the mortis by Jonathan R. Miller

everything, potable water would be the main issue, but he always thought they could carry enough in cargo.  Lee never believed in the idea, though.  Sometimes when you’re lost it’s better to stay where you are and wait, she told him.
     
     
    Park helplessly watches the grounded kayak—in spite of the proximity, it seems unreachable—but he can’t just abandon the boat and swim the distance to shore, so he makes a decision: when the wave cycle is at its trough, he pushes away from the headwall and lunges, arm extended, toward the tethered paddle.  Reaching to catch an edge of the blade.  Treading water.  He fumbles with his fingers and takes hold; he inches up and grips the haft.  He scissor-kicks and heaves with his arms, and the force of the next wavefront propels him backward to the outcropping.  He holds his breath.  He concentrates everything on his grip. 
     
     
    The kayak comes free.  It turns itself over and then it ’s thrashing wildly on the tether’s end.  His spine hits the headwall but he maintains his hold.  The rush of water sends the boat surging in his direction, and he uses the line to tow it in the rest of the way until it strikes the outcropping beside him. 
    He doesn ’t wait.  When the wave cycle hits its trough, he scrabbles onto the deck and swings one leg over the carry handle, straddling the rear of the kayak, keeping his chest down and his back flat.  He throws the paddle into the cockpit, slides his body forward and then drops his legs through the entryway. 
    He pivots and slides into the seat and immediately takes the paddle and starts feathering the water with the blade, steadying himself.  The next wave hits, and he braces the boat against the rocks.  He rides the wall, skimming alongside, running parallel, with the hull scuffing against granite.  He tries his best to align his movements with the wave cycle, moving forward in intervals until he can turn the corner on the outcropping.
     
     
    The waters are blessedly calm on the row to shore.  He pauses at around the halfway mark, eyes closed, and allows the kayak to skim along.  He rests his shoulders, head down.  After a time he sets the paddle on the deck and gets to the business of bilging out water from the cockpit flooring—around a foot and a half of ocean, up to mid-shin.  It doesn’t take him long at the pump handle before he accepts that the satchel and everything it carried is gone.  Some part of him knew already, but now it’s confirmed.  He checks his clothes, his belt.  The kitchen knife is also gone. 
    He unbuckles the vest even though he shouldn ’t.  He shrugs out of it and lies back, gently probing the wound on his forehead.  When he’s satisfied it’s not too deep, he rips off another piece of his shirt hem and ties it on.  He tries stretching the stiffness out of his arms but it doesn’t help, and so he quits and just rests his head on the deck and stares upward. 
    The sun is at ha lf-mast.  Rampant blue skies—no sign of the Bengal monsoon cloudfronts, in spite of the season.  A black and white tern, solitary, winging overhead.  He closes his eyes and thinks about his sad excuse for a plan and considers reshaping it, but in the end he can’t think of any other way forward so he opens his eyes and carries on.
     
     
    Eventually he is able to bring the boat into a longshore current that pushes toward land.  He rides the current most of the way in, but at a hundred yards off the coast he digs out and lets the boat drift.  He squints at the coastline.  The staterooms on the water-facing side of Resort Lavelha.  Its white stucco walls and archways, the saltillo terra-cotta tiling and the sculpted botanics of its landscape architecture.  The sunlight, shining on the corpses assembled on its beachfront, piled in the sand at the wrackline like pale driftwood.  All of their rigid bodies.  The disease often ends a life in this way, with a terrible kind of rigor mortis where