Dash in the Blue Pacific

by Cole Alpaugh

  It took mad skill.

  On Earth, as it is in Heaven.

  Dash heard the flapping an instant before the bird found his shoulder. It was a hard landing, and the damn thing’s nails dug in while finding its balance. The cushion dipped and a cold wave splashed over him. It was salty, stung his barely open eye. Maybe it was the Kappa chicks’ pool, since they owned a parrot. Yo, ho, ho, and a barrel of rum, vodka, and Everclear. His stomach lurched, and up from the darkest depths of his belly came a wet burp that sent his companion airborne with a squawk.

  It was a seagull, not a parrot. He could recognize a seagull’s complaining voice from a mile away. Maybe it was the Omega pricks’ pool after all. The guys were pigs with their trash, driveway dumpsters attracting gulls year round. They’d been threatened with losing their charter for all the garbage fanning out over campus.

  He tried pulling higher up onto the cushion, but wasn’t able to kick his feet. Both were shoeless and swollen, neither ankle wanting to flex. He willed his right knee to bend, but was distracted by a new flurry of wings and braced for another impact. There were more gulls this time, some landing on his back and shoulders, others on the cushion near his face.

  Words erupted in a dry croak. “Get away,” he said, shooing with one hand, sensing yellow beaks about to pluck out his eyes and snip his ears. He’d witnessed their work, an Omega gull once prying open a can of pork and beans and nearly fighting to the death with others over every morsel. Dash shrieked when something caught his pinky, began to twist. He jerked his hand, nearly losing purchase on the cushion. He scrambled back up by rocking his shoulders, then buried his face and hands, hunching forward to protect both ears.

  “Fucking Omegas,” Dash shouted into the soggy cushion. “You guys are fucking slobs.”

  His tongue had grown fat, made it a struggle to swallow. He hoped the bastards lost their charter and their house burned to the ground with Dicky and his goons still inside. He’d cheer when the dumpsters erupted in flames, raise a beer from his soggy cushion, and toast the embers.

  Gulls poked at his neck, tasted his hair. He feared for his earlobes, rocking his head back and forth to present a difficult target. He stopped only for peeks at the enemy, who seemed to mostly bicker at one another, hopping on orange webbed feet instead of coming in for the kill.

  Dash was dizzy when the sun dipped into the horizon and sent the world into blackness. The cushion lightened as bird after bird grew bored and quit the game. Each took wing in a noisy flourish.

  Give us this day our daily bread.

  He shivered into the night, cold and alone, as a full moon rose and showered blue-tinted light. Waves of depression descended, consumed him by midnight. The stars changed places, and he eventually missed the seagulls, convinced they could have somehow coexisted on his cushion’s meager acreage. He tried staying awake, knew it was the safe thing to do. Rescue would come. He would hear the car doors, the drunken laughter, the sound of bottles being uncapped. Someone would switch on the stereo. The back door would swing open, one of the guys dragging an overflowing trash bag. Or somebody would be in the mood for a swim, come running across the concrete patio for a monster cannonball.

  Something moved in the water, only a shadow at first. Dash squinted into the reflections, allowed his eyes to adjust and make sense of the shape. Bobbing just beneath the surface of the pool was the human hand. It floated upright, as if awaiting a high-five, or perhaps waving goodbye to an old friend or lover.

  And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

  “I know you.” Dash spoke in a whisper, energy depleted. He struggled to hold out his own hand, index finger reaching, tantalizing close but not quite touching. He smiled over a bittersweet image of his father’s cramped workspace, a modest desk and wooden chair, a single bare bulb suspended from a leather cord. The only decoration was a Michelangelo print of The Hand of God. His father had explained the picture of Adam’s limp hand, weak and languid, awaiting the infusion of life from God’s touch.

  An airplane had fallen out of the sky. His airplane. He swam through dancing bodies with missing pieces because he wanted to live, to be different than his father.

