Wild Fiction

‘Listen again, over there towards the entrance of the lagoon, there’s the sound of an engine.’
Conrad paused again, one foot dangling in the water and his head to one side. ‘Yes, I think I can hear it now, but it sounds like the drone from a plane.’
‘No it isn’t, it’s the sound of a bloody powerboat and there it is. Rebecca. Out the water. Now. And get down below. We have company,’ James shouted pointing at the entrance to the lagoon.
Speeding towards them along the narrow river that fed the lagoon to the sea, was a large powerboat. Its nose stood clear of the water and its hull sat on the point of the arrow created by the white wake pointing straight at them.
Conrad pulled Rebecca out of the water and she ran inside. As the powerboat neared, the driver dropped the speed and swung it side-on to them, killing the engine. Emblazoned along the hull of the powerboat, in a large yellow and blue italic font, was the name Sunseeker Paradise.
The driver was stripped to his waist where a belt with a silver star on the buckle supported a pair of denim shorts. Written on the star were the words God Loves Cowboys. His transparent gecko skin had started to turn pink on top of his shoulders and the back of his neck. A tattoo of a spider web clung to the side of his neck and one of the strands of the web ran behind his ear and buried itself under his close cropped pitch-black hair. The tendons in his scrawny arms twitched as he played with the steering wheel, idly rolling it from side to side. Hanging from his mouth was a half-burnt cigarette. He took a long drag and plucked it out with his thumb and forefinger. Looking at it, he blew out a lung full of smoke scattering ash over the front of the boat. With a flick of his finger, he sent it flying inches from the other man’s ear. It tumbled through the air and landed in the water between the two boats with a brief hiss.
‘Christ Corp,’ the other man had ducked to the side. He was at least a foot taller than Corp, with tight curly black hair on his head and a broad flat nose underlined by thick fat lips. A bright pink scar ran across his coffee coloured skin from his left collarbone and disappeared under his loose vest towards his stomach.
‘Shut the fuck up moron, it was nowhere near you,’ Corp replied in a thick Cockney accent. He pushed his wayfarer sunglasses, which he had been peering over, back up his nose.
The big man looked at him but did not say anything. The boats had drifted together and the big man threw a looped line over the cleat on Senga Na Lenga.