from the south. Waves are said to more than double overhead and the beach authority suggests that everyone, even the most seasoned of swimmers, stay out of the water for their own safety. This doesn't, however, seem to have stopped many in San Diego's surfing community from flocking to these abnormally large waves. We have an interview with Samantha Soeour...”
As the little gray beater made its way through the gray communities, clouds began to gather, black and ominous, above.
Rip turned onto the I-8 and shifted quickly through the gears, the trucks rattle growing more pronounced as the dial turned clockwise. His hands drummed on the wheel and dash, following the tune on the radio. He looked up at the clouds gathered overhead and checked the clock again. His eyes told him it was getting close to dark, but the luminescent numbers read otherwise.
“...Every hour, on the hour. I'm your host, Kay Tal, keepin it real. Speakin' of which, recent news in Peru; looks like they had some meteor strikes in the coastal area. Apparently, it wasn't really too disasterous 'cause the asteroids were like teeny tiny when they hit (Thanks atmosphere!); but I guess it was enough to shake up the populace at large. Craziness...Well here's another from our boys in the studio...”
As the 8 came to it's final straightaway, Rip looked out past it to the ocean. It was so dark it seemed a void. The clouds were a lighter gray color here. It made Rip squint, even in the absence of direct sunlight.
The freeway ended and he turned left and headed up towards Point Loma, navigating the turns with ease borne of consistency. He pulled up to the small hut in the median; the guards box for the parking lot. The school it belonged to, Point Loma Nazarene, was not in session on winter break. Thus the box was empty and Rip was spared an awkward conversation about why he was there.
PLNU sits on a chunk of earth, bordered to the west by a set of cliffs. At the bottom of these aforementioned cliffs, there are an equally lovely set of beaches, or coves. Sunset Cliffs was set directly in front of Point Loma Nazarene. This was why Rip was there.
He cruised through the parking lot and down the hill. When he reached the finally circle of asphalt, he parked in an allotted space, facing out towards the water.
He moved quickly, grabbing first his stingray booties from the back of the cab. He slipped them on and unzipped his jacket. His wetsuit stretched over his shoulders just as a breeze wheeled through the parking lot. It became entangled in the opening to the suit, gestating in a shiver.
Rip glanced again at the ocean. He spotted the channel first, it's rift allowing any would-be surfer access past the break. A color caught Rip's eye and he saw a small huddle of three boards off to the right, towards Garbage. His eyes began to squint in the gloom. He thought he saw another small red board off to the left, but it and its rider were soon obscured by a monstrous set that began to pound the rocky break.
Hoots and hollers arose from the small tribe. Rip watched as they all paddled for one of the waves. The first two managed to pop up, riding the smooth rippling body of the wave. The third shouted something obscene and duck dived. Rip smirked as the two rode the wave quickly out of sight.
The board slid from the trunk and seemed light in his hands, as Rip descended the sand stone stair case to the small inlet; his feet kicking up small puffs of cinnamon sugar sand. He stood only once more, at the water's edge; the potential of the moment weighing heavily upon him. A path less traveled stood before him. Seaweed clung to rocks unfurling like ribbons tied to handlebars. In the shallows, the green of the ocean's own brand of moss sparkled wildly, half covering the stones which bore a black resemblance to bones and skulls.
Rip stood in this moment, his eyes closed to these wonders. His ears opened to the ocean in all her majesty and he beseeched her not to take him this day. He asked the powers that be, petitioning that they might find for him, some later day, far beyond that of this, to die. That he might not be spared the safety that lies in danger or the fact that sleeps in fear. That if God surely does exist, that He might see fit to allow Rip the use of His playground, if only for this small winking moment of his existence.
The ocean seemed to roar all the louder in response to this last, and with it Rip's eyes opened. They shone out a pale blue upon his face, lit from behind with a passion that bordered on frenzy.
He ran into the sea.
His feet picked their way carefully amongst the stones. His arms hoisting the board as he went. A moment later, he was up to his waist. He threw the board before him, his arms already pumping their steady rhythm. His feet came up as the board slip across the water, balanced as leaf upon a still pond.