  The submerged hand remained out of reach, and the water rocked him to sleep. He held onto his cushion through a dream in which he kept glancing over his shoulder, searching for Sarah’s face as he was herded down the loading bridge to the waiting plane. She hadn’t cheated on him in the dream, and they’d had a beautiful wedding. But where was she now? Why was he boarding a plane alone? He tried calling for her, but could not speak. His tongue didn’t work, nor did his lips or jaw. He shifted his pack and reached for his face with both hands, but there was mostly empty space where flesh and bone had been torn away. His fingers fumbled across something hard at the back of his ruined mouth and he couldn’t resist prying it free. He held his last remaining tooth in his palm, embarrassed by its yellow shade. You’ll still love me because this is a dream, he tried saying, but only managed animal grunts that turned into a cadence, became the sound of a beating heart. He listened instead of trying to say more. He knew he was alive as long as the rhythmic thumps continued. You’ll still love ….

  Thump. A quiet pause. Thump.

  Everything went black, and he might have felt one eye tumble down his cheek and ricochet off his forearm. Everything went silent when both ears came loose and bounced from his shoulders. Did they make a noise when they struck the water?

  I can’t hear my heart.

  Dash let the tooth fall from his hand. And then he let go of the cushion.

  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

  Chapter 3

  The walls were close, the air cool and damp. The echo was a familiar voice.

  “I love you.”

  Quiet for a while, and then it came again. A simple, emotionless declaration from an old tape recorder’s battered speaker. But the words changed his heart’s rhythm, caused a skipped beat as he anticipated their return and imagined the soft hand accompanying the message. They were three words wielding so much power, no matter the energy behind the delivery. He fought growing anxiety, tried calming his noisy insides, and listened to the empty darkness disrupted only by dripping water. He wanted to believe it was an angel’s voice, rather than his own parched throat’s raspy plea.

  He dozed until something landed and scuttled from brow to chin. He jerked to life and wildly swiped the air. He felt his mouth and jaw, touched the outline with hands that were impliable and benumbed save for two fingers he used as beacons. Spots of raw flesh on his cheeks, open wounds with crusty edges. One motion brought spectacular pain, bone against bone, and he swooned, nearly blacking out as the room lit up in pure white. Back in pitch darkness he was left with throbbing aches that spread deep into his ears, into his skull. He sensed his screams long before he heard them winding down. His live fingers crawled to his chest, felt the thumping. He covered his heart as if to protect it.

  A small, distant voice said, “I love you.”

  Dash imagined Sarah’s hovering face, her warm breath across his damaged skin. But her perfect blue eyes narrowed, and he sensed her contempt. His own eyes turned wet with tears.

  “How could you?”

  He fought the urge to wipe his itching eyes, allowed tears to draw uneven lines and fall into his ears. Either he was blind or the night was pitch black, but he was blessedly out of the poison water. Solid ground cradled his broken body, although he hadn’t completely escaped. The drips fell hard and flat in unrelenting cadence. Despite his thirst, he never wanted to see water again, not even in a glass. Not in a fountain, not in a wishing well. Each drop was a hammer into a coffin nail. The flinching wore him down.

  Sleep and dreams of water. A hand too large to be human touched his wounds, stripped off his clothes, and forced his head under the surface. A naked infant floated close enough to touch, an ivory balloon trailing a purple umbilical cord. Tiny fish were in pursuit, tasting or maybe
trying to inflate. The fish came to him, offered their bodies to his tongue. The hand reversed, brought him to the air for a single breath, and then plunged him deeper. Are you clean? Are you saved?

  Dash kept count, each dream a new day. A week passed.

  His skin was no longer cold or burning hot, although the air grew worse, stank of mould and sewage. Sometimes he woke understanding his circumstances. He’d drunkenly stumbled into a bathroom and fallen in the tub. Bad things had happened. Makeshift first aid performed by one of the goons who didn’t want any unnecessary bloodshed. Dash imagined the guy biting his own tongue in concentration, yellow Tourniquets for Dummies book propped in one hand, Dash’s gushing wound squeezed off in the other. From the way his blood pulsed in his forearms and shins, he had no doubt that his body parts were tightly wrapped. His knees were bent, his neck tilted for his head to fit. There was plenty of room on either side because he’d lost all his fat after finding Sarah under Tommy. The rotten fiancée infidelity diet had worked like a charm.

