Surface Wounds

written by peter cole rae

Martha and Greg felt strange waking up to an empty house, but they were getting used to it. Each day they woke up with a gnawing fear that this emptiness would never end. Only two things could happen: Martha and Greg would either lose their son Brady or get him back. It was that simple, that easy to comprehend, but the suffering came from that fact that it was taking an eternity to get to either place.

They spent every waking hour bracing themselves for either good news or the worst news. And for months, there was no news. Just the weekly calls with Dr. Pearson which never amounted to anything—just the doctor’s usual lines first thing in the morning on the first Friday of the month.

The test results look the same.

There’s no evidence his condition will improve.

We’re not sure Brady will wake up.

We’ll keep you posted.

And despite the awful predictability of the calls, Martha lurched out of bed first, threw on her filthy pink robe, and shuffled through the large silent house towards the kitchen. She dropped her cell phone in the middle of the table and prepared breakfast. Coffee, toast, and eggs for Greg. For herself, a glass of lukewarm water was enough.

While she prepared breakfast, she glanced at her cell phone and shook her head. She chose not to play music through the kitchen speakers. She chose not to peek through her gossip magazines while a morsel of butter sizzled violently in the middle of her copper skillet. She chose not to think about the rest of her day, or the rest of her life for that matter. She simply sighed and drank her water.

Greg was making his way downstairs when Martha placed his breakfast on the table. His exhausted grunts drew closer and closer until he came through the kitchen door in his wrinkled suit and tie. He nodded at Martha and took a seat, dropping a bundle of loose papers and manilla folders at his feet.

Before Brady was attacked, Greg never brought work home. He prided himself on a healthy balance between work and life. But circumstances changed, and Greg adapted. As long as Brady was asleep in some cold sterile hospital room, he spent his nights reviewing case briefs and legal journals. And only when his eyes fought themselves closed did Greg join Martha in bed. And only on that long quiet walk from his office to his bed did Greg allow the thought of his son to haunt him. Greg did, on occasion, burst into tears on that awful walk up to bed, but he always made sure to calm himself down before laying down next to Martha.

Without saying a word, Greg lifted a forkful of dry eggs into his mouth and noted the time on the oven. Since Dr. Pearson made a habit of calling at 7 on the dot, Greg had a few minutes to finish his breakfast.

Martha watched her husband eat. She watched how exhausted each bite seemed. Greg appeared almost unsure of whether or not he wanted to eat at all. Then Martha turned to her own breakfast, a small glass of tepid water, and decided, who was she to judge.  

“Is there anything you’d like to do this weekend?” Martha asked.

Greg put down his fork and stared at Martha’s cell phone in the middle of the table. He sighed, and looked into Martha’s tired eyes.

“I can’t think of anything, you?”

Martha shook her head.

“No not really,” she said, “I was… just wondering.”

Martha and Greg despised weekends. For Greg it meant not enough work to occupy his mind, and for Martha it meant failing to make Greg happy. The weekends gave Greg and Martha time, and they didn’t want that. They wanted Brady to wake up, and if not that, then closure.

Greg finished his breakfast at 6:53, which gave him seven minutes to just sit there and wait miserably. Martha took his hand. Seven minutes. Seven full minutes for the couple’s hopes for good news to bubble up inside them just before the call with Dr. Pearson made them disappear.

But it wasn’t seven minutes. Because at just 6:55 in the morning, Greg and Martha heard the phone began to ring the special ringtone reserved for Dr. Pearson. The device vibrated across the table towards them, as though it were possessed, as though it were Brady himself, begging to speak to them.

Martha put the call on speaker.

“Hello?”

“Good morning Martha” Dr. Pearson said, “Is Greg there with you as well?”

“I’m here,” Greg said, eyes on his watch, eager to quickly swallow whatever the doctor had to say and rush into the office.

“Good, good.” Dr. Pearson said, clearing his throat. “I have some news, it’s good news. But please know, good news now does not guarantee good news later.”

Martha looked at Greg.

Greg looked at Martha.

They both leaned in.

“Please continue,” Greg said.

“There has been some improvement in Brady’s condition over the last 24 hours.”

At that, Martha went hysterical. She took the phone into her hands, and wrapped her fingers tight around its edges, as though she were gripping the collar of Dr. Pearson’s lab coat.

“Improvements?” Martha shouted. “What improvements?”  

Greg threw his arms around Martha. He rubbed soothing circles into her back. After before she knew it, Martha was shaking, sobbing, praying.

Mr. Pearson continued. “Last night, a nurse swore that she saw one of Brady’s fingers move. And at first, I’ll admit it, we didn’t believe her.”

Dr. Pearson paused. “But we ran some tests.”

“Is he awake?” Martha said, “Tell me, is he awake?”