Before him a shadow loomed. Rip gave no notice, but quickly ducked himself down as far as his board would allow. He rose quickly, the volume of the wave ringing out to him even from beneathe.
Rip rose from the water, air filling his lungs. He looked for a moment to find his bearings. He was just past the break and swam for a moment forward as another set rolled beneath him. He turned as it lifted him and looked over the cliffs themselves, seeing his truck watching him. Silently approving of his ascent.
He heard a crashing and terror gripped him for a moment. He looked up to see the curling white beginnings of foam, staring down at him from twelve feet above his head. He threw himself headlong and was quickly out the other side. The terror egged him on, his frenzy all the more fervent.
Rip looked to his right, easily spotting the small group sitting not forty yards away. He turned and looked to port, a small gleam of red peaking out from between the dark tide. Rip made his decision quickly, choosing mystery over the safety of the group. He turned, and paddled toward the red streak, curiosity gripping him. He knew the locals and their boards. He wondered at this oceanic anomaly.
He drew closer, oblivious to the waves growing ever larger in size, moving from one story to two. He heard a small cry and something within him stirred. A woman? He paddled faster.
Over another wave he rose, when he saw her. She turned to him quickly her face oddly pale. Her hand rose and pointed out towards the open sea. She cried out to him but he voice was obscured.
It was her eyes that told him what her mouth could not.
His head turned as the moments reeled themselves into a stilted slow motion.
He saw:
A great gray mass rising from the depths of the ocean, water rushing of in droves. It was a few miles off, at least, but it seemed to him only a matter of yards away. Whatever it was, the skin seemed smooth, but thick, like that of a whale. But it was not a whale itself, its size was to unimaginably great.
The great leviathan continued to rise from the sea. Towering, it grew wider now rather than taller. It began to stretch outward, its berth filling the horizon.
As the water dissipated, great ridges, each enormous mound marking a vertebrae; each larger than three of Rip's pickups stacked atop one another.
As it continued to expand, a peninsula grew out from it toward the surfers; each trying desperately to cling to their boards amidst the torrent provided by the beast's sudden arrival.
The water about Rip grew suddenly shallow and he could almost percieve the rocks below him against the dark gray of the sky. At this, he turned about on his board, paddling madly toward the shore. He turned to shout at the trio of surfers, but they were too far and too transfixed to hear him. He turned to the girl, and found an empty ocean; a mossy rock where she had been. His brow wrinkled and he turned to see the red of her board as she picked her way toward the beach head.
He felt the bump of a rock from beneath and stood to run, when from behind the crowd began to shout.
Behind him, the peninsula had grown, the end of its length not thirty yards from where Rip had been before. As he turned to assess this knew threat, the end began to rise from the water, the surfers screeching with a fear that turned about in the pit of their stomachs. Fear of death. Real death. Not adrenaline pumping or short stay in the hospital. Not a car crash or a stabbing. Nothing that their minds could truly wrap about. No, this was something they had not ever encountered nor imagined. It drained the blood from their faces and minds. Allowing only a calm certainty of the inevitable.
From the water there rose a head. The head of a monster.
It perched for a moment. An eye, the size of windshield and blue in ways only the ocean could ever dream of, scanned the bluffs and surrounding area. It washed the landscape in its ancient gaze.
It stopped for an instant. A second that can barely be said to have occurred at all. It looked at Rip and Rip looked back; one soul recognizing the enigma in the other.
In the future, our children will listen to the sound of explosions. They will nod and say to one another: Music.
A rumble began as the monster began to move. Rip realized this for what it was: movement. Everything until then had been buoyancy and fate. Now the ground shook in tremors, it's volume climbing the cliffs. Alarms, like sleeping children, began to sound in the lot; until they too were eclipsed by the roar.
Rip could not move.
He stood and thought of people walking through a college campus arm in arm, not speaking.
A mountain grew before him, the head towering hundreds of feet above the cliffs. Its shadow eclipsed him in the gray, casting him into night. As if on command, rain began to fall; it's taste, salt and ice from the creature's body.
