1

The boat chewed the water under its prow while dragging a water skier behind. Egon watched its progress from the shore. He still had a few hours of the sun but decided to collect his things and go home anyway. A path up ahead cut through the brush and led to a bungalow that he shared with a dog and a TV set. Egon pulled a key from underneath the welcome mat and unlocked the door. From inside he could still hear the waves crashing against the beach and the screams of the gulls. The dog, a beagle, was hunkered down on the couch and couldn’t be bothered to wake up from his nap.
Here Egon was free from intrusions and could think. At times the solitude was so strong that he thought he could actually feel the earth making its slow, steady orbit around the sun. That was the purpose of this. He’d unplugged the TV set, but it still stared at him through its one dead eye. The clocks in his bungalow were set to different times, and the phone was off the hook. Pocket paperbacks with broken spines lined the shelves. Egon had the foresight to stock up the liquor cabinet—a cupboard above the stove, really—and fill the refrigerator with beer and bachelor chow so he didn’t need to bother trekking the mile it took to reach town. His only distraction was the couple next door who copulated loud and often.
He’d seen them unpacking their rental car only a few days before. From afar the couple looked respectable, when in fact they’d chosen this out-of-the way destination for the kind of rugged individualist sex Theodore Roosevelt probably practiced.
Just as soon as Egon had settled into the mental groove he wanted to be in that late-afternoon, the sounds began anew. He tugged at his hair, he’d cut it short to stay cool and the exposure to so much sun brought back bits of blonde he hadn’t known since he was a child. Stale coffee curdled in his stomach. The dog lifted its head and howled as the grunting and moaning began.
The walls in these bungalows were thin, to be sure, but there was a fair piece of distance between them. Egon only assumed another bungalow existed on the west side of his. He’d never explored that far. A patch of trees stood in the way. He stood in the center of the room and rubbed away a curl of sunburnt skin from his shoulder. His body was warm and glowed light brown in most places, but was still pasty white around his belly and chest. He’d packed on a few pounds in the last few years and no longer felt comfortable with his shirt off around strangers. He was the man at the beach wearing a T-shirt.
There was only one thing left for him to do: Egon went to the fridge and filled his knapsack with cans of beer and a packet of hot dogs. He’d build a fire out by the dunes once the sun had set and maybe watch some water skiers wipe out in the interim.
“C’mon, pup. Up and at ‘em.” Egon slapped the animal on its haunches and shoved it off the couch. “We have to move now.” The dog sneezed. It padded over to the front door and whined. Egon opened the door and let the dog nose its way out. The lady next door let go with the kind of moan that stops both man and beast in their tracks. “Whew,” Egon said. “That made me want a cigarette.” He nudged the dog on its way and followed shortly thereafter with visions of bedpost-dented walls and shattered picture frames littering his mind. They wound their way to the path that led to the beach just as bad rock music began to blast from the cabin. It caused Egon to wonder aloud: “Why do people with the worst taste in music insist on listening to it so loud?"
The dog offered no answers.
The ocean had vomited jellyfish onto the beach. Egon used a hefty stick to chuck them back into the water. He’d stepped on one once, as a child. His mother made the mistake of soaking his foot in baking soda and water. The baking soda dulled some of the pain, but the water helped the venom spread enough to cause an allergic reaction that put him in the hospital overnight. The last of the jellyfish was obstinate. Egon swore that it moved towards him when he first approached with his stick. He left that one alone and instructed the dog not to eat it.
Egon squeezed a healthy dollop of lighter fluid onto the wood and the fire found life. He watched the flames lick oxygen and tossed an empty can into the fire’s heart. The dribble of beer still inside the can sizzled and popped as the paint went black and the aluminum began to lose its shape.
Egon rested his head on the dog’s back and stared at the stars. The waves lapped against the shore. It was too dark and too far away to discern the spot at which the ocean met the horizon, but the light shining from above kept a dark hint of blue in the sky and in the water that was enough to keep a person from going mad from staring at the void.
A woman’s scream tore through the ether. The dog hopped up, knocking Egon away, and bounded towards the surf. Egon stood up fast and tossed his beer into the air. He ran towards the sound, kicking up sand, and soon left the dog behind.
He was not the only one to respond to the scream.
There, a few yards away his next-door neighbor was crumpled on the ground. She clutched her knees against her chest and rubbed the exposed foot that was pumped full of jellyfish toxin. She was entirely nude. The moon silhouetted her bosom while shadows blanketed her other parts. Egon stumbled as he slowed down. The girl looked at him incredulously. Her dark, wet hair clung to the sides of her face, beads of water glistened on her shoulders, and her mouth formed an “O”—but before Egon could say a word, an enormous weight crashed into him and wrapped itself around his torso. The added density pulled him to the ground and kept him there. Wet, naked flesh pressed against his chinos and T-shirt. “Oh,” Egon said. A heavy fist pounded his head into the sand hard enough to pop his ears, and the shock knocked him out cold