NEIL UNDER THE SEAS

Neil has been lonely all his life, and he's lonely now in his bath

Neil Mantric had always wanted an exotic life. It was something he really believed he was owed by this or that set of gods in this or that sky. As it was, his life had always been a sort of drab affair, nothing exotic at all. Even his mother, when she wasn’t trying to educate him, was drunk, and his dad had died years ago, if he’d ever existed at all, though he supposed there nmust have een a donor of sperms somewhere along the line.

It had all started when he was a little pre-school lad, maybe a tad advanced for his age because his mother had actually taught him and he managed to read for himself the colourful books meant for parents to read to their children, fairy stories set in far off lands where there was sand under the feet and stars in the sky. He learned to love places like that.

So when he was quite accidentally unwillingly and frighteningly apparently involved in a shipping disaster not far from a multitude of small sandy islands complete with palm trees and very small populations he felt all his dreams had come true. Or would have, if he could manage to both learn how to swim all on his own in the warm waters of the seas and then crawl or breast stroke or even back stroke his way to the golden fringes of the nearest beckoning beach island.

The miracle is, he managed it. But he had help.

At first he thought it was a mermaid. He might have been an adult but he still believed that out there in the sultry wild there must be such people as mermaids, though he very much hated the idea of mermen. They might represent opposition, and he’d never been very good with opposition. Neil Mantric had been born a loner, and believed that was what he would always be. It was his gift (or curse) from the gods.

So he’d always been a lonely kid and then, as the years passed, a lonely teenager and now he was a lonely man. He was used to loneliness. He could live in the extremes of his imagination, so this new environment may well prove to be just right for him.

And to cap everything he was on a ship that collided with something, nobody knew what, and while the crew was rescuing women and children he found himself in salty water. Some cruise!

“Well, well, well,” said a sultry voice as he heaved himself out of the sea and onto the sand. To his surprise whoever it was seemed to speak his own language, English, perfectly, as if the words came out of the mouth of an English woman.

Then, to add to his surprise it said, “isn’t it little Neil Mantric?”

He was confused. How could a desert island in the south seas have anyone on it who knew him? It was plainly impossible! Unless she’d been on the same ship as him and involved in the same wrecking?

“Who?” he stammered.

“You mean you’ve forgotten me already?” she asked, teasingly, “after what we got up to the other night? You haven’t forgotten that, surely, because I haven’t? Neil Mantric and his way with women when the lights are off?”

He couldn’t help blinking almost ferociously. “Who… who are you?” he asked, rather feebly compared to his violent blinking episode.

“You don’t remember me?” she asked, and from the sound of her voice it seemed that she must be suddenly heart-broken.

He decided he must have knocked his head on a submerged rock or something below the surface of the quiet sea, and had his memories forced out of him, because he had no idea who she was, though when he looked at her through bleary eyes he knew she was the most ravishing creature he had ever seen. Her long dark tresses, her perfectly toned dusky skin, her bright and exceedingly lovely dark eyes, those white teeth, wonderfully even and smiling at him, everything about her spoke of sweet perfection.

And he was feeble, in her power.

“Who … where…?” he asked, his own voice sounding crass and ignorant as the light of day slowly faded.

“Who are you?” she asked with a giggle, “or who am I? And where is this island in the salty seas?”

He nodded.

“And who are you, who I know so well” she asked sweetly, “you with the warmth of a god in your breath and the surging beauty of a monster on your flesh…?”

“No…” he croaked, and she smiled again, warmly.

“Come,” she said, “you look uncomfortable in your soggy clothes. We have a shower and a bar where sweet nectar can be bought, to cheer you up and soothe your fractured heart…”

Then she took him by one hand and led him out of the water and off towards a small coppice of luxurious palms, heavy with coconuts, and the smell of luscious exotic food in the air..

There was a small bar in a clearing, and music playing, the sweetest sounds he’d heard since mummy had carolled about Christopher Robin in his ears many years ago when she’d been sober.

The girl, or woman, he could see that she was certainly more than a teenager but that was only a blessing because the emotions that started flooding through him were what he thought that his feelings for a grown woman should be.

“You’re Maria?” he asked.

“Call me by my name! Of course, to you I’m Maria. To my man I’m Petra… I’m to every man what he wishes me to be.”

So she had a man. Neil had best wipe the thoughts that were surging through him right away. But it wasn’t easy. But then, it had never been easy. He remembered that girl at school years ago, when he’d been sixteen or seventeen and desire had started raging through him. Who was she? He’d almost forgotten her. Long dark hair like this lovely woman, a voice sweet as hers too.

“Who was she?” he asked, and he knew that Maria wouldn’t know, How could she, half a world away from his obsession of half a decade ago.

“You loved her,” laughed Maria, “I could tell when I dreamed your dream under these very palm trees and my angel consort soothed my thoughts with song and rhyme. She was there and looking at you and you were yearning to touch her, hold her hand maybe, or stroke her hair.”

“But where?” he asked.

“Silly boy! I was in your dreams like I am now and where I’ll probably always be, Maria to you and Petra to him!”

And she pointed to a dark shadow wriggling along the ground like a snake, and smiled at it.

And Neil sighed his sadness as his breathing stopped. Something had gone wrong. He hadn’t learned to swim and he hadn’t crossed the sea from a wrecked ship to this paradise.

“Serve you right, behaving like that, touching yourself in the bath like no man should!” his mother’s drunken voice shrieked at him.

And he felt her hand on his chest as she pushed and pushed and pushed his head under the already cold water of his bath.

“Dirty, dirty boy!” she screamed, and he knew she must be right because, despite the spirits from her jar, she always was.

“Maria…” he burbled through the bubbles.

And his last thought was acceptance that he might be dead.

Not much change there, then.

© Peter Rogerson, 05.07.22

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Reviews

[Robert Haigh]

A wild and whacky tale of imagination! Thank you for the smile!