“I’m sorry, he’s not.” Dr. Pearson said, “But these test results, they are promising. If things keep going this way, there is a chance he could wake up very soon.”

“A chance?” Greg said.

Dr. Pearson didn’t respond.

“What chance?” Greg pressed, “Tell us, what chance has he got?”

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Pearson said. “We just don’t know that yet. It depends on how his bones continue to heal, it depends on the long-terms effects of his concussions, and most importantly, it depends on how well the organ transplants continue to function. If we’re lucky, very lucky, we could be looking at a full recovery.”

Those words, full recovery. It made Martha put her hand over heart. She felt it, beating so fast that she thought she might pass out. With her other hand, she squeezed Greg’s fingers. Christmas. She hadn’t allowed herself to think of Christmas in months. Suddenly the holidays existed again.

“Is there a chance he could be home for Christmas?” Martha asked. It was just a few months away.

“There is a chance.” Dr. Pearson said. “But again, good news now does not guarantee good news later. I’ll be in touch.”

After the call was over, Greg stepped over his bundle of work papers on the way to the fridge. His foot accidentally bumped into the stack, snapping the rubber band that held it together. All of those formal documents splashed across the kitchen floor. Greg didn’t notice, and if he did, he didn’t care. He opened the fridge and scanned what was inside. Little, but enough.

“Now before we visit Brady,” Greg said to Martha, “You need to eat something, you hear me? You need to eat something.”

Martha smiled, and watched Greg try and cook something for the first time in years.

 

A week before Christmas, Martha and Greg drove Brady home. He hadn’t spoken a word since the hospital discharged him, but that didn’t concern Martha or Greg. Dr. Pearson explained that the cocktail of drugs pumping through Brady’s body would temporarily alter his mood, but that he would be back to normal in no time.

Before the attack, Brady was a hyper ball of attention deficiency, but in the car, he sat silent and still, content with staring blankly out of the back seat window.

Martha and Greg took turns filling in the silence with quick check-ins on their little boy. Martha by turning around in her seat and Greg via the rearview mirror.

“Hey Brady,” Greg said, smiling with his eyes on the road. “Your mom’s got your favorite meal waitin’ for you at home. Guess what it is—go on, guess.”

Brady turned from the window slowly and tried to smile. “Is it spaghetti?”

“That’s right!” Martha chimed in. She squeezed Brady’s hand and he squeezed back. His grip was weak.

“And after that, there’s an entire tub of orange sherbet waiting for you in the freezer.” Martha said, “How does that sound?”

“Thanks Mom,” Brady said, “I love you.”

“And we love you too, honey.”

Greg turned up some pop song on the radio, and snapped his fingers to the beat. Martha tried singing the words but didn’t remember all of them. When she made up the lyrics, Greg laughed and reminded her of how the song really went.

“And after dinner, we can do whatever you want.” Greg said to Brady, “Just name it, okay?”

Brady went back to staring out the window and watched the snowflakes collide with the pavement. For several minutes, he did not speak. But then, he whispered his request. “I want to go to the beach.”

Shivers raced up Martha and Greg’s spine. Silence overtook the car. Smiles disappeared. Greg turned down the radio and looked at Martha, who was equally horrified. They didn’t know what to say, but Martha urged Greg to speak up.

“Hey son, what was that?”

Brady turned from the window, and again, tried to smile.

“Nothing,” Brady said, “Nevermind.”

After Brady finished just a single helping of sherbet, he went up to his room and locked the door. His room was just how he remembered it, and yet, deep down, somehow different. Dozens of posters filled the walls. All of them robust action shots of world famous surfers conquering tremendous blues waves on beaches all over the world. Each of them larger than life, like superheroes, caught on camera at the perfect moment.  

The only space not covered in one of these posters was a space on the wall with two small hooks. And on these hooks Brady’s surfboard used to hang. He searched his room, but the board was gone. Taken, he assumed, by his mother and father.

So Brady went to his laptop and climbed into bed. After the wi-fi connected automatically, hundreds of old forwarded messages from his phone flooded the screen. Most of them dated back to early July, some of them just hours after the attack. Well-wishes and prayers from his family, from his friends at school, from his neighbors, from complete strangers. Brady read just a handful before using a keyboard shortcut to make them all disappear instantly.

He opened a web browser and typed his full name into the search bar. And in seconds, hundreds of news articles appeared, national coverage from the day of the attack. Brady clicked on an article from Time Magazine.

That report called Brady lucky. Lucky to be alive. That without such luck, he would have died immediately from the wounds he sustained in the water. The rest of the report filled the blanks in Brady’s memory with a timeline of events.

