High Sea Horror

"I'm really glad that we got to do this." Jake commented lazily.

Kelly glanced over at Jake and rolled her eyes. "At least keep one hand on the rod." She commented with a smirk. "You know that's how your Junior lost that rod last year."

"Its how I lost that fish." Junior replied without looking up. He had his rod fastened tight to a custom harness he'd built over during the year. Kelly had made it clear that as impressive as the device he had to make sure he was anchored to the boat when he was wearing it. The last thing she wanted was for some damned fish to yank her first born overboard and drag him to depths of the ocean. "It was like three feet long."

"I swear that fish gets bigger every time you tell that story." Tina sniped. She was stretched out on a deck chair in black bikini that her father had expressly forbid her from wearing in public. After a long debate Kelly had convinced Jake that their boat didn't qualify as in public, even if her boyfriend was onboard. "In a few years you'll have people convinced you almost caught a whale."

"Don't be silly." Junior responded. "It was a shark."

"Sure it was. It was a shark and I'm a wookie." Chris jabbed silently setting a beer next to Junior when he thought nobody would notice before handing one to Jake and setting one next to Tina. "Thanks for having me Mr. Carver."

"Yeah, yeah, don't make me regret it anymore than I already do." Jake replied.

"You promised you'd be nice." Kelly chided.

"I am being nice, he's drinking my beer and I haven't decided to use him for chum have I?" Jake spat opening his beer and taking a long pull from it. "We know there are sharks around here that would love to just eat his skinny ass alive."

"Is that an improvement?"

"Is what an improvement?" Tina asked without opening her eyes.

"Well if the shark is going to eat me alive that means he's not going to chop me into itty bitty bits right?" Chris commented opening his beer and sitting down. . .well outside of Jake's reach.

"That's only because you left that Shark Week bullshit on all night and now I know that sharks are attracted to the sound of a struggling swimmer. So you'll make better bait alive." Jake replied a little too evenly for Chris.

"That's enough Daddy." Tina said lowering her sunglasses just enough to peer over them at her two favorite men.

Chris tried to keep the color from dropping from his face while he jammed his hook through one of the sardines? Minnow? Anchovies? He honestly had no idea what the hell they were using for bait other than they were weren't plastic nor were they worms which officially put him well outside his comfort zones. Mr. Carver had insisted that this was the best way for a family to bond.

Chris didn't feel so much like family as he did like a victim but his parents had assured him that the Carvers liked him just fine. If they didn't they would have noticed how often he spent the night instead of scolding him for not bringing any coffee if he insisted on showing up earlier enough for breakfast. It certainly didn't make him feel any better.

Certainly not when Mr. Carver could sound so damn serious about how he intended to use him for shark bait. He'd never been to Australia before, he'd never been outside America before unless northern Mexico counted and most southern Californians would agree that Mexico didn't count as another country, it counted as a place where you could get away with drinking underage which meant the place had completely lost it's allure when Chris hit his twenty first birthday two years back.

"So Christopher Renaud what do you plan to do with yourself?" Mr. Carver asked.

"You mean after I get out of college?" Chris was stalling a bit. He cast out his line. For a few moments he could see the flickering silver body of the fish before he swam down into the depths. For a moment Chris envied the fish. One way or another its pain wasn't going to last too much longer. His on the other hand was probably just starting.

"No when you get off this fuckin' boat." Mr. Carver snapped.

"Well when I graduate I'll already have a couple friends in the industry, there's still a shortage of people who can write code. Most people starting off in the industry can make around sixty k and usually with pretty good benefits too." Chris started.

"You mean on the computer? Like your video games?" Mr. Carver interrupted.

"Well there's a lot more to it than video games. The stock market pretty much runs entirely on computers these days, electronic stores, Netflix. All sorts of stuff really." Chris jabbered a little faster than he intended. They'd been dating for over a year and Mr. Carver still had that effect on him.

"You any good?"

"I'm in school for it, set the graduate near the top of my class." Chris replied. He was careful to keep his eyes on the water even though he didn't have the first clue what he was looking for. Ocean fishing wasn't at all like freshwater fishing where he could focus on his bobber and know when he had a fish.

Jake turned slightly toward Chris gauging the young man dating his daughter. "That's not what I asked." He growled before finishing his beer and tossing the empty can away. He'd forgotten, or maybe he'd never really known, most of Tina's boyfriends didn't have the common sense to be intimidated. It wasn't that they were more sure of themselves than Chris, they just honestly didn't care what he or anybody else thought. Chris cared and it was strangely satisfying to watch him squirming. "Lots of kids go through college, get a piece of paper. Doesn't mean you can do shit. You think I listen to the punk kids who just show up at the office outta school or do you think I tell those snot nosed shits how the real world functions?"

"Yes, I'm pretty good." Chris replied.

Jake raised a brow. "Pretty good. You think pretty good is good enough for my baby girl?"

"I could always lie and tell you I'm the greatest ever." Chris muttered. Filled with impotent frustration. He'd never known what he was supposed to say to Tina's father.

"You think this is some kind of joke?" Jake taunted.

"I told you, be nice." Karen said icily.

"He knows I'm just playing. Don't cha Chris?"

