The Crush

He kissed her. He then pulled his lips away and turned his head. His blonde bangs followed, cutting through the watery air like scissors. Julie opened her eyes. Her lips quivered. His remained firm.

He knew she loved him. That's why he tortured her. But he preferred to think of it as shaping her.

Peering into the binoculars he had earned from selling popcorn for his Boy Scout fundraiser, Kevin hid a hundred feet away. The twelve-year-old boy tilted his head back and surveilled the couple as they stood atop a black pipe that stretched over the desolate swamp ten feet below. The cypress tree barely provided him cover. He squatted behind its broad base, aware that if he stood his body would spill from both sides and expose him. The spongy, dark earth pulled at him, the warm water captive below it rising slowly from the pressure of his weight. It seeped through his hiking boots and saturated his Spider-Man socks.

Kevin strained to hear their conversation, but the swamp would not allow it. Birds howled, coloring the air with a concert of randomness and wariness. Insects released their alien noises with synchronized timing, as though they were following an invisible orchestrator. Tree frogs lost in the swamp’s green canopy chirped without pause. He tried to evade the wetland’s soundtrack by reading the couple’s lips, but he could not capture any revealing movements because of the distance.

Sensing movement to his left, Kevin snapped the binoculars in that direction. A white crane waded in the water by the land's edge and attempted to spear prey, its wiry legs rising and plunging through the dense water like a sewing machine needle in a slow-motion dream. Kevin turned back to monitor the pipe.

Julie thought about how her first kiss had not been like her high school friends had said it would be. Their crude descriptions did not prepare her for the electricity and consuming importance she had just experienced. Being mocked for being the last senior to kiss a boy no longer mattered. Her friends’ suspicions about why a high school quarterback even had any interest in her no longer mattered. Only Jacob mattered now. Nothing else.

She stepped back slowly and then darted back to him, embracing him with both arms. Her left foot barely found the surface of the narrow black pipe that hovered above the black water. She felt his arms harden around her waist.

Her father’s death and her family’s subsequent move to Florida from Michigan three years ago had caused her nothing but depression. But Jacob had changed everything. He blocked her pain.

Jacob had promised her a little more with each dare. First, a hug one night after they had laid down for twenty minutes in the middle of an unlit country road. Then he held her hand after she jumped with him from a soaring bridge into the Gulf of Mexico on a starless night. Now she had walked with him to the middle of a thin pipe that bridged over this swamp, a swamp known to be the feeding grounds for gators larger than canoes. The swamp’s banks loomed a hundred feet away in either direction from where they stood.

Kevin had witnessed every one of these spins on the wheel of mortality. Hidden. Powerless. Afraid. He had just watched. He couldn't tell his mother. She'd never believe Jacob was like this, or that Julie would go along with any of it. And Jacob could destroy him with what he knew. He had to protect his sister. Alone.

As Kevin continued to scrutinize them through his binoculars, mosquitoes assaulted his face, spearing him each time they landed. They were then either pummeled into paste by his swatting hand or escaped with a bloody meal. All or nothing.

Julie repositioned her feet as her eyes locked onto Jacob. Laughing softly, he unwrapped his arms and retreated from her reach. She fought to keep her balance, her eyes drifting below the pipe.

The black water’s surface was a mirror, reflecting the pipe above and the two teens standing on it. The mirror shattered as jagged scales parted the water when the creature glided toward the floating chicken carcass Jacob had dropped into the water. The gator flung its jaws open and slammed its daggers into the dead flesh. The popping sound from the animal’s closing jaws mixed with the sound of crinkling paper made by the chicken’s collapsing bones. A second gator rushed toward the carnage, but it slowed before reaching the larger gator who was finishing its meal.

Julie thought about the nature show she had watched where the host had marveled at the animal’s ability to crush most anything. She stood ten feet from Jacob. He sneered before tossing another dead chicken into the water. The smaller gator dashed toward it. When it reached the corpse, it ravaged it before sinking from sight.

"How about another kiss?" Jacob asked. Her body vibrating with desire, Julie inched towards him. She could still hear crunching bones.

