Motherfucking Sharks

by Brian Allen Carr

  “I’m a young man,” he continued. “And, aside from horse theft, I’ve lived a pure life.”

  The crowd was silent. If you knew what to listen for, you could have heard it—the sharks rising slowly from the puddles that glimmered in the sunlight. As it was, the crowd was oblivious, their attentions solely on the last words of Tim.

  “On account of my pureness,” said Tim. “I have never known a woman.”

  An odd shock took the crowd.

  “I’ve never even seen one’s form fully disrobed.”

  Whispers from the crowd at the oddity of Tim’s statements came bundling up.

  “I’m just asking for a glimpse,” said Tim and he looked down from woman to woman, “just show me your body,” he said, “you don’t gotta let me feel nothing, just lemme look.”

  “Boy’s a pervert,” someone in the crowd yelled, and laughter filled the square, and the sheriff dropped a black bag over Tim’s head, and Tim started screaming.

  “Just lemme see,” he hollered, his voice muted by the bag, “just a glimpse,” he yelled again. “Just some titties,” he pleaded, “not even everything.”

  A scream came from the edge of the crowd. A shriek the color of death. A thing jagged to the ears, so coarse that the whole town turned to see the commotion, the shape of which was so impractical that it didn’t initially register in their eyes. Gray figures thrashed violently and drops of blood flung from the shrieking body of the screamer much as water scatters from a wet, shagging dog.

  “Jail break,” hollered the sheriff, who assumed what was being witnessed was some posse amassed to try and rescue the condemned, and he signaled his deputy to drop the hatch on the prisoner, which he did.

  The trapdoor opened, and Tim tugged toward the earth, but, just as he fell, a shoal of tiger sharks descended like fists upon the platform, shattering the gallows that the rope was tied around, splintering wood in every conceivable direction, and Tim dropped to the soft earth and landed face first in a puddle with his hands tied behind him. In the dark, he did not see, but he could hear the screaming and it confused him.

  What did he build then in his mind? The mind of such pristine imagination? The mind that made nude breasts emerge from the clothes they’d always hid behind? We’ll never know. But it is inconceivable that he envisioned what truly transpired.

  Allow yourself to see this slowly.

  A town of dirt roads, all roads leading to a square.

  At the center of the square, a gallows.

  Surrounding the gallows, standing on swollen grass made magically green by the recent rains, dressed in clothes of bandaged fabric, thread thin from near constant wear and colors faded from hand-washing, sun drying, a scant hundred citizens, their faces lustful with the anticipation of witnessing a thief’s death by hanging, loitering unaware of the miserable fate about to befall them.

  This town—the buildings constructed from rescued and forgotten timber, patched together with twice-used nails and painted with colors stumbled upon in discovered paint buckets, seemingly erected by wayward carnival folks who’d grown wearisome of entertaining and had decided to root themselves where the fatigue toward their occupation became unbearable—is ill-equipped for any attack, let alone an impossible one.

  Imagine one hundred sharks springing from the edges of puddles the way mushrooms blossom from dung heaps when watched at high speed.

  If witnessed in actuality, you wouldn’t believe it.

  Some things go so against the line of logic we’ve branded hot on our brains, that their impressions on our minds echo with madness and are rejected, spat away, and even if you look twice you still don’t believe it.

  Many members in that crowd actually walked toward the sharks that had emerged with their hands out in front of them in hopes of touching away the apparitions that had gathered, because when the world appears insane to us, we trust touch more than sight.

  For this reason, several from the crowd quickly lost limbs, and, “My arm, my arm,” was the first curse hollered in English—not just the noises of death that erupted from the throats of those screaming.

  Let us watch from high above the choreography of the sharks as they circle the hanging’s crowd pushing the would-be onlookers further inward toward a clump of struggling men, women and children ferocious with fear and dizzy with their thwarted attempts at fleeing.

  Any soul who moves toward the perimeter of the square is met with myriad sharks circling in opposite directions, and, in this way, the sharks are able to corral the entirety of the crowd in mere moments.

