Wild Fiction

‘Let’s hope that it isn’t third time unlucky.’ Conrad said positioning the boat where they thought the anchor was. James dived and found it immediately and reattached the chain to the anchor, this time with two shackles.
In the late afternoon, James took the spear gun and slipped into the water and swam away from the boat. Rebecca made Conrad a Cuba Libre and poured herself a widgetised Guinness. She opened a tin of chilli smoked oysters and a tin of garlic mussels and put them together with a handful of water biscuits on a plate. They sat in the net at the front of the boat and watched the red tip of James’s snorkel moving slowly through the water, his head turning from side to side as he search for prey. Now and then, the snorkel would submerge under the water, only to emerge again several seconds later and a few feet from where it had disappeared with a plume of water arcing out of it.
Rebecca put her head on Conrad’s chest. Each time he lifted his arm to take a sip of his drink she felt his pectoral muscles ripple across his chest. She laid her free arm along his leg and caressed the hairs.
‘That’s very nice,’ he said.
She rolled over, gingerly balancing her drink, and moved her head up to his. ‘I can do nicer things than that,’ she said with a smile on her face.
He leant forward and their lips touched, the dark smoky Guinness merging with the sweet crisp flavour of rum and cola. They held their lips together, tasting each other. Rebecca’s glass slipped out of her hand. It fell through the netting and into the water with a splash. A dark swirling cloud of Guinness followed it to the sandy bottom. She pulled herself on top of him and kissed him urgently.
‘I have one. Look,’ the shout came from across the water.
Rebecca rolled off Conrad and they looked up. James was holding the spear in the air. At the end of it was a large red fish. He turned onto his back and kicked his fins on the surface and propelled himself to the boat.
‘Look what I have,’ he said panting excitedly. Conrad was standing on the transom and Rebecca was watching from the cockpit. Conrad took the spear and fish from him. He unscrewed the spearhead and pulled out the shaft. It was a red snapper, its gills were still pumping as it uselessly tried to stay alive. Dark red blood gushed out of the gills and the hole left by the spear directly behind them.
‘Good work mate,’ Conrad said examining it. ‘It must be over two feet long and it’s as fat as Santa Claus. We could feed an army with this.’