Another gator lingered, only its head above the water. She knew others could be submerged. She felt her heart push to the edge of her chest. She realized a plunge into the blackness would create a feeding frenzy.

“I don’t want to fall," she said, her voice child-like. I have to believe in this, she admonished herself. Have to believe in this. In us. She repeated it in her head like a mantra.

“I've got you, Jules. I’m not gonna let anything ever hurt you." His eyes engaged hers, disabling her free will but wilting her doubt. She smiled. He could get her to do anything, he thought. Such a soft, rudderless soul.

Kevin saw Julie laboring to keep her balance. He knew the creatures below would treat anything with meat as a meal, caring nothing about the importance humans placed on their lives or ending them with a slashing death. He removed the backpack from his shoulders and readied himself to snatch from it the steak knife he had taken from home. His body tensed.

The smell of dead animals and decayed plants infiltrated his nose. But the sun attacked with the most ferocity, causing sweat to flow from his pores before it pooled on his skin and dampened his clothes. But a feeling of dread and destruction now coursed through Kevin, gripping him with an enveloping chill. His sweat slowed to a trickle, its remnants penetrating his body like ice chips. He put the binoculars down and mentally mapped the route he would take to reach Julie if she fell. He noticed a black snake coiled on a cypress tree stump jutting from the water’s edge.

"A couple more steps, Jules," Jacob said. His arms invited her.

She looked down and saw the gators’ black, marble-like eyes fixed on her. The reptiles seemed void. Void of intelligence. Of compassion. Of any limits on consumption. She slid her right foot another six inches across the pipe and then followed with her left. She kept both arms outstretched at shoulder level in the form of a T for balance.

Jacob held his hand out to her as she neared. She took it and intertwined her fingers with his. The warmth and softness assured her. She took another step. He pulled her to his chest. Bliss infused her body with a buzzing sensation. She attempted to imprint his smell and the firmness of his body into her memory.

Kevin watched them. He spun his head to the right when he heard a splash, the source causing the still, black water to burst forth with a cracking sound that echoed before fading into the Spanish Moss draped over the water oaks that stood guard over the swamp. The ripples from the splash flowered thirty feet out and formed a jagged ring. Kevin traced them back to the center.

Another alligator, its prickly spine carving through the sediment-filled water, slithered toward the black pipe. Its tail flowed through the water with a hypnosis-inducing rhythm. Kevin admired the beasts, old as the world and able to sidestep cataclysmic events such as fires and floods throughout time. They were battleships armed with two-inch pegs in their upper and lower jaws, able to clamp down with the strongest bite force of any animal on earth. The teeth punctured and then held victims for the death roll, where these ancient reptiles would dive underneath the water with their prey and roll, drowning and ripping limbs from the animals they had snatched from their existence.

"That's it," Jacob said. "That's my baby girl." She looked up and smiled, relieved she was now being firmly held by him.

As warmth continued to engulf her, she felt Jacob’s arms withdraw. Before she could process what was happening, Julie lost the pipe's grip. She tumbled backwards toward the water. She could see Jacob's dark outline nearly eclipsing the sun above as she fell. She broke the swamp’s surface with the back of her head and immediately felt the water's heat as her legs tumbled over her head. But he couldn't see her legs because darkness concealed everything. She became dizzy from watching the rapid alternating between the white sun and black water as she continued to tumble.

Images of alligators tearing into the flesh of their prey and then dragging their gored bodies under the water until all breath was extinguished flashed through her mind. Her body trembled as something touched and then slid across her bare legs. She kicked her legs in the opposite direction, terror propelling her away from whatever had assaulted her. She blinked several times in rapid succession to filter out the sediment so that she could see where the animal was. As a blurry picture of her underwater surroundings formed, she tightened the muscles in her limbs, preparing to speed away from the threat once its image emerged. When her eyes found a small pocket of clear water through which they could see as she continued to push away from where she had been touched, she recognized a black tree branch floating toward her. She felt relief until her need for oxygen overwhelmed the feeling.

