How to Stay Afloat When Drowning
By Daniel Braum, first published in Pareidolia
After ten years a man returns to the shore where he encounters a mysterious woman and becomes intertwined in a web of memories, family tension, and unexplainable occurences.
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Plot Summary
A man is in the bar on the harbor. He sees a mysterious woman sitting on a stool in a sundress. The man and woman exchange odd bits of conversation. At another table, two people he knows, Client and Roy, pretend to fire rifles into the air.
The image triggers a flashback in the man. There’s a mob of surfers pulling a six-foot thrasher out of the ocean. He squeezes Nina’s hand.
Back at the bar on the Harbor, the man continues conversing with the mysterious woman who accuses him of being here to hunt. He thinks that there is no way he will be going out to hunt in the morning. He says he is only here for his family. She accuses him of lying.
He gestures to a woman at another table, Alison, who is his sister. Alison is sitting next to his uncle Roy. He explains that his sister runs a local surf apparel business. The other man, Client, is a purchaser in that industry. The final man at the table, he explains, is a boat captain, Mike, that is taking them out on the water the next day.
They continue talking. He describes a summer he spent in this area years ago. He recounts that he fell in love and ran away with the girl to Costa Rica. He says they had gone on a boat that got caught in a whirlpool. He prayed that if they escaped, he would never leave land again. The conversation ends. She warns him about being vulnerable. He offers to buy her a drink or go on a walk. She declines and says that she is here for family and must find her sister. She gets up and walks out of the bar. The man goes back to sit with his family.
His family urges him to come along the next day. He declines and leaves the table, wishing he had asked the mysterious woman her name. He thinks of Nina and the time he spent with her at this shore ten years ago:
They were together at the pier eating ice cream. At that moment he describes her as carefree and sensual—unlike the depressed soul who had run away from her obligations in the city. Someone begins to yell in the water. A man has caught a thresher shark. A crowd of people helps hoist it onto the pier. They brutally beat the animal to death with a baseball bat. The man cries. He and Nina decide to leave that place. They go to Costa Rica.
In Costa Rica, he plans to propose to her. To get to the lodge, they must travel by boat. The boat gets caught in a rush of waves. It is a near-death experience. They arrive at the lodge. Nina is distraught. Later, they wake up and Nina is still very disturbed. He goes to look for something that may cheer her up. When he returns, he finds that Nina had committed suicide. His mind focuses back on the present.
Outside the bar, he believes he sees the mysterious woman. Upon closer inspection, it is just a large owl feeding on roadkill. A man from behind a near car stumbles across the road and down a path. There is something odd about his face. Down the path appears a line of surfers around a bonfire. He thinks he sees the mysterious woman among the surfers. He startles the odd-looking guy when he followed him. The woman is not there. The odd guy offers him a cigarette which appears to be from a faraway place. Another surfer approaches him and informs him that this is a private party. He expresses that he is looking for his friend. There is a big splash at the shore. The group at the party goes to check it out. The man steals the entire pack of clove cigarettes and goes back to his hotel.
He can’t sleep. He continues to wish he had told the woman at the bar that he had not come to hunt. He chain-smokes the cigarettes. He thinks of Nina and how he would have liked to beat the people beating the shark. His mind drifts to his parents’ surfboard business which they ran in their house when he was young. His parents disappeared after a buyer came to the house. His sister Alison continued to run the surfboard business, thinking that the parents would return. He went to the Eastside.
He wakes up to Alison and Captain Mike knocking on the door. Alison urges him to come along as the Client will not go without him. Alison expresses that she will have to sell her business if she doesn’t land the Client. He submits and says he will be on the boat after he gets coffee.
As he walks outside, he sees the woman from the bar. He approaches her. She says nothing. She opens her mouth to reveal a slew of jagged, triangular teeth. They return to normal. Her hair is shorter, and she carries herself differently, but otherwise, she looks identical to the woman last night. A few moments later, an ambulance rush by. A mailman tells him someone was murdered on the beach last night. He returns to the boat, and they go out on the water. They fish. They catch a shark and shoot it in the head. Back at that dock, people take photos and congratulate them on the catch. Police approach Captain Mike and inform him that the surfer killed last night was his son. That night they all go to the bar to celebrate. He goes on a walk with Alison. They hear about a memorial bonfire that is occurring. They walk towards it.
A woman approaches them. She resembles the woman from the bar, only she has jagged teeth and pointed hands. She rushes towards Alison. A second woman appears who looks similar but is the woman from last night. She says the jagged teeth lady is her sister. She fights with the sister until they reach wet sand. He approaches her and attempts to thank her. She says she is only here to make sure that her sister does not make a mistake. He shows her that she also has sharp teeth. He fades into a psychotic state and sees an opening in her forehead and slits on her neck. He sees the dead shark and Nina. He wakes up on the beach. He gets an apartment on the East side of the area. He returns to the shore on weekends to watch the waves like he used to with Nina. He repeats a phrase that the mysterious woman had told him to a couple one night at a bar.
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