Blood pounded in Rip's ears. An odd rushing feeling swept through him, a plug pulling at his solarplexis.
Water pelted water and the bones beneath him grew ever dryer in the wake of the leviathan.
A scream arose, shrill and familiar; more a tantrum than a wail.
A tiny tan hand gripped his arm with fingers cut from steel cords. It began to pull him back, over the rocks; stumbling as he stared at the unbelievable gray girth before him.
He turned about. His face filled with soft brown tendrils. They lapped at it in impossible slowness.
A great silence began to rise in his ears. The girl turned with it, looking past Rip, out at the washed black horizon.
The light dimmed still and Rip struggled to map the woman's face. It seemed for a moment vain to do so, but with a likely death approaching, Rip looked into the face. He mapped each line. The curve of the nose. The soft cheekbones; freckles mapping a thin face.
Her brow wrinkled and she gestured and pointed past him. She shouted something to him, but in the dark and the silence, he could not ascertain it's meaning. Her hand grew tighter on his arm.
In his mind's eye, he saw what was coming. Saw the water rushing back; returning after its long absence. A great wave formed behind him, reflecting itself in the girl's eye. Rain on black glass, rippling towards them.
She shouted again, and he did the only manner of thing he thought might comfort her.
His arms drew up about her struggling frame. Her legs moving and pistoning against him, trying to run; to escape. Their wetsuits pressed together as his body hardened about her. She buried her face in his chest and he in her hair. It smelled of apples and sweetbread. He could feel a small sob escape her chest as their two bodies united; his over her's.
Roaring.
Apples.
Roaring.
He opened an eye and saw a small heart tattooed behind her right ear.
Yes, that seems right, he thought.
2
The curtains pulled back to reveal a beach.
The waves crashed in and out and Rip stood upon the shore. The sand was pale white against the sea's blue iris.
The tide came and touched Rip's toes; and he felt nothing.
He stooped at the waist to pick the board from the sand. With it, he rushed into the ocean. Her arms extended to him a motherly touch, pulling him quickly past the break; his board skimming the warm pool around him. It shined and sparkled about him, a sea made of crystal and glass.
Still as a sleep; silent as death.
Rip leaned back on his haunches, sitting upright on the board.
There upon the middle of the board was a single icon: a small red heart.
As he gazed upon it, the light about him dimmed. The opaque surf board became gray before him, the darkness eclipsing the heart.
He heard a cry and looked to look back at the small beach from whence he had come. Upon it a woman stood. She cupped her hands and cried to him, pointing behind him into the distance.
A chill rung out; vibrations of goosebumps lighting his arms.
He turned toward the blackness and saw a wave larger than any he had ever known.
From afar, it swallowed the horizon, but as it drew down, it blotted the out the light which had bathed the seascape.
He looked upon it and knew he could not run from it. No man can outrun the sea, for we are but dust and water and soul.
Rip looked sadly upon the strip of sand, the lady, vanished.
He looked upon his finality and felt very cheated. He frowned up at the disaster and waited for the mountain to drop.
In the midst of life, we are in death, he thought.
Who said that?
God?
3
The universe is a vast and wondrous place. It is huge in ways we cannot comprehend and beautiful in colors our mind can't comprehend. It expands and swirls; exploding and turning like the pocket watch of madman.
The universe, is but a exquisite representation of an ordered chaos scientists have yet to completely understand.
Our universe has an armpit.
It is called East County, San Diego.
“C'mon man! What the fuck!”, Burt shouted.
“Dude, c'mon, grab your crap and let's go.” Reid returned
“I was, like, halfway to the save point, dipshit!”
“Don't care. Bosses orders.”
Burt threw the controller in the vicinity of the television. It's clatter jumbled with the creak from Burt attempting to roll from the chair he had previously occupied.
“Dude, you have beat that game like six times. Last time, you played it on retarded hard fucking mode and beat it in a night. Life will go on.”
“Asshole.”
