Returning to My Writing Roots

A touch of nostalgia and a note to you, the reader: I am paying attention . . .

Not only am I once again reading the works of my old favourite authors, with new installments in the Egypt series—Wilbur Smith—and the Thomas Covenant series —Stephen R. Donaldson—but 2015 is the year I will finish the longest story I've ever written. Now that the first draft is complete, I've quickly realized it's merely a beginning.Yes, perhaps an epic sci-fi fantasy is in the works.

No matter how many "new and unusual" books I release, Ice Tomb seems to sell the most. Everyone loves (or hates, but still buys) Ice Tomb. And at the present time I am uninspired to write a sequel. Yes, the premise was wild and appealing, but I still find the story too ancient and amateurish to pick up the threads since I wrote it over ten years ago. So I decided to embark on writing another Ice Tomb-ish story, with a wild and appealing premise, but with even deeper research into the main scientific concept and a more distant otherworldly setting: Mars.



Last March, and for the following three months, I took an online course at MIT to upgrade my dated expertise in science, particularly in genetics and genetic engineering.



I developed a "research paper" which will be incorporated in the book. It is based to some degree on facts, but with added fictional components. In other words, nothing in the paper is true except the truth itself. After all, genetic engineering is a relatively new science, and perhaps some of what I propose will eventually be possible. Believe what you will, read what you like, but this paper is completely layered in professional jargon since I approached it in a professional manner, so I added explanations in the novel to avoid confusion.

Entitled The Furies Bog, the story revolves around this line:

A bog may be Earth’s undoing, but it will be a gift to Mars.

Intrigued? But what has a bog got to do with genetic engineering, you may wonder? What do the furies of ancient Greece have to do with a bog?

I'm not going to tell you.

But just the title alone and that one line do tell a great deal. They suggest that the story is set in the near or distant future, because Mars is involved. They also suggest there is a link to the past. (You know I like to insert such links into my Ice Tomb-ish stories). And of course, on occasion, bogs and archaeology go hand in hand. For example, the bog bodies of northwestern Europe.

  

My tales often involve extreme environments, so imagine a scene in say Polar Bear Provincial Park, and another in, possibly, Botswana, and of course there has to be one on Mars. Did I mention the Everglades? Did I mention Harvard?

I will be releasing snippets of rough material over the next few months as I work on revising the first draft. I completed the final third of the novel during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November, so you can imagine how ridiculously huge this novel is. But I promise it will still be fast-paced. And I hope you will find it as fascinating-ish as Ice Tomb.

In the meantime, I will be asking this question: Are you in it for the long haul? Do you want to invest your mind in a series that may take me as long to write as it took, and continues to take, the eminent George R. R. Martin with his addicting Game of Thrones epic? Will you take a chance on some of my other creations while you wait? They're not all Ice Tomb-ish, but I did pour my heart and soul into them. Mosaic tells the truth, and not everybody likes to hear the truth, but it has a dark fury and a bizarre structure that make it quite unique. Sinkhole has an Ice Tomb-ish flavour, but instead of looking outward in an expansive and bleak fashion, it dives inward in more than one sense, a concentrated journey. And of course you can always embark on a little time traveling if you're in the mood.

So this is how we begin the series, you—my fabulous Ice Tomb fanatics—and I—adventure writer, attempting, as always, to entertain you . . . Remember, this is a rough, unedited version.

 

The Furies Bog

Part I: The Discovery

Teresus (king of the Thracians) came to Pandion’s aid and smashed the enemy armies, thus winning a great renown for his glorious victory. Pandion, impressed by his wealth, the number of his retainers, and his glorious ancestry (which he traced back to Mars himself), gave him Procnê as wife. But Juno, patron of wedlock avoided the feast . . . . No Graces attended their marriage. Only the furies were there, with torches snatched from a tomb.

—Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.424-431

 

1.

Baruti cringed as a gust of polar wind swept through the inadequately insulated helicopter and swirled eddies of crisp, bracing air around his face. He breathed out. Ghostly white. He shivered and leaned subtly toward his companion, another perhaps more sane biologist.

