Warm Waters, Chapter 2

2.
Noon. Water still felt warm.

‘Why are you doing this?’ said the man in the water, not really talking to the man on board. He felt a surge of rage. ‘What have I ever done to you? I don’t even know you!’ he spashed.

‘Ah, a reason’ said the man on board, smiling in a way that made the man in the water feel very small. ‘There has to be a reason. It can’t just be random. You can’t be dying by chance!’ Sarcasm oozing. He proceeded almost philosophically. ‘A reason can be as good as a rope to cling on to.’ he said. ‘But listen, listen to me.’ The man on board leaned outwards, confidencially. ‘Consider this for a moment. What if there really is no reason? There may not even be a plan. You jumped on the boat, you decided to go swimming, and when I see you swimming back, it just pops up in my head: “what if he never gets back on?” You haven’t thought of that, have you? No, of course not. Because that would be so unfair. If you’re going to die of cold in the middle of the ocean, there better be a good fucking reason for it!’

The man in the water had stopped paddling and waving his hands around to control the floating. There was a deep wrinkle between his eyebrows. He hadn’t even thought of all of this, not really.

‘So, just for the sake of argument,’ continued the man on board, ‘let’s say there is a reason. Let’s say I picked you. Let’s even say I’ve spent the whole morning putting in your brain the idea of jumping off my boat in the middle of nowhere. Let’s say there is a plan. Maybe if you think really hard, you’ll find out what it is. And wouldn’t that be helpful. That you could, shall we say, reach me;’ such an ugly sarcasm in the word “reach”, ‘that you could understand what I’m doing, or why am I doing it to you. Wouldn’t that give you some leverage, perhaps even a chance?’ The man on board stared intently to the man in the water for a minute in silence. Then he turned his back to him, leaned forward, grabed a can of beer from the coolbox under the bench near him.

The other man was looking at his hands, distorted and turned white, almost fluorescent, by the thin layer of water above them. They looked like raisins. They’d soon start to turn blue.

‘It would make more sense, wouldn’t it’ continued the man on board, staring into space. ‘It would be a relief. That you deserved this somehow.’ The man on board sipped his beer. ‘There are days when I feel that we all deserve to die a cruel death for something, you know. But if we all deserve this, then in a way none of us do.’ The man on board reclined on the cockpit bench and disappeared.

Warm Waters, Chapter 1

WARM WATERS, A STORY

He felt the cold, black, lifeless eyes of the man on board over him.

‘No more begging?’ he gloated.

‘What would be the point’, spat the man in the water.

It had taken him hours to realise the man on board was serious. At first he just couldn’t believe this was happening to him. The absurdity of it all exasperated him and enraged him until all he could see was red. The situation was dead simple: he had rented a weekend fishing trip to the island. Halfway there he had had the whim of swimming right where there was no land to be seen. He had put on his scuba diving suit and diver’s knife out of snobbery, because the waters were at a stupidly warm temperature and he couldn’t think of one single reason he might need the knife; he had put on his flippers in case currents were stronger than they appeared, and his mask and snorkel out of habit. And after he had done his splashes, and dived, and laid on his back under the sun, and felt connected to the secret soul of the planet and all that, he had tried to swim back to the boat. At that point the man on board steered the trawler away from him. And when he tried to approach it again, he steered away again. Just a few braces each time, keeping always within a tantalisingly close distance. Not close enough for him to reach, but not so far that it seemed completely pointless trying. He had exhausted himself falling into that again and again, and getting furious, shouting, cursing and begging, not necessarily in that order, and getting no results, not even a word. Now he was determined not to be fooled again, to keep calm and resolve this problem. He started reviewing in his head the dangers and the opportunities. He had been scanning the sea around without realising.

‘You’re thinking, “somebody will turn up soon”, aren’t you’, said the man on board. ‘You’re thinking, “This is a route towards an island. People need supplies in an island. A cargo boat or the frigging milk sailor man will go by at some point and see me, and then I’ll be saved.” Isn’t that what you’re thinking?’

He felt like an insect studied through a lens, the glare of the man on board a bright laboratory light peering through his transparent body. Yes, that thought had put his mind at ease for an instant. Why was the man on board so untroubled by this possibility? Did ships really take that route? Was there anything he didn’t know? He couldn’t stand that glare.

