Big Ass Shark

by Briar Lee Mitchell

  The events of the past several moments caught up with her in a rush. She felt her knees get rubbery and she turned to head back to her SUV, which now appeared almost comical parked next to the lifeguard’s shack.

  Abandoned coolers, dented Frisbees, torn umbrellas, and beach towels littered the wet sand.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” one of the lifeguards hollered at her.

  “Just keep the people out of the water,” she said, then turned and bolted for her SUV. There were still enough people running pell-mell around the beach that she was able to get a group of them between her and the lifeguard who ran after her. The lifeguard who had been up on the perch stayed back and watched her get in and drive away. He was able to see her tag and called it out.

  “Victor, Charlie, four, eight, Delta.”

  His partner, having failed at grabbing Misty before she was able to drive off, bounced back up onto the ramp leading to the shack and looked hopefully at his partner, who was watching her through binoculars.

  “Got her tag number,” the lifeguard with the binoculars said. “Going to radio it in right now to the park ranger.”

  His partner sighed heavily and watched the few remaining people still left on the beach. The panic had subsided, and now he could see that dozens of people doing their best paparazzi impressions had wandered back and were lined along the water’s edge, all training cameras or their cell phones on the sparkling waves. The whole scene looked like an ad for a cell phone company.

  He looked out over the water, but still could not see anything that looked even remotely threatening.

  Misty, rather than bouncing over the rocky terrain as she had before when making her mad dash towards the crowded beach, was able to scoot up to the shoulder along the freeway. She drove along perilously close to the oncoming traffic until she was able to cut down to the private road again.

  She knew she did not have much time, and wanted to grab up the iPod she had left behind. She didn’t want to leave any of her belongings there and wanted to get out of the area as quickly as possible before police, or anyone else, might want to question her. She really just wanted her player back, and then she wanted to run the hell away from the water.

  Misty had always loved the water, but as she eyed the dancing waves suspiciously, wheeling her vehicle closer and closer to the land’s end, she viewed the ocean as an alien realm holding something truly terrifying.

  Guiding her SUV back to where she had parked it before, she jumped out and cringed when she saw some of the damage to her front bumper and running boards caused by the rocks she had raced over. Shaking her head, angry over the damage, she headed back to the rocky outcropping, determined to grab the player and run.

  Approaching the flat outcropping, she could see a small piece of her lawn chair, snagged in the rocks right at the water’s edge. A small piece of the vinyl straps used to make the seat fluttered in the breeze coming from off of the water. This unnerved her, but she was determined to get her player and flee.

  Quickly, Misty grabbed the iPod, and after shutting it off she looked back at the piece of lawn chair waving at her. Fearful but intrigued, she inched to the edge and looked over into the water. Half expecting to see the bus sized fish staring up at her, she was relieved to see only water, and another smaller ledge of rock just under the surface.

  Misty stared down into the water, truly not sure at what she might find. Looking cautiously about, and not seeing anything, she inched closer to the edge for a better look.

  Right below her, on a ledge of rock, about 3 feet under the surface of the water, she saw the tooth. The raggedy edge that had been torn free from the shark’s mouth was being picked clean by small fish and what she thought were perhaps some shrimp as well. Her jaw dropped open as she stared down at the massive tooth.

  Off to her left, she saw something blinking, and watched a Land Rover with emergency lights on top making its way carefully to the lifeguard station. A man in a khaki-colored uniform got out, and Misty saw the two lifeguards speak briefly to him, then point in her direction.

  “Dammit!” she said.

  She turned and looked back down into the water and saw a fish, about the size of her hand, staring up at her. It startled her, and she jumped to one side and immediately slipped on the still-wet rocks. She fell down, banging her knees hard and immediately panicked when she realized that she was slipping forward.

  Trying to find traction with her hands on the rocks, she was not able to hang on because they were coated with slick seaweed.

  Misty plunged into the water face first, and the saltwater stung her eyes. She was not able to see anything in the brine except for dark, menacing shapes from the rocks around her. Popping back to the surface, in a full blown panic, Misty swallowed a lot of water and felt it filling her nose and spilling down the back of her throat. She grabbed at the slick rocks, struggling to get back up onto the outcropping, certain the leviathan was racing up from below, ready to rip her to tiny pieces just as it had done to the chair her mom had given her. It took several attempts, but she managed to get up and was soon lying on the smoother top of the outcropping, huffing air in and out of her lungs, shaking badly from the overwhelming fear of having fallen into the beast’s world. She had never experienced fear like that before and felt as if she was never going to be calm again.

  Misty was still right at the edge of the rocks, and she saw that the tooth was still there, sitting on the small ledge a few feet below the surface. Impulsively, she thrust her arm down quickly and grabbed it, feeling the terrible sawing edge bite into her fingers.

  She stared incredulously at the massive thing in her hands, then turned her head and threw up all of the salt water she had swallowed during her perilous plunge into the sea.

  The prize retrieved, she jumped up, making sure that she had the iPod, and then ran sobbing and gasping back to her SUV. Misty could see the Land Rover approaching the private road and knew the man in the khaki uniform, who had been down on the beach, talking with the lifeguards, was going to want to talk with her too.