Shaun Wilson, a tall ropy fellow with uncanny green eyes and a flop of blond hair reaching nearly to his nose, looked up from his perusal of his GPS, aimed a somewhat wicked smile at him and crooned through the mic, “A little cold, my friend?”
 

“You call this summer?” he grunted.
 

“Still wavering on spring, but yes, it can feel like the dead of winter. Especially if you’re from Botswana.” He added a sly wink.
 

Baruti suppressed another shiver and slunk even deeper into his thin layer of fleece.
 

“Honestly, I don’t know why a man would leave his perfectly comfortable life recording the wildlife of the Okavango Delta and come here.” His hand swept the view outside the window, miles of stunted black spruce bordering on vast polygons of worsted vegetation surrounding syrupy brown water. Miles of unchecked bog—lichen and moss the predominate plant life—a good place to sink and disappear. Yet there was something so calm about it. So . . . unmolested.
 

Colors flourished in the gray dawn. Fringes of sunlight tickled the many ponds, transforming the melting ice into a kaleidoscope of green, yellow, turquoise, even rust. A migrating herd of caribou raised their great antlers as the copter sped past, pausing in their search for a spikelet of sedge to crop. Small birds flapped in the air, and one grand creature with a six-foot wingspan hovered off the coast. An eagle, perhaps?
 

“Yes, it does seem odd,” said the pilot, a thickset, black-bearded Canadian of undoubtedly Italian origin. DeLuca was his name. Wilson said he doubled as a geologist, in a rather sneering manner. Wilson liked to sneer, he noted. And joke. And wink.
 

Obviously he took no delight in inorganic substances.
 

“Too dry and dusty at times. Too moleto. Hot. I needed a change.”
 

“One extreme to the other, though, man,” said DeLuca. “Why didn’t you choose something moderate? South of France. Now that would be the ticket.”
 

“And what would I study there?” asked Baruti. “Sunbathers?”
 

“Sun worshipers. In bikinis.” He looked back and winked; the helicopter shimmied and dropped a few sickening yards.
 

Baruti clutched the seat cushion, his heartbeat matching the thumping of the rotors. “Dr. DeLuca . . .”
 

“Tony,” he replied, swerving and swaying the craft back to level. “And no, Baruti. I’m not going to crash us . . . today.”
 

A strong gust of wind begged to differ as it grabbed the craft and shook its threadbare aluminum frame, rattling every loose component and sending the copter into a miniature rotation. Tony fought the controls and barely averted a death spiral.
 

Bile filled Baruti’s throat. What had possessed him to pursue . . . no, take this course of action as a biologist in the extreme north of Canada.
 

Watch your words, even in thought. It’s easy to let thoughts slip into speech.
 

Wouldn’t it have been simpler to follow the demise of the declining populations of ostriches or wildebeest in the delta? Or even to have resumed his studies of the gorilla in the Congo? And if he must come to this bone-withering, frostbitten land, why not study the woodland fox or the dwindling packs of wolves near the southern border? Why Polar Bear Provincial Park? Why polar bears?
 

It was the only option. Yes, of course, only option . . . for an insane man on an insane mission.

****

End of Excerpt 1

Copyright © 2015 Deborah Jackson

Mosaic -- Excerpts

 *

Almost there . . . The manuscript is in the hands of the designer, as noted above. Here are a few excerpts, fragments, if you will.

And so the nightmare begins . . . 

Did your parents ever tell you a sweet bedtime story that your busy little brain turned into a nightmare the instant you fell asleep? Did Cinderella ever become ten feet tall and carry an axe? Did Little Red Riding Hood actually transform into a werewolf (after she was bitten, of course). Did Scaredy Squirrel really fall out of the tree, land in poison ivy and a nest of tarantulas, and eventually get eaten by sharks, proving that he’d been right to be afraid, all along? Sure, it happened. And then you would wake up, shaking and sweating, wanting to run into their bedroom, scoot between the sheets, and spill. But you knew that if you did, they’d stop telling you stories.

 ****

“Sometimes life throws you a curve ball.”

