RETURN OF THE SEA WITCH
By
LINDA C WOOD
His anger knew no bounds – she had deceived him, escaped him and, as he ran towards the telephone booth, he could see she was about to call a cab to leave him alone. He could not tolerate this behaviour, so he wrenched open the booth’s sliding door, grabbed her and started hitting her, hard. She ran from him but he caught up, held her and struck her so hard she fell, face down, on the quay. In the darkness he did not see her lifting a length of lead piping which was lying nearby and, as he came at her again, she hit him as hard as she could, landing the blow on his left temple. Immediately unconscious, he fell directly off the quayside and headfirst into the water. She watched as the bubbles of his descent into darkness and death rose. Suddenly realising what she had done, she threw the lead piping away and ran.
---oo0oo---
He was falling, falling. The cold water enveloped him, swallowed him up. Dazed from both the blow to the side of his head and the impact of the water, he was disoriented in the darkness, but his Navy training kicked in, his will for self-preservation paramount. Coming to, he could not avoid gasping for breath and took a lungful of water. He knew he was dying, had only seconds left, when he saw a dark shape ahead of him. A strong swimmer, with the vestiges of his strength he pushed the water aside and grabbed at the shape. It was the wooden pier pillar. He saw the bubbles rising, pulled himself up and his head cleared the surface. He straddled the cross-bar of the pillar, his head resting on the upright, and then it went dark.
---oo0oo---
My second story, gentle reader, is a sequel to Gerald’s guest starring role in the Dick Powell Theatre episode, “The Sea Witch”.
