[Fiction] The Galleon

By Rutger Middelburg

I have always liked the beach.

When I was younger, I liked the parties we had there; where we would drink cheap rum, smoke pot , play the guitar, and sing out of key until the sun came up. The sun that came signaled  that other people were waking up, which for us meant that it was time to go sleep it off, which we would do right there in the soft sand. By the time I got home it would be almost time for dinner, after which I would head straight out to the next beach party. Those seemingly endless summers of my teenage years are gone for good, but the love for the beach that they instilled in me will last me ‘til  the day I die.

That love is deeply seeded in all those things that I first experienced under the influence of whatever I happened to be using that night. All those things that now still bring back to me those visceral memories of the blissful emptiness of a life without any purpose or responsibility: the hypnotic sound of the waves, the greenish-blue glow of the phosphorescent algae, that feeling that you only have to put your feet in the water to become instantly connected with all the oceans and seas of the world; one tremendously large body of water, all connected, all communicating with each other, all lapping at your feet, right there and then.

All those things can still take me right back to one of those stoned nights almost a decade ago and make me momentarily forget what my life has become today.

As I stand with my feet in the water, I relive the connection with all that water. Of course, it worked better when I was younger and more intoxicated, but even the older, sober me can still visualize how all that water communicates as one, connecting my feet with the whole wide underwater world; a world orders of magnitude bigger than the world on land, using not only the surface but also the depth, which will often run to many kilometers. With a deep sigh I turn around and start heading back towards the house, or rather, the decrepit little shack. It is small and looks like shit, but it’s got running water and electricity, and I’m staying here for free because it belongs to Marc.

What more could I possibly ask for?

I first met Marc last week. He’s a tall, bold guy, about my age, with a fearsome beard, a broken nose, bright blue eyes, and a perpetually sunburned scalp. He came recommended by my little brother, which means he probably makes a living dealing drugs or holding up liquor stores, or something along those lines. That’s none of my business, though. I just needed someone who could take me to the right location, dive with me, and keep his mouth shut afterwards. My brother assured me that Marc is that person.

I set my alarm early today because we have a long day ahead of us. My feet are in the water again, but I can’t concentrate on the size of the continuous body of water that I’m connecting with. I’m too frustrated. Marc should’ve been here almost an hour ago.

I hear the zodiac coming before I can see it. Soon, it is restlessly bobbing up and down on the surf, right in front of me. As expected, Marc is in the zodiac with all our diving gear. Quite unexpectedly, there is also a beautiful girl in the boat. I suspect that she would consider herself a young woman, they usually do at that age, but I’m estimating that I’ve got almost a decade on her, so, to me she’s still a girl. That could change, though. A label like that is defined by more than her numerical age, it’s connected to how she behaves; behave like a woman, and she is one.

Her pretty face, with its upturned nose and smokey dark brown eyes, is framed by long, wavy hair, dark brown, with streaks turned lighter by the sun. She’s wearing one of those drawstring bikinis with the little black triangles, barely enough to decently cover anything up. You know the kind, and the kind of girl who wears it: slim, nicely rounded where she should be, tanned, and a confident smile, which is telling the whole world that she knows how hot she is and is not ashamed to use that to get what she wants. It’s the kind of girl I used to fall in love with, but would be too afraid of to talk to, when I was that age.

I’m not that age anymore, though, and hot as she might be, she’s not supposed to be here.

“What’s she doing here?” I ask Marc coldly.

“She’ll be minding the boat while we’re under,” Marc tells me.

“Hi, I’m Sophia,” The  girl chirps merrily.

I glance briefly in her direction with a look that I hope conveys my deep contempt for her, or at least for her presence here. I turn back to Marc straight away. She’s not worth my attention, only my irritation.

“That’s not what we agreed. The less who know, the better,” I remind him.

“Soph’s okeh,” Marc assures me. “She can keep her mouth shut. Can’t you babe?” He asks, as he turns to Sophia and kisses her before she even has the chance to respond.

I decide there is not much I can do about it now and get into the boat, still feeling highly irritated, and maybe also a bit jealous of Marc. How did that asshole get a hot young girl like that?

