RE Bunch

The By-Blow Promise Land Part 4

“What time is it?” Felix yawned as though he had just woken up from a deep sleep. He shivered as the dark drizzle wrapped around him like a blanket. The tiny boat he was in was drifting off the shore. Felix’s eyes could not adjust to the darkness. It was shapes and shadows along the shoreline as the boat rocked on the inky water. He dug around his feet and found the heavy metal flashlight that rolled under the bench board.

“Bolin?” He called to the shore. His own voice did not return a response either. Felix slouched and began twisting the light on and off. The sharp light blinding him for a moment before it was extinguished again.

“I guess the only help he wanted from me was to watch me row.” I swore he heard Bolin laughing as he rowed. Maybe he appreciated the humor in having the tiniest armed man row a large mountain across a great lake. His arms and his back burned with exhaustion. Felix was almost relieved when he said he could walk to shore from where the boat was. He didn’t think he had the energy—mental or physical—to navigate the hellish swamp by flashlight. He had had his fill of this place for one lifetime. Felix groaned while stretching, his ankles and hands felt itchy from the stagnant air carrying unknown legions of mosquitos.

He twisted the flashlight on to investigate the water below him. The water was dark and cloudy. The light only bouncing off the surface, neat circle of light broken by the falling sky. Felix snickered at the foul-smelling water, “This place sucks ass. I can’t wait to come back here in five years to see it turned into a fucking parking lot. Turn it into a mall where I can get a gator-skin belt. Call it The Buy-Low.”

Felix pulled his free hand through the water. The murk stirred up thicker and darker. The grittiness stuck to his fingers as he tried to shake it off. He counted the seconds to sunrise. He knew his car was a total loss. The tiny car up to the roof in this gross water, maybe drifting back down to Mexico. A homecoming for those waterlogged parts that were worth more scrapped down there. He would be able to flag someone down at dawn, get him to town, or better the airport. It would not be the first time he asked Dede for help getting home. Would not be the last either. Dede would do anything for Jesse, more often that meant doing anything to keep Felix in his life. Truett would figure it out getting home on his own. He had just seen his family, so they should be in a generous mood with him. Positively pitiful was Truett on a good day.

Felix frowned into the water. Truett’s melancholic charm and bouncing nerves were getting old. If Truett felt the same way, he would never say it. Felix found that even if it was a bad relationship Truett would never let go of it. Truett was the best friend he had never wanted for that reason.

Felix twisted the light brighter and dimmer to keep himself awake. Maybe the mosquitos bit Truett first before biting Felix, infecting him with the same moody sadness that ran from Truett like a leaking faucet.

The boat rocked as though something brushed underneath it. The sudden jolt knocking the flashlight from Felix’s hand. The light instantly disappearing into the depth as his heart raced for the moment. Blind in the darkness he pulled himself into the center of the small boat.

“Bolin!” Felix yelled. No answer as the boat bobbed. He tried to pull his mind back together. “It was probably a log. It was nothing.”

The memory of Leticia slithered back into his mind; Cottonmouths get extra angry when the weather gets stirred up. He grew up on a river, snakes were everywhere, but he could not recall a time he saw a dangerous one. He could not recall a time he had ever seen anything more dangerous than a young 4-point stag. Felix remembered the recoil of his rifle into his shoulder as the deer crashed to the ground. It was nothing to be afraid of. It was nothing. Should be nothing but Felix became more aware of how alien this place really was to him.

“Bolin! Come on!” Felix shakily hollered to the shoreline. He was trying to stand, but the uncertainty had traveled to his knees. His legs wobbled and the boat rocked harder under him. Had he scared himself? No, he had been sitting. Something had moved under the boat, he was at least clear on that. The hairs on the back of his neck rose-up as his breath rattled in his lungs. He twisted his neck violently to look around to no use. Shadowy shapes lined the shore on one edge, and unbroken darkness on the other side. He looked up, no stars, but something was watching him. Felix’s gut cramped as he tried to steady his balance on the rocking boat.

“This isn’t fucking funny!” Felix hissed. “Bolin! Get back here now! I’ll fucking leave you out here.”

Felix’s face grew hot in frustration as he scooted his foot around the darkness looking for the edge of the paddle. If Bolin was trying to scare him, he was going to get a face full of oar.

“I’m probably not the first person to hit him,” Felix thought about the grotesquely formed boulder that sat between Bolin’s shoulders. Bolin’s face was too flat and too long. The way it made his eyes move made Felix shutter. The toe of his shoe hooked under the edge of paddle, “Just breathe.”

Felix remembered that although the stag fell long before he had lowered his rifle, it was still alive. He remembered that uneven rise in its chest as he came upon it. The stag looked bewildered as it stared up towards the dusty blue dawn sky, no stars. Its lame legs sprawled out in the tall grass, kicking dirt out from underneath it. It was humane to put it out of its misery.

“Fuck you! Swim back on your own!” Felix uneasily bent over to the grab the paddle up. The boat wobbled under him as he held his breath grasping it against his chest. “Bolin!”

Felix could not hear over the sound of his own jagged breathing. Even if he left without Bolin, he felt like he would spend the rest of the night lost on the lake. Bolin had guided them to this spot. Bolin may have deserved more credit than Felix thought was possible.

