October 2022: What I Remember - Scott Hoffman
Here is what I remember. The immense boil of water that preceded the dark girth of the shark as it came up between us and rolled, one eye blankly gazing, a fin the size of a boogie board trailing, and a smear of white water remaining after it went under again. We were only metres apart so we both saw it. I can remember Steve swearing and me looking up from the smooth ocean’s surface, benign and friendly only seconds before at his white face. Then there is a gap of memory, of sensory inputs before sound returns and side by side Steve and I are paddling towards the shore with my harsh breathing in my ears.
I remember looking up and seeing the beach still far away and empty of onlookers, the blank windscreen of our lone car reflecting back impassive and uncaring. I turned to Steve, saw his arms ploughing the sea, his eyes wide and his upper jaw muscles clenching under his stubble as some waves rolled under us, too small to break and carry us to the shore.
I remember praying that a rolling white wash would take us all the way to the beach and how we would then collapse on the sand with a story for the rest of our lives and warmth in our wetsuits from when we pissed ourselves.
I remember he looked at the ocean behind us. He looked back at me and said between heaving sobs of breath, ‘It’s behind us. I saw its fin. Don’t look, just keep paddling’
That was when the shark hit him. He flew over me with the impact. The shark had come up and under and launched him and his board. And now he floated stunned on one side of me with his board upturned on the other, joined by the legrope that ran between them over the twitching muscles of my lower back.
The shark came again and hit his surfboard dead centre. Took it in jaws a metre across and shook it and took it under. I remember I was no longer silent but screaming then his legrope pulled tight and a shaking, silent Steve knocked me off my board as he was dragged into me by the shark and we tumbled together in the water. Steve was dragged away and he tried to grab my board and live and then at last but too late, the waves came and we were driven down and apart.
After a while I came up whimpering with fear and gasping for air. The waves had swept me much further in. I dragged myself up on my board and out of the ocean and looked for the shark. I looked for Steve.
I was alone. A little way away from me there were bubbles and the ocean had changed colour. Pieces of surfboard and something that wasn’t were floating. And that’s what I remember.
By Scott Hoffman.
#RightLeftWrite’s October genre prompt was Horror and was guest judged by award-winning author and editor Geneve Flynn.
November’s competition is open now - genre prompt: Memoir. Submissions of short work (max. 500 words) close at the end of the month - submit your entry.
Right Left Write’s October genre prompt was Horror.