We dive all day, every day; minimal surface intervals, maximum number of dives. Even with a gas mixture enriched to contain thirty-six percent oxygen, we’re pushing the limits of what’s considered safe. Flirting with Caisson's disease like we just don’t care. We spend three days of fruitless searching in the murky waters. I’m just about ready to give up when, during our second dive of the fourth day, we finally spot the impressive bulk of the remains of a sixteenth century galleon, half buried in the sand. Our dive time is almost up, though, so we quickly attach a line, blow-up a surface marker buoy and head back to the surface.

Later that day, we spend two more dives searching a few cabins on the starboard bow. Very little light penetrates inside the wreck and everything is covered in a thick layer of fine sediment, which swirls through the water in vast quantities at our smallest movements. The dusty swirls reflect our dive lights right back in our own faces and often limit the visibility to less than a meter. I’m very thankful for the guide wire we’re using to find our way back outside. At times, I can’t even find the exit of the cabin without using the wire. If we hadn’t used it, I could never find my way back out of the wreck and would then certainly drown when my air ran out.

In spite of the poor visibility, we do find some assorted sixteenth century junk. At the end of the day, I’m personally rather pleased with three silver coins that I spotted on our last dive. Marc is particularly taken by a rusty pistol he found during the dive before. On the one-hour boat ride back, we decide that today’s finds call for celebration. It seems only a matter of time now until we find the main stock of gold that the galleon was carrying when it sunk. We’re going to have a little party at the beach shack. I can still hardly believe that all my research and preparation are finally about to pay off. The gold in the galleon should be worth millions. I would never have to work another day in my life. Still, I’m suddenly also afraid that someone else will take off with my treasure. After all this time and trouble, I don’t think I could bear it, and I again impress on Sophia and Marc to keep their mouths shut. They promise, and then we’re at the beach already.

Sophia decides to stay with me, while Marc returns the zodiac to the little harbor a few miles down the coast to join us after that. Soon I find myself and Sophia in the corner of the living room, which operates as the kitchen of the beach shack. She’s searching the fridge for the cold beers I’ve promised her. As always, she’s wearing nothing but that tiny, black, drawstring bikini.

“Could you help me look?” She asks, as she puts her hands on the top of the fridge and bends over to get a better look inside. She’s been making suggestive comments ever since  Marc took off in the zodiac, and now she’s making a whole show of making sure I notice how nice her butt looks. I’m pretty sure I know what she wants, and it’s not a cold beer. So, I walk up behind her and experimentally put my hand on her butt.

“What you doing?” She asks with a fake girly little giggle, and I consider the experiment successful. I now know that I have read this situation just exactly right. Thinking ahead, I first pull my swimming trunks down to my knees. Then, my fingers quickly slip under the smooth fabric of the bikini bottom and rub across the soft skin of her butt. In response she pushes herself back against me. That’s my cue, I pull firmly on one of the two black strings sticking out of the bow on her left hip, and the bikini bottom falls to the ground. She wants to  turn around to face me, but I’m already inside her. Stopping her turn attempt, she leans her hands heavily on the top of the fridge, as she pushes her ass back against me.

This might not be the intimate act of love making that you share with someone you have deep, lasting feelings for, but I’m never going to have that with Sophia anyway. She’s simply much too young for me. This girl is only twenty-one, she’s super-hot, and she’s letting me do her like this. Who cares about deep, lasting feelings? I should have my head examined if I passed up an opportunity like this. Sure, she’s Marc’s girlfriend, and I’ve grown to like Marc over the past days we spend together, but she’s too young for him as well, so that never would have worked out in the long run anyway.

Fifteen minutes later, all three of us are sitting outside, drinking our beers, and sharing a very strong joint that Marc brought along. It was a close one, when he suddenly pulled up, but Sophia managed to dive into the bathroom just in time. There she put her bikini back on before walking back into the living room, without as much as a glance in my direction, like nothing had ever happened.

When we finally call it a night, neither Sophia nor Marc is  able to drive. So, they decide to crash on the two couches in the living room.

I wake up in the middle of the night, as Sophia is climbing on top of me. She is wearing only her bikini bottom and the oversized, worn-out, shapeless, old T-shirt, which she borrowed from me because she didn’t want to sleep in her bikini top. After pulling down my boxers, she straddles me, puts my hands on her breasts, and starts kissing me. My hands don’t stay there, though, they wander  down to her hips where they pull the strings on both sides. Pulling the bikini bottom out from under her, I briefly consider what a brilliant design the drawstring bikini is, and how there should be much more drawstring clothing. Then, I stop considering anything because I’m already inside her again. This time we have a very slow, very long fuck, after which she quickly sneaks back to her couch so Marc won’t know.