She had seen three of them while on the pipe. Although her senses processed everything internally with the quickness of a scampering insect, the world outside of her moved like dew creeping down a blade of grass. She scanned the surface of the water while clawing toward it. Concrete had formed in her lungs, and her legs and arms tingled. Seconds from breaching the surface, she glimpsed just to the right the dark outline of a figure no less than eleven feet in length and three feet wide. She jerked her head left to see if the surface was clear there and only saw the tree branch that had grazed her. It popped in and out of the water as though it were scuffling for air.

Her need to breathe and the building pressure in her lungs continued to thrust her toward the surface. She didn’t have time to consider her choices. She could breathe, or not. Her body did not wait for commands and acted on its own. She propelled through the water until her head burst above its threshold. While swallowing air, she tucked her head back so she could see the pipe. Jacob stood there, motionless. He watched her.

A chicken claw floated to her left. A metallic smell drifted over the water. The gator whose outline she had seen while surfacing moved toward her from the right. She wondered about the locations of the other two.

His feet mired in the black mud, Kevin nearly fell when he tried to stand and run in one motion. He had seen his sister fall into the water. And the push that had caused it. He reacted so fast that he had forgotten to grab the steak knife from his backpack. Now at the water’s edge, he looked up at the pipe and could see Jacob’s dark figure, the sun’s rays and the distance obscuring any details beyond that.

Although he didn’t know the water’s depth, Kevin knew that if were six feet or more he would drown. He paused. His fear of drowning, of having water sit in his lungs as though they were fish bowls, had blocked his ability to ever learn to swim. He tried to suppress the vision of water assaulting his lungs. But images of his blue, vein-filled face and vacant eyes crawled through his mind like black widow spiders emerging from a dank hole. Yet thoughts of his sister’s life depending on him beat back the horror.

He jumped.

His feet immediately struck the bottom and sank into its jelly-like mass. The water caressed the tops of his shoulders while his head swiveled in all directions to look for danger before it focused on the area where his sister had fallen. He recoiled as a twelve-foot gator coasted toward the area where the splash had occurred. Kevin picked his legs up from the muck and moved in that direction. Water crept higher with each step.

When Julie emerged, he screamed to her. “Go to the bottom! Swim on the bottom!” The gator accelerated in her direction, a meal now in sight. “Now! The bottom!”

Julie turned to his voice. She then disappeared.

As she kicked her legs and flipped downward into the darkness, she felt something firm brush against her thighs. The branch, she told herself. Just the branch again. But she knew that was a lie.

Her body convulsed when she saw a black tail whip away from her through the water. The raised scales had torn gashes into both thighs. Blood leaked from her legs, forming a swirling red cloud. Julie swam further away from the serpent-like tail and kicked her legs until she rammed her hands into the swamp’s floor. She calculated she was seventy-five feet from land. Pulling her hands free from the oozing, root-filled earth, she swam along the bottom toward where she believed she had seen Kevin.

She disturbed dead leaves and chunks of black soil, causing them to drift up and cloud her vision even more than the tea through which she was already navigating. She repeatedly extended her arms in front of her and then swept them behind in circles, her adrenaline fueling her muscles to overcome her human limitations of pain and fatigue and instead pump like a machine. A catfish as wide as a mailbox cruised a few feet in front of her. When it saw her, it jetted past her face with the speed of a striking snake, nearly forcing her to scream. But needing to prevent wasting the breath keeping her alive, she clenched her jaw and continued to pull herself across the bottom. She had to avoid surfacing as long as possible to limit her exposure to gators patrolling their territory above.

The water threatened to smother Kevin as he trudged to where he had last seen Julie. He battled the mud with each step. A dark gray snapping turtle evacuated a floating log as Kevin neared.

“Julie! Julie!” Kevin’s shouts caused a dark gray snapping turtle to evacuate a nearby log.

He prayed that his sister was still alive and that his voice would penetrate the water enough to guide her to him. He had learned about the bottom swimming strategy on a survival show. He didn’t know if it worked. He couldn’t even swim.