‘I’m thinking whether I should cut your throat with the knife, or is it better if I strangle you? Or should I push you overboard and watch you drown?’ He tried to sound every bit as threatening as the man on board. He realised he was overdoing it.

The man on board coughed a void, cruel chuckle.

‘That’s not what you’re thinking.’ he said, and he lay back again, disappearing behind the gunwale line. The man in the water knew he was reclining on the cushioned bench in the cockpit where he himself had been sitting a couple of hours ago, taking the sights in, the salty breeze in his face, feeling alive.

What are my most pushing problems?, pondered the man in the water. About four hours away north, four hours by boat of course, stood the island were he had been headed. Right now its waters must be swarming with happy, fat tourists, diving to look at the fish, and taking pictures of themselves next to giant bivalves; they would be shipped off on shark spotting safaris. They would take pictures with their disposable, 24-snapshots, waterproof Kodaks. He could have been one of them, but he would have looked down on them. After all, he was an experienced diver; he had been to the Great Coral Reef and to the Maldives. Why in the world had he wanted to go to that blooming island in the first place? Why had he wanted to swim in the middle of the fucking sea? He was seeing red again. He took a deep breath.

Four hours southwards was the continent. How much could it take to get there by swimming? It seemed like a lot. I have to save my strength, paddle slowly, he told himself. He put on his diving mask and snorkel and floated belly down. There was nothing to be seen, no sandy shallows, no rocky reefs, just the deep blue abyss. He felt his breathing pace rushing as his eyes followed the white, straight stripes of light that pierced the waters ever downwards, deeper and deeper, in an angle that converged hundreds and hundreds of braces between his body and the earth, pointing at a cold, dark place where nightmarish creatures fed on the dead things that fell from the world of light in the surface, like himself. Vertigo overtook him. He took his head out of the water, realising his heart was in his throat, and that he could easily have panicked, swallowed water and gotten into trouble. When he looked to the boat, the man on board was staring. His eyes lifeless and black, a doll’s eyes. He thought he saw hatred or disdain in the wrinkle that twisted ever so slightly his upper lip, but he could be wrong. He felt again studied like a lab rat.

‘What are you staring at, you sick fuck?’ he groaned.

The man on board didn’t change his hieratic expression one bit.

‘You know you could freeze to death in this water?’ he said. ‘25 degrees Celsius, reaching perhaps 27 at high noon; like a bathtub, you said it yourself, and still you could die of cold out there, if you stay in long enough. That is, if you don’t get a cramp and drown. As you get colder, your heart will beat faster. The trembling will start. Moderate at first, then more and more violent, until your hands are all but useless. When your internal temperature drops under 35, you’ll start to die. Heartbeat will start to slow down, so will your breathing. The trembling burns oxygen and puts stress on your heart. You’ll feel confused. At that point, if nothing is done to warm you up, death could occur in less than two hours. Some sort of process involving lactic acid. At 33 degrees, your conscience will be completely clouded. Under 32, the trembling will stop, you’ll piss yourself, you’ll go into a state of stupor and then coma. At 27 you’ll appear dead. You’ll lose even your reflexes. Under 25 your body functions will collapse. People have been revived from a starting temperature as low as 15 degrees Celsius. But these were people who were immerged in water near to freezing point. That is not you.’

The man in the water had listened to all that in a state of increasing horror and disbelief.

‘Are you trying to kill me?’ he said, a burning knot in his stomach.

‘I am already succeeding’ said the man on board.

‘But... what is your fucking problem?’ whispered the man in the water, terror choking his voice.

A small, horrible smile curved the left end of the mouth of the man on board.

‘I believe the problem is all yours.’ he said.

Warm Waters (four words)

This one has been on my mind for quite a while. It was originally written simply as a dialogue, then turned into a script for a short film that I hope will be shot in the summer of 2010. This story means a lot to me. It is the first piece of fiction I managed to write in ages, it was my idea from start to finish, and I happen to like it quite a lot as a script. Let's see how it fares as a tale.

It deals with technical stuff (hypothermia and nautical terms) and I'm bound to make mistakes that will jump in the face of some readers (if I get any). Please excuse my ignorance and take a minute to pull my ears and enlighten me, if you please.

As always, I'll drop in the usual excuse of English not being my native language to try and get away with any literary miscarriages in the prose.

The Kennels, Chapter 7 (Finale)

7.

