The sky had opened up two nights before and started dumping buckets on us. Hadn’t stopped yet, and didn’t look like it was going to. Rain came in sideways and smacked the cabin windows in heavy drops so it looked like one big puddle sliding down the glass. The ocean was all puffed up and screaming. It was in a boxing match with our boat, June. She was strong, hadn’t lost anything but a bit of paint, but not strong enough to keep course. I only hoped the storm would bring us a good catch. Back home my daughter had some awful rash or infection on her forearm. I kept waiting for it to sort itself out and go away, but it was only getting bigger. We’d never had insurance, and there was no chance of paying out of pocket for the medicine. What I needed was to sell some fish. I didn’t know quite how far we were from where we meant to be, or really in what direction we had strayed, but Gill had been studying the maps, putting a compass to them every few minutes. I wondered if he had slept since it started. As I was sat up in my bunk looking at him and wondering this, June made a groaning noise like I’d never heard. Gill looked up from his map at me, eyes wide. Doug stirred in the bunk below, and then June’s portside took a deep sway downward. Next thing I knew I was on the ground and sliding across the floor. Just as my shoulder hit the other wall, it started swinging back up and a moment later we were steady again. Then I heard it. Faintly, over the rain and the wind and the waves, the bell was ringing. It was hung up on the boom to tell us when we’d got something. Our eyes ricocheted off each other. I got to my feet and Gill was zipping up his rain slick. Soon we were all three of us out the door and onto the deck, which was trying to slide out from under us as we crept like Bambis on a frozen lake. The fog and sea spray kept me from seeing more than a yard ahead. All the while the bell was ringing at us, getting louder while we got closer. Out of the gray there came the boom, which was bent down nearly into the water. Something big was down there. 

“Let’s just cut it loose! We couldn’t clean it in this storm anyway!” Doug screamed. He picked up the machete and gripped the edge of the boat with his other hand, reaching out for the rope which stuck straight out into the black. I stood back and tried to see. Looked like it was pulled too far for him to get at. He leaned back in and I went for the winch. We were going to have to bring it in, at least until the rope was in reach. Each turn of the crank took all three of us together, and ten seconds rest in between, and I stopped thinking at all. It’s hard to keep track of time without your thoughts to mark its path, so I really don’t know how long it was until I noticed Gill had stopped pushing. I looked up and found him standing open mouthed and wide eyed, staring ahead. I whipped around to follow his gaze, and there it was. The thing looked like a chinook, but it couldn’t have been. It was too big, more like a tuna. Bigger than a tuna. It was squirming and thrashing. It was screaming with its body. That pea sized part of your brain that makes your hand go up when something’s coming at your face, that’s most of what a fish is. When you get one in your net that’s all it is. Its nervous system flexing every muscle in its gigantic body in rapid convulsions, that beast was swinging June so she twitched like a tiny leaf in a big wind. Doug turned around and looked at us, then back around to see what we were seeing, and when he did the shock of it took his legs out from under him and shoved him down. His head hit the wood with some awful thud, and I couldn’t help but start yelling. Wasn’t really words, just yelling. I leaned down and saw that he was breathing and blinking. Good enough. I forced my eyes back up, but the thing was gone. Gill had swung it around so it was hanging over the deck, closer to the light. He just stood and stared. It was dying fast, drowning in air. That’s when my thoughts came back. I was betting that thing would pay for medicine, and if some kind of biology exhibit wanted it, it could buy her a whole new arm if she wanted. I grabbed the machete Doug dropped and went to cut it down. As I got close, that little pea sized part of my brain started screaming at me. Let it go. But the bigger part of my brain was operating the machete, and I sliced the rope.

“No!” Doug shouted. It hit the deck with a crack like thunder. Like the sky splitting so every god from all history could descend on us. And they did. Down they came in every color of the sea. They split June in two, cut her open up the belly so the ocean could lunge in and take her home. And as she was pulled down, that place where they severed her, that crevasse they made, it closed back up like a clam hiding its pearl. As the sea opened its maw to swallow her, she swallowed me.