Air bubbles lifted to the surface and then burst into oblivion ten feet from where he stood. More of them then rose. Now fifty feet from the land he had departed, Kevin plodded toward the bubbles, knowing something was lurking beneath and moving toward him. He realized it was more likely an alligator than his sister and that she had been underwater so long that death had either claimed her or would soon -- through drowning, attack, or both.

Kevin heard mocking laughter bounce off the water before dissipating into the prehistoric forest that defended the swamp on both sides. But he kept his focus on where he had last seen bubbles, ignoring the derision raining down from the black pipe above. The bubbles had dissipated. No more rose to the surface.

Water taunted Kevin’s chin while he strained to keep contact with the muddy earth with the tips of his boots. He slid underneath the water and swung his arms in circles, hoping to locate his sister’s body. He popped his head above the water, his bottom lip only two inches above it. He yelled for Julie again.

Jacob began walking down the pipe, toward the bank where Kevin had leapt into the death maze.

Kevin captured more air and slipped into the darkness again, once more searching with his hands as far as his arms would extend. Despite forcing his eyes to remain open, he could not see his hands. Sediment and plant debris were laced throughout the water, stifling his vision and stinging his eyes. He pushed to the top and shouted for Julie, aware from the corner of his eye that Jacob no longer stood on the pipe.

Kevin took another step. His feet searched for the swamp floor but could not find it this time. He sunk back down and tried to again ascend above the surface, but his legs struggled to push away from the muck and would not drive upward with any force. They could no longer lift him above the water. Eager and hungry, the black water swallowed the crown of his head. Kevin still yelled for Julie, but water raced into his mouth. As darkness began to lower over his eyes like a falling window shade, something pulled on his right shoulder with enough force that he began moving backward, his body now parallel to the swamp floor. He tilted his body and kicked his legs down, hunting for the bottom. When his feet touched, he burst upward and sucked air into his lungs.

He turned and saw Julie leaning back and tugging on his shoulder. She appeared to be screaming at him, her mouth agape and her brows furrowed. But it seemed as though her voice were traveling through a wall. Yet, he finally understood the word she was shouting. Move!

As they turned toward the shore, Kevin glimpsed a gator floating to their right, but they churned through the water, both collapsing when they reached the shore. Kevin watched as Jacob pulled Julie from the ground and wrapped his arms around her. He sprung to his feet, his impulse being to protect his sister from this monster. But he laid back down when Jacob flashed a handgun.

“You were incredible,” Jacob said. “How was it, Jules?”

“The best one yet,” she said. She grinned, her body still fidgeting with adrenaline.

“Yeah, the only thing better than teasing death is taking away its control,” Jacob said. “Time to finally prove that to you. Our unexpected guest has provided an opportunity for this sooner than I thought.”

Kevin’s stomach emptied, its contents plummeting to the ground. When he had nothing left in his stomach, he dry heaved as he saw them kiss. Kevin wiped the strings of vomit dangling from his mouth and nostrils.

“What the hell is going on Julie?” Kevin said. Julie said nothing, her body so tense that no emotion could leak from it.

“I don't know," Jacob said, his eyes narrow. "What the hell is going on, Jules?" He stepped away from Julie and towered over Kevin.

“Actually, I think you have a pretty good idea about what’s going on, don’t you, Kev?” Jacob said.

Kevin understood. He had understood since having first seen his sister with Jacob. He flinched as he thought about how Jacob had been his mentor in Boy Scouts when he first moved to Pensacola. He had looked up to him, an Eagle Scout who had taught him so much about nature, life, and codes of honor. But then so much had happened. Kevin could not believe that he once trusted him.

“She's becoming what I tried to help you become, but you pulled away,” Jacob said. He glared with such intensity that Kevin’s skin tingled.

“Lucky for me, your sister has been quite a substitute,” he continued, still pointing the pistol at the boy. “Just one more step for her. I'll bet you know what that is."

Kevin lowered his head. He rifled through his options. He couldn’t go into the water. He couldn’t attack Jacob, who was much larger and stronger. And because of the gun tracking him, neither option was available anyway.

"You see, Jules. He just couldn't take a life when it needed to be done. Tease death? He did that. Same as you. But he couldn't be part of a necessary kill, to take away death’s control. You're different."