According to the report, Brady pushed off into the surf on his board at 2:31pm eastern time while his parents stayed on shore beneath a beach umbrella. That Brady caught waves for approximately twenty-two minutes before the beach officials sounded the alarm. Someone had spotted a fin in the water. Swimmers and surfers ran for their lives, splashing like maniacs towards the shore. The reports said that, at the time the alarm sounded, Brady, who had a habit of venturing far offshore, was a way’s away, and was trying to paddle in. Everyone else was already on land and could only watch helplessly as the 16-year-old struggled against the tide, with a long scarred fin circling around him.

One man, the report said, a 38-year-old named Jude Corliss, who could not bear to watch, raced into the water against direct orders from beach officials. The man screamed and splashed in the shallows in an attempt to distract the shark. But the shark had made up its mind, the report said.

Brady popped up onto his board to keep his legs out of the water with plans to ride a smaller wave into the shallows as he had done many times before. And that was when the shark, a bull shark 5 meters in length, leapt into the air. And before Brady could react, the creature lunged for Brady with its jaws wide open. The monster captured Brady’s head, shoulders, and chest in its mouth and forced the top half of his body deep into its gut before sinking hundreds of razor sharp teeth into Brady’s lower stomach.

Brady stopped reading for a moment, sickened by a thin slice of a memory he wished he didn’t have. The terrifying few seconds of consciousness inside the shark. Inside that cold cavernous coffin of wet flesh. Brady’s skin could recall the touch, his nose the stench, and his mind the panic. Brady took a deep breath, swallowed the memory down, and read on.

He read about this Jude Corliss, the man who raced into the water armed with just a modest kitchen knife. After the shark got a hold of Brady, it tried to submerge itself, to drown Brady, and feast. But Jude pushed into the water and got hold of one of Brady’s legs. The shark thrashed. Jude stabbed, sixty-three times. Sixteen times in the beast’s gills, twelve in its side, and thirty-five blows directly into its head.

As Brady reviewed the numbers, he ran his fingers beneath his shirt. He traced a deep scar located just above his heart. Brady wondered which of Jude’s sixty-three slashes had pierced the shark so deeply that it struck Brady on the inside.

The report concluded with the shark’s death and Jude dragged its long still body out of the water where the EMT’s spent fifteen agonizing minutes extracting Brady from the fish.

When Brady finished the article, he opened up a new tab in his browser, and typed a name into his search bar. Jude Corliss.

 

The holidays passed and spring was getting started. And so, after a few months with Brady back in the house, Martha and Greg finally felt safe letting him go outside on his own. They didn’t say Brady couldn’t go to the beach, mainly because they assumed they didn’t have to. They assumed his surfing posters would come down, it was just a matter of time. And they definitely assumed Brady would never ask them where they had put his old surfboard.

But still they were surprised, and a little nervous, when Brady asked if he could ride his bike to a friend’s house down the street.

Martha said no, but Greg said yes. And on the insistence that Brady return to his normal life—minus the beach—Martha changed her mind.

“Text us when you get there!” Martha shouted to Brady in the driveway as Brady pedaled down the street.

“I will!” Brady called back, “Love you Mom!”

And it was true. Brady loved his mother very much. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t able to lie to her. Brady pedaled well past his friend’s house and down an access road, leaving the sterile suburbs behind him and heading straight for the Macon Woods trailer park. A place Brady was told never to venture, under any circumstance.

When Brady reached the entrance to the park, he walked his bike through the cluttered rows of dingy mobile homes. He located Unit 405B, which was made of old shoddy metal that was either rusted to a burnt copper color or twisted in ugly unnatural angles. Brady didn’t hesitate. He leaned his bike against an overturned washing machine and knocked on the rickety screen door.

Jude Corliss answered the door. He looked older than his age, his cracked skin fractured by canyon wrinkles, his thin frail muscles dangling by his sides beneath a loose-fitting beach tank. When he recognized Brady, he put his cigarette out in an old coffee can and dropped his beer onto a stack of empties in the corner.

Jude opened the screen door and Brady entered. Brady looked over Jude’s place. It was like a bomb went off. Glass smoking pieces, women’s undergarments, and blu-rays all over the place. More empty beer cans than Brady could count, and the musty smell of cigarette ash in the air.

“Are you okay kid?” Jude asked, his voice rough and low, as dry as tobacco leaves in the summer sun. “They fix y’up?”

Brady nodded slowly and lifted his shirt so that Jude could see his belly, where a string of deep ugly purple scars—where the stitches had been—made a complete circle across his belly and around his back, connected in a circle of ruptured blistering skin. Jude winced at first but didn’t look away.

Jude shook his head. “He ‘bout snapped y’in two kid”

Brady nodded, “Thank you.”

“Aw don’t worry ‘bout it.” Jude said, standing up straight.

Brady didn’t show Jude the place where his blade had struck him. Instead he looked into Jude’s eyes and asked him a question. “Is it true that you have ‘em?”

