Nazi Sharks! (3 page)

“I don’t know nothing,” Costner
exclaimed, perhaps a little defensively. “You suspect—?”

“Foul play?” the Sheriff
answered, idly examining an old protein powder jar that had been
converted into a ‘Tips For Boners’ collection. “Hmm. Don’t like
suspecting. Suspecting’s for caribou and war criminals. More of an
evidence man, myself. A little bit old-fashioned that way. Like you
were the last man seen with the young lady. Like your shirt was in
her car. Bit of blood on it, too.”

The sheriff’s deeply wrinkled,
white face squinted harshly toward the sleazeball in the speedo as
he set the boner-tips back on the plywood stage. Smoke rose from
his pipe as if from the teat of El Diablo. The old man didn’t
sweat; his powdery eyebrows appeared to deflect all heat.

Costner crumpled into his
green, plastic beach chair like a redneck’s beer can. He glanced
around to ensure no-one was near enough to hear the tragic tale he
would have to tell.

“It’s not as you think it,
Sheriff,” he stated solemnly. “I pawed at her breasts like a
burning monkey and her hand struck my face with the force of an
overripe banana. Insulted, I went home, my pride as shrunken as my
penis. But that was all, Sheriff,” he protested to those frosty
eyebrows. “I went home and took care of business. Come on! If
someone killed her—you know who…”

“I know nothing but facts,”
Sheriff Babbage declared, dumping his ashes dramatically into the
sand. So dramatically, Costner’s gaze was taken to the ashes as
they blew and vanished into the dust, as life vanishes from earth
and as bimbos disappear from bikini swim teams…

Chapter 4

This was where they were today.
In a cheap motel room wearing only bikini bottoms and t-shirts, as
all hot girls in motel rooms must do. Where they would be tomorrow
or the next day was to fate, the wind, and Edwina’s impulses. For
this week, they were 1950s synchronized swimmers.

Two of the girls were lying on
one bed, their shapely legs kicked up in that, ‘I’m going to do the
crossword, but sexily,’ kinda way, while the other two sat facing
the TV with their legs curled beneath them. The local news was
covering that story about the Alsatian who nursed a pelican to
health.

The hotel room door flew open.
The thick-lashed eyes of all the girls turned to the negative space
of the doorframe expectantly. The wait was over.

The fifth member and unofficial
leader of The Bubblegum Queens entered the doorframe, a newspaper
in one hand, an overflowing bucket of delicious, fried chicken in
the other. Her Elvis t-shirt barely reached her thighs and the King
gazed approvingly into the sexy hotel room. Uh-huh.

“Queens!” Edwina shouted,
shutting the door behind her and pressing her plump buttocks
against the cheap wood. “There’s a serious situation. So serious, I
forgot napkins. The Shakatitt Shark.”

“Aw man, Eddie,” Steph cried,
her June Cleaver hair bobbing dramatically, “no napkins!”

“Wait,” Andrea said, looking up
from her sexy crossword puzzle (see?), “what’s a Shakatitt shark
and can you deep-fry it?”

Edwina held up the newspaper,
bearing the headline, “The Shakatitt Shark Strikes Again!”

“The Shakatitt Shark strikes
again!” the news anchor stated. Mila finished turning up the volume
on the local news and grabbed herself a piece of greasy
chicken.

“It was on the DVR,” she
explained taking a bite of the juicy, white meat. Such a delicious
mix of spices and herbs—how do they do it?

“Yet another young woman has
gone missing from the Shakatitt Beach area,” the female anchor
declared in a husky voice that betrayed a life-long taste for
whiskey. “Melanie Johnson, of the Water Melons synchronized swim
team, has not yet been found following our previous broadcast. She
is presumed dead, another victim.”

In the top, right corner of the
frame, a photo of Melanie, a girl blessed with some honest-to-god
tetherballs, was displayed. She will be remembered by the people of
Shakatitt Beach as she lived: wearing a bikini that tried its
hardest to support and conceal several pounds of pure boobage.

“Huh,” Nikki wondered. “They
misspelled her name ‘Melony.’”

“Seems appropriate,” Mila
noted, wiping fingers across her Ronettes t-shirt.

“As of now,” the anchorwoman
continued, “four other young women have been identified as victims
of the same killer known as ‘The Shakatitt Shark’ for the single,
symbolic bite mark left on each victim’s thigh.”