He handed her the gun. "Just pull the trigger. This is the last step of becoming,” Jacob said. Julie was trembling. Jacob sensed that emotions were storming through her.

“We need to stay in control, Jules," Jacob said. “He is in the way.”

She tried to blacken her mind like Jacob had taught her, to repress all of the harmful conditioning imposed on her by others about not killing people, even when it should be done and was a necessary kill. She aimed the gun at her brother’s head, but she wrestled with the emotions and images tumbling in her mind. She thought about how she had helped her mother feed him as a baby. About his infatuation with stuffed penguins and wildlife television shows. About how he tagged along everywhere she went when he was younger, trying to be like her, including even demanding that he wear the same Halloween costume she had chosen. She thought about her connection to him, to his blood.

But Jacob had been right, she thought. It was critical that she learn to control death, to make a necessary kill. She placed her finger on the trigger. Kevin could ruin the mission.

"Julie, you can't listen to him! I'm your brother! He' s a psycho!”

The barrel pointed at him. It shook and then steadied.

“You’re not a killer, Julie! I know that’s not you…” Kevin tried to continue, but Jacob spoke over him.

“Ah, but you’re just wrong Kev. Your sister understands. Killing those who are evil is not really killing as most people think of it, as you well know. Man has many weaknesses. Lust. Envy. Greed. To name just a few. But death is his greatest weakness, isn’t it? Man can lie to others, cheat them, abuse them and even kill them. But he can never escape death, no matter how powerful he is.” Jacob walked a few steps and then back again, as though he were a lecturing professor.

“Death is always there, always has been,” Jacob continued. “Watching over us and reminding us about how it all ends when we see loved ones die. Death waits for us, or it just takes us if it grows impatient. It always wants everything on its own terms. The death teases we do are just designed to weaken it a little, to make it feel vulnerable when it comes so close to taking a life but fails. What really hurts death, though, is when it loses complete control and cannot have everything on its own terms. I mean, how else can you explain the absurdity, randomness, and unfairness imposed by death on us other than that it likes the control it has and likes to abuse it? An infant dies within days of birth while a serial killer roams the street and lives to 80? A ten- year-old kid who wants to try to reduce world hunger dies from cancer while a dictator starves and kills his people with absolute impunity? By killing people who deserve to die when death may otherwise let them live just to torture us, we take away the absolute control of death and give the universe some balance. We become death’s greatest enemy. We become.”

“It’s all lies, Julie! He told me about people he’s killed, but their only sin was that they disagreed with him about something,” Kevin said. “He even wanted me to kill mom!”

Jacob glanced at Julie. She turned her eyes from him and lowered the gun. She looked out over the water.

“And he almost tricked me into doing it until I realized just how crazy he really is with all of his death and universe bullshit,” Kevin said. “You have to get away from him!” Tears cut across his cheeks and then disappeared into the wet soil.

“Julie, do you really know why you moved here from Michigan?” Jacob asked.

Julie struggled to speak. “Because mom’s job transferred her,” she said, her voice tinged with so much uncertainty that it was almost as though she questioned the validity of the statement as she made it.

Jacob smirked.

“Is that true, Kev? Well, he won’t tell you, so I will. Kev and I got pretty close a little while back. He told me about how your mom started dating a guy a few years after your dad died. Benny, or something like that. Remember him, Jules?”

Julie remained silent.

“Well, turns out that ole Benny liked little boys. And your mom liked booze. Bad combination. And Benny liked to hang out with Kev when your mom passed out. Kev finally told her about it. Did she kill the man? Even call the police? Nope. She moved down to Florida and that guy still exists and is free, undoubtedly abusing other boys. Yep, he’s still alive, and death is consenting to his continuing existence. Your mother is consenting to this evil man still being alive and hurting others, too. And so is your brother. We can only take care of one of these problems right now.”

Jacob grabbed Julie from behind and enclosed his arms around her. He kissed her neck before turning her toward him.

