Spielberg: Reprisal

(OOC: Sorry I missed the last round. All work and no play made Sail…you get it.)



He didn’t know what came as the greater shock, the steel barb piercing his skin, or the realization that he was being hunted.

It hurt, but his flesh was tough enough to withstand the sudden drag of the yellow barrel behind him. “Foolish to go too close,” he chided himself as he powered wide of their boat. They were different, not like the ones he’d taken so easily near the shore. Instead of panicking, the three on this boat turned in pursuit. Of him.

He could hear their shouting, recognize the mounting bloodlust as the old boat’s engine labored to follow him. This was like a bad dream. He had to think. He had to work it out. And so, he went deep, dragging his painful burden beneath the surface.

As they circled above, he struggled, his body arching and writhing to dislodge the projectile in his back. All the while, he wrestled with this cruel predicament, forcing his mind beyond the veil of pain and the dawning fatigue to understand the hunters. It wasn’t too difficult. They wanted…expected…to tire him out, force him to the surface. He rolled an eye upward. The rope stretched out in his wake, fading in the depths until his only sign of the persistent barrel was the steady flash of a beacon. They would follow him, day or night. They would break him.

He had to break them first.

Under a night sky, he rose to the surface, his plan an old one. Those men on their boat aimed to kill him. He would do as he’d done just a few days earlier. He’d force them into his world. He’d kill their boat.