  Great whites and makos and tigers and bonnets and lemons and nurses and threshers and blacknose and blacktips and spinners and bull sharks and duskys and finetooths and smalltails and silkies and dogfish and hammerheads, sharpnose, and browns. All circling, circling, circling their death-patterned courses, pushing the mass of horror-stricken humans deeper into their clump of false-security safety-in-numbers, huddling together with their backs to the murderous fish that had somehow stripped away order from the universe and learned to navigate against the laws of the physical world.

  Have you ever seen a thing the first time and known its name?

  These were the motherfucking sharks.

  And the name of them came cackling up from the mass of terror-stricken crowd members who, though moments before stood with eyes glistening toward the gallows, mouths watering for the thief to be dropped and dangled by the noose until dead, recognized now in the eyes of their encroachers the same glistening premonition of a death to be witnessed and swelled with apprehension, their spastic bodies floundering toward the nucleus of their pile, the weight of those out toward the crust of the lump of them crushing and suffocating those trapped in the core.

  Once contained, paralyzed by the quagmire birthed by their instinct of flight, the sharks began to plunge against those at the edges, tearing bodies in swift jabs, their felony-sharp teeth exposed in their draped-open mouths, and the sharks merely had to swim their death orifices against their victims, plucking away mouthfuls from the clump of them at random.

  But what of the hooded Tim?

  Last seen, he lay bound and blinded from the slaughter transpiring, a limp noose around his neck.

  Indeed, a frail rescue attempt was worked out for him.

  His sister, his twin, had set to it even before her brother’s guilty verdict had been announced, because she’d lived long enough in that town to know that those who dwelled there would always disappoint her, and she’d prayed thanks to God when the rains came, because without them, her fragmentary draft toward his rescue could only be dreamed over.

  Sadly, her plan was only a first step. It involved tunneling.

  From the ramshackle red barn that housed the community dry storage, Tilly dug each night a portion of passage from the dirt floor of that building to the shadow of the gallows.

  The night before Tim’s original execution date, Tilly wept in the tunnel as she worked her shovel, well aware that her efforts would fall short, and, come break of day, there’d exist still several feet of dirt between the subterranean channel she’d slaved over and the spot in the earth where she’d hoped the tunnel would emerge.

  Tilly labored alone.

  She trusted that several of her friends and family members would lend assistance if asked; however, she did not trust that any one of them would be able to keep the endeavor secret until the thing’s completion.

  She had to rescue Tim in private, unassisted, and she struggled herself delirious in the solitary scramble of the chore. During the last several feet of the undertaking she heard phantom voices casting whispers through her imagination and saw invented, colorful explosions smearing through the hovel’s dark quarters. She broke ground mere seconds after her brother dropped to the earth—the sharks’ attack being infinitely fortuitous in this regard, because without it, she would have merely managed to emerge from the dirt in time to see her brother’s death. As it was, in the hysteria of the odd attack transpiring, Till
y was given the perfect diversion under which to operate. The only flaw to the sharks’ presence was, for several moments, Tilly assumed she’d ground herself into utter insanity, and that what she saw—the phantasmagorical sharks hunting human prey—was mere illusion.

  Either way, she was able to extract her hooded twin from the scene of it, tugging his ankles until he tumbled into her tunnel where she unhooded and unbound him.

  Tim did not understand how, but he was safe, and the two twins crawled to the red barn where they barricaded the tunnel as Tilly explained the shark attack to her brother.

  “Impossible,” he told her.

  She shook her head, “It’s true.”

  They found a hole in the barn wall that faced the town square, and they took turns watching as the shark army minced the men, women and children of the town, tossing the bits and pieces of them like wet rags that sprayed hot blood as they flung to and fro, and they did their best to keep quiet in the full-fledged terror of their witnessing it.

  “What happens,” said Tilly, “when they’re done with all them?”

  It is a myth that sharks can smell fear, but they can sense panic, and, as the sharks undid the troop of townsfolk—making them first merely dead and then muck and then bones—the twins’ hearts heaved and raced, and their breaths hurried.

