Fiction

The Spirit Beneath The Glass Bottom Boat

The water felt cold to Samuel. He shivered as he swam out from the cave and into the open sea. His body felt empty and light, as if he was pumped up with air, yet in the water he was nimble and strong – he twisted, dived and flipped about like a baby dolphin. When he was alive he couldn’t swim – not even paddle – so this new ability in death had been an unexpected surprise.

It was Samuel’s 62nd birthday when death took him. He had been sitting on the beach, as always, sketching the tourists for a few dollars – the local Rastafarians did what they could to get by – when from nowhere what felt like a bolt of lightening stabbed into his skull, taking him from the physical world in seconds. Next thing he knew he was sulking in the caves a couple of kilometres out to sea, unsure about his new predicament. He’d always assumed death would be nothing, an eternal darkness, but out there, in the damp, deserted caves, he felt very much alive.

Alongside his new skills as a nimble swimmer, Samuel had discovered other things about his dead self. In life, he was a happy, breezy person – nothing really bothered him, despite the poverty and having had lost all his teeth. Death had introduced him to a wealth of newness. He was now grumpy, impatient, and he’d magically developed an abundance of sparkly fangs that he just couldn’t get used to – it felt like he was hosting a family of pointy pebbles in his mouth, the discomfort of which was unbearable.

The days went by, and the boredom settled in like quicksand. Samuel soon began to swim closer to the shore and discovered hours of entertainment spooking the tourists. He would wait until just before sunset, then creep up on starry-eyed couples frolicking about in the water and tickle their ankles and fill their swim-wear with shells. He’d hide the children’s playthings and throw pebbles at the vendors on the beach. And after much practice, he was able to materialise himself at will – this he saved for the boats which were always heaving with stoned Canadian tourists swigging back Red Stripe. There was nothing quite like a grinning, aged Rasta hugging the glass bottom – all teeth and unruly dreads – to give these holiday-makers the sighting of a lifetime.

It was only the first day of the vacation and Rose could already feel the impatience in her son Peter’s voice as he ushered her creaking limbs to the breakfast table, which was anchored, at a crooked angle, out on the hotel’s private beach, its crisp white tablecloth shimmering in the glorious morning sunshine. They’d arrived late the previous night after a tiring trip from London, and were now climatising to this all-inclusive resort. The furthest Rose had been from home was a week in Morocco with her late husband 40 years prior.

Rose could sense her son’s annoyance. She had to pause her arthritic shuffle to painfully bend down and remove her sandals, which had sunk into the warm golden sand. “Come on mother, we’re all starving” he said, with a ‘tut’ clinging to the back of his throat, which he was struggling to keep hold of. “The kids will start tearing the place up if we don’t get some food in them”. Seated, finally, Rose took a deep breath and opened her eyes wide to absorb her surroundings. Her heart fluttered like a trapped moth that’d finally found its way out of the darkness and into the daylight. She rarely visited the seaside back home, let alone come to the Caribbean – she felt quite overwhelmed.

Beyond the fleshy huddle of tourists chattering over their feasts of fruit salad, eggs and coffee - and those already camped out on their sun-beds glistening in lotion like joints of meat in marinade – her heart almost stopped at the sight of the beaches. Her body trembled beneath her pink cotton dress at the vision of the endless sandy miles which stretched out into the distance, the ocean boasting a blue she’d never seen before.

Most people find vacations revitalising. Not Rose. After a week she felt exhausted. Exhausted not of the hours sinking into her deck chair, sipping iced tea and watching the vendors on the hustle and the young women getting heady on rum cocktails – but exhausted of herself. She would gaze for hours out to the ocean, lost in a trance, as if she was searching for something. The more her pale blue eyes fixated on every wave, splash and ripple, the more hollow she felt inside – and what she was looking for she had no idea.

The sun had embarked on its downward journey towards the sea, preparing for another picture postcard setting. Rose had awoken from her afternoon slumber and was now freshly showered – she’d combed her short silver hair into its neat feathered crop, and had put on her favourite linen trouser suit. She sat patiently in her room waiting for her son to escort her across the palm tree peppered hallways to the tables outside. Her old bones had given up on her – her skeleton creaked inside her like rusty pins in an antique wardrobe. At last, there was a staccato-esque rap at the door and her grandchildren bundled in, followed by their frowning father.

