The One that Got Away Read online

pores.

  When I finally registered what everyone was looking at, I wasn't certain it was real. I kept thinking how it could be a prank, like something used on a Scare Tactics episode, only on a massive scale. I had seen the Loch Ness monster remade once, its body a broken crane with a seemingly prehistoric head attached, and I could not imagine how someone would pull this off because it seemed too real. There was the shadow and the depth, the way the light flew by as it moved; if this were a gaff, the person who crafted it was due an award.

  I saw a shape swimming against the backdrop, where the horizon met the water, the form as large as the whole of the Sears tower. It did not seem possible but there it was, drawing closer as I stared. My mind reeled and screamed, asking me how this could be real, my body a limp noodle.

  Mouth opened, arms flailing from side to side, I felt useless and out-of-control. I did not seem to be alone in this response. There had to be a hundred or more faces rushing along the shoreline, many of them wearing the same expression of disbelief. They were not running and they were not retreating, seemingly stuck in a loop, many still taping whatever it was.

  I could see it as it pitched and rolled, a shape now coming into view, the body of the beast covered by refuse from the ocean. Giant mackerel and sharks and even a whale jutted from indentions on its back, impaled on scales the size of automobiles, pieces of old ships filling in some regions, the rest distorted portions mirroring the deepest blue-green the ocean had ever produced. It cut through the water effortlessly, gliding like a snake as it writhed back and forth, the motions soundless. Had I been alone, I would not have even noticed it.

  As a child I had been in awe of dinosaurs, thinking their forms majestic. The “Thunder Lizards,” walking the continents before they were truly continents, Pangaea’s top predators. My father explained how the world had looked then, noting how some of the creatures stalked the depths as well, their world coated in oceans far more extravagant than the ones known now.

  He even took the time to show me the body of some monolithic predator on display at the local science museum, its skeleton spanning hundreds of feet, a crocodile the size of a bus. For months afterward, my bathtub was filled with beasts hiding beneath the Mr. Bubble. I had never contemplated them drifting into the shallows like this thing was doing, worming itself past the breaking tide, toward boats in the distance, and yet there it was, in the sunlight of all things, the gargantuan shadow lurking beneath the waves, looking more like a submarine than anything known.

  One of the voices at an adjoining marina seemed to agree with this way of thinking, with screams of "it's going to ram us! That bloke underwater is going to hit us!" carrying across their PA. Horns blared and people scattered, thinking a naval vessel was perhaps out-of-control, but I knew it was not a submarine, that it did not make sense.

  The other idea, the beast in the water, did not make sense either, but there it was, drifting closer, creeping like some terrible phantom.

  My legs would not move no matter what I did, eyes focused on the thing, unable to look away, noticing human-like appendages trailing in its wake. True, they were attached to something as long as most cruise ships, taking the shape of something that looked like a cross between a frog and some type of reptile, but they seemed to be jointed, much like a person's.

  Claws jutted through the waves like oversized sails slicing through waves, a monstrous arm appearing, following another, then three, and a fourth. A mouth the size of a large cavern yawned, funneling water in and out of view, at least four sets of eyes ringing that enormous head.

  I felt something strange and wrenching and inspiring all at once, my mind analytically telling my quivering body how it wanted to see it all, that this was no terror. It was something older, something archaic, that had swam into my recollections, picking this day, of all days, to do it.

  It had gotten close, beginning to stand, when I noticed a miniscule detail out the corner of my eye. To my horror, I saw my line angling upward, snagged on something, my hook apparently finding its mark.

  I was no ordinary fisherman in the fact that I did not utilize a store as my outfitter. A mechanical engineer at heart, I made my own lures, killing time by crafting my own wares. Many people did the same thing, doodling but with tools, but my notions were more concise. I took pride in my designs and tried different things, working and flexing and bleeding for my art, wanting everything to be perfect so my quarry stood no chance.

  I had once built a frog that swam through the underbrush just like a real creature, taking pains with weighting and with features that would allow it to traverse weeds. I even added a motor to make the legs move, and a tiny blood bag to make certain fish knew it was injured.

