This Is Who We Are

by Matt Christiansen

swimming curiously up to the boys, circling ever tighter. Under the water, the boys squinted at it, sensing no ill will from the creature. As it circled closer it suddenly broke toward Lee and lunged at his wrist, barring its teeth as if to bite. At the last second though, the fish veered and swam pointedly away into the blue.

  They boys surfaced and caught their breath before Mo exclaimed “HA! Did you see that?! I told you the bracelets work!”

  “Huh…” Lee mused, raising his wrist above the water to examine the crudely fashioned bracelet featuring multiple small magnetic beads. “So the magnets like screw up their sense of direction?”

  “Something like that…” Mo replied “I’m not a doctor… I’ve just always been told it works and it seems like it actually does.”

  The boys made their way back to The Phoenix to rest awhile before diving once again. The world seemed as it should be as they basked in the afternoon sun, gently rolling on the surface of the water, the feint sound of their muffled bass occasionally thumping from below.

  “I think I saw another one over that way,” Mo said, rousing himself from a distant musing.

  “Let’s go check it out!” said Lee, pulling the drawstring around the opening of the burlap bag tight and tying a complicated looking knot.

  Out over the side of the boat the boys flew, working systematically as they located, harvested, and brought back the teeth of three more sharks. It was hard work, but enjoyable and the boys took their time as they dove repeatedly down into the silent crystalline world. There were small fish swimming here and there among the bones but the sharks, for the most part kept their distance.

  The boys had just finished their fourth shark and were swimming upwards to get a breath before heading back to the Phoenix when something shot past them. The boys snapped around and stared at the wriggling, weaving creature that had just careened past them. It was unlike any aquatic life the boys had ever seen, and nothing that Mo had ever heard of even in the childhood sea tales told by Mack.

  As it whirled and weaved, it had a long, skinny body that Mo would have guessed to be around seven feet long, with an eerily serpentine body. It was moving sporadically and as abruptly as it had whooshed past them it turned around, ducking and cutting, and wove its way back toward where the boys were now gawking at it, dumbfounded. As it came closer to where the boys were now floating limply below the surface of the water, it opened an unnaturally wide mouth revealing the oddest set of teeth either of the boys had ever seen.

  Rather than rows of teeth like a shark or fangs like a snake, it’s mouth was lined with dozens of pads, each holding lines (reaching inward instead of across) of three-pronged needle-like teeth. As it lunged at an eerie velocity, spiraling up and down, side-to-side, it turned away from the boys at the last minute and vanished into the blue haze of the distant waters.

  The boys had been so taken by the unearthly creature that they had forgotten to surface for air. As they finally did they wheezed loudly, their lungs burning as the much needed oxygen finally filled them with life.

  “Dude!” Lee said between deep droughts of air. “What was that thing?!”

  Mo looked grim as he filled his lungs. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my fourteen years in these waters. I have no idea…” He sounded put off. “Did you see those teeth?!”

  Both boys had an unspoken sense that they had witnessed something rare.

  By now they had reached the Phoenix and were starting to unload their last harvest of the day. Lee reached over and turned down the music, which was still thumping away, defending the boat against the sharks. “I’ve never seen any sort of teeth even remotely resembling those… Not in Africa and not here.”

  “Maybe Mack would know…” Mo said, relaxing a bit now, his tone picking back up. “I’d say that’s enough for today.”

  - Origins (Part 1) -

  The entire world seemed to draw in its breath for a moment before there was an ear splitting clap of thunder that rolled and echoed across the water. Moses and EmJay had just begun to head back from a joy ride on the Phoenix when it had begun to cloud over. They were now racing the wind and rain and were moving at a good clip up until the thunder crashed.

  Mo looked over at EmJay before turning the Phoenix toward the shore where he scoured the coast for somewhere to dock the boat, at least until the thunder subsided.

  “There!” said EmJay, pointing to an inlet that looked to be uninhabited.

  “Perfect…” Mo said from behind the steering wheel as he guided the vessel towards where EmJay was pointing.

