Free Dash in the Blue Pacific by Cole Alpaugh Page B

for such a huge amount of water,
not to mention the hungry whales and giant squid. Manu’s young
warriors might be tough guys, but the fishermen were the truly
brave ones.
    Dash raised the bone when they were gone,
measured it against his sunburned face. It was an adult for sure.
The tooth tumbled out again, bounced across the thin layer of black
sand. It was yellow, maybe from age or stained from coffee and
cigarettes. Could it have belonged to the lady in the flowered
dress with the bag of knitting? Perhaps whatever swarmed outside
the reef had picked her body clean, recycling the old gal in a way
she could never have imagined. He hoped she hadn’t suffered, even
though she’d been certain he was doomed to hell for violating the
irresistible crack in the wall. She’d at least had something to
hope for, had somewhere to go. Maybe she was there, or maybe she’d
been nothing but one day’s nourishment for scavengers.
    His penis hurt from thinking about the noisy
hole, but touching the front of his briefs proved the pain was a
ghost. He was as numb as ever. He stroked the smooth surface of the
bone instead, tilting it to examine tiny holes in the harsh
sunlight.
    The girl had told him the eating never stopped
until you were made of nothing. If so, then the woman could be at
peace, whether or not heaven was real. But he realized there was
still one piece of her left, or two, counting the tooth. He should
throw them back into the waves, let the Sea God finish the
job.
    Perhaps the jaw’s appearance was her attempt to
communicate from the next life, to remind him of the inevitability
of death just as Hamlet had been reminded by his dear friend
Yorick’s colorless skull. But the all-powerful sea had intercepted
the messenger and smashed up her news, or her one last chance to
tell Dash he was a dirty, filthy man. Maybe it was the Wave God’s
work, or maybe the Bird God had filled its belly on her last
morsel. Perhaps the Sun God had broiled away every last
bit.
    Being a godless heathen was easier.
    He rubbed the bone as if summoning a genie,
held it against his thigh to contrast the color. He tapped it
against his numb parts, still feeling nothing. He arched his back
and lowered the waistband with his left hand to expose his pathetic
member. He thumped the bone directly on the pale knob. “God, smite
the sinner with a paralyzed pecker!” he imagined the lady’s message
was meant to say. He drummed the bone hard enough to bring tears,
but his penis was unconscious or dead. The bone became a blur as he
beat himself, and then chuckled with an awful thought. He might be
in bad straights, but what sin had the woman committed to be
reduced to a mere drumstick?
    There was another flash of motion in the tide
pool, different from the spraying blowhole. He stopped whacking his
crotch and looked up in time to see a man lift himself out of the
water onto the edge of the shelf. He was immense, with bodybuilder
chest and arms, wide shoulders glistening bronze under the high
sun. There were no boats in sight. No crashed airplanes.
    Dash tried to look away from the man’s
nakedness when he stood tall and stretched, striking heroic Greek
god poses. But the strange object perched atop his shoulders was
impossible not to watch. If the man’s mouth did not move and his
eyes did not turn and blink—and if the small bit of bone or
cartilage did not light and flicker over his forehead—Dash would
have been certain it was a Halloween mask.
    The herculean man with the grotesque fish head
stalked up the jagged lava and swept around the tide pool. He sat
heavily next to Dash, who could only stare. The man’s lower jaw was
set in a drastic under-bite; narrow teeth were pointed barbs, made
more ominous by wide gaps displaying reddish gums. His jowls hung
from his jutting bottom lip down to a human Adam’s
apple.
    The creature looked at Dash with blue eyes that
appeared startled from skin pulled taut and missing eyebrows. What
looked to be the