Chapter 5

Chapter Five
I was feeling cold again, I could trace my very skeleton out in pain, and I was literally chilled to the bone. My teeth were chattering so badly that my jaw was aching painfully. Water was trapped in the head with me and sloshed around on the door it was sickeningly cold. My shoulder was tired and in pain from pumping the pump, but if I stopped pumping I would run short of air. I have to keep pumping! I had convinced myself, or I will die!
I was not getting wet from water being sucked in from the sea by the pump, this was good, and at least I had thought so. Then it occurred to me that I could not really tell if my arm was pumping the pump any more. I was telling it to pump; I had been for hours, but in the pitch black I could not see if I really was actually moving my arm. I was not getting water anymore, but was I getting air? I could not tell; my senses were too numbed.
Was I imagining my arm was pumping? I no longer could trust my senses. I could see nothing, and for some reason my mind was too confused to decipher from all the noise of my stressed out mind to listen for it. For all I knew I could already be dead, maybe that is how it is when we die, we just continue with whatever our last struggle was for eternity. Maybe it is like that for everyone. Perhaps when a man falls in front of a train and he tries to get up and run out of the way and fails to make it, but for all eternity he never knows he was hit, he just keeps repeating his last action command for all eternity. Well that would suck! I thought, hoping it was not true.
In the cramped quarters I reached around with my other arm to feel if I was still pumping the pump. I found my arm to have fallen from the pump handle and was up over my head trapped between the toilet and the bulkhead. It was finished, it had no feeling left in it; it was as if dead. My position in the head had pinched an artery in my arm and cut down the blood flow to my arm causing it become as if paralyzed. How long has it been like that? I wondered.
I grabbed at it with my good arm and laid it across my chest, it was cold, and had no feeling, or motor control. There was a pain in my shoulder that was caused by my wet jacket sleeve bunching up between my elbow and my armpit. It had cut off the blood flow to my arm and now my arm was as if it was paralyzed, without felling or motor control. I tried to loosen my jacket sleeve at my armpit to get some blood flowing back into the arm, but it seemed hopeless. I could not position my self in that small space to be able to pump the pump with my other hand either, I tried, but it was no use.
I began wail; “augh!” was the groan that I uttered. I was worse than hopeless; I was helpless. “Why? Why? Why?” I cried, “After all this effort and work! …and for what? Nothing!” Some part of me was saying you knew that it was coming, what did you expect it to be like? But I was not able contain my frustration. I was angry with God that he would allow me to die in such discomfort. Why couldn’t I be warm and comfortable and then just fall into a peaceful sleep and never wake up? Why did dying have to be so damn unpleasant? Eventually I was able to get my jacket straightened out and feeling and strength came back to my arm. As I began pulling on the pump handle again I did so reluctantly, knowing I was merely postponing the inevitable and prolonging my misery.
“High School was another repetition of the previous patterns“, I began, my words slurred by the cold; “again there would be bullies and again I would stand against them. One day I was in sheet metal class, there was this kid Jodie Phillips, he was eighteen, for grade nine that is pretty old, he was not too bright I guess. I had just finished making a small tote type toolbox that was the assigned project. Jodie Phillips was working on a more complicated small four-drawer chest type toolbox. He had just that day got the rollers for his drawers so he could begin on the drawer installation. Jodie had already built several small tote boxes, since he had already been in high school for three years, even though he was still in grade nine.
Jodie Looked across the bench at my completed tote type toolbox, “Nice job Morrison; that looks real nice….” he said, ending his sentence with a four-pound hammer smashing into my toolbox and folding it up. I felt sad for him; he did not realize that just because he was bigger than I was, I would not be intimidated.
“Well Jodie” I said, “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones!” At that I picked up an eight-pound sledge and swung it hard flattening his tool chest, folding it up good. Well the fight was on, I don’t recall much of the fight it wasn’t much of a deal, I only recall that we could have been hurt fighting around all those metal working machines. I recall that we wound up in front of the principle, but not much about what became of it all. Jodie tried to get tough with me lots of times but he was a coward and I never had to fight him again, he would always back down.
