“Storm?” Herm asked, looking around the empty sky. “You are daft,” he muttered to himself. “I should’ve listened to my brother — he told me not to come out with you. Said you were mad, obsessed with some mythical sea beast.” Georg sat back, letting Herm’s ramblings fade beneath the gentle whoosh of the waves. He looked over at the harpoons latched beside him in the hull, coils of rope fixing them to the boat. He picked one up and turned it over in his hand, fingers tingling, feeling that today just might be the day he could drive it into that cursed beast. Penelope’s pink ribbon was tied around the very same wrist that held the spear. Though it was hardly pink anymore, bleached white from the sun. “Are you even listening to me?” Herm asked. The wind shifted then, just as the first chill of winter. A blot of gray clouds could now be seen on the distant horizon, pushing in toward them. Georg felt something stir in him. “It’s here ...” he said, gazing out across the sea. Herm shifted nervously on the other side. “It’s just a storm.” Georg shook his head, palms beginning to sweat around the harpoon, an anticipation bringing life to his body he had not felt in years. “Paddle toward it.” Georg ordered. “What?” “Do it!” “You’re crazy, old man,” Herm muttered, but did as he was told. It was not long before the storm washed over them as an eclipse taking over the sun, enveloping the sea in shadow. Their boat was tossed side to side, but it was a sturdy vessel, reinforced to take the thrash and pull of whales. Sheets of rain began pouring down in on them. “This is mad! You’re going to get us killed!” Herm shouted. But Georg’s gaze was fixed upon the sea, searching as a spotlight for that gray fin to break through from the depths. “There!” Georg yelled, pointing deeper into the storm. “Oh God ...” Herm mumbled to himself. Georg watched as the towering gray fin tore through the waves undeterred, eagerness overcoming him. All these years searching, waiting, plotting — and now the moment was upon him.“Brace!” Georg shouted as the beast approached. He raised his hand, harpoon poised to strike, a crack of lighting sparking across the sky, as if Zeus himself endorsed the battle. And just as he saw the lurking shadow he flung the spear into the boiling sea. Their boat lurched to the side, rocked by the creature’s weight, knocking them both over in the hull. The rope fixed to the harpoon remained limp on the deck — he’d missed. Georg cursed under his breath, pulling the spear back in. Herm began to paddle furiously. “What are you doing?!” Georg cried. Herm said nothing, seeming to be strangled by panic’s grip, desperate for an escape that Georg knew could not come. He hauled the harpoon in the last of the way, watching as that wretched fin turned slowly, deliberately, until it was fixed upon them again. “Oh God oh God ...” Herm blabbered. The fin grew larger as it approached, the beast’s hulking form rising from the depths. Georg readied the spear, watching with a crystalline focus as its beady eyes broke through the sea. He saw for the first time its gaping maw, unending rows of chiseled teeth, riddled with rotting flesh that seemed to have festered for years. Its mouth was cavernous, enveloping Herm, whose screams of horror No. 127 were muddled by the beast’s own throat. Georg flung the harpoon into its gilled side just as its jaws clenched down upon Herm, sprays of blood and sea sputtering back at him. The end of their boat taken into its mouth just the same, wood and bone breaking between its teeth. But Georg saw the harpoon had found its home, barbs rooting deep into the beast. He readied another and lunged across the boat, jamming it directly into that wretched gray skin. It thrashed, Georg leaping back and clinging to the other end of the boat as the thing mangled the last of its prey, the screams of Herm swallowed whole. Georg braced, seeing the creature dive into the water, the lines of rope that bound them together quickly snapped up. His arms wrapped around the boat’s stern as it was yanked through the sea, the barbs on the harpoons holding strong even as the beast yanked them both through crashing waves. Slack fell in the line just then, the fin winding back around, a trail of red sea swirling behind it. Rain whipped at Georg’s face as he unlatched the last harpoon, bracing with one hand as the beast approached, face grimaced with rage, determined for this to be the end for this wretched creature that’d stolen all he’d ever loved in this world. But the beast was swift, the sea its home, and soon its gaping maw was rising from the the sea again, fixed upon Georg. He hurled the harpoon into its mouth as he dove from the sinking wreckage into the sea — too late. He moaned in agony as the waves crashed over him, feeling thousands of tiny knives cut and gnash into his legs. His body thrashing, oscillating as Georg’s arms flailed madly until he felt the wood of the harpoon jutting from the beast’s side. He beat at it with his hands, throttling the spear through the creature’s flesh until it released his legs where he darted forward into the waves. The sea was awash with their blood, Georg’s legs useless, only a scream of pain. But he felt the coarseness of a rope brush against him then beneath the water’s surface, let it wrap around his arm, yanking him forward, still fixed to the harpoon embedded deep in the beast’s gills. He coughed and choked on the sea as he was dragged, the rope burning into his skin, he and the beast bound together. The line slackened again then, Georg fighting not to succumb to the waves, his legs twitching though little help, more and more blood seeping from him. “No …” Georg gasped, feeling his body drain of what little life it had left. But as he looked up one last time he saw the menacing gray fin returning, harpoons jutting out from its sides as it ripped toward him. He slipped his knife from its leather strappings on his chest. “Come on then!” He screamed at the wretched thing. Georg watched the beast’s hammerhead break up through the frothing water, able to smell the rotting flesh in its teeth as its mouth crushed down on his waist. He cried through excruciating pain, the creature chomping up to his chest. But with his last moments of life he stabbed and stabbed and stabbed at its head, at anything he could reach, Georg’s body torn to ribbons as his knife carved across the hulking hammerhead, the sea a whirlpool of their blood. He screamed with his last breath of air, driving the knife deep into the beast’s head, leaving it there as it gnawed and gnashed at Georg’s now limp body. But the beast’s wounds were many, seeping from all over its scarred form, its movements growing slower until it too became still, all their blood drained away into the sea together. And as the storm thundered on above, their lifeless bodies floated there in the waves, adrift.
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