I awoke at dusk.

The important thing was that I felt no pain. Being an experienced skydiver, scuba instructor, hiker, mountaineer, and rock climber — I had been through my fair share of injuries. I broke my leg on a forest trail once, just slipped right through a wood bluff and fell five metres into the glen below. Didn’t even feel it until the air ambulance was strapping me into the rigid gurney. That one hurt but knowing that help would come kept me calm.

Today was… Friday? I had been taking a group of Australians on a tour of the… where? What hemisphere was I in? North America, by how amazed their faces had been. But then…

Why was I here?

And where was here?

I rolled my eyes around and saw only sky. No other part of my body was responding properly to my movements, just my eyes, and I could open and close my mouth. If I strained my eyes down to look across my cheekbones, I could see that the light in the sky was fading. Pastel orange all the way along the ocean’s horizon, fading up to peaches and pinks, eventually purpling like a wound.

A cool wave slapped at my face.

It all came back at once: the freak wave grabbing me and launching me at the shore, the sensation of great impact.

I had been snorkelling.

Now I was in the shallows. I tried to get up, tried rolling over, moving at all. Only my hands responded weakly to my commands, I had no sensation in my legs at all. Almost everything below my neck was numb.

I tried shouting for help, but it felt like a great weight was sat on my chest. The only sound I could make was a whisper. How many ribs and vertebrae had I broken? I was glad that the snorkel mouthpiece was still attached to the mask, and the mask was still on my face, because the low tide of sunset was going to come back in soon. The snorkel might be the only way I could breathe when the waves went higher than whatever rock I had been thrown onto, whatever mud flat I had washed ashore on.

Clack, clack.

Some noise to my left, my submerged ear. The sea was more to my right, so it came from the landward side. Clicking steps, a snuffling. A dog? A dog! It could go get its owner, be the good boy, save the day. We could be on the front page of the local newspaper together after I get out of hospital.

Clack, clack, chick…

It was my imagination or the water amplifying the sound.

A sharp pain shot through my ear.

I couldn’t groan, only let out a long and profane breath. This was no dog investigating me, making little furtive steps in the shallows, its tiny mouth was too sharp and its miniature movements too quick.

Another pain, and I felt the water around my ear go warm.

It had drawn blood.

As if summoned by its discovery of an immobile feast, its fellow walked across my chest. It did little to add to the invisible weight I felt crushing me. I did my best to push my chin down and peer down to see it, as little as my head would obey on its swivel.

Clack.

It snapped its pincer at me when I moved. It did not like sudden movements.

My friends told me I should snorkel off the coast of Astoria. They said Portland was beautiful this time of year. They said it would be brilliant. They said Hawthorn has the best crab dinner anywhere in the Pacific Northwest, Dungeness crabs up to ten inches, boiled in garlic butter. The sea salt on my skin was my own seasoning.

Clack.

It jabbed at me, snapping its pincer on my chin. The stubble gave it less purchase, it did not manage to break the skin like his friend by my ear had, not yet. It still hurt. I could feel that much. I spotted another shape moving further down, mounting my useless right leg, and could feel that not at all.

By the dim light left echoing through the sky, I saw its hideous little features. Black beetle eyes on stout stalks. Legs segmented and bowed, carrying its horrible body closer in timid steps. The body, flat and spiked all along its edge, a hard chitinous carapace, alien and horrific, even before its hooked pincers lashed forward and snapped onto my chin, twisting to rip off a piece of flesh, only to transfer that to the horrific mandibles that fed it into its mouth. The pain in my chin was balanced out by another piercing nip at my left ear. If the one by my leg had begun feeding on my ankle, I counted my blessings that I couldn’t feel it.

The one on my chest ripped off another piece, and I saw a grey hair in the short, shaved stubble. I liked that grey hair, thought getting some greys in my beard made me look dignified. I looked away. With shock setting in, even the pain didn’t feel so bad. 

A seagull wheeled overhead.

It wasn’t so bad, I thought, being reclaimed by the sea.

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