"Second Time Around" by John Leahy

Introduction: It's said there are no truly original ideas in story telling, but as John Leahy shows in this story, that might not be true. Here is a well-written moving tale about...

Second Time Around

by John Leahy

It punched through the smooth thing around it with its front flipper. A grainy material flooded in on top of it. Sand. Up, up, up a voice inside it prompted. Keep going. It smashed through the remainder of the shell and tunnelled through the sand, propelling itself upward. As it climbed, something flashed arrow-like through its instinct-dominated consciousness. A vision of some sort.

A picture of a woman walking down a crowded, rain-hammered street, a hard look on her face.  

It kept on digging. Whatever about the mystery that had just hit it, it was no rival to instinct. There was important work to be done. Urgent work.

Another thought struck.

            Two girls, a boy and a man playing basketball in a yard at the rear of an apartment building. One of the girls looked like a younger version of the woman in the first thought - the woman walking down the street. In New York.

It dug on, knowing that it wasn’t far from emerging from the sand. Onto the beach.

            The three kids and the man playing basketball were a family. A family that had grown up in the town of Coldwater, Michigan. A town that Carrie Sherman had always wanted to escape from.

With less than six inches to go from the surface, the memories began to flood in thick and fast, forming a life – not unlike dropping a kitchen towel over a collection of water droplets, which soak through the material and run toward each other, eventually merging:

studying in bed late at night while in high school...losing some of her deadbeat friends in her senior year because she spent her time studying and not drinking with them...grown-up Carrie Sherman walking down that street in New York again – the turtle knew it was Park Avenue now...Carrie graduating top of her class in college, smiling for her father’s camera as she posed for some photos, her teeth a little yellow from a smoking habit which had grown on her during the four gruelling years of her advertising degree...Carrie walking down Park Avenue once more, her face set and serious, eyes fixed on something – or someone, perhaps...Carrie, smiling once more for the camera in her new junior advertising executive office at Plant-Gerber, New York’s premier advertising agency, Carrie’s teeth a little yellower now, her physique carrying a little comfort weight too, in contrast to the beautiful blonde-haired woman taking her photo - her friend and burgeoning rival, Emily Schraeder...

The turtle poked through into sunlight. It didn’t pause to bask in this brightness that it had never seen before but kept on working until the remainder of its body was free from the sand. It could hear a crashing sound in the distance and knew that was where it was headed. Water. Up ahead of it the turtle saw three more hatchlings scuttling toward a lip in the sand. Two reached the lip and disappeared over it.

The turtle got moving, scooting forward as quick as its not-made-for-land body could carry it. It was aware that there were more hatchlings rushing forward at either side of it.

Carrie Sherman making her way forward on Park Avenue, her determined progress as relentless as the rain. Her eyes are set on the blonde-haired woman standing amidst a crowd of pedestrians waiting to cross the street in hectic traffic...  

As it neared the sand-lip the hatchling just up ahead of it to its right was set upon by a large hairy brown thing that appeared out of nowhere. A rat. The hatchling dashed onward, leaving its sibling to its doomed struggle. The hatchling went over the lip at speed, almost going head over heels. There were many more of its brood ahead of it on the descent to the ocean, whose powerful waves crashed against the shoreline. It saw a pale ghost-crab emerge from a hole in the sand and grab a hatchling in its pincers.

 The blonde-haired, beautiful Emily Schraeder, waiting to cross the street to her lunchtime haunt. Beautiful Emily. Maggie’s friend. But a friend who was landing all the big accounts. Charming all the gone-to-seed frat boy CEOs with her looks, her laugh and her tight little ass...

As it rushed down the incline toward the water it saw another crab flash out of a hole and grab a hatchling. The crab began to haul the kicking, flapping abductee toward its lair. Up ahead, a frigate bird dipped out of the sky and suddenly a hatchling that had been no more than a few feet from the water became airborne, gripped tightly in the bird’s talons, soon to be eviscerated in the frigate’s nest and fed in pieces to its brood. There was a commotion on the sand just behind the hatchling – it knew that yet another of its siblings had fallen victim to a predator. It powered onward as fast as it could. Only a combination of determination and luck would get it to safety.

Carrie glances sideways at the traffic. It is moving quickly and relentlessly. As she passes behind Emily she moves close to her.