Sitting on one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs of the ER, waiting for his name to be called, he told himself he would go to the kennels the following day and confront these people. He was thinking of the anguish and despair on the woman’s face when she realised her plan to get help wouldn’t work, and that she was alone with her problems and with the men who profited from it once again.

Tom went home with seven stitches on the back of his head, the area feeling blissfully numb thanks to the superficial anesthetics he had been given. He felt determined and rage made him brave. A few hours later, the effects of the anesthetics had worn off, the stitches pulled and the area throbbed. The dressing bulged and every time he turned in bed it reminded him of what had happened. He was unable to sleep. In the morning he had a hammering migraine. He couldn’t even open his eyes without a moan. He took everything he had been prescribed until his belly rattled, and laid in bed telling himself there was no way he could get up and face the people at Ickfield. He spent all day in bed, in the dark, trying to sleep. Every time he heard a car outside he gave a start, his pulse rushed wild and his forhead pearled with sweat.

On Monday he dragged himself to the office, still with the migraine’s hangover and a bandage on his head to explain. He said he had tripped in the shower, and yes he was alright, and no he didn’t rather go home thank you. He said he couldn’t stay another day in bed. He didn’t say he felt safer among people. When it was time to leave he felt an almost overpowering urge to ask Jack if he could crash in his settee. He then remembered Jack’s wife’s obsessions with chicken broth and how very much attentive she could be with recovering patients, and he decided to risk his own place after all.

He unlocked his door that evening with a shudder. The door opened like a mouth to a place that was dark, quiet and unwelcoming, full of corners and hiding places where desperate, evil men could be lurking from that very second. When he locked the door behind him, the warm, yellow lights of the streetlamps were locked out with it. He switched on every light as he moved around the house, and left them on. He looked at every window with a shiver. How accessible his house was, how easy to break into. He wouldn’t see a marauder in his back garden until the trespasser’s nose was stuck to the French doors’ glass. Would the neighbours do something. Would they stay put and ignore the noises, like they did, like he himself did, that time when a group of teenagers smashed a car’s window and drove away with it, the alarm booming, the boys laughing. Wasn’t his home supposed to be a sanctuary. Should a sanctuary have bars on every window. Should he have gotten another dog. He was sitting on the settee, the telly on mute, looking at the dining chairs and wondering if they would make a good barricade. He felt ridiculous and cried. Out of the corner of his eye he had seen Baloo’s leash still hanging from the rack in the hall. He had left it there and stopped seeing it after a while. Tonight it flashed, silver and red, and made Tom feel incredibly lonely.

On Tuesday he looked like a racoon –he hadn’t slept a wink, again-, and his workmates struggled not to insist for him to go home. Tom didn’t feel half as bad as he looked, but he allowed them to believe it. By noon the boss told him go home Tom really. He accepted, smiling tiredly, sheepishly. He didn’t go home though. He headed for Ickfield instead. He didn’t phone the police. He wouldn’t have known what to say.

He turned at Touchwood Lane into Ickfield Road and he smelt it. Smoke. He could even smell how black and thick it was. Then he saw it, like a dark, ominous tower climbing over the trees, a tongue of flame licking its walls every now and then. He heard it. It creeped and thrummed like war drums, like an army of insects. The bulging belly of the grey clouds was tainted rust red, like old, dry blood. He heard the sirens and saw the orange and blue flashes of the police and the firemen.

He got to the beginning of the bumpy private road leading to the kennels. A young police constable walked towards the middle of it to stop him from going further. Tom jumped out of the car, looking upwards, mesmerised by the flames he could finally see, although he coulnd’t see the buildings because the meandering road flanked with trees disguised them.

‘There is a fire, sir, you can’t get through.’ said the young PC, stating the obvious. ‘You need to move your car.’

Tom only half listened to him. He was drawn to the fire like a moth. The PC stood right in front of him and thrusted his hands forward. Another step and he’d grab Tom’s arms.

‘Sir! You can’t get through. Move your car now, please.’

Tom stopped. He looked at the PC for the first time. He looked a bit out and the PC wondered if he was on something. He saw the dressing at the back of his head and drew a few mistaken conclusions. Wondered if he had to caution him about driving under the influence.

‘What about the owners?’ was all Tom said.

‘There was nobody in, that we know of.’

