Blood on the Water
Paul Ahnert
1430 words

BLOOD ON THE WATER

“Dude, the mosquitoes are brutal tonight”, Chaz complained, for about the hundredth time in the past hour. “Yeah, you’re in the swamp, man, and you asked to come out here so just deal.” Chaz and Andy sat in a jon boat in the Florida Everglades doing some night fishing and drinking more than a few beers. Andy spent most of his spare time in the everglades fishing and generally hiding from the mess of a life he created for himself. Chaz couldn’t even remember why he wanted to go fishing. “At least the beers are cold,” he thought as he swatted yet another annoying mosquito buzzing around his ears.

Up until now, the conversation had been light and inconsequential, just two lifelong friends who hadn’t had much time to hang out together catching up with one another. Andy cast out, lit up a cigar and with a serious look in his eye turned to Chaz and said, “Hey man, you know, Lenny’s back in town.” Chaz, mid sip, spit beer all over Andy’s tackle box. “Nice,” Andy said with a smirk and an eye roll. Chaz, wiped his mouth and with wide eyes replied. “Do you think he’s still holding a grudge?” “I don’t know, bro, but if I were you, I’d be watching over my shoulder.” Andy punctuated his last statement with a large plume of smoke from his cigar.

A loud splash to the right of the boat caught the two men’s attention and they turned in time to see a twelve foot alligator glide by in search of a late night snack. “You know dude, we shoulda fed that guy to a gator that night, it would have saved everybody a whole lotta hassle,” Andy reflected. “Yeah,” Chaz agreed as he chugged his beer with one hand and reached for another with the other, suddenly having an overwhelming desire to go from pleasantly buzzed to solidly drunk.

Twenty-three years and a handful of months earlier, Chaz, Andy, Lenny and Lenny’s soon to be ex-best girl Marina were hanging out at a party in Everglades Holiday Park, blowing off steam, drinking and getting high after senior year finals. Imbued with liquid courage, Chaz called over to Marina, “Hey baby, when you get tired of babysitting Lenny, I know a real man who will love you like you deserve.” What neither Chaz nor Lenny knew was Marina had been getting tired of Lenny and Chaz’s offer was exactly what she had been waiting for. Just high enough to cast caution to the wind, Marina sauntered over to Chaz, positioned herself so she could stare Lenny in the eye and planted a wet kiss on Chaz’s mouth. Many of the party goers erupted into cat calls, adding to Lenny’s humiliation.

In a blind rage, Lenny hopped in the pick up truck his parents bought him for his eighteenth birthday, only two months earlier, and sped out of the park onto U S 27. Through angry tears and, drunk well beyond the legal limit, Lenny never even noticed the minivan traveling in the opposite direction as he crossed the center white line. Convicted on three counts of vehicular manslaughter, Lenny was sentenced to three consecutive ten year stints in the state pen. Now, a little over twenty-three years later, due to time off for good behavior, Lenny was out on parole.

Lenny’s first few years in prison were exactly what one would expect for a scared, scrawny, eighteen year old, a living hell. Tall, but thin, Lenny hit the weights and before too long filled in his six foot two frame with impressive bulk. Lenny transformed from bullied to respected when he brutally beat one of his worst tormentors. Gone was the shoulder length blond hair, replaced with a shaved head accentuated with tattoos readily identified as the homemade jailhouse variety. No one who knew Lenny from high school would have recognized him now. Fueled by hate, he became one of the most feared residents of his cell block. For the next eight years, Lenny enjoyed the fear he instilled in others and enjoyed the pain he inflicted on those he perceived as disrespectful.

One fateful, rainy, Saturday afternoon, unable to lift in the Yard, Lenny wandered past the lunch room where some fellow inmates had gathered to listen to Chaplain Jack. Chaplain Jack had once been an inmate in this very prison, but after turning his life around through the power of faith in Jesus Christ, he dedicated his life to serving the Lord. Chaplain Jack looked like he still belonged on the inside, and caught Lenny off guard when he waved over to him and said, “Hi, I’m Chaplain Jack, come on in friend, and have a seat.” Lenny skeptically went in but decided to listen to what the man of God had to say.

Weekly, Chaplain Jack came and ministered and Lenny found himself, on more Saturdays than not, sitting in the lunchroom listening, and eventually, not just listening, but asking questions and interacting. Within a few months, Lenny prayed with the chaplain to receive Christ and entered into a discipleship program. Lenny soon became a model prisoner and began ministering to other inmates.

The day Lenny was released he reached out to some contacts given him by Chaplain Jack and soon found himself in a welcoming community of believers who loved him for who he was and helped him get re-acclimated to society. Encouraged to make peace with his past, Lenny decided to reach out to the one person he would have happily killed with his bare hands twenty-three years ago, Chaz Lewis.

