I continued bobbing in the water as Star Child Two hovered above.
“Say, this reminds me of a story….” I began, still bobbing.
“We was comin’ back from Omaha, just delivered the sprockets and lube. The silver sprockets. We hit a large mass of plankton and forty three thousand went into the water. The raft went down in eleven minutes. Didn’t see the first beacon for about seven hours. Red. Seventy three-footer. You know how you know that when you’re in the water, Star Child? You tell by lookin’ from the top of the beacon to the bottom. Why that is, I have no idea. What we didn’t know… was our sprocket and lube mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent.”
Star Child Two seemed interested.
“They didn’t even list us overdue for a couple of months. Very first light, Star Child, beacons come beaconing. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. Y’know, it’s… kinda like an ol’ drunken slap fight, and the idea was, beacon shines on the nearest man and that man, he’d start slappin’ and hollerin’ and screamin’, and sometimes the beacon’d go away… sometimes it wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that beacon. It shines right into ya. Right into your eyes. Y’know the thing about a beacon, it’s got…a light from a beacon. When it shines at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’… until it shines on ya. And that beacon shinin’, and then… oh, then you hear that terrible high-pitch screamin’, the ocean turns red, and spite of all the poundin’ and the hollerin’, it comes in and it… slices you to pieces.”
Star Child Two seemed to begin losing interest.
“Y’know, by the end of that first dawn… lost ten men. I dunno how many beacons. Maybe four thousand. I dunno how many men, they averaged one an hour. On Thursday mornin’, Star Child, I bumped into an associate of mine, Bob Senitram from Dundee- drunkard, raft chef’s mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up… bobbed up and down in the water just like a kinda bloated weeble. Well… he’d been drowning nearby men and then eating them. Noon the fifth day, Star Child, a Goodyear blimp saw us, it slowly swung in low and it saw us. Stoned pilot, a lot more stoned than Bob ever was. Anyway, he saw us and comes in low and sixteen hours later, a shiny water ski comes over and starts to pick us up. Y’know, that was the time I was most frightened, waitin’ for my turn. Didn’t know when Bob would be in a drownin’ and eatin’ mood again. I’ll never deliver sprockets and lube again. So, forty three thousand went into the water, forty two thousand and ninety men come out, and Bob took the rest, August the 1st, 1953.”
Star Child Two had by now flown away.
I continued bobbing.
Suddenly, there was a commotion nearby.
The water was becoming agitated, just like it would if there were…..
“SHARKS!” I screamed to no one.
Wishing that Bob was there to do his drownin’ and eatin’, I began swimming as fast as I could.
Something rose from the water and blocked my way.
It was white.
On the front was the number 53.
“Herbie?” I asked.
- Monday, November 24, 2025
