Guillermo del Toro: The Shape of Water

Then he’s on the jetty, tearing off a last rat along with a chunk of his thigh. Waves smash into the walkway, walls of water rising on either side, a military saber arch. The black tunnel focuses him upon its end. There stands Elisa Esposito and Deus Brânquia, their backs to him, gazing down at the river’s vortex. Strickland covers the distance in seconds, his feet sure despite the river’s spray. There’s an old man, too, off to the side. Strickland recognizes him. It’s the driver of the laundry van. It’s all coming together now. Oh, what a pleasure this will be.

The old man sees Strickland and cries, Elisa! But Strickland is coming too fast. The old man does the last thing Strickland expects, rushing him. Strickland has to stop, his foot slipping across the slick planks, the whorling torrent. He’s off-balance. All he can do is swing the Beretta. It cracks the side of the old man’s head. He goes down hard and lands badly, his torso rolling off the side of the jetty and into the raging waters. There is a suspenseful second, the old man trying to grip the wet wood. He can’t do it. He drops headfirst into the barbed waves.

Now Elisa sees him. Strickland rights himself, aims the gun at Deus Brânquia, ten feet away. But his eyes flick toward Elisa. She’s wearing next to nothing, an untied housecoat. And shoes. Of course, shoes. Sparkling silver heels meant to torture him. This temptress, this jezebel, this deceiver. She was the true Delilah all along, distracting him from her scheme. Instead, he’ll make her serve as witness to Deus Brânquia’s end. Starting now, the Gill-god is of the past. And he, Richard Strickland? It’s like the Cadillac salesman said: The future. You look like a man who’s headed there.

He’s satisfied to be right about one thing. He does, at the end, make the mute girl squawk. It’s her only way to warn Deus Brânquia of the bullet about to be fired. She gulps a water-swirled breath and, her neck veins drawing taut, screams. Strickland is certain it’s the first to ever expel from her weakling throat. It’s a little sound, the breaking of whatever is left of her voice box, the same croak the vulture chained to the Josefina made when it choked on Henríquez’s logbook.

The noise is unique enough to pierce the howling squall. Deus Brânquia turns. Lightning strikes, slashing white through the Gill-god’s blue-green glow. But it is too late. Strickland, man of the future, wields a weapon of the future. He squeezes the trigger, once, twice. In gale winds and pelting showers, it sounds tidy. Pop, pop. Two holes appear in Deus Brânquia’s chest. The creature wobbles. Drops to its knees on the jetty’s edge. Blood spouts outward, mixes with rain.

After such an epic hunt, across two continents, against so formidable a foe, it’s disappointing. It is, however, the nature of the hunt. Sometimes, your prey rages in death, becomes legend. Other times, it winks away, becomes nothing stronger than a fairy tale. Strickland shakes the rain from his face, aims at Deus Brânquia’s bowed head, and pulls the trigger.

IN THAT INSTANT, Elisa knows the frenzy that makes a man cover a grenade for his fellow soldiers, that makes mothers sacrifice their lives for their children, that makes anyone in love impatient to lose everything so that their loved one can carry on. But there is no opportunity. She raises an arm, as if she could ward off the bullet by gesture alone. It is as far as she gets. Everything happens at once.

Strickland’s body wrenches to the left at the moment of firing. The thin, sharp end of a paintbrush has been impaled through his left foot. Just behind him is Giles, resurfaced and clinging to the edge of the jetty. It is the person who dragged Giles free of the current who has taken the paintbrush from his pocket and stabbed. It is Zelda, incredibly Zelda, materialized here at world’s end, sprawled across the walkway, drenched and muddy, her fist still clenched around the brush, her hand gone green from the drizzling paint.

Strickland reaches for his foot, stumbling to a kneel. Hope punches Elisa in the chest. Then, she realizes, it isn’t hope at all. She falls to her own knees, mirroring Strickland. Her thighs quake and she clenches them with both hands, not wishing to fall any farther. It’s no good. She pitches forward, bracing herself in a push-up pose. River water splashes across her face, over her fingers. The water is black, it is blue, it is purple, it is red. She looks sharply down at her chest. There is a neat bullet hole directly between her breasts. Blood spurts out, onto the planks, and is instantly washed away.

Her elbows are paper. She wilts. Her vision rolls over. She sees an upside-down world: charcoal clouds with lightning-bolt capillaries, a shower of racing rain, police lights flashing against nearby boats, Strickland scrabbling for his gun, Zelda pounding her fists on his back, Giles back on the dock and reaching for Strickland’s ankle. Elisa sees green, and blue, and yellow; then faster, violet, and crimson, and umber; then faster, peach, and olive, and canary; and faster, every color known and unknown, outshining the storm. It is the creature, the magnificent grooves of his body phosphorescent, and he has caught her in his arms, his blood pouring into hers, hers spattering into his, both of them connected by the liquid of life even as both of them are dying.

AWAVE NUDGES the Beretta toward the depths, but Strickland is quicker. He crawls for it, seizes it, joins both hands to hold it tight. Now to rid himself of the twin rats nipping at him. He rolls onto his back, kicks the old man in the face. He shoves Delilah Brewster several feet down the jetty. Strickland is bitten all over, spurting blood from his foot, blinded by the downpour. Still he props himself on an elbow, opens his mouth to the rain. It is his rain now. He brings himself to a sitting position, gasping water into his lungs, and cranes his neck.

Deus Brânquia fountains with color. It stares at Strickland through blades of rain, past Elisa, who is cradled in its arms. Slowly, it lowers her to the walkway, where waves lick against her. The Gill-god stands. Strickland blinks, attempts to comprehend. It’s been shot twice in the chest. And yet it stands? And yet it walks? Deus Brânquia continues down the jetty, its body a torch in the night, an infinite thing that Strickland, stupid man, believed he could make finite.

Strickland tries anyway. He fumbles the gun upward, fires. Into Deus Brânquia’s chest. Into its neck. Into its gut. Deus Brânquia wipes a hand across the bullet holes. The wounds dribble away along with the rain. Strickland shakes his head hard enough to spatter water. Is it the freshly filled river that gives it such strength? Is it the gathered beasts supplying their master with life force? He’ll never know. He isn’t meant to know. He’s crying. The same big, ragged sobs he told Timmy he wasn’t ever allowed to cry. He lowers his face to the jetty, ashamed to meet the Gill-god’s everlasting eyes.

Deus Brânquia kneels before him. With a single claw, it hooks the trigger guard of the gun, gently removing it from Strickland’s grip and lowering it to the dock. A spate of black water explodes across the jetty, steals the gun, swallows it down. With the same claw, Deus Brânquia tilts Strickland’s face upward by the tender underside of his chin. Strickland sniffles, tries to keep his eyes closed, but he can’t. Their faces are inches apart. Tears stream down his cheeks, across the bridge of Deus Brânquia’s claw, down the brilliant scales. Strickland opens his mouth and he is glad, here at the end, to hear that his own voice has returned.

“You are a god,” Strickland whispers. “I’m sorry.”