Felix gasped as suddenly the boat was rammed from underneath. The boat leapt from the water, as though being pulled into the sky by an invisible hand. Felix soared through the air as he toppled over the shallow edge of the rowboat. Icy water shocked him as he crashed under the surface.

The water stung his eyes and flooded into his mouth. The mud chocked down his throat as he sank further down. The oar more like an awkward anchor in his grasp as his fingers turned numb. Felix flailed under the water, reaching out for anything. The bottom that felt impossibly far way. Up and down were the same in darkness as he drowned. His mind paralyzed by the terrible thought of this being the end. His feet thrashed as his stomach spasmed violently. He wanted to be sick, but swamp water sucking further into his stomach. The gritty mud settling deeper down like cement. His foot brushed against something solid, yet gave a little bit. A bottom, hopefully. With his last bit of sense, he pushed both feet against it and sent himself upward.

His body shivered as his hands pulled wildly forward. If he survived, he promised himself he would teach Jesse how to swim to avoid this hellish fate. Felix wanted to survive long to see him one last time. His arms felt weak but he had to keep pulling up. This had to be up, air should be coming soon. His head throbbed in agony as the numb tingling in his body marched further down his arms.

A beautiful rush of cold night air cut across his face, as the gentle drizzle kissed his face. Felix gagged and spat out of the muddy slurry in his gut. Coughing, chocking up the swamp mud now stuck in his lungs. His hands and feet prickled with fiery needles of unspent adrenaline. His eyes were blurry as he looked up and out. Darkness, but he was alive and could breathe for the moment. His hands slapped around the water, trying to feel out for anything familiar.

From below he felt the rough scales of a tremendous tail brush along his legs. Each jutting scale like a barb as it picked along his exposed legs. Felix’s heart stopped as he let out a scream. His legs springing up as he tried to jump away from the water. Feet treading shakily as he tried to swim towards the shadows of the shoreline. His arm’s burning as he choked on the mud seeping into his mouth. Felix had to make it. The shadows on the shore were getting close. Just a few more strokes to shallow water.

Sharp daggers broke through his fleeting hopes as they cleaved into his shoulder with unimaginable power. His bones shattering in an instant. The strength of freight train both grabbed and shot him into the air. Felix could see the enormous reptile erupting from the water like a canon. The creature’s armor was darker than pitch with crimson red fissures down its back. Felix’s body was pinned in its massive jaws. Jaws that if fully opened could have swallowed him in one-easy bite. The long teeth and muscle were wrapped around him, acting as both a vice to squeeze the last bit of air from him and a tourniquet to stem his blood. Its eyes were glowing amber in the darkness, illuminating its own gleeful curved smile in Felix’s draining face.

The goliath’s spiney tail propelled them higher still. Its legs perfectly pinned to its side to gain further height. The beast’s growl deafened and shook Felix in its jaws. Felix’s legs kicked wildly beyond his control. His mind spun, but arrived at the same sinking, breathless conclusion as he finally felt the beast’s body listing to the side. Time seemed to stall out until the descent began. Desperately he gasped for air as they fell back into the water. Twelve vertical feet collapsing down in seconds. The beast only teasing just a portion of its full body still submerged under the water.

The water hit him like pavement as the massive alligator pulled him deep below the surface. The glowing in his eyes dimmed, until the pain and darkness swallowed his vision. His mouth and nose filled with the muddy water as bubbles forced their way out of him.

The massive alligator began to roll. A quick half turn of its head followed by a pop in his shoulder rocketed white hot agony through his body. The water spun him around with tremendous violence and rage. It struck at Felix’s flesh, tore at his limps as beast rolled. Water rushing in and out of him, as Felix fought against himself to remain conscious as the rolling became faster. It was as though the leviathan was trying to see how long he could go before Felix gave out. The spinning centrifuged his senses while ripping him apart.

He felt tendons shred inside arms, and muscles give out in his legs. Felix last anguished feeling was sickening crack that echoed over the roaring water in his ears. The spinning, the violence all stopped feeling as Felix lost the feeling in the rest of his body. Cruelly he could feel the pressure force of the beast’s jaws building up behind his eyes. As suddenly as all this felt, there came release.

Felix floated freely. His arm finally torn free of his body stopped the death roll. Blood pooled into the back of his throat, mixing with the coffee-ground like grit suffocating his lungs. All directions in the water were now the same. No light rising around him, no stars. Felix’s mind obliterated by the hemorrhaging inside his broken body. There was no space left inside of him to feel afraid of the silent leviathan lurking in the depths with him. The silence was comforting, over the ringing in his ears.

A gleaming amber eye looked over him. Felix’s torn body reflected in the glassy eye of his fate. The fun of the hunt was over for the beast. The icy swamp water filling the inside of his body, freezing his heart before the cold-blooded monster beside him. Felix could see the glowing red fissures along the alligator’s body. All thirty feet moving gracefully in the water creating no ripples in its wake. The last thing Felix saw in the darkness was the creature’s own displeased boredom in its eyes. Bored by how easily broken Felix was. Another broken toy of Bolin’s abandoned at the bottom of the lake.