The Choice

I SHOULD have suspected something immediately. I mean, out of the blue, suddenly these three guys want me to go fishing with them. They haven’t said two words to me the whole time I’ve lived here and suddenly I’m their best mate, their preferred companion.

No alarm bells ringing then. They’re fucking ringing now, all over town.

Jay was the biggest of the three and the meanest. He’d got a head like a smashed crab and a voice like a little girl. His reputation was one hard won. He said to me in that whining voice, “We’re gonna cut you and feed you to the sharks.”

He said it matter-of-factly, as if he were excusing himself for farting at the dinner table, as though it were a minor faux-pas.

So I’ve agreed to go fishing with these three, like a wanker, like a mug. I ain’t too physical so punching my way out wasn’t an option. I’ve stepped onto their boat with nothing in mind but maybe a nice little bream for dinner, just pan size that’ll crisp up golden brown and crunchy around the edges.

And the sharks. I was thinking about the sharks.

Jay produces a curved knife as a counterpoint to his promise, as if to reassure his brothers that this is no joke.

“How long did you think we were going to listen to you preach against us, boy?” he said.

Rare to see a grown man shake with fear, but I reckon I did. I could see what was coming, but maybe they’d reconsider if I could just convince them.

I did speak my mind around town, always thought that it was a God-given right in a democratic country. Maybe I had been wrong.

Martin and Robert were Jay’s smaller but no less terrifying brothers. They were edging around the boat’s forward mounted seats, deploying themselves in a position to rush me.

How could I change their minds? How could I avoid the horror that was creeping toward me in the fleeting seconds that remained for life?

“Wait!” My voice sounded strangled and desperate even to me as I cast my first option for them in a perfect, shining mould. “Don’t you guys have kids?”

If they were impressed they didn’t show it. I knew they were all fathers, all husbands. I had not known they were also ‘businessmen’, so to speak.

They certainly knew I had my two girls at home, Mona and Sue, my wife and daughter.

“Please don’t leave an innocent child fatherless!” I said, tears began streaming down my face.

They moved closer. The knife edge caught the sun and winked evilly. Martin produced an axe and winked just as wickedly at Robert who was clutching a curved gaff.

I’d only been trying to protect the kids, you know, when I spoke out about black-market profiteers. I hadn’t even considered what the repercussions might be for me personally. I was no angel, that’s for sure, but becoming a father had changed my view of the world the way a reversal of the poles might change the world itself.

I tried again, desperate to hold back those razor sharp smiles and the inevitable outcome I had begun to suspect.

“Please don’t do this!” I begged. “Please don’t let this happen!”

They did hesitate for a moment, but my melodramatic desperation wasn’t going to change the tactics here. They were going to kill me. They were almost close enough to strike me down now and I could see the weapons begin to rise, edging toward a terminal moment.

I had been thinking about the sharks. Thank God for sharks, I always say.

I had tried to stop it, but there was nothing else I could do in the end, to my regret.

Jay was first as he whipped the blade toward my throat.

I think it was surprise that registered on what was left of his face. The Beretta has a flat report, so maybe the other two just didn’t realise what was happening, even with their brother’s brains splattering the deck. It was as if they couldn’t see the pistol even after I had pulled it from my waistband and fired it.

They kept coming so I shot Martin twice in the throat and drilled Robert neatly through his right eye before he could deploy the gaff.

Making orphans and widows is something no man should have to do. I tried to talk them out of it, I begged them, I tried to make them see another option, to appeal to a less superficial awareness of what it means to practice violence.

They didn’t listen and I have to live with what I did, but in the end, it was their choice.

They are dead, I am alive, and the sharks move through the clear water without any burden of conscience.

Biker Fiction by David Barnes