Samuel floated in the water on his back, licking his teeth. He chomped down hard in one big bite and the clatter of colliding molars made him shudder all over. Depressed, he sunk down into the water until he was completely submerged, his dreads forming a blanket of tentacles around him. Craving entertainment to lift his low spirit, Samuel ploughed through the waves towards the shore, with strokes of steel.

On impact with the soft white sand, Samuel’s torso created a deep invisible dent. He continued to lie there, scanning the seafront for his next victim, with an overwhelming desire to find someone different from his usual prey. His gaze eventually zoned in on the shiny big resort directly ahead of him, with its over-sized fake-looking palm trees on either side and the cornered off beach area where idle security guards were loitering, chatting to each other with their caps pulled down over their brows.

At one of the tables he noticed an elderly woman staring out towards the ocean – in his direction – and the melancholy he felt vibrating off her slight frame unsettled him to such a degree he accidentally materialised, the shock of which sending a young girl close by scampering off in tears. Samuel quickly re-vanished and crept slowly up the beach. As he got closer, he could see her face, which was so full of deep wrinkles it looked like someone had carved out her skin with a pen knife.

He sat within touching distance of her. Suddenly she was no longer looking out to the ocean, but staring directly at him. He felt himself go pale, which was strange, considering. “Well, hello there, who are you?” she said, grinning so widely he thought her eye-lids were going to crack into small pieces. He was frozen to the spot, stunned, with no idea what to do. Then, for the first time since death, a surge of laughter flooded out of him, inflating him with a feeling that he thought he’d lost forever. “My, you’ve amazing teeth!” Rose added, her glass wobbling in her hand with all the excitement. “But I don’t understand, what’s so funny?”. Samuel stood up, and went to brush the sand off his weathered clothing, but he hadn’t materialised as he’d first thought, she could actually see him. He sat on the chair beside her, with a smile so intense the dazzle gushing out from his mouth forced Rose to put on her sunglasses.

They sat there in silence for what seemed like hours, staring at each other. Two strangers – one in life, the other death – that’d found this unlikely connection. They inspected each other’s faces with animal-like curiosity – touching, prodding and stroking with their gaze - both trying to make sense of what was a most peculiar encounter. But despite the strangeness, Samuel and Rose sat there like two old souls that had been mated for as long as time itself. Peacefully they watched the sun and its bloody orange canvas become absorbed into the ocean, and darkness fell.

Samuel felt the change inside himself the moment they’d met. He would leave the caves earlier than usual and wait in the shallow waters by the shore for his new friend to appear. This connection with a living person had altered his mood dramatically, the anxiety and melancholy that had previously devoured him had now morphed into longing – a deep yearning for the life he used to have. Death hadn’t accepted him.  Spending time with Rose electrified his being with particles of life, like some magical transfusion, which disappeared the moment they departed.

Since they’d met Rose had discovered a new internal place of calm. The moment their sphere’s connected, her anxieties and physical pains evaporated. When it was time to disengage, the hollowness that ached inside hurt as though she were a bruised carcass, engulfed with feelings of isolation. For Rose, death made her feel alive.

Rose’s bags were now in the boot of the hire car, tightly squeezed in-between her grandchildren’s boogie boards and her daughter-in-law’s matching trolley cases, which her son Peter was struggling to heave in. Rose watched him from the lobby window smiling at the sight of him with his sleeves rolled up, blotchy red face, his ungainly manoeuvres reminding her of when he was a small child playing with his toy cars in the back yard.

It was time to leave. But before they did, Rose had to say her goodbyes. She hobbled over to the hotel’s beach side entrance and looked at her table for one last time, before settling her teary vision on the stunning seascape ahead. As she blinked to clear her watery eyes, she was convinced she could see him hurtling through the waves in a blur of black dreadlocks. She hurriedly wiped her eyes and looked again, and her heart sank – he was nowhere to be seen.

“Children, please stop poking your Grandmother with bread sticks, she’s clearly very tired” grunted Peter from the driver’s seat, whilst doing his best to avoid the potholes on the road. His mother had been deathly quiet since they’d left the hotel – she hadn’t been herself for days, but today she was more distant than ever. ‘You OK there mother?” he asked, looking at her in the overhead mirror. Rose lifted up her head up and nodded in response, giving her son a smile as affirmation. Peter nearly swerved straight into the roadside, which caused an explosion of children’s shrieks from the back seat. Good lord, he thought. He swore he couldn’t remember his mother getting such a bright new set of dentures.