Melanie’s photo was replaced at
this point by a stock photo of a bite mark, in case the residents
of Shakatitt Beach had forgotten what one looks like.

“Criminal profilers suspect the
killer is a local of the Shakatitt Beach area. They warn all young
women to exercise extreme caution when going out in the evening.
Keep in groups or just stay in the house.”

Edwina looked to wipe some
grease off her hand and instantly regretted forgetting the napkins.
With her left hand, she grabbed the remote and turned off the
TV.

“So there ya go!” Edwina
concluded. “No-one goes out alone anymore. I could’ve been
Shakatitt Shark bait!”

“It’s broad daylight, Eddie,”
Nikki argued.

“Hey! Anyone could be the
killer. Anyone. We don’t know. Could even be that Kevin Costner
guy!”

Andrea nodded solemnly and bit
a deep, meditative chunk out of her drumstick. “Y’know,” she said
between chews, “I bet his real name’s Enrique Gutierrez.”

“But he changed it,” Steph
added, “because he’s always been obsessed with Kevin Costner.”

“Sure,” Nikki agreed. “When he
was a boy, his grandmamma would take him to see the same Costner
films over and over. He’s seen
Dances with Wolves
seventy-four times!”

“But she died during their
twelfth viewing of
Waterworld
,” Mila said.

Nikki nodded, dropping a
meatless chicken bone back into the bucket. “And he’s been
traumatized ever since. So becoming Kevin Costner, in a way—”

“—is the only thing that makes
him feel whole!” Steph completed with the joy that always follows a
great epiphany.

“Exactly,” Andrea agreed.

“That’s certainly possible,”
Edwina acknowledged to her fellow Bubblegum Queens. “And need I
remind you that Kevin Costner played a woman-stalking serial killer
in
Mr. Brooks
? Meaning—if being Costner really is that
important to him, it’s even more likely he’s the Shakatitt
Shark.”

Altogether, the Bubblegum
Queens declared, “Oooo.”

“Good point,” Mila
concluded.

“Yeah, so, you see, this is
serious stuff,” Edwina said. “Because, keep in mind, if any one of
us dies, the Cherry Bombs are gonna win this competition. And
that’s the worst thing ever. Right?”

“Right!” the girls agreed
vehemently, their greasy fists raised high.

Chapter 5

“Yeah, so, you see,” Sherry
explained to the Cherry Bombs as they devoured the pizza in their
bikini bottoms and Ramones t-shirts, “this is serious stuff. If any
one of us dies, the Bubblegum Queens will win this competition. And
we want that like we want more frequent periods—am I right?”

“Right!” the girls agreed,
raising their pizza slices above their neon, psychobilly
wedges.

Chapter 6

In the golden light of evening,
the wave appeared blue that swept the voluptuous floating body
through a few strands of seaweed and into the surf. As the body
crashed into the moist sand, one tit knocked helplessly against the
other, a symbol of mortality.

Then she flipped over with the
agility of a wounded gymnast and rejoined her bootylicious
companions. They frolicked just off the surf, developing their
swimming skills to just a few more steps above sinking. If they had
any concept of synchronicity, they did not betray it. Any childhood
swimming lessons they dutifully forgot. But enthusiasm and energy
they displayed in abundance. Plus they’re pretty nice to look
at.

“We’re totally gonna win this!”
Florence told her friends with all the optimism of someone who’s
always been rewarded for her good intentions or even for just being
there. She clumsily stroked her way above a confused crab and gave
gravity the ol’ one-two.

“I hope so,” Betty replied
breathlessly, giving it her all despite her lifelong, chronic
asthma, “the prize money is sweet.”

“Yeah,” Louisa agreed,
struggling to master the fine art of not-sinking, “you can finally
get your little bro that cancer treatment he needs.”

“Exactamundo,” Betty answered,
flipping over for a backstroke, her taut abs tensing as they
resurfaced. Betty always loved her abs. She named them ‘Arnold’
after a seal pup that died in her arms once. It was that day that
committed her to a life of charity, sit-ups, and nude calendar
modeling.

Susan doggy-paddled around the
others proudly, just as her mother’s string of sleazy boyfriends
had taught her to do. She picked a string of seaweed from the
depths of her DDs with a giggle. Somehow things always seemed to
get caught in there! Crumbs, hair, drool, hands!