There were two other guys that really were tough, they intimidated me, but I still never would back down from them. These two guys were twenty-three and twenty-four; they were in prison but were let out during the day on some special experimental program to get an education. Their tiny criminal minds were only able to figure out that they were the biggest students in the whole high school, so they could be the biggest bullies ever. I had several run-ins with them and they threatened to kill me and promised me that one-day they would.
I believed that they meant it, I had to be careful. It was a tight rope walk, if I showed any fear it would trigger them to carry out their deed of hate. I sensed that they were willing to actually kill, but they wanted to see the terror in my eyes before they would do it. I knew they were serving their master of fear and so the would not kill me till I bowed down worshiped there god of terror as well. But I would refuse to obey fear, and in spite of how hard it gripped me in its chains and tethers I refused to obey its commands.
One day they cornered me at the end of a school hallway and one of them punched at me, he was fast, no one had ever hit me without me at least seeing it coming before, I did not see it coming, he was that fast, and got me good. But I couldn’t let him know that I thought he had hit me hard, “Your gonna have to do better than that!” I said.
“We will!” they responded.
At that I said, “I think the odds are a little uneven”.
“You bet they are!” they responded.
“Yes, you guys better start to be nice to some of the bigger guys in this school and make some friends, and when you do, bring them with you and come see me again, the odds will be more even.” I told them while strenuously controlling each breath to try to keep my voice from quivering. I was used to fighting gangs more than individuals. Even though I was bluffing them the thought of fighting a gang rather than one or two people comforted me in some strange way and gave me a little more control of the deflection in my voice, and this helped sell the bluff. They backed down and left me alone. I was very relieved.
Another time they caught me alone in the weight room next to the gym, “Hey!” they called out to me, how about we have a friendly wrestling match? Pointing to the wrestling mats on the gym floor. They were acting friendly, as if all was ok, like we were buddies. I think they thought I would fall for it; they are criminals, so they’re not that smart. I pretended to go along with it, I had little choice. I began wrestling but I was careful to not let them get me down, before the first move was made a loud thought was ordered in my brain “Whatever they do counter it, don’t give one inch or you’ll be really hurting!” That set of instructions was ringing in my mind and it worked! To my surprise I threw those big guys all over that gym.
When it was all over they were obviously very incensed and bigger and uglier of the two walked up to me and said between catching his breaths in his cigarette tar plugged lings; “You think you’re pretty tough don’t you?”
“We were just havin‘fun right?” I asked back at them, a lump growing in my throat.
“No you think your pretty tough!” and having said that he some how jumped up and kicked me in the chest with the souls of both of his feet, leaving his boot marks in my T-shirt and knocking the breath out of me. He kicked like a bad horse, I had never been kicked so hard, it shocked me, but I struggled not to show it.
Just as quickly he was standing in front of me and looking me straight in the eyes and he said; “I know; that didn’t hurt” and again planted both his boots into my chest, probably three times harder than the first time. I stumbled back a bit but regained my composure, I needed air; my wind was completely knocked out of me. I looked him in the eye and gave a smirk to try to show that I was not impressed; I could not speak, so I turned and walked away. They did not follow, and when it was clear to do so I gasped for air and began to breathe again. My bluff again had worked and we did not continue the fight.
It was not over however; it would end in a violent mystery that I never have completely solved. It happened on what was a normal day, to start off with. In the cafeteria the kids at the back wall table were pelting our table with apples and oranges. I had instructed everyone at our table to not throw them back, and to pull up on the hem of our t-shirts to make a cradle for the apples and oranges, and to hide them under the table until we had more than we could hold. That table was more popular than our table so it seemed like everyone in the cafeteria was giving them apples. They threw them at us, but we discreetly collected them up.
