by Weston Ochse
“They have a tradition here that goes back a thousand years,” she’d whispered while they lay in bed the previous night awash in the sweat of their sex. “Their god must be fed. There once was a time when they’d feed those captured from other tribes, so they had wars, and captured victims to be sacrifices. But the 20th Century came and peace overwhelmed them, as it eventually does when cultures become more civil. So to appease the god, they began a tradition. Three times a man could tie himself to the statue. And three times he must survive. And if this man survives, he gains a power over his own fear greater than any other man, because fear, more than anything else, controls and makes us a slave. This process, this thing they do here on the Sea of Cortez, is a crucible for heroes.”
She’d been one of the only women to tempt the god. She’d said that at first they wouldn’t let her. She’d had to convince them. She’d had to beg them to let her be a part of the sacrifice so she could banish her own fear. In the end they’d relented.
Pain like a pin piercing his leg made him yelp. This was followed by another and then another as something with teeth attacked his ankle. He thrashed in the water, his legs kicking, one free, the other attached to the rope that held him to the undersea god. The man beside him thrashed as well. Their eyes met momentarily and he recognized his own terror in the bulging orbs of the other.
A scream erupted from farther down the line. Thomas turned in time to see a man disappear beneath the water, but had no time to contemplate the other’s fate. Something hard moved against his own leg.
Then he was jerked beneath the water.
He’d managed to take a breath and now held it as hard as he’d ever held anything. Like a rope to freedom, the oxygen in his lungs was the only thing that kept him safe from drowning or...
Panic electrified him as he finally saw the beast moving beneath him.
Or the beasts, to be more specific. First came the shrimp. Thousands of them. Their pereopod and pleopod spines pierced his skin as they skittered over and around him. The man on his left was completely covered, as if the crustaceans were feasting, their dagger-like legs rising and falling as bubbles escaped in an undersea cloud. As the shrimp swarmed him, Thomas scraped his hands across his chest and arms, shoving them away, ignoring the pain as best he could. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry at the surreality of the events that were transpiring, but he dared not. Instead, he kicked and scraped and stared agog at the fates of the others.
Following the rope to where it was affixed to the statue, he saw that part of the statue had come alive. Eight antennae from the gargantuan shrimp were whipping through the water like scythes through wheat. Two men had been grasped around the waists and were being pulled deeper and deeper. One had already died, his lungs filled with water, his eyes wide with lifelessness. The other was determined to live and as he sought anything that might help him. His gaze darting desperately around him, he spied Thomas.
Thomas willed the man to hold his breath longer. He willed his own breath into him. He prayed that the great beast might forget about its human morsel and release the poor man. But none of that happened. Instead, Thomas watched as the air finally exploded from the man’s mouth, unable to hold his breath any longer. Eyes that were at first wild with panic softened as the weight of life left him. Then Thomas was released and he popped above the water like a bobber that had just been teased by a fish. He gasped. His chest heaved. The man next to him and two farther down the line were gone. There were nine of them left and he felt a little less human for the happiness he felt, glad it wasn’t him.
He remembered something June had told him. “I used to think I was lucky that it wasn’t me. But then when I continued being so lucky, I couldn’t help but feel guilty. Why should I have all the luck? What did I do to deserve to live when everyone else was dying?”
Luck.
Guilt.
He didn’t care. He was just happy to be alive.
He stared into the windows of the Black Dolphin knowing that June was there waiting for him. He could go to her, sleep with her, and tempt death two more times, or he could leave right now and never look back. For a moment he thought the choice was between love and life, but then he realized that it was simpler than that. His choice was about choice. To stay would be to leave his destiny in something else’s hands. June should have died in Iraq and was condemned to live with her own mortality, her destiny tied to the souls of the dead. That RPG should have exploded, taking her with it, and she couldn’t deal with the fact that she continued to live. She couldn’t live with that. For all the living she did, she wasn’t living.
A carload of young men his age pulled into the parking lot of the Black Dolphin. They piled out, falling drunkenly together in a gaggle of indefatigable fun and headed inside. She’d take one, just as she’d taken him, and she’d sacrifice him.
Thomas remembered hearing something when he was in Iraq, and he couldn’t help but believe that it was connected to the tale she’d told him. Somehow, someway, the insurgents believed that there were force fields around HUMMERS. In an inspired sequence of insane determinations, they’d figured out that wrapping the explosive round with duct tape would allow the round to pass through the force field. With this technique, the insurgents found immediate success and began to wrap more and more RPG rounds with the tape, as if they’d discovered a secret as important and necessary as cold fusion. Thomas couldn’t help but believe that their belief in force fields stemmed from that singular RPG that had failed to explode June’s HUMMER in the city of Haditha, the insurgent gunner convinced his careful aim had been foiled by an American force field.
Thomas would never be sure, but the odds were in his favor, and the mystery of how unrelated events could be connected and reinvented in logic would become his coda until the day he died. At that moment he was certain he’d live. He absolutely knew that he’d survive if he tried twice more. But it was like Iraq. They hadn’t given him a choice. It wasn’t about cowardice. He’d proven that here. It was about choice. If he wanted to be with her, he’d be required to follow her choice.