There is a cry and the sound of tyres skidding in the rain. There is a thud, followed by some shocked exclamations and screams. Someone shouts at someone to call a paramedic. Carrie keeps walking, her step slowing. She stops and turns around. People are gathered around the motionless form of Emily Schraeder, which lies on the asphalt before a taxi. No-one is looking in Carrie’s direction. At that moment she knows she has gotten away with it. No-one has spotted the quick jab of her elbow, the murder she has been contemplating for over a month.

It pays off. As the weeks pass she gets most of Emily’s clients. The ones she doesn’t get initially gravitate to her over time. Her star keeps rising and in less than five years she has her own boutique firm on Eighth Avenue.

The water was less than two yards away. It could see two hatchlings floating in the hissing white of a dead wave, the thunderous surf not far behind them. These unfortunates have drowned under the brutal force of the waves – it will have to time its entry to the water well.

Carrie builds her empire, buying up rival firms as the years go by, bolting them onto her own. She marries twice, making sure she has nothing to lose by becoming a wife to men richer than her, the unions producing four children. The crutch of her youth accompanies her through the years though, taking its toll. Her smoking eventually takes her lungs and cancer kills her three years shy of her fiftieth birthday.

Paying no heed to the strange Carrie Sherman picture-show playing in its instinct-propelled mind, the hatchling makes its play, entering the water just after the destruction of a particularly fearsome wave. The wave’s dying surf strikes it, blasting the hatchling backward. The hatchling sees another dead comrade floating nearby. It begins moving forward again. When it sees another huge wave hurtling toward it, the hatchling speeds forward with all its might. It has to get under the wave before it breaks or it will join its dead compatriots.

It just makes it. The wave breaks behind the tiny swimmer. The surging churn of its crash catches the hatchling and for a few seconds it spins about helplessly, but eventually calm is restored and the hatchling re-orientates itself. It swims onward, out into the deeper water.

It has made it! The open blue stretches before it. It knows exactly where it is bound – the rich feeding grounds in the waters off eastern Brazil, over a thousand kilometres away. And so its journey begins –

The shark’s huge maw snaps shut around the hatchling.

It has eaten countless newborns that morning, but now something causes the shark’s progress through the water to slow. There are other hatchlings nearby, but for now, the shark’s keen interest in them is abated as another one of these strange…pictures swims through its appetite-driven consciousness. These…things have come to it every so often since it had been born. Images of a blonde-haired woman (her name is Emily Schraeder – the shark has no idea how it knows this) at various stages in her life – her childhood, teen years, adulthood. The shark has never focused on them much – has hardly given them any consideration whatsoever, the predator’s primary purpose in the world being, after all, to feed.

An image of the blonde-haired woman, this Emily Schraeder, lying on a wet road, a thin line of blood flowing down her cheek. Her eyes are open, unblinking. The light is slowly fading from them but while life still lingers in them her gaze remains fixed beyond the field of legs around her on a pair of pink, silver-bowed shoes on the pavement up ahead. Now the shark can see from the eyes of the dying blonde-haired woman...and can see faintly, her thoughts....the blonde-haired woman in a department store laughing with a woman who is trying on the pink shoes...it is clear they are good friends...the thought fades and the shark is once more viewing the pink shoes on the rain-hammered sidewalk, then everything is gone.

There are hatchlings swimming past the shark in abundance now, thrusting forward into the deeper water. The killer knows it should be snapping them up – tasty morsels that they are – and it is still hungry. It is always hungry, of course, it has been since its birth – but something has been sated today. Something…deeper than the need to feed. For eighteen years it has been answering the call of its gut, but at this moment it simply idles in the water, hatchlings speeding by it in droves. It has never experienced this feeling before, this strange…satisfaction.

Slowly, the sensation begins to fade, and the shark’s ancient hunger begins to assume centre stage once more, a roar that the predator knows it will be answering until the second it dies. The water is empty around it, the hatchling brood is well in the distance now, answering their own primordial call. The shark turns and gives pursuit. It will catch them quickly enough.

Time to dine once more.

END

Author's Bio: Writing on and off since he was a child, John Leahy began to take the craft more seriously after winning the Humorous Essay competition at Listowel Writers Week in 2007.

Since then he has had four novels published - Harvest, CROGIAN, Unity and The Faith. His story The Tale In The Attic attained an honorable mention in L Ron Hubbard's Writers Of The Future Contest.

His short story Singers has been included in Flame Tree Publishing's 2017 Pirates and Ghosts anthology, alongside tales by literary greats such as Homer, Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.P. Lovecraft, and H.G. Wells.

When not writing John Leahy spends his time teaching and performing music, working out, and keeping abreast of the stock market and current affairs. He lives in Abbeyfeale, Ireland.