The day Lenny contacted Chaz, Chaz contacted Andy and together they hatched a plan similar to what they had discussed on fishing night. “I’m not really sure if this is cool, man” Chaz told Andy as they discussed killing Lenny and dumping him in the swamp for gator food. “Course it’s cool, bro, the dude wiped out a whole family and now he’s coming for you.” “Yeah, I guess it’s either me or him, then, right?” “Exactly!” Andy said with a wink.

Chaz and Andy found out where Lenny lived and staked out his apartment. When Lenny returned home from a church meeting, Andy was waiting for him with an aluminum baseball bat. After knocking Lenny out, the two smaller men wrestled his unconscious body into the bed of Andy’s pick up truck and headed out to a secluded boat ramp on U S 27. What neither man noticed was the surveillance camera attached to the apartment building, placed there due to the high crime rate in the immediate area.

The men, with great effort, transported Lenny from the pick up truck to the fishing boat and headed out to back channels where they would not be disturbed. Neither man was expecting Lenny to wake up so soon. Only halfway to the pre planned killing spot, Lenny woke up and lunged for Andy. Before Chaz could grab the nine millimeter handgun from the tackle box, Andy was being lifted from the boat seat by his throat. Eyes wide with terror, Andy gurgled, “shoot him man!” Chaz aimed and fired, but at such close range, he managed to kill two men with one bullet. Terrified, Chaz did the only thing he could think of, he dumped both bodies overboard and hoped the alligators would do the rest. Not knowing what else to do, Chaz drove back to Andy’s place, where he had left his car earlier in the evening. Chaz didn’t think anyone could connect him to the night’s events and decided to leave Andy’s boat and trailer in his driveway and head home and try to forget about what happened.

Meanwhile, the night manager at Lenny’s apartment building, having watched the attack take place on his CCTV, notified the police. Able to identify Andy by the license plate on his boat trailer, the police sent a car to stake out Andy’s house. Chaz never even noticed the police car parked at the end of the street as he pulled into Andy’s driveway. Before he could get into his own car and speed home, the police were on him.

Three years later, Chaz Lewis was walking past the prison cafeteria when he noticed a small crowd gathering. Standing in the front of the room was a rough looking guy in civilian clothes who looked like he was no stranger to a prison jumpsuit. The man waved over to Chaz, “Hi, I’m Chaplain Jack, come on in friend and have a seat.”