When they were all out of apples they sat at their table reveling in their glory for what they had achieved. It was at that point that that I told everyone to stand up and we flooded our table top with apples and oranges. When they saw us do that the whole cafeteria fell quiet, and the guys at the back table stopped laughing. A worried look was unanimous on their faces. We picked the apples off our tabletop and winged them at them as hard as we could. Ray Kolodachuck, one of the regulars that sat at our table had aspirations of being a major league pitcher some day. He bragged that his fast ball had been clocked at ninety eight miles an hour! Well he could sure throw that was for sure! You could hear the apples and oranges sizzle through the air as he threw them, and he was deadly accurate, sending our foes diving for cover.
Their table was up against the brick wall so even when we missed they were showered with apple sauce or orange juice, and the ammo was destroyed, so they had nothing to throw back at us, those idiots would fall for that at least once a month. Ray over through his arm out during one of these bouts and although he was still a better throw than anyone else in the school he never again could throw as well as he had been able to. He was unable to break seventy-eight miles an hour with his fast balls any more so his major league dreams evaporated. Last heard he worked in a tire re-treading shop somewhere in Toronto.
After that lunch break I was talking with Warren Hill. I told him that I did not much feel like going to classes for the rest of the afternoon, so I thought I would just leave and go home after lunch, I lived about thirty miles from the school so it would take most of the afternoon to get home. But I preferred that to class. I walked through the city of Orillia from my school. Once on the forty-eight highway I thumbed my way home.
My trip home was not completely uneventful, as I was nearing my home walking along the bank of the Talbot River. I heard a strange long-winded whistling sound; it seemed to last for nearly a whole minute but it was probably no more that thirty seconds. I stopped in my tracks to listen for where the sound was coming from. It seemed to be from directly over head, but I could see nothing. Then there was a sharp concentrated impact splash in the river about three feet from shore, which was about eight feet from where I was standing. The object could not have been larger than half the size of an egg; it hit the water with an impact splash only slightly less then a bullet would have had if it had hit the water.
I did not know what it was; a small meteorite is my best guess, or maybe a spent bullet from some distant fired rifle. I contemplated going into the water to look for it but it was still early spring and the water was still pretty cold. I probably would never have found it anyway. But this incident stuck in my mind, and I thought it would make a good conversation piece the next day at lunch, since it was a rather unusual incident. Little did I know that at that very moment events were unfolding that would completely make this unusual incident be not worthy of any mention.
The next day I caught the bus for school, our stop was one of the first stops on the school bus route, so there was only about four other people on the bus when I got on. But something was different, they were looking at me differently on this morning and I did not know why. Some one said “Surprised to see you here today!” I grunted some whatever kind of answer, and took my seat on the bus. I figured that this guy was referring to the fact that I was not exactly in line for any perfect attendance awards. “What a geek” I thought.
As more people got on the bus I noticed that I was getting noticed by them all and could sense something odd about their reaction to seeing me. The bus was strangely quiet; not the ranting of teenagers as usual, but sort of a murmur of hushed voices. I did not really think much of it, until the last few kids got on the bus, “well, I gotta hand it to you, swami; you really put your money where your mouth is!” Ray said to me as he boarded the buss. Swami was a nickname that was given to me by those that sat at our lunch table. It began as an East Indian reference for how much pepper I would put on my french fries, but also spread to the fact that I was sort of the leader of that table during the fruit wars. Few people got away with calling me that, but Ray was one of them that could, he had earned my trust and respect.
I did not know what he was talking about but I answered “Well of course, did you expect any less?” He shook is head and walked past me to find a seat on the bus. Before the bus had made it to school I got several more comments like that directed at me. I answered them all rather evasively, something was up, I could sense a new found respect and fear of me from everyone, I did not want to let it be known that I had no clue what they were talking about.
As I arrived at my locker Warren Hill was at his locker which was next to mine. Warren was a pretty good guy, he was a bit of a smart-ass so he was always entertaining, and he had a good sense of humor. He was a small guy, and was at one point picked on by bullies a bit, until his locker ended up next to mine and we became friends. I never let anyone pick on him after that and they never did. At one point we coincidentally had met each other before we became friends through sort of a lark I invented. I was in history class, bored to tears, “Old dead people…. Who cares?” I decided to write a note on my desk, knowing that at least seven or eight other people sat there, I thought some one might answer the note. “Dear desk writing on pen pal” was how the note began, and I wrote about how bored I was and stuff, wondering if I would ever get an answer.