  Ten days gone.

  Not flushing the damn toilet was something new, a definite step backward for a drink-to-oblivion phase. He was disappointed to have an instinct let him down. Not cool. It went on the list, along with puking on your own shirt and drinking from a glass being used as an ashtray.

  Two weeks.

  Taunted by the rhythm of the drops, Dash began questioning his circumstances. Doubts rose with images running across his black vision. He saw the small dial with a pointed nipple in the center, knew that twisting its grooved ring created a jet of air. An old woman was bent over, grasping her ankles in a strangely erotic pose.

  “I need you to lean forward and brace for impact.”

  He recalled his erection.

  “Only pieces.”

  “Pieces come from many people.”

  “Send them back to the Sea God.”

  “Volcano wants this white man.”

  “We wait for her to speak.”

  Dash answered weakly. “Cindy?”

  The pictures morphed into movies, a bird’s-eye view of recent events. He stuffed clothes into a backpack—clean underwear and dirty socks, a damp swim suit. He grabbed his passport from next to the coffee pot and spotted the creased note attached to the tickets from his crazy mother. It said to have a wonderful honeymoon and be sure to bring back a grandchild.

  “Whose grandchild? Grab one off the street?”

  Trudging through the airport, the pack slung from a shoulder and his laptop wedged beneath one arm, he twice stumbled into the person in front of him. A man cursed.

  Burlington to Detroit, then Atlanta to LA, a flight path resembling an advanced mathematics sign when looking at a Google map. The last leg to Sydney was more than half the twenty-eight hour trip. The captain’s voice had been friendly but professional, reassuring to a novice flyer. It was a doctor’s voice explaining there was only a slim chance of cancer, and the next forty years should only deliver a few minor cuts and bruises. The captain let everyone know their cruising altitude, the temperature, and the local arrival time. The only visible land once they got out over the Pacific would be beautiful Fiji, a destination to consider for their next trip. “Beautiful Fiji, the Hub of the South Pacific. It consists of 322 islands, with 522 smaller islets, each more tranquil than the last. They’ll be visible on the right side of the aircraft if the weather cooperates.” He’d remind everyone to have a look once they were closer.

  Fiji never happened. The captain spoke. The airplane fell.

  Twenty-one dreams, twenty-one days.

  He tried shifting his back to stretch, but a flash of pain took his breath. A knife was buried, or maybe a knitting needle. He touched his face, noticed his palms and wrists were wrapped in strange gauze that smelled like muddy grass. He sniffed and touched one hand to his chin, discovered it was mud and grass. He remembered the sucking fuselage wall and reached for his penis, but trying to scrape off the concoction brought electric jolts zipping up into both funny bones, a sickening agony that roiled his stomach. He drew deep breaths of fetid air, then turned and vomited next to his ear. He’d stuck his dick into a hole on a doomed airplane. It wasn’t a nightmare; it had really happened. No, check that. He was now living in the definition of a nightmare. I have fresh puke leaking into my ears and my dick is gone, and some funky awfulness is happening to my hands. I’m blind and buried in a cave or some primitive toilet, and never once have I heard of a penis growing back.

  He fought for control, tried to steady his hitching body with deep, even breaths because the sound of grinding bones was worse than the dripping water.

  “The fucking sun will come out tomorrow,” Dash tried singing, needing his mother’s comforting voice, but his mouth would not work, would not bring her closer.

  Any hope for his vision was lost, not that there was anything to see at the bottom of a leaking grave. Dizziness swept over him, a sensation of falling from the tops of clouds, from six miles above an empty ocean. He vomited again, and then mercifully passed out. He dreamed he was lying next to Sarah in the gloriously cold snow. They were at arm’s length, about to make snow angels, his dick shrunken from the Vermont chill but still fully intact.

  A month of dreams.

  * * *

  “It is crucial we retrieve every piece of wreckage.”

  The voice was female, but masculine and heavily accented. Not British or Irish; it was more like the Aussie action movie hero, or the poor crocodile hunter TV guy whose daughter would never get to know him.

