Not close enough, not yet. He does not notice us yet, does not look up, does not look away. He does nothing but lounge there, leaning back in his yellow plastic boat, staring intently in toward the dock as if this is all there is to the world and there could not possibly be some deadly slithering Something sliding toward him with such icy glee.
He stares unaware, watching only the dock, where a buzz of joy floats out at us across the water—a joy that should not be there in the presence of that clumsy horror in the Dumpster, a joy that should only be our quiet reward in this sunny midnight, and one small flicker of a glance tells us that Jackie has arrived and the crowd has forgotten all about why they have gathered and can think only about her golden presence, and my unsuspecting playmate is no different, no more aware than his kayak that we are only a handful of heartbeats from uncoiling onto his slack-jawed doze and taking him far away out of the bright warm sunshine and into the deep cold dark forever—
Closer …
And he looks up at last; some small tick or whir of the engine alerts him that we are oh so very near, and he turns to gape at us, and there is the face from Facebook, with its secret smirk of look-what-I-done, and he stares without seeing for only a moment, and then he turns away to focus again on the golden-haired woman on the dock, thinking once more his hungry thoughts and having no tiny flicker of a clue that Something much hungrier is here to gobble him up.
Closer …
And he looks at us again, and this time we are a little too close to be just casual passing traffic, and a frown creases his face, a frown that turns slowly, delightfully, into alarm—does he recognize this face we wear? Does he know us and realize at last that we have come for him, come to stop his clumsy fun and end his lethal bumbling and finish him altogether?
Perhaps he does; he lurches upright, clutching at his paddle as if it can save him from what is coming, what will soon happen, what must happen to him, and he digs the blades of the paddle into the water very hard—left, left, left, and right, as he spins the boat away in a growing panic that is very rewarding to watch. What does he imagine is coming for him? Arrest? Imprisonment? The mighty Hand of Justice? A steely handcuff and a stern reading of his rights, and then a long slow wait in a series of small and smelly rooms with iron bars on doors and windows?
Would he paddle away any faster if he knew that there was no iron-barred room, no handcuffs, and no arrest churning happily along in his wake? That the only justice for him will be the final kind, from the High Court of Pain, and his rights are limited to only one: He has the right to shuffle off his mortal coil and spin away into the Dark Forever, and there is no appeal, no parole, and no way out at all.
Because we are on him, no matter how rapidly he paddles. We are right there with him, quite content to take our time and watch him splash his paddles in and out of the water so very earnestly. Left, right, left, right—faster and faster. For him it is a sprint, a race to safety at truly dizzying speed, very fast indeed—for a kayak.
Not for our motorboat.
To us, with our hand on the throttle, it is an amusement, a toying with the mouse before our claws come out, and we stay with him, ever so slightly easing up closer and closer—
He is really moving very well now, digging the paddle blades into the water with a good and rapid rhythm, and glancing back to see us smiling calmly, happily slipping only a tiny bit closer, and closer, and he tries, he really does try hard, to make his little yellow boat into a wonder of speed; jaw clamped tight, veins bulging in his face and arms, he tries so hard, so valiantly, as if mere sincere effort can outrun the laws of nature, and we are so very impressed at his labors that we nearly pause and applaud.
But he is around that last barrier island now, and he is angling in toward the park onshore and quite possible escape, and he can almost taste it now, almost feel the thrill of getting away, leaping up onto the seawall and off into freedom, his hard-earned getaway from the strangely sluggish pursuer who still idles along behind him, slow and smiling, and perhaps there is a small space in his panic where he begins to wonder why.
Why do we move so slowly closer? Why don’t we pounce, or shout, or shoot? Why do we simply smile, and smile, and be a villain, and ease so slightly closer a little bit at a time?
Why indeed? He does not yet know, can’t hope to know, but it is really very simple. Too simple for this senseless simpleton.
We are smiling because we are happy.
And we are happy because we have been waiting for him to do just exactly this, and now he has done it for us, just as if he had studied his part in our Dark Script, and he has done all the right things just right and the time is now.
Now, when he has finally fled to the far side of the little island; now, when he is away at last from the boat basin, invisible at last to the rows of yachts, shielded from sight by the island, hidden from the dock with its crowd of cops and gawkers, and still half a mile from shore. Now, when everything is as perfectly Just Right as it can ever be and all our joyful gleaming readiness is poised and polished and ready to spring into this perfect moment—
Now.
And our hand flexes forward on the throttle, and the growl of our happiness swells up with the growing roar of the engine, and our boat surges forward—not too fast, but fast enough, faster than any kayak, no matter how panicked its paddler.
And he has time for no more than one startled strangled yelp of complaint, an abrupt yodel of protest that this could possibly happen to wonderful him, and then it has already happened. Our boat thumps the side of the kayak, thumps it hard, with all the force of our weight and greater speed, and all the wicked need that holds the wheel and still smiles, smiles even wider now, with a true delight at the lovely things that are finally happening to the ignorant and well-deserving clot in the kayak.
But he is not in the kayak, not now, not anymore. Now he is in the water and flailing away, grabbing for something that floats, or something that makes sense, and there is nothing there of either kind for him to latch onto. The kayak is already scudding away, far out of reach and upside down, and the shore is even farther away, and only one small fishing boat with a cheerfully smiling captain is anywhere in his sight. And so he flounders there in the water, and coughs and splashes, and he yells out, “What the fuck!” and we circle carefully around and slowly crawl between him and the shore.
“Sorry!” we call out, with perfect insincerity. “Didn’t see you!”
And he splashes some more, but then he slows down his epic struggles, b
ecause it makes no sense that we really did hit him like that on purpose, and he is in the water right here in the sunlight, and in any case we are smiling and saying sorry and there is truly nowhere to go. So he treads water as we creep up to him, glaring up at us with suspicion and resentment, and he shouts again. “Fucking douche!” he yells, and there is a very broad smear of Tennessee on his words. “You seen me fine!”
“Sorry!” we say again, and we reach down beside us, under the gunwale, to the boat hook where it nestles in its clamps, and we pry it out and hold it up. “Grab onto this!” we call cheerfully. “We’ll pull you out!”
He blinks and stares at the boat hook as it drifts closer to his face. “Who’s we?”
It is Us, of course, the Dark We, the not-quite-visible but oh so very strong and cunning We of the shadowed inside smile, the happy wicked smile that spreads outward from the cold core and onto the mask of bright dopiness we wear to hide the razor teeth—but we do not tell him this; we do not tell him he is outnumbered by no more than this very real, very happy smile—we say instead no more than, “Grab the hook!” and add a cheerful, “Oops!” as the boat hook purposely-accidentally thumps against his temple. One small and careful thump, beautifully crafted to look like a mishap and perfectly calculated to stun him just enough so that for one weak and gargled moment it all goes ever-so-slightly dim for him and he breathes water.
“Sorry!” we call as he sputters back to dizzy wide-eyed panic. “Grab the boat hook!” we yell, more frightful urgency in our voice as we drift slowly away from where he flails at the endless deep that will soon be his home.
And he lunges for the boat hook, a wild and gratifying surge of panic that lifts him up and out of the water just enough so he can clamp both frantic hands onto the shaft of the boat hook.