A few days later I got an answer, so I wrote back again, We each hoped that it was some girl on the other end writing back, but our handwriting gave us away we both knew the other was no girl. So we would write stupid jokes back and forth, and sometimes the answers to the test we were writing. But it was blind leading the blind, neither of us was paying attention in class, so our test answers that we wrote on the desk to each other were of little value.
This went on for most of the year until one day after school I saw that Warren was carrying a bucket and some soap and I asked him what he was up to. He said that he had a desk writing on pen pal and he got caught writing on the desk so he had to wash it all off. “Hey! I am your desk writing on pen pal!” We had quite a laugh about it, we ate lunch together everyday, our lockers were side by side, and we had been desk writing on pen pals for months and didn’t know it. I never offered to help him wash the desk though, that would have been too gay.
“Well you sure showed those guys!” Warren exclaimed. Several other critiques of my big mouth also chimed in; “I thought you were all talk an BS, but you sure showed us!” was the general theme. I knew now that I was the victim of mistaken identity or something, and had to answer very evasively to not let the cat out of the bag. The day continued like that, teachers, students, old foes, all seemed a little fearful if not respectful of me. I did not know how long it would last so I tried to milk it for all it was worth.
In the cafeteria at lunch time I tried to make the guys tell me the story of what happened, but they just figured I was looking for them to brag me up and so they refused. This went on for several days. Girls; pretty girls would stop me in the halls just to talk to me, they would stand so close to me I would get uncomfortable, as my charm with the ladies was rather clumsy at best. Often I would be making excuses to get away from them so I could get my feet out of my mouth. I was being approached so often that I was developing a style, but I was not yet smooth. I thought, “This is great!” but the whole time fearing I would be exposed for the fraud I was.
Eventually I had to know what went on, but no one would tell me the story of that day. I tried to get them to tell me but I couldn’t figure out how to get them to tell me without them figuring out that it was not me that this was all about. So one day I asked Warren to tell me exactly what had happened that day. He was reluctant; he just said “You know.” So I decided to tell him the truth of what I knew. I had to subdue my ego and for the first time and confess that I was not hero everyone thought I was.
“It was not me that was there that day,” I told him.
“C’mon it was so I saw you” he answered.
“No it was not me!” I insisted. I left school that day after lunch, remember?”
“Yeah, but you came back!”
“No I did not!”
“Yes you did I saw you!” he persisted.
“Ok, so you saw me, how did you know it was me?”
“What are you talking about I see you every day I know it was you!”
“Then tell me what did I do?” I asked.
“Those two guys on that prison education release program came to the school drunk with a knife and a gun to kill you! You know that!” he insisted. “When they found you, they tried to stab at you and you fought them and got the knife off of them!”
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“Well they pulled out a gun! Everyone that was watching the fight ran into the library for cover! Everybody was screaming and running to hide! But you grabbed the gun from the guy before he could shoot you and took the bullets out the gun. Then you smashed the hammer of the gun on the floor so it would not work anymore! But you know all that!” Warren said looking a little worried that I was denying that it was me.
“And you know for certain that it was me?” I asked.
“Yes” he replied.
“You were there?” I asked interrogating him.
“Yes yes I was there, I told you that! I was there!”
“How sure are you that it was me? As certain as me standing here?”
“Yes! As certain as I am that it is you who I am talking to right now!”
“Ok, then what happened?” I asked
“After you took the knife and gun away from them they tried to attack you but you got a hold of their wrists and held them till the cops came. When the cops arrived you handed one of them over to the cops, but he attacked the cops and he overpowered four cops and was trying to get one of the cop’s guns. Then you reached in and grabbed both the guy’s wrists with one hand and pulled him off the cops and held him till the cops could cuff him, the whole time holding the other guy by his wrists as well.”
“And this was me that did all that?” I asked with a hint of sarcasm.
“You know it was”. Warren responded, not appreciating my sarcastic tone.