Tom was puzzled. He accepted to remove the car. He stayed by the road, waiting for new developments. He wondered whether there were any dogs left in there, roasting, but didn’t ask. He didn’t want to know the answer.

It took hours before the firemen declared the fire extinct. By then a little crowd had gathered and there was mess and confusion. The young PC was overpowered, and before reinforcements arrived, Tom had already gone through, crossing the fields, to examine the wreck with his own eyes. The long flat house was a ruin. Only the stone foundations had survived. The roof had collapsed and the wood frame was gone. Perhaps the firemen had pushed in a few walls, making some furniture topple, because there were objects scattered outside the house like a very off sort of flotsam. The cells compound was blackened, the metal grids flagging like a windless sail, the metal shed deformed by heat. Behind the compound, the woods had become an ink illustration in a book of Gothic tales. Tom walked towards it. Nobody stopped him.

There was a feverish, sickening heat radiating from the ground. The burnt undergrowth cracked and broke as he walked through it. Twice he heard thundering and realised it was some big old tree falling over. He realised he could be crushed. He ignored it. He realised he could be poisoned with the smoke. He put a handkechief to his mouth when he started coughing and kept walking. He reached the stream. The long planks of wood where two thinned bars of coal. He descended the four feet towards the water dragging on his back, wetted his hands and face and handkerchief with the drip of water still running in the stream, climbed the four feet of red clay with protruding, untouched roots that fed no living thing anymore. He didn’t think twice about his suit. He rushed forward without realising when he saw the hill. He walked around it like last time. There it was, the clearing.

The ancient, twisted oaks were still standing. A few younger, twiggy trees had fallen off, making the clearing wider. On the ground, the things, the lichens, the meat flowers were blackened, smoky bulges, like burnt jacket potatoes, whistling, an odd purring noise emerging from deep inside them. Tom felt once again about to be sick. Under a thick veil of fungish-like smell, and smoke and ashes, one could feel the stench of burnt flesh. However, the growths and shapes that would appear in Tom’s nightmares for years to come were unrecognisable. He realised there was no way he would convince anyone that the thing two feet away from where he stood had been a dog’s head, with eyes and teeth and the suggestion of hair, like a half-formed horror, the foetus of an entity Tom would forever more try to ignore and forget, a thing existing in this world he could not explain, and that he feared.

When he read on the local newspaper the police was quite sure the fire had been provoked, and that it had started in the woods, Tom wasn’t surprised. When he didn’t hear a word about the things in the clearing, he was suspicious. When rumours appeared about the owners disappearing with a large amount of cash, he wasn’t so sure. He wondered if it was true. He wondered whether Mr. Ickfield would forgive Mrs. Ickfield for burning the chicken with the golden eggs. He wondered what would happen with the puppies from Ickfield, those weird animals who had come out of thin air, and might propagate a hybrid species of god knows what, with god knows what consequences. And he hoped he would stop some day waking up in the dead of night, with his pulse rushing, because he had dreamed of Baloo’s red eyes glaring at him from the end of the flower of flesh, twisting and screeching because it was being burnt alive.

THE END.

The Kennels, Chapter 6

6.

Dry lips. Tang of blood. Occlusion in his brain. Eyes will only open a glitch. The world is blurred and there is a gravestone on his forehead, or a hammer. Feels the back of his head. A burning hammer struck and a dry crust that must be blood. If somebody tries to hurt me now, I’m helpless, I’m done for, I can’t lift a finger. His throat is so dry he feels an acute pierce when he attempts to swallow. He slowly rises up to a sitting position and experiments with opening his eyes wider. Where am I. Stench of dog and stale dog food. And mud. The kennels. He feels the ground around him. A little clang when he bangs something with his fingernails. A metal water bowl. He feels like a blind man, wets up his fingers, licks them, then wets them up again, rubs his eyes. He drinks. He freshens up his face, his throbbing forehead. He opens his eyes. There is an evening dim, warm light. He is a muddy yard surrounded by a low concrete wall, crowned with a tall metal grid. He is leaning against a wooden box with a blooming dog flap in it. He really doesn’t want to turn his head around –the fear of the pain he might feel paralyses him- so he slowly crawls to his knees and turns his whole body around, to get a look behind him. The door to the passageway between the cells is secured with a heavy chain and padlock. He feels like shouting “if this is a joke it isn’t funny” but it dawns on him as clear as day that this in no joke and that the situation is critical. He has been assaulted, knocked out and locked up in a fucking dog cell. He is a prisoner, and that padlock is big enough to dispel any suggestions of humour.