  “You crazy. No way to fix airplane. Broke in too many pieces.”

  It was a man’s voice, authoritative, also perhaps Australian, but the sentences came in short bursts, the way Tonto spoke to the Lone Ranger.

  “They need to be examined to find answers for the victims’ families.”

  “Your airplane killed our fish, turned lagoon to shit. Fish go belly up, taste like bad clap-clap,” said the man.

  The accusatory words entered and bounced around the walls of Dash’s grave, made him wonder about good clap-clap. His head no longer ached, and his stomach was empty. He was hungry despite the piss and mildew smell.

  “The airline company will make restitution. They’ll pay for the damage. Their environmental team is the best in the world. My concern is with wreckage, anything that may have washed up on your island.”

  The man grunted and his language changed to something flowery and sing-song, nearly all vowels. His words set off a stampede of bare feet, followed by a long pause.

  There were murmurs—small talk that sounded more like tropical birds and communing insects. It slowed time and nearly put Dash to sleep.

  Feet slapped the ground, heavier and much slower. Dash heard strained breathing and the sound of rustling, two plastic buckets dropped onto stone.

  “One million dollars, small bills,” said the man.

  “With all due respect, Chief, I can’t imagine what your people would do with currency.” Exasperation tinged the woman’s words, and Dash felt sorry for her. “We need to salvage airplane sections, plastic or metal. Segments we can piece together.”

  “You take good look at my island,” said the Chief. “You see mini pretzel factory under breadfruit tree? These come from your plane. Bags say these are savory treats everyone loves. Mini pretzels are wreckage. One million dollars.”

  “These are food snacks. And that bucket is filled with sanitary napkins.” There was more rustling, and Dash pictured the woman taking inventory. “Passenger headphones, airsick bags, magazines.”

  “Half million dollars; you keep buckets.”

  French words were exchanged among the woman’s clan.

  “Merde,” said one. Dash knew it meant ‘shit.’ One of his high school pals had also taught everyone how to say fuck, handjob, and tits.

  “I’m very sorry for what’s happened to your lagoon. We have sixty kilos of rice and a fair amount of coffee. It will be our gift. We’ll bring it from our boat with help from your peopl
e.”

  “You pay one million dollars if we find metal pieces of airplane?”

  “We don’t have money, Chief. Our job is to investigate the cause of the accident.”

  “What you pay for people?”

  “Did you find human remains?” The woman’s voice was skeptical. Too skeptical, as far as Dash was concerned. “Did a body wash up?”

  “You have one million dollars?”

  “No, I’m sorry. Just rice and coffee.”

  “Then we only found what’s in buckets.”

  * * *

  Dash drifted off to the intoxicating smell of fresh brewing coffee and melodious chatter in exotic tongues. He dreamed his own feast, though his jaw required help from strange hands that smelled of coconuts and slightly sour milk. Every joint was a rusty hinge as he gobbled spoonfuls of steaming rice heaped with tiny whole shrimp and a fishy sauce. He was a voracious Tin Man with no can of oil, itchy hands, and a missing dick. A metal body polished by busy bees with coarse rags, although each bee was a non-stop complainer in clunky English phrases.

  “Cries more than sick baby.”

  “Smells like old squid.”

  It’s the fault of these grass and mud mittens, he yearned to respond. It’s these corroded knees and dented feet. I’m trapped, lodged in this too small tub. The toilet might as well be on the moon. I try to hold it in!

  “I’m a mess,” Dash whispered to the hands that had quit polishing, had left him in the dark.

  A ghost barged into his sanctuary before he could drift back into his dreams, interrupting his loneliness. The apparition was tall and square shouldered. Light from a single eye cast a white glow from head to toe. A rag was draped over one shoulder, stained with something like blood and gore. The creature stank of ammonia, things found under kitchen sinks. Dash drew a breath and watched it peel one hand off in its teeth, then reach down with the remaining stub to part the flesh beneath its bulging stomach. It pulled out what resembled a human penis that created an arc of yellow fluid. Whistling noises emanated from a scabby face, a tune resembling Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”