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NOTHING OF HIM THAT DOTH FADE By Poppy Z. Brite |
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As the sun rose in the wrong direction across the sky, they saw a plane circling low above the ocean’s surface, far away. A little later they saw a boat on the horizon. They shouted and waved just as they had done before, but none of it made any difference. “I’m tired,” said Theo. There was a crack in his voice, and at another time Jack might have latched onto that and shaken it like a pit bull. Instead he only said, “I know.” “Do you think we have any chance at all?” Jack began to answer, but then his head jerked up and his eyes widened. He stared at Theo, mute, obviously terrified. “What?” “I felt something brush my leg,” said Jack. They looked down through the clear water and saw huge dark torpedo-shapes circling lazily below. “Sharks.” “The dive instructor said they wouldn’t bother people.” “Yeah, I’d put a lot of stock in what the dive instructor said.” They were quiet for a while, staring down at the dark circling shapes. The sharks made no attempt to approach them, not yet. But the psychological effect was that of a man lost in the desert who sees the first vultures overhead. “We’re going to die,” said Theo. It was not a question, not even a half-veiled plea for denial or comfort; it was nothing but a statement of fact. “Come here,” said Jack, and let go of the air tanks. They shucked their inflatable life vests and gave them to the current. Theo kicked off his fins and his swim trunks, and they pressed their bodies together, making a line of warmth in the slight chill of the ocean. The water was a great buoyant hand cradling them as they held each other. They sometimes still had sex, but it had been years since they’d really kissed. They kissed now, softly, remembering the feel and taste of each other’s mouths; then harder, with teeth and tongues, with fingers tangling in each other’s wet hair. “You’ve got a one-track mind,” said Theo, and they both laughed. It was something he had said to Jack in the early, sex-drenched days of their relationship, when they could not get enough of each other. Their hands crept lower, beneath the water line. Their cocks were two rigid columns of flesh. They no longer felt the cold water, had no awareness of the depths yawning beneath them; it was like being in bed together years ago, knowing and feeling nothing outside their world of two-made-one. They did not trust death to give them that fabled final orgasm. They gave it to each other with their hands and the friction of their bodies, and their seed mingled with the ocean, the salty essence of their lives returning to its primordial home, a triumph over the void as well as an acceptance of it. Then they held each other very tightly and let the tanks float away. They did not want to be taken, to wonder who would go first, to see each other ripped apart, the pool of blood spreading like an oil slick on the water’s surface. Instead, they took one last breath in unison, savouring the seldom-noticed sweetness of air, and dived together forever. * * * |
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Author Biography: 
Poppy Z. Brite was born in New Orleans in 1967, and has been writing as long as she can remember. Her earliest work was published in the small but well-regarded magazine The Horror Show and in anthologies such as Borderlands and Still Dead. In 1992 her first novel, Lost Souls, was published by the groundbreaking Abyss horror line and has since become a cult classic, reprinted dozens of times and translated into eight languages. She followed it up with three more successful horror novels, Drawing Blood, Exquisite Corpse, and The Lazarus Heart. Her short fiction has been collected in three volumes, Swamp Foetus, Self-Made Man, and The Devil You Know. Other projects have included a collection of nonfiction pieces, Guilty But Insane, and an authorized bio of rock diva/trainwreck Courtney Love.
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"Nothing of Him That Doth Fade" - © Copyright Poppy Z. Brite 2000 |