The next few days, we systematically search the wreck of the galleon until we find the room where big heaps of golden coins lay scattered across the floor. After this, we still need several dives to bring it all to the surface. At night, Marc and I hide that day’s gold under the floorboards of the beach shack. In the meanwhile, since that first time, Sophia visits me every night after Marc goes home. Without ever talking about it, or even consciously deciding it, we start making it a point to never have sex twice in the same place. The shower and both couches are obvious choices after the fridge and the bed, followed by the kitchen table, the kitchen counter, and up against the wall on both the inside and the outside of the house.

I know I’m falling for this girl, but she’s still too young. Or am I too old? Either way, a real relationship seems impossible. Maybe this fuckationship  could work, though. During the day we chat superficially, like we have no interest in each other whatsoever, and at night we fuck like a couple of wild animals. What if this animal attraction is enough for us? Whoever  decided that everybody needs deep meaningful relationships anyway?

Once, during the period when we’re still searching for the gold, we’re between two dives and having lunch in the zodiac, when a speedboat passes in the distance. Fifteen minute later, it returns and passes by a lot closer. After our next dive, Sophia tells us that it passed by even closer, and much slower, while we were under. We find it suspicious, but there’s not really anything we can do about it.

The next day, we see the speedboat again and it seems to anchor a little way off. We consider leaving, but we still have a lot of galleon to search. In the end we decide to continue on the next dive, but while we’re under, the speedboat approaches again. Two mean looking guys ask Sophia what we’re doing there. There is no point denying that we’re diving, so that she admits and then they leave.

“Probably drugs traffickers, making sure we’re not competition,” Marc says, when he hears Sophia’s account of what happened.

“Or police,” Sophia adds.

“Either way, no worries,” concludes  Marc.

“Unless they find it suspicious that we’re diving here, where there’s no known diving site, no lovely reefs, or big shark populations, or anything,” I worry out loud.

“So what?” Marc asks. “They’ll think we’re stupid divers. Let  them.”

“Unless they decide to check why we’re diving here and find the wreck. Or simply keep an eye on us and find out that we’re taking things back with us. What if a couple of mean, hard-ass, violent drug traffickers discover we’re hauling a hundred kilos of gold out of the sea?”

The day that we bring up the last of the gold, I suggest having another celebration at the beach shack. But Marc already has plans, so we decide to celebrate the next day instead.

Around ten there’s a knock at the door, and I already know who it is. I open the door to find Sophia there, wearing a buttoned summer dress. Except that it’s not buttoned at all. It’s hanging open, and she’s not wearing anything underneath. I pull her inside, put her on the windowsill, which we haven’t had yet, pull down my shorts, and immediately enter her. We haven’t even finished, when there’s another knock at the door, a louder, more demanding knock than before. I look at Sophia, raise my eyebrows while I shrug, and slowly and very quietly continue fucking her, while she tries not to giggle. There is another knock and it’s starting to sound urgent and a bit threatening. I sigh, pull back out of Sophia, pull my shorts up over the worst boner ever, and walk over to the door with some difficulty while Sophia holds her dress closed by crossing  her arms in front of her chest.

Opening the door just a crack, I peer through to see who’s there. It turns out to be Marc, who’s not about to wait for me to open the door any further. He immediately throws himself bodily against it, catching me by surprise, and throwing me off balance, causing me to take a few steps backwards. Marc rushes in, gun drawn, and starts pointing the gun alternatingly at Sophia and me.

“So, you guys’ve been fucking behind my back?” He shouts at us. “How long’s this been going on?”

Sophia puts her hands up, causing her dress to fall open. In spite of the situation, I can’t help but notice what a truly beautiful sight that is. I very slowly creep backwards, away from Marc and towards the kitchen table.

“Well?” Marc demands, while pointing the gun at Sophia again.