 That’s what one of the many doctors who patched me up after the accident said. I think he was the chest guy, in thoracics, or something like that. Of course there was the neuro doc and the plastics lady and the general surg person—you know, the jack-of-all–abdominal organs. Orthopaedics dropped by every other day, waiting for their turn to add more pins to my bones. But no one else called my situation a “curve ball.” Instead, they patted my head and said, “At least you’re not dead.”

 Every day I wished I were dead.

The nurses would come in, crank me up, flip me over, redress wounds, and smile, because they couldn’t really see me. I didn’t blame them. If they’d really seen me, I think they would have cried. And you can’t cry every day.

 But the day that guy said that life had thrown me a curve ball was the first day I managed to move my casted arm on my own. I don’t think he was ever going to say it again.

 But you know what? Maybe it was a curve ball.

Sorry about that, Doc.

****

A Pirate's Captive

One of the most difficult tasks in writing this book was to switch from a modern tongue (and a hockey player's, to boot) to a more archaic and formal one. And sometimes to intertwine the two.

The tossing of the ship was relentless. I felt more than queasy, but not yet entirely green. The aftereffects of the battle persisted, as well. Although it had all but ended, it continued to rage in my head with flickering images of flying shrapnel, blood splatter, and white-faced crewmen scattering like minnows.

The schooner had severed our mainmast with a roar of cannon fire. Men had been shot, split, and disembowelled, and the corvette had listed as water poured into her holes. Now the schooner was coming alongside us. Unkempt, brutish men tossed grappling irons over the side and snagged the rigging. They swarmed onto our ship, landing with heavy boots, their flintlocks exploding, punching holes in the crew.

I scrambled away from the fray, attempting to make myself invisible behind a tattered sail that fluttered in the breeze. Beyond my flimsy refuge, guns barked repeatedly, and men screamed in terror and agony as they lay dying. I shivered and shrank and gripped the sail tightly, hoping the shot would miss me and the pirates would scramble past.

Yet little hope remained. The ship was sinking, and I could not swim. Even if the navy defeated these brigands, would there be time to mend the ship or send longboats over the side before we sank?

A crewman stumbled into my sail, clutching it and falling, tearing the ragged cloth from the rigging, and exposing me fully. He gasped a dying breath as a pirate pulled the cutlass blade free of his belly.

I froze, my heart skipping like a woodland deer. I had no concept of what I should do, or if I should even attempt to flee. The brigand stood stolidly before me, his blade poised for a lethal strike. He loomed over me, nearly two feet taller than I, the wind sweeping fair locks around his sharp cheekbones, the amber stubble on his chin catching the sunlight. Cold blue eyes peeled back my clothing with a single glance. Then, of all things, he chuckled.

“Well, well,” he said. “Bad luck you are, to the navy.”

With casual indifference, he leaned over and wiped the bloody residue from his sword onto the remnants of the sail on the deck.

My gaze tumbled to the short sword still clutched in the crewman’s stiff hand. An idea sprang to mind, a desperate one. As swiftly as a snake strikes, I snapped at the weapon, raised it high, and attacked.

The pirate parried my blow with ease, and sent me stumbling backward with a smirk.

“Bad luck for me, as well?” he asked, advancing toward me.

I stabbed again, clumsily, with the sword, but I possessed no skill with this weapon. I was much more adept with a whip. He struck back with such force that the sword was nearly torn from my grasp, my wrist bent painfully backward. I clutched the sword with both hands, wheeled away from his assault, and charged from the side.

He released his cutlass, to my amazement, and seized my hand before I could inflict even minor injury, driving my sword upward, backward, and drawing me closer. The tip of my own weapon pierced the skin at my throat, but instead of thrusting and ending it for me, he pressed on the nerves in my wrist, eliciting pain, searing pain. The sword clattered to the deck.

“Indeed, I appreciate your courage,” he said. “But I do not appreciate the men with whom you associate.”

“The—the men?” I sputtered. “But you are a pirate.”

“In the past, when we were called “privateers,” we were enthusiastically employed by various governments. Now we are referred to merely as pirates.” He swept his arm in a vast circle to encompass the sinking ship and the array of crewmen who lay dead or dying. “At this point, I think you and your men can refer to me as your better. Now, I will allow you a choice. You may either join your men in death, or you may escape to shore. But I warn you, the community there will not welcome you.”

