Dead Sea

“Scrape it off,” Gosling told him, handing him one of the little rubberized oars.

George took it, leaned over, started peeling the stuff away, a big and heavy clump of it was tangled on the oar. It smelled rank. He tossed it aside, heard it splash, and then saw that there was something still stuck on the blade of the oar. It was about the size of a shoe. In the dim light he could see it was a clot of something. .. something odd. He pulled the oar in, made to brush the mass aside with his fingers.

The mass moved.

George cried out in shock, dropped the oar. It floated just behind the raft, the mass still intact. Gosling was there by then, he cursed George for dropping the oar and brought the lightstick out so he could grab it.

But he didn’t grab it.

He didn’t dare.

George saw it and just stared. Sitting on the end of the oar was something like a round, thick spiderish body, ringed by dozens and dozens of legs. They were segmented and dirty-brown in color. Two of them were up in the air, shuddering. From the top of its body there was a cluster of things like yellow grapes that he realized must have been eyes. As Gosling brought the light closer, a pink membrane slid over them.

George wasn’t sure if it was an insect or a crustacean or a mollusk for that matter. Only that it was disgusting and he had a mad desire to smash it.

“What in the Christ?” Gosling said.

It just sat there, looking oddly grotesque and comical at the same time with all those eyes. George could see that they were set on stalks and jerked slightly as it looked about.

Carefully, Gosling grabbed the end of the oar, tried to shake that beastie off, but it held on tenaciously. Taking up another of the oars, he swatted at it and it moved. George had a nightmarish image in his mind of the thing running up the oar and wrapping itself around Gosling’s arm, but it didn’t happen.

Gosling swatted it again, this time making contact.

It made a weird, almost birdlike peeping sound and ran off. Actually ran over the surface of the water, skimming along easily like a water strider. Then it vanished in the fog.

“What do you suppose that was?” George asked, more amused than anything. The idea of it being on you was offensive, but he didn’t really think it was dangerous. “What sort of critter is that? And please tell me you’ve seen one before, Paul, or I’m going to start thinking hard on that Sargasso-shit you told me”

“No, never seen a critter like that before. Like a sea spider gone all crazy,” was all he would say.

He went back to his radio and George sat there, wishing he had a cigarette or a drink, just about anything to pass the time with. Because with that ever-present fog, time was distorted and he just couldn’t seem to get his internal clock moving.

Again he waited, wondering what the next thing would be and whether it would amuse him or scare the shit out of him. Gosling was suddenly very talkative, going on and on about an old Chevy Bel-Air he was fixing up.

But George wasn’t paying attention.

He was seeing something out in the fog… or thought he was. He kept watching it, his skin feeling so tight it felt like it might split open. His eyes would not blink. Yes, there it was again. A huge amorphous shadow, passing deeper into the mist.

“There’s something out there,” he said, his voice dry as sand.

“Could be another raft,” Gosling said, grabbing a flare pistol to signal with. He got up by George and watched, saw something vague out there, but just for an instant

“It’s not a raft,” George said.

“It’s too far, you can’t tell.”

“Oh,” he breathed, “I could tell.”

Gosling just looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“What I mean is unless rafts have big green eyes that shine in the dark, that was no raft.”

6

“Hey, Fabrini,” Saks said, “what’s the difference between your mother and a refrigerator?”

“Just fuck off,” Fabrini said.

“Wrong. The difference is that your meat don’t fart when you pull it out of a refrigerator.”

Menhaus giggled. “That’s a good one, Saks. I’ll have to remember that.”

“Yeah, you remember it, dipshit.”

Saks was figuring, according to the luminous dial of his watch, that the sun would be up in an hour or so. And maybe when that happened, it would burn off the damn fog. But he had his doubts. He had doubts about a lot of things, only he wasn’t voicing them. These two… Menhaus and Fabrini… they weren’t much. They were both scared white and maybe, inside, Saks was, too. But he couldn’t let them see that. Way he was figuring things, he was in charge and he had to set an example for those two wet-ends. He started telling them what he was really thinking about all this, that it was the mother of all clusterfucks, and those two pussies would be pissing themselves and calling for their mothers.

No, somebody had to exhibit some balls here and Saks figured the mantle had fallen to him.