Lost At Sea

Lately I’ve been waking up, right on time. My alarm goes off after I’ve been staring out my skylight for some time. I don’t even have to turn over and look at it to turn it off. I just slam my arm down and sit up, scratching my nappy hair. I can see it out of the corner of my eye in my mirror, large and wavy and wild.

I put the bowl to my lips and puff on it until my soul feels warm enough to get up; and then I take one more puff. I pull off my t-shirt over my frizzy hair, feeling it bounce back into place, and roll on my yellow bikini. The sun is just starting to rise, and I drag my fingers down the wall of the hall until I hit the kitchen. I grab a water out the fridge, my hoodie off the kitchen chair and my board off the wall, turn on my heel and go back through the hall to the front door. Tango’s eyes are open, and he watches me, but he doesn’t bother moving from his bed, his ears perched forward. My sweet boy. He knows he’ll get fed when I come back.

The air isn’t so sticky yet, and the wind feels cool. The sky is a dark shade of purple, almost blue, and it’s shadowy enough so that you can still see some of the pretty gold stars twinkling up there. The clouds were light along the horizon, as if someone took a brush and just lightly feathered them in to look like pulled apart cotton balls. The palms were just a blur to me, blending together as I rode down the same road. The same road, with the same boards, at the same time.

I don’t say that in a bad way either. I don’t take it for granted. I love what I do, and I do what I love every single day. If I don’t want to, I won’t ever have to grow up. I don’t think you really ever want to, until you want too. I didn’t think I would. Sometimes I get a stabbing feeling, you know like in my heart, that maybe I do just want a normal life and to get married and have kids. Sometimes I feel like I’m not trying hard enough for that.

What successful guy would want to settle down with a freelance painter that wakes up has a bowl for breakfast, heads out at dawn to surf, heads home, cracks a bottle, whips out some elaborate art, smokes a cigarette, stays up until three am and smokes until she falls asleep, and then wakes up to do it all over again? It’s not exactly healthy, you know. Anyway, Tango is the only man for me. His shiny coat and four paws are all I need in this life of sin.

Only a few people head down to the beach at this hour. There’s maybe a handful of us. We’re a rare breed. Some are true professionals, and this is their one passion. I can see them creeping around their significant others, trying not to wake them, even though they’re in pursuit of what sets their soul on fire. I know that’s how I felt when I used to go before work. All happy and alive and shit. Now it just makes me feel peaceful. It calms my nerves and I let the ocean speak to me, and there’s no way else I’d rather wake up. I don’t even have coffee before I dive in, headfirst.

My board already a few feet ahead of me, the ocean cools the burn on my hand. The one that’s been healing for weeks. The waves are bigger than usual today, but that’s always fine with me. It’s nice to have a challenge once in a while. I like to get a rush; it tends to make me more creative through the rest of the day.

I caught up to my board, and road the first wave I could catch. When you first start to surf, the board feels like you’re on top of a soap bar. There’s no control, until you gain it. Every little thing you do matters. How you stand, which way your feet are pointed, where you distribute your weight. You need to have full control of your body. Eventually it’s as easy as riding a bike. To me now, it’s natural. Being on a board in the ocean is the same as walking on the earth. Maybe I’m even more connected at sea.

I rode the second wave in, the third, paddling back out. The air tastes better when you’re not close to so many people. Almost cleaner. I sat out the next few waves, looking at the moon in the morning sky. Tonight, she will be full, and I already know I won’t be able to sleep, or my dreams will be weird as fuck. I see the few people to my left, doing the same thing I’m doing, sitting and staring. Until I realize they’re all staring at me.

I turn over my shoulder, and my throat drops into my gut. My heart completely stops beating, my eyelids won’t even blink. I’m looking at a massive shadow in the wave tumbling toward me, I breathe in sharply and prepare for the worst. I ball my fists and hold my breath and feel it collide into me. A hit like a wall was collapsing into me. I start throwing my fits around me, kicking my legs in the water around me; not even worried about which way the surface is to get back up for air. I wasn’t trying to get eaten.

There’s a thump on my back, sending me deeper under, and I start to feel pain. All I can see is bubbles and colors until I start swimming to hold myself together. Then I saw it. A dark shape that didn’t look like the one in the wave. It looked like one of those cursed pirates from that movie. When they walk across the bottom of the ocean, looking like a bunch of creepy zombie skeletons. Only, this didn’t look like a skeleton. It started toward me, and I kicked my legs out, sucking in saltwater as I screamed. And something else hit me in the head. Probably the shark.

I was out of air, my head was throbbing, and all I remember is seeing his face. A face that looked like it was cut from stone, and eyes that swirled a blue and green like an ocean of smoke. It was beautiful.