  With trembling fingers she barely got the key into the ignition, but was finally successful, and then stunned to realize she was so terrified that all of the strength had left her arms. She couldn’t get the key to turn in the lock. Holding onto the steering wheel with both of her hands, Misty pressed her forehead against the rubbery covering of the wheel and whispered through chattering teeth, “Momma, momma help me here. Please help me get out of here. Help me, mom.”

  Taking a huge breath into her lungs, Misty held it for a few seconds then slowly released the air and reached for the key in the ignition. Keeping her eyes closed and focusing on an image of her mom in her mind, she slowly turned the key and was rewarded with the engine coming to life.

  Her eyes snapped open. Misty set her jaw firmly and she slammed the SUV into drive, then, floored it.

  The Land Rover was approaching her, but she raced past it, forcing it off the private road as she fishtailed onto the freeway, cutting off other cars that were blasting their horns at her.

  She didn’t care. Nothing mattered right now except getting away from the ranger, but more importantly, to getting more land between her and the water.

  Chapter 2

  Park ranger Barry Fitzsimmons eased his aging Land Rover up the private road to investigate the area where the girl had been—the girl who had caused such a ruckus down the beach.

  Of course, this sort of thing happened from time to time, especially here in Los Angeles, with more than its fair share of “nervous types”, as he liked to refer to them. Not much ruffled Barry’s feathers, and although he saw the girl there while he was still down on the beach getting the story from the lifeguards, he also had her license plate . . . and that he would turn over to the police if he felt the situation warranted their involvement. His interest right now was to go see where she had been and just check out the location of a supposed shark sighting.

  Yes, Barry was concerned about
her aggressive, perhaps deranged, behavior down on the beach, however his job was not to worry about the strange actions of citizens in public parks. His job was to make sure the park and its inhabitants were safe for those citizens.

  She was right in front of him on the private road, barreling full speed toward him. He spun the wheel just in time to avoid a front-end collision and slid onto the rocky sand. He stopped his vehicle and turned to watch her fly by him. He caught sight of her face.

  She looked terrified.

  He watched her spin onto the freeway, and decided he had better check out the area where she claimed to have seen the shark pretty quickly. Barry eased his Land Rover back onto the road and continued towards the rocky point. He stopped about twenty feet from the edge and put his vehicle in park.

  Barry—tall and lanky, in his early thirties, and dressed in his khaki park uniform—slid out of the front seat of his Land Rover and made his way over to the rock outcropping. He was surprised to see how much water had splashed up onto the rocks, however, rogue waves were not uncommon, especially since the ocean floor dropped away quite a bit here. This girl—this panicky girl that had driven her car right onto the public beach next door—could have been hit from behind by such a wave, and her possibly overactive imagination might have gotten the best of her.

  He had encountered stranger tales from other people enjoying the state parks.

  Barry wandered around slowly, looking at the ground, and saw a few tatters of an old lawn chair, although they could have been there for a long time. The pieces looked pretty worn. He pulled a notebook from his jacket pocket and opened it to a page where he had recorded notes from the lifeguards. He double-checked that he had her license number. Something on the ground caught his eye, and he saw the partially smoked joint that Misty had lost there.

  Barry laughed out loud, and then, using the cellophane wrapping from his own pack of cigarettes, gathered it up. He decided that he might as well hang onto it in case he needed to give it to the police. He didn’t necessarily want to cause trouble for the girl, that crazy girl who drove like a nut onto a crowded beach . . . however, she did endanger a lot of people, and whatever it was she was smoking might have contributed to her bizarre behavior.

  After gathering the joint, he closed it up inside his notebook and returned it to his jacket pocket. Before leaving, Barry stepped to the edge of the rock outcropping and peered into the water. He could see dark water, and knew there was quite a drop off here. On the few narrow stone ledges just below the surface he saw more pieces of a destroyed lawn chair. That was odd. If there had been an old chair out here, the waves would have dragged them away long ago. These pieces were newly deposited here.

  Barry kneeled down on the rock outcropping and peered into the water. Looking around, he found a small stick nearby and used it to try and fish a piece of the chair out of the water. He nearly fell in, trying to use the stupid stick as a tool, and ended up reaching down into the water with his hands to grab a piece. He pulled it out and studied what appeared to be a remnant of the chair leg, and saw that the old aluminum was not just bent or broken from age. The shiny end looked like something had cut right through it recently.

  He sat back on his heels and studied it a bit closer, running his thumb over the raw, cut edge of the aluminum. This was odd. Did the crazy girl have a hacksaw with her? Stranger yet, if she did saw the chair apart, why would she do something like that? Didn’t one of the lifeguards tell him she claimed that a whale ate her lawn chair?

  Barry laughed out loud in spite of himself as he pictured what that might look like in his mind’s eye.

  He looked around a bit more and spied some blood on the rock. Barry quickly set the piece of chair aside and leaned towards it. This was intriguing. If the girl had hurt herself while hacking the chair apart—even though she was acting irrationally—and all hell had broken loose with running, panicky people down on the public beach, the lifeguards surely would have noticed if she had cut herself deeply enough to leave a pool of blood on the rocks.