My breathing quickened. This was no choice at all. He was committing my wellbeing to the tender mercies of the ruffians of the land—the only inhabitants of this outlying region of Florida: a small, struggling remnant of Indians, Spanish men who worked the fishing ranchos, and escaped slaves.

“Would you offer me another choice?” I asked.

The pirate grinned, his eyes sparkling with devilment.

“Perhaps. You are invited, fair maiden, to join my crew. Upon my ship, you may earn your keep.”

Earn my keep? The implications were repulsive and sent shivers throughout my body, but . . . what other option was available to me?

“Very well. I will join you, if you will treat me as a lady. If you will not . . .” I couldn’t even say the words.

His laughter startled the pirates nearby, who were dispatching the crew in the most torturous fashion possible. They stood bewildered and sent long stares in my direction. The pirate laughed as if he found my protests delightful. His grip loosened on my arm, and it appeared he would tumble off the ship. Oh, if only fate would lend me the courtesy! But even as I considered consigning my own body to the sea, since my situation would not improve if he were to shortly meet a well-deserved death, his hand clamped down on my arm again, and he drew me inexorably to his chest. “Do you honestly think that you have any say over how I will treat you? That I shall continue to grant you life is your greatest hope.”

My courage plummeted, along with hopes of any possible leniency. Nevertheless, I thrust out my chin and met his merciless gaze with equal iron.

“I may be your captive, I may be forced to do your will, but if you harm me—if I cannot in this world, then in the next I will make you pay.”

To my astonishment, he seemed even more tickled. “Interesting,” he said. “You have spirit, I’ll give you that. But I have no fear of the next world.” He winked.

Before I had the opportunity to reply, he clapped his hands, and more men poured over the side. Some leaped down into the hold and released the prisoners, assisting them as they stumbled up the steps, where they wobbled on deck with unsteady knees, blinking in the searing midday sun.

He turned to these men and addressed them.

“Good day, gentlemen. I offer you this opportunity. You may join my crew and share equally in our booty, or we will release you on Pine Island, where you may settle in the community. If you throw in your lot with me, you will have ample occasion to improve your situation, since I have freed my ship, my seas, and my settlement from any laws of the land.”

I shuddered. Such lawlessness, such disregard for order. No wonder this wretched land was so uncivilized. No wonder brigands, thieves, and murderers gathered here.

The pirate turned to me and smiled, as if he could read my thoughts.

“Shall we board my ship?” he asked, as if I had a choice.

He shoved me to the railing, looped an arm around my waist, and gripped a rope. Suddenly we were swinging out over open seas and landing smartly on the schooner’s nicely balanced deck. He added a nausea-inducing squeeze and released me, and I found myself face to face with a familiar scarred visage of charcoal hue.

“R–– Reginald,” I sputtered.

“Miss Amelia.” He neither bowed nor backed away. How absurd, how insolent! Nor did he lower his gaze in deference. He clasped a cutlass in his fist in a stranglehold that suggested he’d like nothing better than to carve his name in my flesh.

“Recognize the girl?” asked the pirate captain.

“Yessir,” said Reginald.

“No yessirs, here.”

“Sorry, Cap’n.”

“What would you have me do with her?”

I gaped, entirely flabbergasted. Would this man, insufferable as he was—albeit a ship’s captain—actually let Reginald decide my fate?

“I’d have her learn the way o’ things,” said Reginald.

The captain grinned most unpleasantly and slapped the wretched slave on the back.

“I would have given you the option of killing her,” he said. “But this may serve our purpose better.”

  
Their purpose, I thought? What could their purpose possibly be, other than to hijack ships on the high seas, to bloody and bludgeon men, and to capture and rape women? Perhaps it would be better to die. But first, if the opportunity arose, I would do my best to repay the captain for every injury and every indignity he had inflicted. He would rue the day he’d captured me.

Sneak Peek

Hi  there,

 I know, I've been quiet lately. That's because I've been working on something new. Entirely new. Definitely different.