  Mo eased the Phoenix through an enormous gap in the rock face, looking like a forbidding gate. The break in the cliff was abrupt, leaving both sides of the natural doorway shear. The rock faces were a deep brown, baked with a slight rusty orange from the near constant sun. As they passed through the cliff, the water suddenly got shallow; very shallow. So shallow that Mo had to kill both of the motors immediately and raise them up so as not to ruin them. The Phoenix skimmed across the thirty-foot bay, propelled by its momentum and slowly eased up onto the beach.

  The rain was now pouring and a flash shot through the air, followed closely by another clap of thunder. Mo led EmJay off the boat and across the rocky beach to where the sand abruptly met the cliff, which shot jaggedly upward at a near right angle. The tiny cove was surrounded entirely by the rock face, which was riddled with vegetation and greenery, even featuring a couple trees growing straight out of the side of the cliff. As they searched for shelter from the rain, Mo came across a cave. The cave was shallow, just deep enough to fit the two inside, a few comfortable feet from the rain. It was tall enough to stand and after checking it over for wildlife they determined that it was as close to a shelter as they were going to get.

  EmJay sank to the ground slowly, watching the rain that was now pouring down over the opening of the small cave. Mo followed suit, sitting across from her and staring out into the torrential downpour.

  After a long pause of listening to the rain beat against the side of the crag, EmJay said pleasantly, “Well this cave couldn’t be better…” As she looked around, smiling and examining the perfectly sized cave. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure!” said Mo, who found himself torn between staring at the rain pounding the coast outside their cave and her glowing eyes.

  “What happened to your mom?” she said in a quiet voice that said that she knew she was touching a sore spot. EmJay scooted across the sandy floor of the cave to where Mo sat, staring out at the rain. She sat next to him and continued in a soothing voice, “I saw you flare up when that masked guitarist mentioned her…”

  Mo’s face had fallen, and as he finally tore his eyes away from the entrance of the cave to look into her face he spoke softly and humbly. “She died before I was born…”

  “What?” EmJay asked, her face contorted with confusion.

  Mo drew in a deep breath and continued, “When she was nine months pregnant with me she was out on our boat with my dad and my uncle Myles. They were coming back in when something hit the boat…”

  “You mean like they hit a rock?” asked EmJay after a pause.

  “No, it wasn’t a rock. Both my dad and Uncle Myles have told me the story so many times. I’ve seen Mack drive a boat, there’s no way he would have hit a rock, especially with my mom on board. He doesn’t know how to explain it, something just crashed into the side. It messed up the boat pretty bad, there was a huge hole in the side of it, and my mom fell into the water.

  “Something attacked her. I don’t know if it was whatever had just hit the boat or if it was something else but something attacked her and all they could see was red in the water. Mack and Uncle Myles both dove in after her and they got her back onto the boat, but she was torn up pretty bad I guess.”

  “Oh Moses, I’m so sorry…” EmJay said, resting her head on his shoulder sympathetically.

  “Somehow they managed to limp the boat back to the marina and they got an ambulance right
away. She died on the way to the hospital.” Mo stared at the cave wall now.

  “So how did you…” EmJay asked, still confused.

  “When she got to the hospital they decided to try and save me and after like an hour of operating they managed to get me out and on life support until I was able to breathe on my own. The doctors said that I wasn’t gonna make it through the night and that if I did I would have permanent brain damage.” He suddenly smiled as he continued, “Mack told them we’d see. In the morning when I was still alive my dad named me Moses. It means ‘drawn out of water’”.

  “That’s really cool…” EmJay mused, staring with a mesmerized look at Moses. “And you’ve been kicking ass ever since,” she said with a reassuring smile, her voice welling with pride.

  “My dad says I got her eyes and her smile. He says that he prayed for me that whole night and that he could feel her praying too. He always tells me that I’m the reason that he believes in God.”

  • • •

  The rain presently grew thinner and eventually the sun broke through the clouds. As Moses and EmJay emerged from what they had dubbed their ‘secret place’, they beheld an entirely different cove from the one they had seen before. The apocalyptic foreboding rock faces that they had stared up at before had transformed into glowing reddish brown cliffs, dripping with shimmering water and