  Just then, Barry saw a crevice in the rocks that had what appeared to be a deep gouge recently etched into the stone. He leaned down further and studied the scarring more closely. The rock looked like it had a whole section that had cracked away, actually widening the crevice. This was quite odd. He pulled out his cell phone and used the camera feature to record what he was seeing. Double-checking to see that he got the picture, he nearly lost the phone, almost tossing it into the ocean, when his radio crackled to life, blurting a nerve-jangling spate of static into the air followed by a voice familiar to him.

  “Barry, you there?”

  Cursing quietly under his breath, Barry fumbled for his radio and finally managed to get it out of the holster where he carried it on his belt. It was Terrance Holt, another ranger he worked with.

  “Yeah! Come on back Terry.”

  “You finding anything out there? Is that girl still there?”

  “Ah, no, the girl is gone. I saw her take off, but you got her tag, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, good. Look, it might be a good idea to shut the beach down for a bit, in case that girl did see something. Could be a dead whale or something offshore we can’t see, something that might be drawing the big ones in.”

  Barry ran his fingers over the cut edge of the lawn chair again, and continued.

  “Can you see if the Coast Guard can maybe do a flyby, a mile or two out off the shore here? Just for a look-see in case there might be some of our finny friends nearby.”

  “You got it.”

  “Did you get any information on her tag yet?”

  “Yeah. The vehicle is registered to a Misty Witlow. Four-eight-seven-nine Beaumont in Venice Beach.”

  Barry wrote the information down in his notebook.

  “Okay. Got it.”

  “You want I should send police over to talk with her?”

  “Nah. Let’s keep this low-key for now until I hear her story. Her place is nearby. I’ll go do it.

  OK. I’m outta here.”

  “Later.”

  He switched the radio off and looked back over towards the public beach, where a news van was moving slowly across the sand towards the lifeguard station.

  “Excellent,” Barry sighed. “The circus has arrived. I think I’ll have to miss that.”

  He turned towards his Land Rover, still carrying the piece of lawn chair, and tossed it onto the passenger seat as he pulled himself into the cab. He didn’t know yet what had happened here today, but he knew he had to hear this girl’s story. He wasn’t sure if she had seen a whale or a shark or maybe even a UFO that rose up out of the water. Two things he was certain of—something had happened to her with the odd evidence he had found, and it was clear when he saw her barrel past him on the road, whatever it was that happened had terrified her.

  Barry started his vehicle up, punched Misty’s address in his GPS, and then, drove up to the highway. Even with as much of a ruckus as she had caused, no one had been seriously hurt. Barry decided it was time for a conversation with Ms. Witlow. He wanted to hear her side of the story about the chair-eating whale that may or may not be a shark.

  With greater care than Misty had exhibited just a few minutes earlier, Barry carefully eased into traffic and headed for Venice Beach.

  Chapter 3

  Peter Everett, looking cool and composed in his very dark, very chic sunglasses, huddled out of the wind near the open door of the van for KQRX news. He gently touched his fingertips to his hair as he studied his reflection in the quarter panel of the van.

  Looking good, he thought.

  In stark contrast to Peter’s slick appearance, his two-man crew wandered over to him. They both looked like refugees from a Grateful Dead concert.

  “Peter, we’re about set,” the crew member named Hobart said. He wore sunglasses too however they were scratched and hung slightly askew on his face. Peter noticed that the headband he wore, a red bandana knotted tightly
around his brow, actually held the glasses in place.

  “Sounds good!” Peter chirped at him. “You got a good shot lined up with the guard’s shack in it?”

  “Oh yeah. All set boss. Just as pretty as a picture. Almost like we knew what we was doin’.”

  Hobart turned towards his partner, who was making final adjustments with his camera.

  “Huh, Jethro!” he called out cheerfully.

  Jethro smiled broadly, revealing gaps where some of his teeth were missing.

  Peter was not sure why he kept drawing these two rejects for his crew, but he pretty much knew the answer already. Janet Pierson, the head of the newsroom, hated his guts and kept assigning them to him. That was okay. He hated her right back. However, as long as she continued to send him out on calls, he knew he would sooner or later stumble upon that one big story that would make his career. If that meant having to travel with these hillbilly rejects, he would tolerate it. Peter considered working with them part of paying his dues. They would certainly add color to his memoirs when it was time to write them.

  He stepped out of the lee that the door of the van provided him and gave the small crowd that had gathered a deprecating smile. He made his way onto the sand in front of the camera and took the microphone, offered to him by Hobart. They had already recorded interviews with the lifeguards and some of the beachgoers. Making a big show of it for the crowd watching him, Peter adjusted his ear jack, then, looked seriously into the lens.

  Looking out past the crowd, he could see some lights from emergency vehicles up at the parking lot. Paramedics had formed a triage area and were treating some of the people injured during the alleged shark sighting.

  “This good?” Peter asked Hobart, who was monitoring a recording and simultaneous live feed back to the network.

  “Yup, and we’re rolling.”

  “Let me know when you have speed,” Peter said to him.

  “Speed!” Hobart shouted out to him. They were recording and the live feed was intact.