This is a teen read, something that I hope has a little artistry, but, since my female main character is a hockey player, I'll warn you in advance, there is a bit of mature language. This was necessary to give the character the appropriate voice. Hope you find it interesting. The following is a potential blurb and the first chapter, unedited, as yet.

MOSAIC

It wasn’t until Carlos helped me put the pieces back together that I realized how many were missing.

 

Shattered. Tormented. Brain on disconnect.

 

A car accident leaves Erin Rocheford, a seventeen-year-old hockey player, fractured, disfigured, near death. Not only is her future career in the NHL erased, but when she’s finally released from the hospital she can barely walk, her thoughts stumble into each other, and people grimace when they notice the scars crisscrossing her face.

 

Erin's parents consider a vacation in Florida, on an island of palm trees and pirate lore, is just what she needs to recover. But in her post-traumatic state, Erin is vulnerable to attack, to a ghostly invasion, to a further fragmenting of her troubled grey matter. A pirate tale of an odd English pirate and his feisty captive, a story of defiance and decapitation, will weave itself into her mind and threaten her very soul. She will need to dig up every reserve in her hockey-toned body to keep from falling apart all together, to fight back and to protect her star player—the one boy who can see beyond the scars.

1.

 At the end a hush falls over the arena as the crowds are absorbed into the night. At the end the flashing red light on the ambulance fades like a distant star. At the end the scoreboards are wiped and every hard-fought point is forgotten. You do one last skate over the slush and cracks in the ice, feeling the cracks zigzag and widen, extend desperate fingers to avoid the collapse. You stop at the hole, the entry point, the garish splotch of blood. The lights dim until nothing is visible but the silver streaks of a broken mirror. A tiny voice whispers, Game Over.

 

2.

Erin

 

Some days, you shouldn't get out of bed.

“Madre de Dios. Who are you? And what happened to your fa— I mean, what are you doing here?”

 His words pinned me to the ground, like I was a specimen in a glass case, a bug in the Montreal Insectarium.

My normal response would be: “Well, who the hell are you?” and, “I didn’t see a sign that said ‘Private Beach,’ so I have as much right to park myself here as anyone else.”

But I wasn’t exactly parked, more like concealed behind a palm tree and sneaking forward through the grass to, you know, listen in, and it was the other half of his question, the broken one, that really hurt.

Why would I need to hide and sneak, you might wonder? Who really does that, eh?

Someone who doesn’t want to be that specimen.

So there I was, exposed and displayed for all to see. I needed to rip out the pins and bolt or vanish. Frantic, I looked in ten different directions at once.

I made an attempt, scrambled halfway up, but before I could escape the headlights of his eyes  I froze again. Struck. Blindsided. Breathless. A weird epiphany needled into my brain. It whispered “death isn’t stalking you anymore.”

I could have sighed. After all, a part of me still wanted to live.

Not like this, of course. Not like this limping, cowering piece of shit. There were many moments over the past six months when I didn’t want to live. When I’d drift away to the sounds of cheers and the flood of Gatorade over my head and wake up to stabbing pain, blurred vision, casts and pins and coat hangers stuck through me (or at least they looked that way). My face felt like a dartboard and I thought, God, you hit a bullseye, didn’t you? It was for getting so cocky, wasn’t it? For thinking I could actually challenge the guys, compete in a man’s world, make it to the NHL. Ha!

Joke’s on you, Erin, he’s laughing.

I would have laughed too, but it hurt too much to laugh, or smile, or move.

But this was my chance to recover. This tropical island with the palm trees and the glittering postcard horizon. Nobody knew me. No one would look at me.

Who was I kidding?

So what do you do when you’d like to dissolve into a puddle and drain into the dirt? You slink away. But I wasn’t capable of slinking yet. Inelegant hobbling. That was about it. And he’d already seen me, so what was the point?

The point was to escape, not this moment exactly—although it was bad enough—but the ones that would inevitably follow, the moments when I wouldn’t want to live again. The ones that would make me feel cowardly.

