Jaws

by Peter Benchley

The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail.

At first, the woman thought she had snagged her leg on a rock or a piece of floating wood. There was no initial pain, only one violent tug on her right leg. She reached down to touch her foot, treading water with her left leg to keep her head up, feeling in the blackness with her left hand. She could not find her foot. She reached higher on her leg, and then she was overcome by a rush of nausea and dizziness. Her groping fingers had found a nub of bone and tattered flesh. She knew that the warm, pulsing flow over her fingers in the chill water was her own blood.

Ellen Brody was thirty-six, five years younger than her husband, and the fact that she looked barely thirty was a source of both pride and annoyance to Brody: pride because, since she looked handsome and young and was married to him, she made him seem a man of excellent taste and substantial attraction; annoyance because she had been able to keep her good looks despite the strains of bearing three children, whereas Brody—though hardly fat at six-foot-one and two hundred pounds—was beginning to be concerned about his blood pressure and his thickening middle.

“Offhand, I’d say she was attacked by a shark.” Cassidy’s knees buckled, and as he sank to the sand, he said, “I think I’m going to be sick.” He put his head down and retched. The stink of vomit reached Brody almost instantly, and he knew he had lost his struggle. “Join the crowd,” he said, and he vomited too.

one of the few advantages man has over other animals is the ability to choose the way to bring on his own death. Food may well kill me, but it’s also what has made life such a pleasure.

Sharks are like ax-murderers, Martin. People react to them with their guts. There’s something crazy and evil and uncontrollable about them.

Intellectually, they knew a great deal. Practically, they chose to know almost nothing.

“The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future. It’s depressing if you spend too much time reliving the old joys. You think you’ll never have anything as good again.”

“I’d trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday.” Would she make a deal like that? She wondered. But what good was there in wondering? Yesterdays were gone, spinning ever farther away down a shaft that had no bottom. None of the richness, none of the delight, could ever be retrieved.

“That’s supposed to be every schoolgirl’s fantasy,” she ventured playfully. “What is?” “To be a … you know, a prostitute. To sleep with a whole lot of different men.”

What the fuck?

“To fantasies,” he said. “Tell me about yours.” His eyes were a bright, liquid blue, and his lips were parted in a half smile. Ellen laughed. “Oh, mine aren’t very interesting. I imagine they’re just your old run-of-the-mill fantasies.” “There’s no such thing,” said Hooper. “Tell me.” He was asking, not demanding, but Ellen felt that the game she had started demanded that she answer. “Oh, you know,” she said. Her stomach felt warm, and the back of her neck was hot. “Just the standard things. Rape, I guess, is one.”

What the fuck x2????

“Sometimes I’m in the kitchen in the morning, after everybody has left, and a workman from one of the houses next door comes to my back door. He wants to use the phone or have a glass of water.” She stopped. “And then?” “I let him in the door and he threatens to kill me if I don’t do what he wants.” “Does he hurt you?” “Oh no. I mean, he doesn’t stab me or anything.” “Does he hit you?” “No. He just … rapes me.” “Is it fun?” “Not at first. It’s scary. But then, after a while, when he’s …”

X3?? Why is this unnecessarily in a SHARK book?

“I’ll tell you what, Hooper. At this point, if someone came in here and said he was Superman and he could piss that shark away from here, I’d say fine and dandy. I’d even hold his dick for him.”

“That fish is a beauty. It’s the kind of thing that makes you believe in a god. It shows you what nature can do when she sets her mind to it.”

“I don’t think I’d like five thousand pounds of pissed-off dinosaur trying to eat me.”