  Let this be now in your mind—Tim and Tilly in the hay. They’ve cotton-colored skin and eyes the shade of sorghum fields when gazed at from a distance. His hands, tight as sun-dried clay. Her hands, smooth as sunflower petals. Fear holds them both in its sinister grip, their hearts haphazardly pumping in their chests in sporadic fashion, metaphorical loose stones down a mortality-shaped hillside.

  They can hear the gray-bodied sharks bouncing against the broad, red walls of the barn they’ve sought refuge in. They hunker in the loose hay, trying to quell their possessed breathing, the stale stench of the feed and straw sits thick in their throats, and their ears flitter with the music of splintering wood and nails and screws singing loose from their sockets.

  “What do we do?” Tilly asks.

  “We’ll die here,” says Tim, a resigned sheet of panic making milky his eyes. “Just you and me.” He drags his hand through his hair. The sharks are splintering through. “I’m gonna say something,” Tim says, “you might not want to hear,” he continues, “I almost died today,” he takes his twin’s hands, “a virgin,” he says.

  Tilly does not like the look in his eyes. She pulls back her hands. The sharks thudding is like thunder.

  “Listen,” says Tim, “we’re our only option.”

  The world becomes silent to Tilly. “What are you saying?” she asks. Her mind flitters with memories of her growing up alongside Timmy—her identical in every way except in their sex—and all the things they’d done that did not lead them to this. There were times they’d lay in each other’s arms on warm summer nights watching the night sky for comets and listening to the music of crickets, the black of the sky’s endlessness draped over them like a blanket, but in that there was no echo of anything beyond sibling affection, though in this new language her brother speaks—a disgusting and twisted English that suggests an occurrence repulsive to her—that old memory seems crippled and twisted, and the dross of Timmy’s nature cleaves at the pure parts of him that Tilly has kept in her heart. “What are you saying?” she asks.

  “I’ve never thought it before now,” Timmy says, “but inside me there’s rage toward the idea of dying without knowing.” A wall breaks open and light spills through at them, and in that light they can see a murderous shark’s myriad teeth striking wildly at the boards of the barn.

  Tilly thinks a time when her brother and she shared a slice of watermelon while sitting naked in a bathtub. They were six or seven. The pink juice of the fruit ran down their chins and into the water.

  “Maybe boys and girls are different that way,” says Tim, “because I can see that you’re not thinking the same.”

  Now the shark has worked his body into the gape in the barn, his head thrashing, eyes locked on Tilly and Tim.

  “But,” says Timmy, “I’d do anything for you.”

  Tilly nods. It is true. Half the reason she’d tunneled to his rescue is because of all the good he’d done her. The horse he’d stolen was on her behalf. He could have left her when their father died and stomped off into the world and into a safer life, but he’d stayed to make sure she was cared for, though she cared for him in turn. Hadn’t she mended his clothes and cooked him dinner, and placed cool rags on his forehead when he took ill with flu, and read to him from the Bible while he fever dreamed so he wouldn’t catch nightmares, and hadn’t she brought him to this barn? So, he’d asked for more.

  Tilly sees two clear anxieties working inside of Tim. She sees his fear of death, and she sees the sexual anticipation. She looks at his face, identical to her own but with shorter hair. A soft skin. A smooth form.

  She places her hands near his throat. She nods. She runs her hands down his shirt unfastening the buttons. The dirtied cotton falls open. Timmy’s chest heaves up and down. The sharks make murder noises. The barn cracks further open. Tilly takes to her own shirt. She spreads it open revealing her soft breast, and Tim touches clumsily at her nipples, lifting the softness of her form, and he lowers his face to her and suckles, licking the dark pink areola shiny with his tongue. He drags his mouth down her smooth stomach, licking away the salty slick of her sweat, and he hoists her skirt to her thighs, and his hands dive between her legs, and he feels the wet of her as he spreads her legs open, and he trembles at the warmth. Tilly breathes nervously and unbuttons Timmy’s pants, and drapes them from him, her hands running across his buttocks, and his cock springs up at her, and she wraps her legs around him, and grabs him, guiding it into her. Timmy’s face goes slack as he pushes himself through her moistness, and they both whimper unknowingly, and the sharks are chomping a bad-murder music and the light builds as the barn breaks further open, and Timmy lunges into her with all the awkwardness of the universe, and they roll back into the hay, and he lifts himself up and stares down at his twin, and both of their faces grimace with sex pains and horror and longing and shame, and they are both lost in that music of each other, in that wild endless energy of the coming finale, as though all of them is a spitting whisper shot through a vacuum and aimed at eternity.