‘Oil! Anyone!’ he screeches, his throat still feeling like sandpaper, his heart pounding, his stomach burning. ‘Hello!’

Nothing. The usual disturbing noiselessness of the kennels.

‘Hello! Somebody!’ The second screech is even screechier.

Shouting makes his headache wake up and throb with fury. He can’t keep up anymore. He leans to one side and ends up with his face on the mud. It’s cold and it feels good.

It feels like ages of lying there, unable to move or keep his eyes open. Then he hears the padlock and chain and opens his eyes temptingly. It’s nigh time and it’s dark, the only light is the residual clarity created by the stadium lights at the entrance of the kennels, fifty yards away. He makes out a silhouette approaching him, then the feel of a firm grip on his shoulder and a shake.

‘Are you awake, Mr. Everton?’ It’s a woman’s voice. Tom struggles to focus. ‘Get up. Hold onto me. Hold onto me Mr. Everton. That’s it, good lad. Push up now, hold on. We’re walking.’

Tom leans heavily on the woman, stronger than she looks, and is half-carried half-dragged along the passageway between the cells, through the metal shed and into the long flat house. He is taken to the lavatory and sat down on the toilet, where the woman has already set out a sink full of warm water and a couple of cloths. She cleans his wound and his face and gives him tablets. Tom shrugs off them

‘Paracetamol, Mr. Everton.’ She says.

He takes them. She sounds reassuring.

‘What’s going on?’ Tom takes the second cloth and rubs his face and his eyes. It’s soothing.

‘They found you in the forest. They know you know. You need to get out of here before they come back and tell the government what’s going on! This has to stop!’ She has stopped washing him and instead is standing there rubbing his hands together in anguish.

‘What is going on? What needs to stop?’

‘The flowers! The meat flowers in the forest! All those puppies coming out of nowhere! I thought you’d understand better than me. What kind of a scientist are you anyway?’

‘An engineer.’

‘An engineer? But you said you worked at the hospital!’

‘I said I had done work for a hospital.’

She went pale.

‘So you don’t know what is going on?’

‘No more than you.’ Tom got slowly on his feet. ‘Where is my stuff?’

‘They took it all.’

‘My camcorder?’

‘Your camera, your mobile, everything. They went to get rid of it. Then they wanted to get rid of you! They think you are a scientist and that you’re going to tell the whole world about this place and those things in the forest! You need to go now.’

‘You told miss Alastair how to find me, didn’t you? You told her I’d be interested.’

‘I thought you were a scientist!’ she moaned. ‘I thought you’d be able to stop all this! And now what!’ She was in despair. ‘You need to go now. I’m sorry about getting you in this mess. Leave, now! They’ll be back soon!’

‘I’m going to the police, lady.’

‘Try if you want. They have never believed me or given a toss about dogs being impregnated with spores! Now, leave, please!’

Tom took the blanket she offered and accepted to be lead to a back exit. He found himself facing the muddy fields again and wondering if he’d manage to find his way in the dark. Hell, would his car be there? His knees were wobbly and his head still throbbed. Still he crossed the field, arrived to a fence and recognised the crossroad. He had to walk southwards half a mile.

He heard a car behind him. A flash of instinct told him to duck. The big tank-like muddy Jeep he used to park next to when he left his dog at the kennels. The owner and the guy in the black paste glasses where in it. They went passed where he was with a roar of thunder. Tom was glad to have ducked and believed he hadn’t been found out.

He stumbled and limped the half a mile towards his car, driven by sheer terror. He believed they were capable of everything the woman had said. His car was there, thank god. Would he be able to drive. His heart was pounding like explosions in a deep mine and his stomach burning with fear as he drove past the kennels’ gate. He breathed deeply when he reached the main road. At the first lay-by he had to stop, step out of the car and vomit. They would have killed me, he thought, blinded with fear. He had jumped into that situation merrily, without a real clue of what was at stake and what might be the consequences. He realised these men would not just let him off that easily. He wasn’t safe. He did not know what to do. He ha had gotten himself in deep shit. To think that just a few hours ago he had felt exhilarated and happy. What an idiot he had been. What was done was done. But what now?