Muddying The Waters – Arthur Chappell 1,497 words

“What’s bog-snorkelling?” I asked, never having heard of it, and half expecting it to mean shoving your face down the toilet bog while breathing through a tube.
My ‘do it or we stop your benefits’ work coach told me. “It’s a sport, albeit rather an eccentric one, like cheese rolling. It involves swimming, which you obviously love, having added life-guard work to your resume, but the competitors don’t swim in water. They swim in a trench of peat bog mud. They win prizes for getting from one end of their little swamp to the other fastest.”
“You want me to jump in artificial quicksand?”
“Only if one of the aquanauts gets stuck. You have to be there to fish them out, just as you would if anyone got into difficulties in a municipal pool or in the sea.”
“And these idio… These brave sporting souls: they wear swimming trunks or bikinis, do they?”
“Some might do, but most prefer full wet suits, dry-dive suits and a few go in wearing fancy dress costumes. I’m assured it is great fun. Sadly, I can’t swim, or I’d give it a go myself.” He chortled forcedly at his own lame stab at humour. I pictured him drowning in a bog, the flushable kind.
So, here I am in Hull, on a windswept day on a bleak desolate moor beside the Humber. I am being sucked down into a parody of my lifelong Baywatch hero’s ambition. BEWARE OF THE DOLE signs should replace the WARNING – DEEP MUD PITS signs round the Somme re-enactment trench.
The ground round the straight track is quite firm and solid. The warnings deter spectators and passers-by from stumbling into the mud being tanker-piped into the six-foot-deep hole, gouged out with a JCB bulldozer just before my arrival, creating an instant grave for a tall thin corpse. The slimy thick mud smells like they got it from the local slurry pits. I was thinking how glad I was not to have to get in, just as my boss turned up to invite me (a you’ve no choice in the matter type of invitational summons) to go in. The smell of corruption is a cruel parody of the corruption of the welfare austerity that brought me here.
I’d barely uttered the first ‘But’ when Mr Cushell told me it was my duty to check the course was safe by swimming it. He rather too conveniently had a wetsuit ready for me. (I’d wondered why my height, weight, and inside leg measurements were requested on my application forms).
Despite the diving gear, I was freezing even while still dry. Like the twenty competitors expected the next day, I was told not to jump in but use the steps at the ends of the slime tube as entry and exit points. Also, like the masochists doing this by choice, I was not to wear flippers, which might have got me through the filth quickly and help me get this over and done with.
I had thick rubber socks on as part of the legs of the wetsuit which was a little tight on me as I had understated my weight on the application form. I wish now that I’d claimed to weigh twenty-three stone.
I moved gingerly down the steps to the last one above the bubbling muck. What the hell was making it bubble? Could there be fish, worms, or something worse in there? My next step would put me in there too. I was struggling not to gag. They say don’t eat right before swimming, but did that apply to swimming in a quagmire too?
Cushell was filming me and cheering, as I was a finalist in the competition which he was apparently judging along with a few local celebrities, the kind no one remembers or recognises.
“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” He told me. “Everyone loved it last year, well except for …. Oh, never mind. I’ll tell you later.”
Something was wrong. He had a distinct ‘told you too much already’ expression. I froze on the iron rungs of the rickety rusty step ladder and demanded a full explanation. “You’ve run this competition here before?”
“Yes, for three years in a row now. It’s extremely popular. We might not get it into the Olympics for a while, but everyone loves it, the swimmers and spectators alike.”
I cut to the chase. “But something went wrong didn’t it? Did someone get hurt?”
He sighed. “Yes, regrettably, last year, a competitor drowned. He died near the start line. He just sank without trace; quite horrible. You were hired as part of our health and safety enforcement measures after the council nearly banned us from ever doing this again. A few protesters still want the show stopping. You’re here to save our bacon as well as the aquatic athletes braving the dirty waters tomorrow.”
“How come someone sank? Was there no lifeguard on duty then?”
“No, we never thought of it, and poor old Tom went down before any of the other swimmers could get in to drag him free from his sorry doom.”
“Who was he?”
“Our postman, Tom Meegham, lovely chap, forty-two and always up for a laugh. He said he’d try anything once. Obviously he never tried bog snorkelling a second time.”
“Did he get a decent funeral?”
“No funeral at all I’m afraid, said Cushell sombrely. “They never found him.”
“What?”
“Exactly as stated. His corpse is still in there. We stopped the races and drained the mud right after he vanished, but there was no trace. I hoped they might find him re-digging the pool today, but no, he’s been swallowed rather deeper than we imagined. “
I wanted to protest more, but my cheery boss clapped his hands. “Just water under the bridge really. Let’s not dwell on it. I’m getting cold so if you would swim your length, we can both get a nice hot cup of tea when you shower and dry off. “
“You provide showers?”
“Cold hosepipes are the best we can do sadly, but you’ll soon dry off. Now get in.”
His sudden burst of impatience freaked me. I really wanted this finished. I counted to three and stepped down the last few rungs into clammy clinging porridge sludge. It gurgled as if it was swallowing a stick of living liquorice. It was extremely cold despite my wet suit being marketed as capable of withstanding Arctic ice-hole plunges. The mud was viscus with a film of water on the surface, and swimming was sluggish with a disturbing downward drag.
Cushell was yelling at me with everything but encouragement and morale building. “Go faster, and put your face in. All I should see is your plastic snorkel. “
I put my face down, and realized the mask only served to protect my eyes, Visibility was literally zero. The toughest part of the swim for the racers would be going in a straight line, as they were not supposed to look up.
I lifted my face up sharply when something vile wriggled against my cheek. My ears were blocked with mud seeping under my balaclava section, so I never heard the Cushell above a dull mumble, but I had ceased caring what he was calling out now.
I thought I must be at least halfway along the course, but I’d barely moved. The treacle thick ooze was impeding me. I decided getting sanctioned and living off food banks when my Universal Credit got crunched was better than this, so I started turning round.
“I just heard “What the Hell are you doing?” as my left arm struck solid material.
“There’s some sort of obstacle here,” I shouted. “Feels like steel plating. Must be something the JCB and mud pouring vibrated and dislodged out of the underlying soil.”
My employer looked faint. I dreaded him swooning as he was quite close to the mud pit and I doubted if I could swim to him quickly if needed. He pulled himself together as I reached and started hauling myself up the steps.
I thought he might shout at me to get back in but even he realized the contest was off now before the tape-lines were ever put up to keep the madding crowd back from unwittingly joining the competitors. Instead he lamented, “I think it’s Tom. You’ve found Tom.”
“What do you mean I said, dragging myself out of the crap that was so reluctant to let me go. “I hit metal. Are you saying Tom was some sort of robot?”
“Good Lord no. It was a fancy-dress charity dip, just like this year’s. Tom turned up as Sir Lancelot, in a full suit of armour. Thinking about it, I’m surprised he made it as far as he did.”
I phoned my work coach with the news that I had quit about the same time as my replacement, a giant electro-magnet on a crane, fished Tom from his muddy penultimate resting place.