But there is no escape once you’re trapped in the case. The only way out is to change the past. Start over. Reverse the film. Splice it, trim it, use other camera angles. Try another replay, with the mike off or different lines dubbed in. If I were really smart I’d figure out how to erase the last six months of my life. But the best I can do is mess with the last few hours.

Here you have it. My first attempt at film editing.

We crossed the causeway and what I saw was absurdly beautiful. Palms trees, flowers, glossy leaves.

“Dorothy, we’re not in Canada anymore,” I whispered. But it was more than just Florida, too. The island shimmered, like an oasis with a surrounding wilderness of sea instead of desert. I can breathe here. Spanish moss dangled like emerald webs from tall trees. People strolled by in pink tank tops and butt-hugging shorts. The air was sharp and fragrant. And it was dirty.

Not garbage-filth-layered dirty. Fresh with dirt, sand, mud, smiling plants. Not a hint of sterile surfaces or pine-scented disinfectant. Nor was there the smell of sweat-drenched uniforms and stale indoor ice.

This is perfect, I thought. The perfect place to die, that other voice said. I hated that other voice.

Mom gave my arm a fluttering touch and Amy sat up to get a better view. (Dad cast me a look, a smile that was sort of droopy-sad. Why did he have to do that? It was like he could read my mind and knew I was comparing everything to . . . before. I think he was comparing, too.)

First thing, let’s get rid of Dad’s smile. Snipped. Erased. No more reminders.

“The hotel’s on the next island,” said Dad.

“Are we taking a boat?” I asked.

“No. Just a bridge. Sanibel’s incredible, isn’t it?” His hand swept over the quaint souvenir shops to our right, nestled between massive, twisted trees and then, the taxi shuttled us past a bald white sign that said, “Ding Darling Refuge.”

I looked at the entrance, at the thick fringe of vines and creepy mangroves with their exposed roots. These weird long-necked birds—something like snakes with wings—flew over a swamp in the distance. It seemed so odd in the middle of tourist-town. But then again, I was odd now, too. I didn’t blend in with the perfect crowd anymore, not that I ever did, but now I was a weed in the garden just like this refuge. Mine was the face that could stop conversations, or make even Reverend Alden stumble over his words.

“E-Erin, dear. You’re looking . . . well.”

Do I really look well, jackass?

“We’re here,” said Dad.

Thank God. If I’d thought about that idiotic reverend one more time, I might have had to punch someone. And Dad didn’t like it when I punched Amy. Mom either. But Mom couldn’t make me back off with just a look.

So. This was it. The island of captives. Captiva, they called it. The hotel resembled a manor from ancient times with Roman pillars and bulging white balconies that overlooked the ocean. And the ocean dangled at its doorstep, just metres away, waves curling in and sweeping towards me. I opened the taxi door. Salt tingled the tip of my tongue. I walked forward. Sleek sport fishing boats cruised up and down the coastline and the specks of green islands hovered in the distance. The waves trickled in from the Gulf of Mexico, sighing as they splashed down on the beach. You could dive in that ocean, you could swim, you could drown.

This is the perfect moment to get back into the taxi and tell the driver to shuttle me back to the airport, now! or to drown. Make note for new script at this point.

Amy clambered out of the car. “Isn’t it awesome?” she said, her voice all squeaky, her eyes all shiny.

I looked down at my feet, my thick runners sinking into the sand. “It’s a beach,” I said.

“But the sand is like pure white. And look at all the shells.” She pointed at heaps of sun-baked clam shells with the odd starfish thrown in. “The water is that incredible blue colour.”

“Turquoise?” I asked.

“Yeah. Like your eyes.”

“My eyes aren’t turquoise.”

“Yes, they are.”

“Whatever.”

I was still looking down when I noticed something poking out of the sand. An ivory comb with a crust of shells adhered to the teeth and jewels embedded in the spine. Sapphires, maybe? I don’t know what the attraction was. I never wore these kinds of things; I wasn’t a glittery type of gal. Still I bent down and grasped it in my hand. I hardly felt the jolt of pain from bending my legs, but as I slipped the comb from the sand a small vibration travelled through my fingers, and then a shock.

