Her Mouth, A Thousand Ivory Deaths

She was first spotted off Rehoboth Beach three miles from the shore. A massive and ancient behemoth, she was easily three tons and nearing thirty feet. One of God’s greatest creatures of the deep blue waters come to wreak havoc on the quiet coastline.

The coast guard didn’t have a chance by the time she got too close to the sand. In only two weeks, there were thirteen recorded attacks resulting in five deaths. Whatever she wanted, she wasn’t finding it off Delaware. This was something worse, something bloodier, and she was going to take more lives if something wasn’t done quickly.

When Captain Robert Morski finally got the call, he’d been settling down with his fifth nightcap of Johnnie Walker. The telephone rang and rang, blaring in the back of Morski’s swimming mind. He thought to outwait it but if it was so important to call at night it might be worth answering. He set the beveled glass on the counter.

Morski held the receiver to his ear. “Hello?”

“Hello, is this Captain Morski?” a grizzled voice asked from the other side, a smoky quality to his tone.

“This is he, to whom am I speaking?”

“This is Admiral Jethro Smythe sir, I hope I haven’t interrupted your evening too much.”

Morski glanced at the half-empty bottle. “No, no, not at all. Where’s the fire, admiral?”

The man on the other side, Smythe, did not laugh. “There’s an urgent need for your services, sir, off the East Coast. The Coast Guard was hoping you might be of service.”

The silence following that sentence could have killed someone weaker.

“…I no longer sail, Admiral Smythe, that is fairly public knowledge,” Morski mumbled into the receiver, “and I don’t believe I will be continuing this conversation.”

He went to hang up the phone before- “It’s a Great White, Captain.”

He hesitated over the phone cradle, his knuckles whitening as he fought not to crush the plastic. He brought it back to his ear.

“Why would that incentivize me further, Admiral?” he snarled into the mouthpiece, “Why would that make me fucking care?”

The Admiral was silent before speaking. “It’s the same one, Captain. I’m sorry I had to tell you but it’s the same one. You’re our best bet at hunting it down before it takes another victim.”

Morski refused to hide his weeping at that point, crumbling into his armchair and limply holding the phone by his knees. He could still see her face on that last sail, her beautiful crooked smile as she hoisted the sails for the last time.

He smeared his tears with the knuckles, loosening the grip on the phone before holding it to his ear once more. “She, Admiral, is a monster. Something I couldn’t even kill fifteen years ago. What makes you think I could kill her now?”

“I don’t know, Captain,” the Admiral said quietly, “but I know if anyone could do it, you would be the one. She doesn't have to die in vain if you can help save someone else.”

Morski let the tears roll down, the salt dripping into the carpet. He sputtered his acceptance before hanging up. They’d chase him down in a matter of days now that he’d accepted. He could only hope he’d be enough to kill her once and for all.

-

The government had gotten him to the coast in less than 24 hours, a sense of urgency in every officer’s voice as they briefed him on the situation.

She’d been active for over thirty years but rarely made herself known this close to shore. Only three previous incidents of violent behavior had been on record and only one of those even in the last two decades. They think something had changed; something had spurned her towards the coast these last two weeks to strike the way she had. They couldn’t place if it was rising waters or rising temperatures, but something was amiss.

The only experienced shark hunters they could even consider were either retired or dead, or in Morski’s case a combination of both. He hadn’t set foot on a boat since his last hunt all those years prior and he was practically a ghost when his old crew saw him.

“Damn brother, you have got to start eatin’ again,” Nino winced, “your girl would’ve wanted you to be one with living still, brah.”

“Yeah, you’re definitely ghoulish right now, Ragebeard, but you’ve still got the thunder, I can feel it!” Jimenez said, slapping him on the back.

He gave them both a tired smile. “It’s good to be back together boys, I was just hoping it would have been under different circumstances.”

“What, like your funeral?”

He turned to look at Musa, her face turned down and a perpetual wrinkle between her brows. He knew she was upset.

“Not to be morbid, Typhoon, but more than likely, yes.” He said, apologizing with his eyes. She didn’t even look at him once he said it, only closing her eyes and sighing.

“You’re an asshole, you know that?” She spat, venom in her voice.

“I know,” he turned back towards the group, “but if we capture this bitch on this trip, hopefully I’ll be forgiven, right?”

He gestured his hands towards the group, prompting a quiet sound of discussion amongst his former crewmates. Admiral Smythe had been more than accommodating allowing him to choose his own crew, and every single one of them was irreplaceable.

“Listen, we’ve got a loaded boat, we’ve got an entire crew, and we’ve got a big fuckin’ target,” Morski shouted, “and I need everyone to be ready by tomorrow in getting this beast taken out, is everybody with me?”