“No I don’t, I left after lunch and I hitchhiked home! I did not come back; I left and was gone! Now who was it that you saw doing all these things?” I demanded. At that saying it seemed a light went on in Warren’s head, for it now seemed ridiculous to him that it could have been me, he did not say it, but I could see it in his eyes.
“Well it must have been that other guy that looks like you….” he mumbled.
“Looks like me? Who is this guy that looks so much like me that he fooled everybody?” I asked.
“Oh I think he is from the other side of the school.” He continued.
“Other side of the school what other side of the school?”
“I don’t know over there on the…” he mumbled and trailed off not answering. He was now very troubled, I could tell he did not want to talk about it any more, I could not get anymore clear answers out of him.
Many times I tried to find the mystery guy from the “other side of the school” but never found him. Warren refused to speak of it anymore, and would not help me search for the mystery man. It seemed to always really bother him to talk about it. I would learn from several other sources over time the same story with a few more details. The cops took the guys away hog-tied, threw them in the back of a cruiser and they smashed the windows out of the cop car with their feet as they drove away.
I know it was not me that day in that fight, I benefited from it several ways, I lived that was good, but better still I ruled that school, everyone thought I was one bad hombre. I would walk down the halls and students would turn and drop to their knees and bow down in mock worship as I walked by and shout “Swami!” I don’t know who started it, at first I didn’t like it, but one time I was walking down the hall, and they all started doing that “Swami” thing that they thought was so funny. I noticed this girl who heard the ruckus; she turned from her locker and saw what they were doing as I walked by. She began really giving me a look as if like she figured I must really be something if everyone did that. So from then on I didn’t discourage them from that game.
I never did find out whom it was that did my fighting for me that day, I was always afraid I would run into him some day and he would beat the crap out of me for being such an imposter. It was not only the students who thought it was me, it was the teachers, the principle; even the janitorial staff thought it was me. I knew it was not me. I had not had any memory laps; I knew where I was during that time and what I was doing. I was thirty miles away listening to something fall to earth from the sky. Even my huge ego does not pretend that I could have done those things. It is a mystery.
As with all true stories they are stranger than fiction, these two violent criminals as it turned out had a prior contact with me that I was completely unaware of until after it was all over. One time when called into the principles office it was revealed to me that, what these guys were in jail for was a crime that had occurred on the Talbot River. I recalled that night of crime.
It was one of those coal black nights, so dark that if you looked into its shadows you questioned if your eyes actually worked. Nothing much was happening; we were all sitting around the cottage, watching television. The cottage had changed from what it once was, its isolation overcome with roads, power lines, telephones, and neighbors. The sound of a Coleman lamp or the yellow glowing flame of coal oil not heard, seen or smelled around here anymore; the entertainment of Television replaced the wonder of a bonfire. Sonny and Cher was on, and we were watching it. I longed for those nights of the coal oil lamp of old, but they were gone. But at least we had Sonny and Cher.
I was feeling restless, so I went out side, and looked up; a billion or more stars decorated the sky. I loved this place, it had everything, and the song of dozens of bullfrogs up and down the river chorused the sounds of millions of crickets. The night air seemed to absorb its scent right out of the river; I inhaled deeply to take it all in. I stepped off the steps of the porch and felt the soft cool grass between my toes and soothe the bottom of my feet. I knew this would not last forever; I wanted to soak up all I could, while I could.
There was a path of light coming through the curtains and dimly lighting the slip where the “Sting” was docked. The “Sting was a boat my brother Dan had built, it was a speed boat, only eleven feet long and four and a half feet wide an less than two feet deep. It had a thirty-five horse Merc outboard on it, nearly double the design horsepower of the boat. It accelerated tremendously, sometimes tossing unprepared passengers out the back. I enjoyed that boat tremendously.