I dropped it, the pain excruciating in my newly-healing bones. Had I snapped one again? What the hell! For a minute I blanked out from the pain. And heard a voice: Sleeping, sleeping for nigh eternity. But not now. I feel her. Nearby.

Some sort of feedback? Really should clip this, but even the memory of it is making my hands shake.

It’s okay. It’s all right. Remember the time you got hit in the face with the puck. Broke a cheekbone. Nearly cracked your jaw. You said, ‘I’m tough, man. I’m going to play the next game.’ Erin, you can do this. You can come back to us. You can play the next game.

It was Dad’s voice in the hospital. He brought me back. He always brought me back.

“Erin?” Louder this time.

I opened my eyes. “Dad?”

He was there, bending over me, tucking his arm behind my back. “Slow movements. Remember what the physiotherapist said.”

“Are you okay, sweetheart?” asked Mom, almost touching my arm, but not quite.

I’m not going to break, I felt like saying, although I had, so that wouldn’t cut it anymore.

I nodded, and straightened, and took a deep breath. I looked down and the comb was still clutched in my hand. I shook it free. It plopped to the sand and stuck there, oddly out-of-place like a . . . girl in an NHL uniform.

“Let’s unpack,” Dad said, giving my shoulder a squeeze.

“Can we go for a swim afterwards?” asked Amy. “I can’t wait to get in that water.”

And get into her bikini, I thought.

Dad was starting to nod and I nearly panicked. “Amy can swim. I don’t want to swim.”

“Maybe swimming so soon isn’t a good—”  said Mom.

“How about biking?” I interrupted. “Joanne said I could bike, right? To try to get some strength back into my legs.”

 “I don’t—” said Mom.

Now this is where I should insert a new line, “Okay, Mom. No biking. You’re probably right.” But I just can’t seem to do it. Mom is never right.

“Sure,” said Dad. “We can even check out the refuge on Sanibel with the bikes. There’s all those different trees I told you about—Banyan, Gumbo limbo—and mangrove swamps. They say it’s amazing—full of alligators and birds, too.”

Creepy refuge. Right. But in a way it seemed a matching destination. That refuge was as wild and tangled and strange as I was now.

I watched Mom’s face grow paler. “Do we really want to see alligators while we’re on bikes?” she asked.

I couldn’t suppress a smirk. “They’re not going to eat us.”

“It’s happened before,” she said.

“Seriously, Mom?”

“Seriously, Erin.”

“Stop being so nervous. I’m fine. I’m not going to let anyone eat me.”

Dad leaned over and added with a wink, “No, you wouldn’t.”

“Steve, you’re not helping. We’re talking about alligators. You can’t just fend off alligators with a . . . with a . . .”

“Water bottle,” smiled Dad.

“Oh, I give up.”

I grinned, even though it hurt. At least with small battles I could still win. But it wasn’t about winning anymore. I had to get away. And I needed to feel that power again, the adrenaline pumping through my legs and buzzing in my brain. I wanted to feel . . . better.

“How about,” I said, “we go for a quick swim this morning and you let me bike by myself this afternoon?”

“By yourself?” Mom looked at me like I was asking to climb Mount Everest. “Erin, you’re still having trouble walking.”

“I can bike better than I can walk.”

“But what if you fall off and hurt yourself, and no one’s around. And there are supposed to be some poisonous snakes on the island. Darling, I just—”

“Why don’t we go for that swim,” said Dad.  “We’ll work our way up to biking.”

“But what if there are sharks in the water?” I mimicked. I couldn’t help it.

Dad slid me a sideways look that said, Cut it out.

I cut it out and we went swimming . . .

Speaking of cutting, let’s cut the entire beach scene. But maybe I could splice it with a scene from Jaws and we’d be racing off the island, or I’d get eaten. Either way, the case would be empty. Need to rip out the next scene, too.

. . . biking down the path, and not feeling better. As I pumped the pedals, teeth of pain chomped at my legs—wicked, biting, chewing, grinding teeth—but I focused on the trail and kept pedaling. Green palm fronds waved me on. Blushing, cascading bougainvilleas pulled me deeper down the path. Banking, squawking gulls beckoned me towards the ocean. Laughing, chattering voices . . . stopped me.