Reid stood at the doorway while Burt attempted to dress himself, is outfit chosen from the clutter of assorted shirts thrown about the floor. Reid ducked his head as he exited to the hall. His six foot four inch frame navigated the second floor hallway quickly. He moved down two doors and knocked.
“Comin'”, came the grunt from the other side. Mikey.
“Pull the ass out, man. We gotta go.”
Silence was the response.
A series of bumps and obscenities came from behind Reid. Well, at least Burt's ready, he thought.
“Hon?”
Reid looked to the end of the hall. Trish stood in the doorway. She rubbed at her eyes, her platinum hair a single sided hurricane. He walked down towards and gathered her up in his arms.
“Shhh babe. Go back to sleep”, he cooed.
“Wuzz goin' down, hon?” Her face nuzzled against his chest.
“Just some bizness with Boss. Go back to bed sugar.”
“Kay,” she said and turned on heel. He closed the door quietly and heard her body moving in the bed.
Mikey came out of his room and after one glance at Reid, moved huskily through the hall towards the kitchen. His frame bulked in the corridor. He maneuvered his wide shoulders over the threshold and found Burt blowing smoke ring at his flytrap.
“Fucker!” He whispered and grabbed Burt's shoulder.
“Whatthehell!” He screeched.
Mikey turned Burt smoothly and drove his head into the cabinet. It went through the thin paneling and smashed the box of cereal waiting on the other side.
“My fucking flytrap!”
Burt screeched in the cabinet and pressed his hands against the door his skull had encountered.
“Fuck, assbags! We gotta get goin!”, Reid bellowed.
“You two fucktarded monkey boners had better grab your nutsacks so we can fuckin' make the meeting on fuckin' time 'cause I don't wanna hear anymore fuckin' shit from Boss!”
Mikey shrugged and grabbed a granola bar, muttering about his flytrap. Reid shook his head and walked out of the room.
“And Burt get your fucking head OUT of that cabinet DAMNIT!”
At that, Burt began to cackle blood into the cheerios.
A girl stood in the doorway to the hospital waiting room. She wore a red hooded sweatshirt and tight jeans, which ended in scuffed black sneakers. She looked at Rip.
Rip lay in the bed, unconscious, his feet almost hanging off the edge. He was breathing quietly, tubes flowing from his hand and nostrils. His eyes moved under his eyelids.
The girl walked forward, closing the door, and bent over Rip. She withdrew a sowing needle and a small glass bottle. She unscrewed it, and, setting the cap aside, began to work. She picked up his hand and began to jab at it.
She pictured a friend or family member walking into the room and sitting at the edge of his bed. He would wake sluggishly and smile. They would whisper something funny and comforting to him; and he would snort.
No, chuckle, she thought. He'd chuckle.
Then, they would turn, to consult his injuries and find the tattoo.
“What's this?” They would ask.
He would shake his head and take it between his fingers, gently caressing the pain.
Because, she thought, although he would not really know the name, his mind would find her.
When she had finished, she replaced the bottle and looked about the room. She looked back to Rip, her face tender. She bent and kissed his lips, wondering for an instant if it might wake him. She shook her brown hair and left.
“Rip, man, we gotta go!” A voice whispered.
“Yeah, dude, we gotta get outta here!” Another said.
Warm hands touched Rip's shoulder and Rip thought he would scream. His face puckered and no sound came out. He gasped and took a breath.
He opened his eyes and the room swam. He closed them again. Oh God, he thought.
“Duuuuuude!” The first voice whispered.
“Got! To! Go!”
“Rip!”
“C'mon man!”
“Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!”
“What?”
“My ma used to always say it when we were getting up for school.”
“You're retarded, you know that?”
Rip opened his eyes again. He was unsurprised to find Chill and Sweeps leaning over him; quietly arguing over the most annoying method with which to wake an injured man.
Rip opened his mouth to speak. 'Shut up' was all he wanted to say. He made a noise and then grunted. They looked down at him, Sweeps eyes bugging 'Roid Rager.
“He He. Rate your pain dude...”
“Yeah, one to ten; one being eight billion, two hundred and fifty four million and ten being the same thing plus ten.”