He thought about how he’d so desperately wanted to get to know her and how now he wanted nothing to do with her.
They ordered him back to Iraq and he’d chosen to say no.
She’d told him that if he chose to tempt the god three times, it would make him a different man.
He didn’t need to be a different man.
He was a good man.
And he chose to go home.
AND FOR a long time he would forget about his attempt to become a Don Quixote on the Sea of Cortez, tilting at sea monsters for the charms of a young woman. But then sometime in the future it will come to him; perhaps even years later, standing in the aisle of a hardware store the memory will surface. Thomas Greely Jones will reach for a roll of duct tape and return to the memory of his days in Puerto Peñasco: June the seductress; the holy duct tape insurgents wrapped around their grenades; the RPG that rang off June’s HUMMER that didn’t kill her but killed her spirit; the constant search for control they all had with death at every door; the desperate need to have choice in one’s life; and the tentacled truth of the god beneath the waves who’d promised to remove his fear, only if he’d play a celestial game of bobbing for apples. Then he’d shudder at how close he’d come to dying so that someone else might live. It might take a moment, it might take an hour, but eventually he’d collect himself, put the tape in his cart, pay for it and return home to his wife and children. He’d use that tape to repair something mundane, something necessary, and think about how his life had almost been undone in his attempt to forever remove his fear and become the confident cavalier hero he’d always thought he’d needed to be.
* * *
Notes from the Author: This story, of course, owes its heritage to H.P. Lovecraft’s Dagon and the movie made of the same name. But how could I not? I challenge you not to think of that wh
en you see the statue in Puerto Penasco’s square. Yes, it’s a real statue. I’m sure you could google it if you wanted to. One starlit night my wife and I went for a walk and saw this and the whole story came to me – the bobbing for courage, the ancient sacrifice, the undersea god, the cowardly young man who saw himself as a Don Quixote-esque cavalier, and the girl who couldn’t come to terms with her survival. I wrote this story and held onto it, eventually putting it into my collection Multiplex Fandango. And yes, the thing about the tape is true. I swear.
Rhythm
PRIVATE FIRST CLASS Jesse Jones sat in the gunner’s chair of the Ml Abrams tank and peered carefully through the rangefinder. Although touted as just another drill, their ammo was as real as the enemy. Through his rangefinder, he could see his pre-appointed target in harsh white outlines sitting on the crest of a hill across the DMZ. The tell-tale bulbous design of the Chinese-made North Korean tank, hunched there like a giant beetle, would have been visible even without the use of his starlight scope. He watched for any indications of enemy movement and absently rubbed his thumb over the fire button. He had a rhythm. He called it the five rhythm. He’d rub left left left right right; then right right right left left; then finish, right left left left right. Each time barely grazing a button that could unleash instant death and mammoth destruction on an unsuspecting, but well-deserving enemy.
Some people froze at times like these, unable to turn years of training into actuality. Most forget that when it comes right down to it, in the Army you’re trained to kill. Soldiers were caught up in the lower-middle class lifestyle, college night courses, hours in the motor pool pulling senseless maintenance, and Congress’s continuous attempts to make the job a sociological survey. Jesse never forgot, however. He never forgot that a main baffle tank was a machine of magnificent destruction. And through some miracle, he had mastered the insane rhythms of his life and was placed in this position of God-like control. The fate of the world rested just millimeters from his thumb.
He glanced down at that thumb, hovering like a small grease-covered Sword of Damocles, passing restlessly across the raised surface of the button. He pulled his hand back in shock. Gotta watch the rhythm, he thought. Gotta take care to watch the rhythm.
He concentrated deeply, but found the compulsion too powerful. Instead of his fingers, he transferred it to his teeth. He moved his thumb once more into the ready position as his teeth began to gently chatter the five rhythm. Biting left left left right right; then right right right left left; then finish, right left left left right.
“Private Jones, Target,” prompted the tank commander through his helmet communications.
“Target. Stationary. No engine bloom. Locked on, Sarge,” replied Jesse grinning. He loved the way people talked in the military. Ever since he was a kid he’d watched movie upon movie – World War II, Vietnam, it didn’t matter. Speaking military was like firing his weapon. The words came out in short staccato bursts of rhythm.
“Loader,” came the sergeant over the headset, “check load.”
Private Donnie Gee glanced at Jesse and rolled his eyes. The over-exaggerated look on the Navaho’s face was a comical study in patience. It was the fifth time that Sarge had checked the load. He knew good and well what the load was.
“SABOT, Ready,” replied Private Gee in a monotone staccato burst that made Jesse smile again.