What Marc and Sophia, of course, don’t know is that I got a bit paranoid with the whole speedboat episode. I was afraid that someone might suspect something and follow us back to the beach shack, where I’m all alone at night, with all the gold stashed under the floorboards. So, I called my brother, and soon I was in contact with a local illegal arms dealer. I taped one of the guns I bought to the side of the nightstand where I could reach it from the bed, and one to the bottom of the kitchen table, like they do in the movies.

Now, I’m reaching under the kitchen table and pulling out the gun. Marc sees me reach under the table and swivels his gun in my direction, just as I’m bringing up my gun to point at him. I startle and pull the trigger, without even taking aim, without even trying to take aim, because I never even meant to shoot at all. I have never shot a gun before, and the sound is so overwhelming that I first don’t even realize that I’ve hit anything at all. As I regain some composure, I find that I have accidentally shot Marc right in the face.

“What the fuck?” Sophia screams, as she looks with horror  at the body of Marc, which is now lying on the floor in a small puddle of blood, not to mention mostly faceless.

“I didn’t mean to,” I answer with a quiver in my voice.

“Well, you did!” She says accusingly. “Now what are we going to do?”

At this point, Marc moans. As I look at him, frozen in complete shock, he also moves one arm. The movement is seemingly random, but it is clear he isn’t dead, as I assumed. I rush over and kneel next to his damaged head.

“We’ve gotta call an ambulance!” I call over my shoulder at Sophia, who has first moved over to the kitchen table but is now coming my way again. The advantage of the small shack is that everything is really nearby all the time.

“No, we don’t,” she  answers calmly, while bending over Marc, putting my gun against his temple, and pulling the trigger.

I expected the sound to be less intimidating, now that I knew what to expect, but it isn’t. What is even worse than the sound, though, is the feeling of blood spatters on my arms, chest, and even my face. Looking up at Sophia, I notice how the blood spatter hit her square in the legs, abdomen, and chest, and I find it strangely exciting.

“You maniac,” Sophia says icily calm, before I can spend too much time wondering how sick I am exactly to actually find blood spatter on a girl a turn-on. “He wasn’t going to shoot anyone. Just  wanted to scare you a bit. He found out about us last Tuesday, followed me over here, after he had dropped me off at my place. Said  he’d leave us alone if I helped him convince you to give him fifty percent instead of twenty-five. The gun was just to help the negotiations along.”

“What the fuck?” I scream at her, equal parts surprised and angry. “You knew?”

“Well, yeah, but it’s not like he left me much of a choice, really. He was threatening to kill us both if I didn’t go along with it. So, I figured, the two of us, we could still’ve a pretty good time together with half the gold. Beats being dead , right?”

Of course, me shooting Marc in the face could easily have been explained as self-defense. Sophia shooting a completely incapacitated Marc through the head, with the gun actually pressed against his temple, obviously can’t. After some discussion, I decide to forgive Sophia, both for not telling me Marc had found out about us and for making me an accomplice in his murder. We then focus on getting rid of the body, instead of on everything that either of us could have done differently. Sophia  goes off to get the zodiac, and about two hours later, far out on the open sea, we are tipping the body, weighted down with Marc’s diving gear, over the side of the boat. Then, in a different place, we toss the gun into the sea as well and head back. I never even wonder if I should be helping Sophia cover up this murder. It’s just like the sex: she takes charge and I agree to everything.

Of course, if someone reports Marc missing, the police will come looking for him at the beach shack, which is in his name. So, Sophia tells me to scrub it clean, not only of the blood, but also of every fingerprint, hair, or bodily excretion that either of us might have left there during these last weeks. We decide to burn the clothes we are wearing, all the bedlinen, and even the throw pillows from the couches.

Since Sophia, of course, didn’t bring any extra clothes, she borrows a shirt and shorts from me and goes commando. This, again, turns out to be a huge turn-on for me. So, I end up fucking her on the floor, which was probably the last place where we hadn’t done it yet.

Afterwards, to further cover up the murder Sophia committed, I cover just about the entire house in bleach and scrub everything clean, until my arms burn with the effort, while Sophia loads the gold into her car. I’m just about to start with the bathroom when I hear Sophia’s car start. Walking back into the living room, I look out the window just in time to see her race off, with my gold, but without me.

Rutger Middelburg  is a writer, editor, and epidemiologist. He lives in the Netherlands

with his wife and two children. He writes both short fiction, and novel length works. His

short fiction has been published in several literary journals and anthologies (short fiction).