“Jules, the pain of doing what needs to be done will be temporary. The power from doing the right thing will be forever,” Jacob said. She nodded at him, and he could feel her relax some. But he knew he needed to give her something more.

“Tell you what, Kev,” Jacob said, his right index finger and thumb stroking his chin. He took the gun from Julie. “Make it to the other side and I’ll let you live. No hard feelings.”

“He can’t even swim, Jacob,” Julie said. “You saw him.”

“A Boy Scout who can’t swim? Say it ain’t so, Kev!” He wagged his right index finger at Kevin like a parent to a young child who had snuck a cookie. Kevin did not look up.

“Don’t think it’ll be a problem, Jules,” Jacob continued. “Where you were swimming probably gets to eight feet. But we can go under the pipe. I don’t know for sure, but I’ve been told there’s so much sediment buildup there that it’s only five-feet deep. My troop leader is also a rescue diver for the county and told me that they were trying to find a body from a suicide out here last summer. Said the body was stashed under a log halfway across in just five feet of water. Gator kept him stored there to soften him up.”

He placed the pistol against Kevin’s back and pushed him along for thirty feet until they were under the pipe.

“You ready, Kev?” Jacob motioned with the gun for Kevin to get into the water. “Silly me,” Jacob said, reaching into his backpack. He pulled out another chicken carcass and placed it by his feet. He did the same with another.

“Got school Monday. Can’t just leave these in here,” he said, winking at Kevin.

Acid rose from Kevin’s stomach and snaked into his throat, burning him as it plummeted back down.

Jacob threw one chicken into the swamp to his left. The next one was pitched to his right.

Kevin peered around but didn’t notice any gators, just tranquil water and the sun’s rays beaming off it. Less than a minute later, the water ripped open with the black snout of an eleven- foot gator. It gulped the dead chicken down its jaws before sinking back down into concealment. Another gator dove into the water from the overgrown grass to their right. He had not even seen this one before, but it didn’t surprise Kevin. He knew unseen dangers lurked throughout this place, including gators that were hidden until the ambush predators chose to make themselves known, which was mostly only after their prey had found themselves clutched between their teeth. The reptile grabbed the chicken before fading into the water.

The first gator’s head now rested above the water, its black eyes tracking the shore for its next meal, the rest of its body splayed underneath and parallel to the water’s surface. The second one did not rise again.

“Amazing they can stay under for an hour without coming up,” Jacob said, nodding in the direction of where the chicken bodies had been mauled. “Probably about twenty of the things under the water in front us now.”

“But the water’s nice, Kev. Time for you to take a dip.”

Kevin’s muscles resisted. He could not move.

A slapping sound reverberated throughout the swamp as Jacob pulled back the pistol’s slide, chambering a bullet. He pointed the gun back at Kevin and began to count.

“Three… Two… One.

Kevin glanced at Julie before launching into the water as far as he could. When he hit the bottom, he began pulling himself across it. He looked up and saw the ten-footer above him to the left. He didn’t see the other one. The water was shallow enough that he could stand, but he didn’t know if this would continue to be true until he reached the other bank and needed to remain submerged as long as he could. He expected his side to be torn open by a black death train barreling down on him unseen. But he continued placing his hands into the mud and propelling himself across the bottom, the closest he could come to swimming.

With his chest burning, Kevin stood and swallowed as much air as he could. He was halfway to the opposite bank. He dropped back down and continued to pull himself along the bottom, with the Cypress roots bursting from the swamp floor serving as platforms off which he could push. Jacob fired a round where Kevin had been a second after he went under.

Julie’s impulse was to grab the gun. She stopped herself.

“You said you’d let him go if he made it across,” she said, trying to keep her voice even and emotionless. But the tears forming around her eyes betrayed her.

“Never thought he’d make it this far,” Jacob said. “He’ll run. We can’t let him ruin what we have, what we’re creating.” He kissed her cheek. She just looked at him.

“Don’t you understand?” he said, stroking her cheek with his left hand while he held the gun in the other. Her eyes locked onto his. She nodded.

As he heard something breach the surface of the water from underneath, Jacob turned from her and shot twice more at Kevin, who was now seventy-five feet away. The first round pierced Kevin’s left triceps muscle before tearing through the front of his arm. The second bullet missed.

