Issue #137 : Over The Edge
The boat pitched underneath her, and Karen tried to find a spot on the horizon to focus on, anything that might stave off a potential bout of seasickness. She didn’t understand why she allowed herself to be talked into idiotic excursions like this. At some point she needed to learn to develop some backbone. Other people had it, she had seem them using it but she honestly didn’t know where it came from. The few times she did say that she would prefer not to join them on their idiotic excursions, she was greeted by blank stares of indignant disbelief, as if she had just stated that she didn’t really need oxygen to survive. Ultimately, it was just easier to say yes, and go along with it, paying with some discomfort in order to contribute to everyone else’s good time.
She was seated at the bow, letting her legs dangle over the edge as she looked up into the cloudless sky. At least the cool air and the spray from the sea felt refreshing enough and almost made the inconvenience of all this somewhat worthwhile.
“Why do you always stare up at the sky like that?”
The voice came from behind her. It was Edson. Always Edson with the stupid questions, the dopey grin, halfway covering his face, as if he was the most entertaining part of everyone’s lives. He was making his way towards her, trying to act like he was born to be on the ocean, but she could tell from the way he was white-knuckling the railing that he was putting up a front. As he half sat, half collapsed to sit next to her, she reached down and absentmindedly pulled her sweater up over her shoulders, crossing her arms in front of her chest. The guy had gotten even more relentless over the past few weeks, and she had always clung to the hope that if she was just stand-offish enough, she could turn him away from her but so far, there had been no luck. Things had gotten so desperate, that she had actually considered giving him a quick round in her bed just to shut him up. Couldn’t end up being more than a minute or two of boredom, followed by a little acting on her part. She wasn’t at that point, yet.
“So what gives?” he asked as he leaned over and nudged her with his shoulder. She imagined that he sat at home, by himself, practicing that voice. That faux-concerned tone that conveyed nothing of what he likely thought it did. Whenever she actually looked into those eyes, it was hard to not think that the only real empathy he ever felt was for himself not being able to smooth-talk his way into the pants of more of his female acquaintances. “Why are you always sitting off by yourself?” He nodded up at the sky above them. “What are you watching for up there so much? Everything okay with you?”
She shook her head and looked off, trying again to will him away with her attitude and indifference. It was like trying to put out a brush fire by spitting on it.
“You know you can always talk to me about stuff that might be on your mind, right?”
She shook her head, silently wishing that he would simply disappear, go somewhere else so that she didn’t have to listen to him breathing, let alone trying to talk to her. What was the point of engaging anything he had to say to her when even the slightest response would only encourage his belief that the two of them were going to end up together, in one of the cabins?
Her head was starting to spin, and his voice seemed to be echoing through her mind, jabbing at her consciousness so violently that she was worried that she was going to start crying and of course, how he would react to that.
“Hey,” he said and this time his hand actually sneaked across to her back, rubbing the skin softly in a way that he probably thought was being sensitive. She thought it was like being stroked by dead flesh. She shrugged away from him, and tried to squirm out from underneath, but he simply took that as encouragement to try harder, so he reached the arm across and placed it over her shoulder, drawing her up next to him as he did so.
In a rushed moment of panic, her adrenaline took over, and she drove her elbow into his ribs. He let out a heavy exhalation of air as he bent over forward. Using his momentum, she put a hand on the back of his head and cracked his forehead against the metal railing. The sound rang softly as he rebounded, his eyes already rolling back to whites as he collapsed limply onto the deck. She leaned over, and as he was starting to moan and stir, reached underneath his prone form and rolled him off the deck.
Absentmindedly, she watched as his body flipped as it fell the thirty feet to the water below, landing badly as he hit the water, face first.
She wasn’t sure if the propellers got him, or if his neck broke in the fall or if he drowned. What she did know was there was no sign of him coming to the surface, waving and calling for the boat to return to pick him up. The boat plowed on, cutting through the water as the party carried on over on the other side of the boat, unaware of what had just happened.
Karen leaned on the railing and returned her gaze to the water below, trying once again to regain her train of thought.
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