The pep-talk worked this time, the crowd of them shouting in agreement. All of them stepped forward to start talking strategy before he could even ask. He hadn’t spoken to any of them since the funeral and here they were, helping him to hunt the biggest sea creature on Earth, and he couldn’t be more thankful. As emaciated as he had become, his smile could light up a concert stadium. Even when he locked eyes with Musa, she couldn’t help but match his joy.

Tonight, they would rest and celebrate and conspire. Tomorrow, they would set sail!

-

They’d been chasing her for eleven days.

They had started off Rehoboth, following the trail from the previous days. There hadn’t been an attack in over three days but sightings were recorded all around the area from fishing vessels and tour cruises. She was hiding for now but she was close, he could feel it.

They were getting tired, he could see it in their faces. They had never hunted like this before, running themselves ragged steering the ship and checking the sonar equipment and staying vigilant by the sides of the ship. He too was on a knife’s edge of his patience, sharpening the harpoon tips over and over in the cabin down below. He wished she was here, her bright brown eyes glinting as she laughed over Jimenez’s crab-fishing stories or her solemn face as Musa spoke of her time fighting pirates in the waters near Côte D’Ivoire.

He wished and wished but she wasn’t coming back. His little girl, her gap-toothed smile just starting to fill in all the way. When they’d hit the storm fifteen years ago off the coast in Maine he’d been watching her the whole time. The wind whipped overhead, the sky gray, and he’d watched her scream at him that something was out in the water before a massive wave tilted the ship on its axis. He hadn’t even taken his eyes off her but she had gone overboard all the same. By the time he’d gotten to the edge of the boat, the beast in the water, the one she’d seen, was already reeling away with its present. He could see her bright yellow hair streaming in the water through the trail of blood before the shark disappeared beneath the waves.

He pricked his finger along the prongs. “Ow, fuck,” Morski muttered, sucking his finger into his mouth. He dropped the sharpening tool on the floor and set the harpoon down.

He dropped his head into his hands and sighed. It was getting late in the journey, and they were running out of supplies. They’d had enough for two weeks, and they were nearing the end of that time frame. Admiral Smythe had been incessantly calling on the boat-phone until Nino had ripped the cords out. They hadn’t established contact for over 72 hours and they were surely getting antsy on shore.

“Captain!” He heard Musa shout into the cabin. He sat on edge for what was coming next.

“She’s fucking out there, we see her. It’s El Nina, she’s here!”

The speed he took the stairs to the deck was nearly too much, tripping over his shoes as he hit the wood. He held the harpoon gun under his right arm, looking out into the distance where Musa pointed. A shape the color of bone lurked some forty yards out, churning the waters angrily. The same stormy weather blew overhead, the same as that day fifteen years before.

“Typhoon, Clooney, get us as close as you can!”, he screamed over the thunder cracking, rain blinding his fixed gaze, “we’ve got a hunt to finish!”

The boat was being smashed by waves the size of houses, crushing against the sides without mercy. El Nina, an old friend, lurked just out of reach as the boat creaked and turned to capture her. She was waiting for them. And what was Morski but a giving captain?

Forty yards became twenty became ten, and he readied the harpoon gun against his left shoulder aiming for the ominous shape just ahead. Her head locked on him, her beady black eyes mocking him.

“See you in hell, bitch.” He aimed right for her side, preparing to pull the trigger and-

“Robbie, please, we have to go! Mommy has an appointment.”

Robbie was pulled from his daydream by his mother pulling him by the shoulder away from the exhibit. All that work he’d just put into thinking of his life on the waves and she had just taken him away! Unreal.

The pair of them trotted out the front of the museum out onto the concrete, his mother prattling on about something he didn’t care about. Honestly, it’s like she’d never been a twelve-year-old boy before. He knew it was stupid to fantasize about sharks considering the last one had been right there in the museum, but it was still entertaining to think of what he could’ve been in another life.

El Nina, the world's last Great White, had been gone for nearly thirty years now. She was immortalized in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, truly as big and as fantastic as all the documentaries he'd seen had said. He must have read her exhibit paragraph a thousand times in all the trips he'd taken here over the years. He wondered what she had been like when she was still alive, still hunting in the deep all those years ago.

"Are you even listening Robbie?" his mother asked, her tone annoyed.

"Yeah, what?"

"I said, for your birthday you can invite some of your friends and we can come back to the museum, how does that sound?" She opened his car door, letting him slide in before shutting it and getting into the driver's seat. "You can invite whoever you want, Frankie or Diego or, ooh, maybe even the new girl in your class, what was her name?"

"Aega Musa."

"You could ask her, if you want. Whoever you'd like."

"Okay."