"Yeah. Just playing. All fun and games." Chris tried to laugh while he said that but he was a bit too reminiscent of his high school days. It wasn't at all difficult to imagine Jake, who even in his old age retained much of his old bulk if not all of his old tone, as one of the guys who made a routine out of stuffing him in trash cans and rolling them down the hill. More than once he'd been pinned against a wall when a teacher asked what was going on and the answer was always the same. Nothing going on. We're just messin' around. Sometimes that bought him a day or two off. Usually it just made the difference between getting a little roughed up and a little humiliated.

"See, told you we were cool." Jake replied. The tone he took sent a shiver along Chris's spine. It was the same tone of voice the bullies had used.

Karen looked away from her rod and straight at her husband. "Jake if you don't leave him alone the only one who'll be sleeping on the couch tonight is you." The matriarch of the Carver family declared icily.

After that the boat fell completely silent except for the sound of the waves and the occasional cry of a gull overhead. It remained like that for almost fifteen minutes before Junior gasped and was yanked forward against his seatbelt. The harness held exactly as it was designed to. "I think I got something." Junior attempted to deadpan but the smile was easy to hear in his voice.

Thankful for the distraction Chris started reeling his own line to watch Junior when something hit his bait and nearly yanked the rod clear out of his hand. Failing at breaking his grip with the first strike whatever had his line instead swam straight out attempting to yank him overboard only failing because he slid off the chair to the deck where his boots collided with wall before he could be taken. "Holy shit."

"You okay?" Tina was already scrambling over to her boyfriend uncertain what she could do to help without getting in the way. Chris managed to nod but he didn't look like he was okay. He looked scared. She ran to the railing to peer over hoping she'd catch a glimpse of what her boyfriend was fighting.

On the opposite side of the boat Jake and Karen were crowded around Junior watching him steadily reel in a fish that seemed certain to grant Junior a great story for the next Carver family get together when he'd be able to flaunt pictures of monster he'd conquered.

The entire portside of the boat seemed to lurch when the bright red fish leapt out of the water well overhead before disappearing back into the depths. "What kind of fish was that?" Jake asked. Karen could only shrug and Junior was too busy fighting to do anything more than grunt. His lips were pressed into a thin determined line while he continued his contest with the fish.

Chris grunted as whatever was on the end of his line yanked him upright slamming his ribs against the railing with a sickening thud. The idea of just releasing the rod didn't occur to him even after it started pulling him up over the railing. Tina was screaming something in his ear and suddenly her arms were wrapped around her chest with her legs on either side of his hips anchored against the side of the ship holding him in place. His arms were burning with the strain, so were his ribs and back. Tina's fierce grip around his torso wasn't helping with the pain but he wasn't going to let go.

The fish on the end of his line suddenly shot out of the water and came sailing straight towards him. The massive magenta sailfish would have skewered him on its serrated sword like nose if Tina's weight hadn't pulled him down on top of her knocking the wind from both of their lungs at the same time. Behind them someone screamed.

Chris rolled to his hands and knees and saw his fish stuck to the back of Junior's seat. He didn't need the visual that Mr. and Mrs. Carver were sharing to know what exactly had happened. The cushion was rapidly changing from white with blue stripes, or blue with white stripes (Chris and Jake had wandered into a fairly heated argument after half a bottle of vodka over which it was. One that Junior had compared to astronauts vs. cavemen and hadn't ended until Tina and Karen had separated the men by dragging them into separate rooms.) to a deep reddish purple radiating out from where the fish's head was. Blood oozed down it's snout into the snapping jaws filled with dozens of glistening teeth. A shocked sound managed to escape Chris's mouth but even he wasn't certain what sound it was.

When Karen turned towards Chris he could see her face was speckled with blood and her mouth was agape. The only reason he knew she was screaming was because he could see her the way her chest was heaving and somehow he could feel it in his chest. His ribs, definitely bruised, possibly broken, seemed to resonate with Karen's scream. Jake was busy trying to unfasten his son from belts holding him to the seat. Something in Chris snapped and he lunged for Mr. Carver knocking him to the deck as he unfastened the belt.

Junior was still strapped to his rod and the strange orange sail swordfish on the far end. The moment the belt was undone his corpse (at least Chris hoped it was a corpse, he couldn't tell from his position on the floor,) flew from the boat minus a few ragged hunks of flesh ripped free by the jagged skewer.

"Get off me!" Jake roared throwing a right cross that loosened a few teeth and sent Chris sprawling to the side. Jake was on his feet again almost instantly staring overboard at his son's corpse floating on the sea being dragged away. He was trying to scramble over the railing and dive in after his son when Karen and Tina both latched onto his hips each earning a stray forearm to the face during the struggle.

Together the three of them watched as something with a white belly and black back rose up from the depths and swallowed Junior whole before sinking back out of sight. The two women held on to Jack as he continued his desperate scramble to get to his son then he turned towards Chris. "This is your fault?"

"My fault?" Chris gasped looking around for an escape route. The fact that he was on a boat was suddenly terrifying.

"Hon." Karen whispered still clutching her husband.

"This isn't over." Jake snarled at Chris. A moment later sank to his knees and started sobbing. It was the first time in Chris's life he'd seen a grown man cry, not shed a few tears but a full blown cry only barely stopping long enough to inhale so he could sob some more. If the situation had been different Chris might have taken the time to laugh, or gone over and asked if there was anything he could do to help. Instead he fled below deck. The angry bruise forming on Tina's cheek was all the warning Chris needed to know he'd be much safer if he waited until emotions weren't running quite so high and he'd feel a helluva lot safer once he got back to shore.