Michael Seidlinger - The Fun We've Had

She shut her eyes from it all and enjoyed how this felt, how she felt: timeless and safe. Here is all she needed. Right now.

When his grip tightened around her chest, it was enough for her to notice that the moment had passed.

She could feel his shivers through his bloated belly. Though she couldn’t see the shark, the effect of its appearance seeped through him right into the pit of her stomach.

She bit her lower lip, tasting what he had tasted upon sipping seawater.

She could see the sun quickly rising. Its appearance brought not the beauty of a sunny day but rather what the ghosts had warned her about.

Love could be so blinding, it almost fooled her into thinking that she wouldn’t have a problem holding on. To think, forgetting the trajectory of the story, foolishly pretending that it wasn’t going to end the way this is written to end. Looking at him, she could see it plain as the previous day.

They finally have each other, where no one could ever judge what they had, and yet neither would be able to enjoy it.

Counting how many turns remained, she knew there wouldn’t be much time left. And then she saw it .

A shark fin.

Right on cue.

Shortly after the shark fin, the sun gave its warning and receded behind a cloudy, darkening sky. The sun had no reason to remain. Gave them little more than a warning before it left him to fend off the drizzle that soon became a soft, delicate rain.

“Stay in my arms,” he warned.

It would be right to keep her safe. Whatever it takes.

He looked over the edge of the coffin. The darkening sky made it difficult to see much of anything. He wouldn’t be fooled; the shark was there. And indeed, soon enough, he saw it.

Worse: The shark could be seen in the water, the light grey of its body, the dead stare a reminder of his demise.

The inevitable demise.

How foolish must you be to hold on? Life has elapsed. It was time to let go. Pass on. The aftermath would be the afterlife, as dictated by blind faith. What waited for him over the horizon, past the words of warning that seemed to block his view? He wouldn’t be able to know without letting go, without letting the coffin float in that direction, the direction where only he can go, the direction where they part ways.

No. Words on the horizon read like commands:

KEEP HER SAFE.

CLOSE YOUR EYES.

SHE LOVES YOU.

LOVE HER BACK.

To which his replies were instant, honest, and true:

He would.

He did.

He does.

He always will.

The hero role took hold and the soft rains and darkened sky tore the moment, replacing it for the beginning of what would be a deeply-rooted fear of the sea, of the waters and what they hid from him, rising to the surface, building into a boil.

He saw it on the horizon, the one statement he needed most:

YOU CAN.

And it might have been new, what happened next; his actions, so admirable of a fight to pull her close, to live in this moment, despite the plain melancholy of this tale:

It is told in the past tense. Living in the past, there is no present to save you, no future to explore. All that can be merely was, and if it weren’t then, it never would be.

And this is how it will come to pass. It already had, now is merely a retelling of the tale. Not for the sake of it but for his sake, a hero in death, a simple man in life.

The shark ran its body into the coffin, pushing it to one side. Hold her. Hold her now.

“No!” he shouted.

The rain grew stronger. The softness of this rain concealed the true danger. What little hair he had left wilted. Skin burning, bubbling, and peeling. Not that he felt any of it.

There would be no feeling. It was only physical.

The pain, it had long since passed. A hero held on.

A hero must.

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.

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 and merely a hero’s departure for the other.