d a v i d    g i a n a t a s i o

Wipeout

At the edge of vision, more sensed than truly seen ... a sudden commotion upsets the dappled waves ... a flash of color ... then it's gone. And we're strolling back to the car, picnic basket between us, the kids skipping across the sand, puckered pink from their day in the surf. I look back at the water, say nothing. That's when I see her, slim and blonde, walking quickly at first, then running along the shoreline, scanning the surface of the sea. The lines of her face harden with tension and concern as she shouts to the nearest lifeguard. They haven't seen what I've seen: that dash of color and quick violent movement near the jagged crags that rise like angry spires or the claws of some impossible beast bubbling just below the surface. Reaching, hungry ... like talons. Teeth. Soon she's clearly panicked, waist deep in the foam, calling out a name in desperation. The lifeguard paddles into the surf. He's heading away from the rocks, in the entirely wrong direction. A group of teens crane their necks this way and that. The lifeguard in the tower studies the horizon with binoculars. They're trying to see. But they don't. And we're in the car, heading home. Those crags, like the signposts of a submerged and haunted world ... or markers for an ancient wreck. Vengeful and violent and HUNGRY somehow. To this day, I can't say what I thought or felt, can't explain why I didn't run back and tell everyone what I'd seen. What did I see? It was more like an impression, not really a visual image at all. It could have been anything, or nothing. That's what I tell myself now. Even after we'd begun to drive off, there still might have been time ... Funny, sometimes I don't think about it for months ... or weeks, at any rate ... (OK, I think about it EVERY day) ... and I take out the yellowed newsprint and obsessively read those 166 words (I've counted, countless times) ... and trace my finger over the washed-out image of an unfamiliar face and the gray crags looming up from the sea. I can stare at that clipping for hours. I haven't been back to the beach. Any beach. But I'll return one day. Maybe next summer. Or 20 years from now. Even if I die on bone dry land, in the depths of the Sahara, I'll go back. Those crags are there, waiting. Still hungry. And I wonder ... what waits for me below?

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DAVID GIANATASIO's first collection, SWIFT KICKS, is due out next month from So New Publishing.