Free The Fun We've Had by Michael J Seidlinger Page B

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