“And what’s left we can donate
to the Cystic Fibrosis Society,” she said.

“Thanks, guys!” Tracy said
humbly, “I don’t let it get me down.”

In fact, ever since she’d been
diagnosed, Tracy had a new attitude toward life. She took joy in
every day, every good smell, every funny joke, and just for being
there, right then and there, with her wonderful friends in the
wonderful air and the beautiful sun setting and the wonderful
water! Gosh, life is great and even the disability fetishists have
good hearts deep down, she was sure.

Betty gasped, not one of her
familiar asthma gasps, but a decidedly startled gasp.

“What was that?” she
exclaimed.

“Sorry,” Louisa apologized,
“I’ve been gassy all day.”

“No,” Betty said, “I thought I
saw something—something moving out there.”

“Gee, I hope it’s not a shark,”
Tracy said.

“Couldn’t be. It was like a
bunch of sticks or something.”

“There it is,” Susan shouted,
pointing out to an approaching rectangular formation of shark fins
like angry erections.

“I think those really are
sharks,” Florence gasped. “A whole kaboom of them.”

“What?” Betty asked.

“Kaboom,” Florence repeated.
“It’s the scientific word for a grouping of sharks.”

“I thought it was a school,”
Tracy demurred.

“No, no, no,” Florence argued,
“nothing bigger than a tuna can be in a school. It’s a kaboom.”

“Well, the kaboom is getting
closer,” Susan noted.

“To the shore!” Betty shrieked.
“And quickly!”

The girls swam frantically
toward the shore, again, with a lot more enthusiasm than any real
ability. An E for Effort, but to no avail.

Initially it felt to Florence
like a mustache brushing against her leg, and she imagined one of
those highly-amusing pairs of Groucho glasses. Alas, the mustachey
brushing swiftly became a sharky biting across her pelvis. The jaws
crushed and ground the delicate, female bones, rending and
devouring her whole reproductive system in a single, horrific bite.
As the shark pulled away, an ovary hung out the side of its mouth.
Florence’s slender, award-winning legs floated to the surface as
she herself never could quite manage. Her torso sank swiftly
beneath the surface to feed another shark. Before her dying plunge,
she only had time to say, “Swim, Susan, I’ll distract them.”

But Susan felt herself suddenly
straddling a hard, throbbing mass of muscle, like King Kong’s
penis. She remembered playing this game with mom’s eighth and
twelfth boyfriends. Soon the game became all too serious as the SS
armband flashed into her vision, memories of studying Anne Frank in
high school flooding her brain. The phallic beast’s prehensile face
met hers in a stunningly acrobatic move that no normal shark could
manage and her torso suddenly seared with outrageous agony. Then,
as her spinal cord was brutally nibbled into breadcrumbs, she felt
nothing but the onset of death.

“I love you guys,” she
blubbered with her dying breath as her head sunk beneath a red,
frothing sea, where her own left breast and Florence’s
gorgeously-sculpted legs floated before her fading vision. “I’m
glad—” glub “—my last mome” —glub— “nts were with you!”

Tracy shrieked in horror and
dismay. She looked back to see Susan not sinking, but devoured with
one hungry chomp. If the methodical, super-organized attack alone
didn’t give it away, the armbands and soulless eyes did: these were
Nazi sharks!

“This is what we get for global
warming,” Tracy exclaimed in well-intentioned panic.

Her contrition did nothing to
save her arm from the thousands of kilograms of pressure and the
millions of kilograms of hatred in the Nazi shark’s bite. With one
arm missing and cystic fibrosis, Tracy strove toward shore with no
more hope than a fat girl at a frat party. Blood streamed behind
her in circular puddles as she progressed sporadically, the salt
water tripling the agony.

Shore seemed close to Tracy,
whether it really was or not. But her courage swiftly dissipated as
she observed Louisa pulled apart by two sharks, her kind, decent
innards spilled into the sea like leftover spaghetti sauce.

“Louisa,” she exclaimed, “you
were one of the most wonderful people—Ahh!”

The pain of her arm vanished as
a new, significantly worse pain overtook her brain. The jaws of
evil had grasped onto her right leg and began squeezing slowly, not
a chomp, but a leisurely bite. The damn shark was savoring her!
It was savoring her
!