Free Multiplex Fandango by Weston Ochse Page A

god. She’d said that at first they wouldn’t let her. She'd had to convince them. She'd had to beg them to let her be a part of the sacrifice so she could banish her own fear. In the end they’d relented.
    Pain like a pin piercing his leg made him yelp. This was followed by another and then another as something with teeth attacked his ankle. He thrashed in the water, his legs kicking, one free, the other attached to the rope that held him to the undersea god. The man beside him thrashed as well. Their eyes met momentarily and he recognized his own terror in the bulging orbs of the other.
    A scream erupted from farther down the line. Thomas turned in time to see a man disappear beneath the water, but had no time to contemplate the other’s fate. Something hard moved against his own leg.
    Then he was jerked beneath the water.
    He’d managed to take a breath and now held it as hard as he’d ever held anything. Like a rope to freedom, the oxygen in his lungs was the only thing that kept him safe from drowning or... Panic electrified him as he finally saw the beast moving beneath him.
    Or the beasts , to be more specific. First came the shrimp. Thousands of them. Their pereopod and pleopod spines pierced his skin as they skittered over and around him. The man on his left was completely covered, as if the crustaceans were feasting, their dagger-like legs rising and falling as bubbles escaped in an undersea cloud. As the shrimp swarmed him, Thomas scraped his hands across his chest and arms, shoving them away, ignoring the pain as best he could. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry at the surreality of the events that were transpiring, but he dared not. Instead, he kicked and scraped and stared agog at the fates of the others.
    Following the rope to where it was affixed to the statue, he saw that part of the statue had come alive. Eight antennae from the gargantuan shrimp were whipping through the water like scythes through wheat. Two men had been grasped around the waists and were being pulled deeper and deeper. One had already died, his lungs filled with water, his eyes wide with lifelessness. The other was determined to live and as he sought anything that might help him. His gaze darting desperately around him, he spied Thomas. He willed the man to hold his breath longer. He willed his own breath into him. He prayed that the great beast might forget about its human morsel and release the poor man. But none of that happened. Instead, Thomas watched as the air finally exploded from the man’s mouth when he was unable to hold his breath any longer. Eyes that were at first wild with panic softened as the weight of life left him. Then Thomas was released and he popped above the water like a bobber that had just been teased by a fish. He gasped. His chest heaved. The man next to him and two farther down the line were gone. There were nine of them left and he felt a little less human for the happiness he felt, glad it wasn’t him.
    He remembered something June had told him. “I used to think I was lucky that it wasn't me. But then when I continued being so lucky, I couldn't help but feel guilty. Why should I have all the luck? What did I do to deserve to live when everyone else was dying?”
    Luck.
    Guilt.
    He didn’t care. He was just happy to be alive.
    He stared into the windows of the Black Dolphin knowing that June was there waiting for him. He could go to her, sleep with her and tempt death two more times, or he could leave right now and never look back. For a moment he thought the choice was between love and life, but then he realized that it was simpler than that. His choice was about choice . To stay would be to leave his destiny in something else’s hands. June should have died in Iraq and was condemned to live with her own mortality, her destiny tied to the souls of the dead. That RPG should have exploded, taking her with it, and she couldn’t deal with the fact that she continued to live. She couldn’t live