  Even the hook I was using was my design, utilizing a steel frame that bent in a multitude of directions, allowing me to hook a fish from all different angles. I had grown weary of telling stories about the one that got away, knowing no one believed in fish you could not prove existed. I had designed it to hook a shark, thinking I might get lucky, but had instead hooked a behemoth.

  I stood there, staring at the biggest fish I had ever seen dancing on the thinnest of lines, thinking how I would like to mount it and give it to my father. It seemed absurd but I imagined giving him a two ton tooth, putting it on a necklace for him to wear.

  The thing might not have noticed it at all, ignoring the line as my reel screamed, releasing hundreds of yards of material, had my hook not pierced the globule of jelly that was one of its eyes.

  Dad, I did this for yooou.

  A thrashing overtook the water, a smaller appendage ripping through lumber as the thing angrily moved, the thing lashing out angrily as it probed the waters for whatever had caused it harm. Giant claws ripped through a boat as it slammed its arm upward, portions of canvas and polished wood flying through the air as a hand leaked out humans, motion cutting through people and pieces of technology like Judgment Day made flesh.

  Over and over again it thrashed, people flailing and screaming, falling and drowning. Boats sunk as I noticed forms scattered here and there, some swimming and some housed atop inflatable plastic objects, trying their best to exit the killing fields. Their desperation caused me to choke on sobs, unable to say anything.

  There must have been sixty bodies in the water within the first few minutes, thirty more before the time it closed in on the shoreline, many finding themselves crushed as it lolled to and fro, the harbor a depiction of the Normandy invasion.

  It seemed to be scrutinizing the crowds as it rose, scanning the droves of individuals now fleeing the scene, intellect burning behind its uninjured eyes. I seemed to miss its scans at first, it seemingly attracted to the noises of the crowds, but something made me go from invisible to tangible and, silently, I cursed it.

  I cursed it as much as a person could curse, sending waves of withering and hating and dying through the fabric of both time and space, hoping beyond hope that the cause of my appearance would die. It didn't matter why or what or where to me, only that the thing was now staring my way, a tower with teeth and scales and little eyes noticing me completely.

  They seemed to accuse me, knowing my sins, knowing that I had put the hook in its path, locked onto the rod-and-reel, my line still somehow unscathed. It swatted at the object, catching the transparent line, causing it to float into the air, the weight of the object causing the creature to roar.

  I wanted to disappear but my phone wouldn't stop, the chiming resounding like cicadas screaming “kill him.” Backing up, I cursed it, wished it would drop away.

  As I audibly swore, it seemed to lock onto me, truly noticing me, trying to ascertain whether or not I might be tasty. I tried to telepathically cause it to wither, closing my eyes and saying inwardly that I was too nasty for anything that big to eat, the buzzing of the phone beginning anew.

  A ring of curved teeth appeared as it leaned toward the wharf, forcing me to look deeper into its gullet as a mouth the size a mall entrance fl
ared. I could see people inside, heads and pieces and body parts stuck inside like garnish, my mind screaming how I couldn’t be one of them because I was meant for more.

  I fell to my hands and knees, my body betraying me, looking like I was praying. Mumbling words, I bobbed back and forth, a Pentecostal feeling the touch of God. The media would later dub me the praying man, people on the side of faith saying I was hoping to be heard, and this might have had some truth to it. Perhaps I was hoping God might acknowledge me for once in my life, ignoring the others in the area doing the same thing.

  Something about my action seemed to make the beast grin, as if it picked up on the vibrations of my words, and I prepared to die.

  The seconds passed slowly.

  An appendage returned toward that maw, so close I could feel the breeze it created, two people pinned in its claws. One man's head dangled to the left and one woman turned a myriad of colors, her eyes bulging out of her head, her innards drooping from its digits. Throwing their remains in its mouth, it picked up three more people, a child and a mother and another person crushed into a unitary puddle, the snapping of bones becoming a mantra as a misshapen blob was forged from humans.

  Two skulls became one feet in front of my face, a genetic anomaly