  Then the sharks are upon them.

  III

  Bark and Scraw were tasked with Murm’s execution. They led him down the main road toward their workshop where the two brothers served as butchers, barbers, and doctors to the town. They could not heal you. Most of their visitors were so near death, they couldn’t fight their being dragged there. Going to see Bark and Scraw was synonymous with the end, but Murm didn’t know this. He walked one-eyed, being dragged by the rope around his neck.

  Of the two, Scraw was slower—mentally and physically. He walked alongside Murm and watched the mule’s face as they progressed.

  “Is this a boy mule?” asked Scraw, “or a girl mule?”

  Bark, who pulled the rope a few steps ahead of them, looked back, sneered. “There’s only boy mules, idiot,” he said, and he leaned harder on the rope.

  “Huh,” said Scraw.

  A silence passed—only the sounds of Murm’s heavy breathing and hooves against the dirt.

  Bark looked back again, watched Scraw smiling at the mule.

  Bark stopped. The rope went slack in his hand as Murm took another few steps before halting.

  “Why do you ask?” said Bark as he looked now at his brother’s goofiness toward the animal.

  Scraw pet Murm’s mane. “No reason,” he said. “Just curious.”

  Bark seemed to sniff at his brother, trying to discern a veiled intention.

  Both brothers had peculiar features, but, of the two, Bark seemed further human. Their lips hung loose and their eyes seemed pulled back on their heads and their skin seemed dirt-stained even after they’d bathed and their hairlines were high. It was as if y
ou had no choice but to contemplate them through a convex and dirty lens, and their heads twitched slightly every time they talked.

  “Nah,” said Bark, “there’s something to it.” He grabbed at Scraw’s shirt. “Gum it out. What’s in your silly head?”

  Scraw gazed at the dirt, then up at his brother. “He keeps winking at me,” he said.

  Bark’s mouth gaped open. “If we’d different mothers,” Bark said, “I’d call you a dumb sonofabitch,” he said, and he grabbed Murm by the jaw and showed Scraw again how Murm was missing an eye. “All this damned beast does is wink,” he said, “at everything.” He let the mule go. “What’s a wink?” he asked.

  “Huh?” said Scraw.

  “A wink, you dumb sonofabitch,” Bark said, “what is it?”

  The sun hung low in the west, and Scraw looked away and saw thick clouds the color of ocean gathering above the mountains in the east. The snow-capped peaks appeared incapably white against the deep-dark backdrop.

  Scraw closed an eye and raised a thumb and the tallest white peak disappeared behind his fingernail. Then, “Closing one eye,” he said.

  “That’s right,” said Bark, “closing an eye,” he continued, “so this mule don’t blink, it just winks, and you’re just standing on his eye side, so it just seems he’s winking at you.”

  Scraw lowered his thumb, opened both eyes and looked at his brother. “Nah,” he said. “I think there’s more to it.”

  “More to it?” said Bark. “More to it?” He turned then and walked forward, pulling the rope. “What more could there be?”

  Scraw sighed. “Hard telling,” he said, “for certain.”

  They got to the workshop and raised the door on its rails, the door squealing as the runners rode the rusty tracks and the door tucked up against the ceiling. Murm spooked a bit when they brought him in, presumably because he could smell the blood of prior deaths, but Scraw petted his mane gently and cooed him back to calm. “See,” said Scraw to Bark, “I’ve got a way with him,” he ran his hand down Murm’s back, “he likes me.”