Nothing attacked him.
“Come with me, Eva. Let me show you.” He held out a hand. “I swear on my father, you will be safe.”
Eva looked toward the black ocean, the diamond-crusted waves, the onyx abyss of its massive, infinite body. She regarded the night sky and saw the mirror image of the waters, as if the entirety of reality beyond the island was nothing but endless void.
Exhausted beyond reason, she reached out and took his hand. It was warm and dry, and it tugged at her to follow.
She dropped off the rocks, onto the sand.
Together, they walked across the beach, unharmed, toward the line of dark trees.
“Promise,” she said, as they stepped off the shoreline and into the fertile ground of the untouched garden. “Promise you won’t hurt me.”
Manu looked down at her, his shadowed face a dark chasm of infinite night.
THE VIEW
I WAS STRANGLED TO DEATH by a man who makes his living mixing concrete. A life-long companion turned sour.
This same man was contracted to build a community swimming pool for the children who live in the next town. Through a series of triumphs, he was able to sneak my corpse into the pool’s foundation. Weeks later, the construction finished, the chlorine-scented water was poured in. Yes, I can smell it. Even in death. I can also hear and see (the survival of my senses a mystery best left for poets, pseudo-scientists, and Catholics).
I don’t hate the man who murdered me. I despised him in life, that’s true, but in death I’ve lost the ambition. My energy has waned considerably. I enjoy the small things now. In a way, it’s like being retired—only when the world stops do we properly enjoy a golden sunset, the fiery bloom of flora along a forest path, the tingling smell of a storm.
For me it’s the children. Hearing them laugh. Breathing in their innocence. I look up at a liquid blue sky and watch them swim.
They float above me, all limbs and wild hair, cloudy eyes and silly dances. I feel a thrill when a child leaps from the world beyond, shatters the turquoise ether into mercurial fragments, then sinks toward me, knees-to-chin, a vertical chain of bubbles tethering them to life.
My dead heart warms to see teenagers hold hands beneath the surface, pale feet caressing. Clandestine lovers hidden by a liquid heaven.
Rarely am I forced to endure a drowning. When I do I close my eyes.
So yes, the man who took my life was evil, and hateful.
But he gave me a gift, a most peaceful ending:
I lie in a bed made of stars and spend my days watching angels fly.
ROW
PART ONE – THE INVITATION
JESSIE’S A FIGHTER.
She proudly refers to herself as hypercompetitive and, as a teenager, was often labeled by her basketball coach as being “fierce” at both ends of the court.
She isn’t unusually tall, or strong. Athletic, yes; but not freakishly so.
But Jessie has the one thing all great athletes have: a fire in the belly. An internal drive to succeed that’s near impossible to extinguish. A fire to be—if not the best—then one of the best. To perform at the highest level. If she falls short, if she fails, she’ll know—know deep in her heart, where the flames burn furnace-hot—that she’s given it her all.
That she never quit.
That she competed.
When nine years old, Jessie made the decision to challenge every kid in her neighborhood to a race, running from the bottom of her driveway to Mrs. Stinton’s mailbox (about a hundred feet if one took the time to measure). She wanted to prove she was the fastest kid—boy or girl—of all the children living on her block, a tidy square of middle-class homes in the New Jersey suburb of Greenwood.
And for one bright, humid July afternoon, she was. Against girls who were taller, older; against boys (including eleven-year-old Timmy Dobson, who she’d had a crush on all summer), she’d won. That summer afternoon, Jessie ran as if chased by demons, as if it were lava beneath her sneakers instead of a hundred feet of cracked pavement. She ran until her heart pounded, her lungs burned, her legs ached.
Until she’d beat them all.
In high school, Jessie sprouted to a gangly 5’9” and, as a sophomore, made the varsity basketball and track teams, awarded All-State in both sports. A few months after her acceptance into Rutgers University, she was informed she was too short to play basketball, too slow to compete in track. Desperate for something to fuel her competitive nature, Jessie discovered a new sport, a new passion in which to immerse herself.