Why is this not working? I was never an expert at Media Studies in school, but I thought I’d cut this. Okay, one more shot. Shift camera angle, speed up film. Keep bike moving.

“Hey, Sadie. Let’s go for a swim.” (Imagine this on fast forward.)

“Wait a minute. I’m talking, Carlos. Don’t you guys want to hear?”

A sigh whistled though the shrubs. A sigh and then chuckles and giggles and a few hearty “yeahs.”

I slid off the bike, edged around the palm tree that bordered the path, and ducked down between the sea grass or oats, whatever it’s called. Ever so quietly I parted the purple strands of morning glory vines that were threaded through the oats and shifted to get a better view. A blonde girl with dark roots, wearing a string bikini, was sitting on the sand. She had a perfect face, model-perfect, gag-perfect, on second look, fake-perfect considering all the makeup slathered over her cheekbones and around her eyes. For some reason she was the magnet. Gathered around her like groupies around a pop star were a bunch of teens sprawled over colourful beach blankets.

“So, get this,” said the blonde. “They found her body somewhere on Sanibel, or parts of it. Washed in from the ocean. They say she probably went swimming and never came back.”

“Maybe she was eaten by a shark,” said a petite, snub-nosed girl to her left.

“’Kay. If that’s what you believe,” said the girl.

“What d’you believe, then?” asked this bronze-skinned guy to her right. He leaned forward, his hazel eyes tracking her body. I tracked him—black curly hair and heavy, interesting brows that arched high on his forehead as if he didn’t believe a word the girl said. He was bare-chested, decked in blue cotton shorts, and a thin crust of sand clung to his pecs and thighs. Hot, yes. But something else held my gaze. Despite his focus on this girl, he seemed unfocused, distracted, surfing the ocean instead of baking on the sand.

“Well, duh,” the blonde continued. “What do you think, Carlos? She was murdered. Her head wasn’t even attached to her body. Some nutcase came up behind her,” she raised her arms, shoulder-level, like she was holding a baseball bat, “and snapped off her head.” She let it swing.

“Eww,” said a skinny cinnamon-haired girl, wrinkling her nose.

“Cool!” said a male voice in the group, a dude with dyed platinum spikes and wide brown eyes.

The guy, Carlos, didn’t say anything, but he kind of flinched. Maybe he wasn’t turned on by beheadings. His eyes drifted away from the blonde, following the horizon where blue met blue. Was he picturing the poor murdered girl pitched out to sea, or was he more likely picturing the blonde, skinny dipping in the rough tide?

I shifted as teeth nipped at my leg again. Crap. Stupid position to be in, hunched under the vines. I reached down, to ease the tension, but then I felt a cramp. I clenched my jaw. I needed to scream. The muscle was howling, like a thousand needles were jabbing me, as if I hadn’t been jabbed by a thousand needles already. I stretched my calf, massaged it gently, but the cramp gripped even tighter. I groaned and twitched, making the sea oats shiver.

“What was that?” asked the girl.

“What was—what?” asked the guy, his deep voice breaking in midsentence as if he were holding in a laugh.

“Behind us, in the oats. What if it’s a gator? Didn’t you hear it?”

I froze, tears pouring from my eyes from the freaking pain.

“Probably a tortoise or a bird.” I looked up to see him rolling his eyes. “How long have you lived here, Sadie?”

“Long enough to know that gators do come to the beach sometimes. Can you check it out, Carlos?”

Say no, Carlos. New audio: Emphatic “No!” He’s mouthing something else, though.

He pushed off the blanket, sprang to his feet, and headed straight for me.

I instantly slithered backward, trying to shrink behind the palm. But I wasn’t as quick as a snake might have been, and before I knew it, he was standing right in front of me, looking down at me, eyes sweeping my long-sleeved cotton blouse and mid-calf capris and coming to rest on my face.

“Madre de Dios. Who are you? And what happened to your fa—I mean . . . what are you doing here?”

So much for film editing.

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Jackson