Jude took a deep breath and asked what, even though he knew what.

“The teeth,” Brady said.

Jude thought about it for a second and nodded.

“Can I see ‘em?” Brady asked.

Jude wasn’t sure why the little guy would want to see them, but he obliged anyway. He had Brady follow him to a spare room in the back of his trailer. It was a small room that contained just two things. A stained mattress with stained sheets was in one corner of the room. And across from it, fastened onto the wall, were the bleach white jaws of the bull shark that had attacked Brady.

Brady’s head began to spin. Those hundreds of razor sharp teeth jutting out at him. Again. Each of them having done their best to tear Brady’s life to shreds. All of them, jutting out along the shark’s wide jawline.

Brady inhaled deep and walked up to the teeth. He urged himself closer, closer. So close that he could see the tiny ridges in each tooth. And without meaning to, Brady found himself searching for remains of his own flesh stuck in between the beast’s teeth. When he found none, he turned to Jude.

“Why did you hang this up?”

Jude shrugged and kept his answer short. “Best thing I ever did, y’know? Reminds me of what I’m made of.”

Brady thanked Jude for his time, got on his bike, and pedaled home. As he turned back onto his street, he couldn’t stop thinking about those teeth. The ones on Jude’s wall and the ones that could be waiting for him in the water.

 

Brady woke up before dawn the next morning. It was still quiet and dark and cold. His parents were still fast asleep. Brady shifted his weight onto the floor beside his bed slow and soft, so that the old house didn’t creak. He moved in the darkness towards the garage. After weeks of secretly searching, Brady had found his surfboard hidden in the back of the garage beneath the old lawnmower his father refused to get fixed properly. He secured the surfboard into his specially made bike carrier, and headed quietly through the garage doors.  

But before going to the water, Brady paused in the driveway, and looked back at the window to his parents’ bedroom. And for just a moment, he wasn’t sure if he could go through with what he had planned. But that was just one moment, and in the next one, Brady was pedaling hard and fast towards the beach.

When he arrived the sun was creeping up over the horizon. The beach was empty and the only sounds were those of the small waves lapping against the shore. He carried his board to the water, its weight reminding Brady of the wounds that needed more time to heal. His toes reached the water and he froze in place for a moment. Much like he had froze when staring at the teeth on Jude’s wall the night before. A deep fright coiled around his spine and begged him to go back, to go home, to stay safe. But Brady didn’t listen and put his board down into the water.

He laid his bare chest against the board’s rough surface and paddled out into the surf. As he made his way through the water, he looked over the side of his board. Down, into the water. At first, Brady felt alright, he could see the sand beneath the clear blue water. But the farther he went, the less clear the water became. And the deeper the water became, the more monsters Brady imagined could be there, swimming beneath him.

He began shivering, not from the temperature, but from the fear. That he was testing fate, and that this time, a monster wouldn’t mess around, that this time, he would be eaten whole on the first bite. Brady stopped for a moment, remained still in the water, considered turning back, but did not. He paddled and he paddled and he paddled. Until he was well beyond where he had ever gone before. Until the shore was nothing but a small brown blip in the distance. And only then did Brady sit upright on his board, with his legs dangling in the water, and his eyes closed shut.

In his mind’s eye he pictured the jaws of the shark, collapsing in around him. He thought of the teeth that made their way through him like wet paper. And he forced himself to remember the feeling of being inside of the shark—alive, gasping for air, and finding only the cold serrated sting of Jude’s knife in his chest as a reply. And when he couldn’t bear it any longer, Brady took out a long serrated kitchen knife from his shorts.

He pulled his legs out of the water and squeezed the skin around his ankles, but found them too thin for a cut. So he gripped his calf between his fingers instead.

Brady pricked the knife into both of his calves. Small shallow cuts that bled. Not a lot, but enough. And then Brady dropped his legs back into the water. He recognized a change in the water around him. Cloudy bloody darkness forming around his board.  Brady’s heart raced. He couldn’t breathe. He was terrified. But despite that, he remained there, sitting upright on the board, searching for a fin to shoot up from out of the water. Brady gripped the knife’s handle as tight as he could muster and waited. He dared the water to send its most vicious killer. When none came, he slapped at the water again and again and again. He screamed at the water, give me something to kill, give me something to kill! But no fins surfaced, no teeth came.

Brady waited like that for a long time. Until he the sun separated from the horizon and Brady could feel warmth on his neck and back. He rested his hand on the scar just above his heart and felt the beats from beneath his chest. They was unmistakably calm.

Satisfied, Brady brought his legs back onto his board and paddled to shore. A long trail of small blood drops dotted Brady’s path back to his bike. He headed home without offering even a parting glance at the water behind him. And Brady might consider himself lucky for not looking just once over his shoulder, or he might have seen the long fin waiting for him in the shallows.