SABOT rounds were a tanker’s first and best love; better even than an unexpected one night stand. Unlike conventional HEAT rounds which were just newer versions of the old fashioned exploding rounds that were the rage in all the movies, the SABOT was a product of modern technology, allowing them to hammer enemy tanks like the fist of God itself. The SABOT had no explosive capability. It did enough damage without them. SABOTs were depleted-uranium tipped kinetic weapons that would punch a hole right through the thickest part of a target tank. The real damage came when the piece of metal that had been punched through by the SABOT ricocheted around the inside of the enemy tank, smashing everything to pulp, until finally ending its bloody trail in the ammo locker. The resulting internal explosions were like the Independence Day rockets Jesse used to watch as a kid. Only these were at ground level and were somehow even more beautiful because of their intention.
Jesse absently rubbed his thumb over the fire button again, using the rhythm of five, this time in concert with his gently chattering teeth. When stationed on the DMZ, you had to be ready for war at any time… ready to protect your South Korean friends and their Western way of life. This was the third drill he had been through in as many weeks. It kept him and his crew on their toes. Even so, one inadvertent shot towards the enemy could result in World War Three.
It was common knowledge the North Koreans had nukes. Since they were like rats in a corner, even the heartiest optimists were pretty sure they wouldn’t be afraid to use them. If that wasn’t bad enough, they were rumored to have a biological warfare program that made Saddam Hussein’s look like OTC meds dispersed from the waiting room of a doctor’s office during the height of cold and flu season.
Jesse tried to imagine the huge plague-infested radioactive cloud approaching the west coast of America. There was no way they would let that happen. Jesse felt that he and his crew were ready. They were the roadblock. The only thing in the way of a madman. They just had to be careful and be very sure about what they did.
He tapped his left foot on the aluminum floor of the tank. He didn’t use the five rhythm. That was for hands. This was his feet. He used the seven rhythm.
Although proud and defiant in the face of the enemy, Jesse couldn’t help feeling lucky that he was even sitting here. He hadn’t been absolutely truthful with the recruiter when he signed up. Not that it was really Jesse’s fault. The recruiter just didn’t know what questions to ask. He didn’t know to ask about the rhythm.
EVERYTHING STARTED when Jesse turned ten. It came on like a bad cold and no drug could affect it. It was so bad he had to drop, not just out of school, but out of society in general. His parents wouldn’t and couldn’t take him out anywhere; God forbid bring anyone home. It hadn’t mattered to him, though. At the time, he didn’t even know what was going on. He was so lost in the rhythm it was his new normal.
It’d come out of nowhere. There wasn’t a doctor who examined him who was able to diagnose it. Then again, the doctors in the mountains of Tennessee weren’t exactly collecting Nobel Prizes in medicine. Of everything that happened, it was probably going to dinner every night that was the most frightening for Jesse.
In those days, Jesse’s life was absolutely ruled by the Rhythm. Everything he did had a purpose. His mom had learned to call him a half hour early to dinner. Even with the head start, he barely made it in time. There was just so much he had to do before it was safe for him to leave his room and eat dinner. The fate of his very existence, the existence of his family, and the safety of the world rested on Jesse following a precise rhythm.
He’d invariably be on his bed, reading, when she called. It was impossible to move without first looking under his bed. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular. He was just looking. In fact, he would have been surprised to find anything. It just had to be done. He’d lie flat, always staying perfectly in the middle of the bed. After a five rhythm on each hand, he would lean over and look under the left side, then return to his starting position. After another five rhythm, he’d repeat it on the right side. Then he’d scoot himself down to the foot of the bed and swing his legs ever-so carefully over the edge in order to tap the seven rhythm. Ensuring that he kissed both of the large cherry knobs at the foot of his poster bed in the sacred trinity of three, he’d spring up and move over to his four drawer dresser. Even though his favorite two books, The Hobbit and White Fang had been perfectly placed before, something was always amiss. He’d pick them up, one at a time, turn them three-hundred and sixty degrees counter-clockwise, and then put them back in the position they started in. He’d
finish by touching each of his elbows to each book five times.
Once done, he was led inexorably towards the door. He’d sneak up on it and gently brush the inside of the closed door with his knees, tapping out a seven count rhythm. He was so expert that the knees barely struck the paneled door, resulting in the faintest of sounds.
Reaching down to lick the door knob twice, he’d then open it with his mouth, cock his head and back up three steps. He then stood straight up and then sat down. Moving backwards and ensuring his butt was at all times in contact with the floor, he’d drag his lower body backwards through the opening. Once through, he’d stand up and with both hands securely around the door knob, pull it open and closed five times. On the fifth and final pull he released the handle and heard the satisfying click of the brass tongue engaging.
That singular sound represented a safety no one could ever give him – it was something he had to achieve.
Then he’d then turn around and pull out his comb from his back pocket and hold it up close to his left eye first. Peering carefully through the first two tines as he looked carefully down the hall, he’d click his tongue in the three rhythm. Once done, he’d move on to the next two tines, repeating the rhythm as he made it through all the tines, then transferred the comb to his right eye, only to do it again.
His mother seemed to understand.
It was his father who was the Nemesis. One day his Father had come home in a worse than usual mood. Jesse could hear him from his place on the center of his bed. When his mom had called him down for dinner, he’d heard his dad say, “I’m gonna go get that screwy kid. I ain’t gonna wait half an hour while he does his crazy dance. I wanna eat now!”