Kevin dove under, the pain in his arm searing. The decimated flesh and nerve endings howled in agony, but he knew he had to make it across. He had to get help for his sister.

Jacob knew the hit wasn’t fatal and that it was unlikely that a gator would now kill the boy. The shore was too close. He hopped onto the pipe and sprinted across it toward where Kevin had last surfaced, more afraid of the boy making it to the bank than of losing his balance.

Kevin’s left arm was now useless. It felt rubberish and as if it were just dangling, like a limp flag from a pole. He pulled across the bottom with just his right arm, aware that he was only fifteen feet from land but that he needed one last breath to make it there. Blood trailed behind him.

Jacob watched Kevin’s head lift from the water ten feet away. He fired the gun at him as he ran across the pipe.

Julie pulled herself onto the pipe. She began walking toward the other bank.

Kevin felt small drops of water land on his arms from the splashes made by the bullets pelting the water all around him. Only five feet from the shore, he remained standing and lifted his knees above the water as high as he could to gain speed.

While still moving, Jacob attempted to steady his aim on Kevin’s back, but his focus on the gun’s sights caused him to misstep on the thin pipe. He tried to swing his arms in the direction opposite where his momentum was taking him, but gravity prevailed, sending him tumbling into the black water. As he plunged underneath the water, he grasped the gun tightly. Before he could surface, he felt a powerful force grab his left arm and hold it still, like a clamp securing a piece of wood for a saw. He could not process what was happening as the clamp locked his arm in place while his body rolled underneath the water. When he stopped spinning through the darkness and could orient himself, he saw his left arm in front of his face and a gator surging toward him for another strike. He raised the pistol with his other arm and fired at the incoming beast, diverting it before it vanished into the blackness.

Jacob launched to the surface and gulped air. He stumbled toward the shore, still holding the gun in his right hand. The nub where his left arm had once been gushed blood. A smaller gator behind him snuck away with his left arm.

As Jacob pulled himself onto the shore with his lone arm, Kevin pummeled him across the jaw with a tree limb, knocking him down into the mud and causing the gun to fly from his hand and land five feet away. Driven by rage, Kevin struck Jacob again, splitting his right ear. Jacob flipped over and kicked away the tree branch. The effort exhausted him, and Kevin began pounding him with his right fist, his left arm still dangling by his side. Jacob grabbed the injured arm and pulled, causing both of the boys to tumble into the shallow water, their blood painting it red.

Kevin clawed at Jacob’s eyes as they rolled and splashed in the water. His right hand found Jacob’s throat and tried to close it. With his skin fading to white, Jacob strained to resist the assault, but the blood loss and strikes from the tree limb had decimated his strength. While Kevin struggled to stop Jacob from breathing ever again, a twelve-foot gator shot from the water and crushed the right side of Kevin’s body, its jaws locked into his broken rib cage. He fought the beast as it began to pull him underneath, his right hand reaching to the shore and to his sister who was standing on it just five feet away. She held the pistol in both hands and was pointing it at him.

“Help me, Julie!” he bellowed, with blood coloring his teeth and running down the sides of his mouth. “Julie!”

As the creature jerked at him and began to roll him over, Kevin saw a small explosion from the end of the pistol’s barrel before he knew nothing else. The gator dropped beneath the water with his now limp body in its mouth.

Jacob pulled himself to the shore, his face pale and smeared with blood. He tried to slow the blood still pumping from where his left arm had once been by covering the gash with his right hand, his splintered humerus bone cutting at his hand as he did so. He stood and smiled at Julie, grateful she had saved him. He knew he could recover. He just needed to stop the bleeding and get to a hospital. He would live. And she had become. They could now start their work together.

“I love you, Julie,” he said.

“I love you, too,” she said, walking over to him. She hugged him, her arms wrapped around his neck. As they continued to embrace, she placed the gun she still held in her right hand against his temple and pulled the trigger. He had become a necessary kill.

Julie started walking home. She needed to visit her mother.

THE END