But the Sting was not there, I knew I had tied her up ok, so the fact that it was not where I left it surprised me. I walked up the edge of the slip where the Sting was supposed to be, and could see that it was floating at the mouth of the slip. I perceived that it was hooked on a cable that ran under the water across the mouth of the slip about four inches below the water surface. The only spot that the boat could clear the cable was at the center channel of the slip. The cable wrapped under a submerged cradle at that point; the cradle was on a track that ran on the bottom of the slip and up onto shore for removing Lady Susan from the water before winter.
When I would go in and out of the slip I had to navigate between the span of the cradle so as not to catch the cable under the water. The Sting was hooked on this cable and was not going anywhere; it was possible that I had not tied it well enough and it floated away from where I had tied it up. But it was a quiet night and I thought everyone needed some stirring up so I decided not to let on that I knew that the Sting was hooked on the cable. The rouse would not last long but at least it would be something to stimulate the evening a bit.
Ron came out side and when he had walked up to the edge of the slip although shrouded in the blackness of the night, he immediately saw the Sting floating at the end of the slip. “Oh it’s right there” he said and turned to return to the cottage, but he stopped in his tracks, “wait” he said, “Quiet! Listen”.
Down the river could be heard the slight sound of an aluminum boat in the water, the sound of paddles striking the aluminum gave it away. It was a ways off. Ron decided that we would leave the boat where it was and wait under a tree on the shore in the dark. Sure enough that boat we heard made its way in the dark directly to where the Sting was floating at the end of the slip. It was obvious that they had tried to steal her earlier but she got hooked on that cable and they could not get her out. They had now returned for a second try.
It was too dark for me to see exactly what they were up to, but we all could hear them as they fussed with the Sting at the end of the slip. Sooner than I had expected Ron stood up and boldly asked, “What’s going on here?” This completely caught them off guard, it was so dark we were less than fifteen feet away and they had no Idea we were there. Their reaction displayed how unprepared they were of being encountered.
From the darkness came a stream of foul language that would make a drill sergeant blush. None of it was coherent; all of it aggressive and directed at us; they’re intention was to intimidate us. At some point they reached the depth of their ignominy and ran out of things to shout at us. So they decided to act indignant; “we just came boating down the river and we see your boat trying to float away and so we try to rescue it for you! And then you start accusing us of trying to steal it!” was a sentence I discerned from amongst all there vituperation.
“We never said anything like that!” I spoke up. But Ron quickly hushed me.
“Ok well great, thanks” Ron said to them, “We can take it from here” he assured them.
But they were not satiated, and again began another rant of defamation, and this time was heard amongst the foul castigation was the sentence “Who do you think you are…the king of the river?” “Well he’s got our number,” I thought.
“Every thing is ok” Ron told them trying to calm them down, “just continue on your way everything is ok; just go!”
“Is there some kind of rope or long cable hooked to this thing or something?” They asked but not without punctuating it with plenty of opprobrium intent.
“Yeah there is a cable under the water there that it gets hooked on.” I answered, again Ron hushing me.
“You think you're pretty smart don’t you!” That was about all we were able to cipher from amongst another wave of debasement that they sent our way. “Pop em! Why don’t you just pop these guys!” was also heard amongst the foul verbiage.
I wanted to go onboard the Lady Susan and shine her search light on them, but Ron would not let me. Ron’s wife Debbie and my mom and my dad came out side to see what all the fuss was. This seemed to upset Ron even more and he quickly told them to go back inside. It was very dark, and it was not possible for me to see these guys at all. Later I would learn that Ron thought that they might have had a gun. He said it seemed like the one guy had something in his hand, and their words “pop em” might mean to shoot us.
Eventually they went on their way, we never called the police, I don’t know why, in hindsight it seems strange, but I recall that back then we had a tendency to not take anything too seriously. We should have called the police, but we did not. We also did not always have a good relationship with the police, especially Ron; he felt they unjustly persecuted him; giving him speeding tickets more often than they should; putting him in jail for unpaid parking tickets. The police were not exactly on our speed dial. Of course that’s just an expression, no one had speed dial back then.
The next day we found out that they had broken and entered several cottages up the river, and stolen many items. When the cottagers learned that we had caught them red handed and let the go they were very angry with us. To make things worse, a few days later, I had found where they hid the aluminum boat they used up a creek. I was canoeing and came across it hidden on the bank of a creek that flowed into the river. At the time I for some reason never connected it to those guys, just thought of it as a curiosity and forgot about it. But in hindsight I am sure it was their boat.
A week later more excitement came to the Talbot River, these guys were at it again, but this time they had larger booty on their little minds. They decided to steal a yacht from the Trent Talbot marina. At night that marina is as good as fort Knox for keeping a large yacht from theft. The whole waterway was literally locked at night. There was a low swing bridge that needed to be opened to let the boats out onto the lake, it was closed at night. The Talbot River would turn to shallow rapids if you headed up stream about ten miles, and the Trent canal had lift locks that were also closed at night. Even if those lift locks were open, they would not get too far without getting caught, because there is no where to hide in the canal system. Never the less they stole the biggest yacht in the marina.
They towed it down around a bend in the river before they decided to try to start it. But, unfamiliar with the boat, they accidentally pushed the siren button instead of the starter button. The silent still of the night was shattered by the wail of the yacht's siren. This woke up the marina owner; he looked out his bedroom window and saw that his brother’s boat was missing. If they had taken any of the other sixty yachts moored at the marina he would have never known, but his brother’s boat, he knew it was not supposed to go anywhere.
The owner of the marina immediately called the police. The perpetrators had only just figured out that they were land locked by the time the police had arrived and launched their police boat. It did not take much time for the police to find them. From the cottages the sound of the pursuit could be heard as it echoed through the trees in the night air. All we could do was interpret what we were hearing. The sound of an outboard throttled up, which must be the police boat, we assumed. Shouts in the night, unintelligible by the time we heard it at such a distance. An out board motor revving and the sound of propeller cavitations they must be turning hard about, we agreed.
More shouts this time we were able to recognize the verbal rancor, it was our filthy mouthed felons of a week ago. Then the night air was punctuated with short little pops, a kind of bang, but more like half a bang. Pop! …Pop! Pop! Pop! Came the reports; gun fire? We wondered. Then the motor of the outboard fell silent, to more pops were heard, then pops and bangs, very fast, faster than we could count. No one made a guess at what was going on now, we were all silent, listening to the sounds of what was going on, like a family of the twenties would be, all gathered around the radio.
Then the sound of men yelling was all we heard, voices, unintelligible, but distinct, strong authoritative voices, angry voices, cursing and swearing, desperate voices. Splashes in the water, then the sound of some kind of scuffle could hardly be heard. We now could hear the sound of police car sirens as they sped towards the occurrence; it seemed that they were coming from all directions. Then after a short while silence, we tried to listen for more, but it was silent, we all went back inside the cottage. Not knowing what the night had brought.
Ironically; it would be these two guys who were released into my school as some sort of strange prisoner education program. A program no doubt invented by teachers, the worshipers of education. It was these two guys who tried to kill me that day when I was not there! Truth truly is stranger than fiction. At least I think that is Ironic; or is it coincidental?” I don’t know if I will ever figure that one out.

I was startled by an ear splitting crack type of bang, followed by the unmistakable sound of breaking and snapping noises. There were all kinds of eerie noises whose source was in no way identifiable. Sounds like stone slabs being dragged over cobblestone groans, and more deafening cracks and tearing sounds. I could see white flashes of light inside my head as shock waves impacted my hypothermic body. Then my head was driven hard into the toilet bowl, it felt like it broke my neck, and I was convulsing and throwing up, choking on my own puke. Something was forcing my head down into the toilet bowl; I couldn’t lift it out. I was nauseous, and weak, extremely dizzy. Then all my discomfort seemed to fade away; I was drifting into unconsciousness. My last thoughts were, “Well I never got to live like a rock star, but at least I get to die like one!” I think I almost cracked a smile at my joke about dying with my head jammed in a toilet.
I was hoping my last thoughts would be more profound, but before I could come up with a better thought, it was all over. Warmth flooded my body; I fell into some soft bed of feathers, after that nothing, nothing at all.