Surf-lit: “He stares up at the carpeted roof panel with the LED lighting and grimaces. He thinks about how he judged surfers with vans like this; It didn’t matter how well they surfed, they were bound to be dickheads. And now it’s him”

His mind claws at the bad thing. It might be a dream but sometimes it’s not.

Something doesn’t feel right.

It’s the feeling he sometimes gets in the morning when the limbo between sleep and waking has briefly freed him from something awful that could come flooding back at any moment.

His mind claws at the bad thing. It might be a dream but sometimes it’s not.

He was on the boat again, trapped in the hold. He remembers the cloying darkness, the heat and throb of the engine, the plastic boxes stacked with ice, the layered smells of diesel and remnants of old, dried-in prawns, and the thudding on the deck above as the men continued working.

He remembers the feeling of knowing they would be laughing at him. Grown men, hard men, buoyed by humiliating a 13 year old.

He fumbles for the hood of the sleeping bag, pulls his knees up into his chest and extricates the last gasps of sleep’s warmth. He tries to shiver off the feeling of dread as if it were trapped in the coldness of the air.

The van doesn’t help. He wishes he was back in the old one. He stares up at the carpeted roof panel with the LED lighting and grimaces. He thinks about how he judged cunts with vans like this. Fucking Transporters and Sprinters. It’s embarrassing. It didn’t matter how well they surfed, they were bound to be dickheads. And now it’s him.

At least there’s a crack in his windscreen. He’s refused to fix it. It makes him a little more comfortable, somehow.

“Wankers,” he mutters to himself.

He’s listened to the sound of the building swell with apprehension. Just beyond the condensation and the cold, metal panels it’s been bombing on the reef all night. He knows it’ll be big today, knows that he’ll struggle to be sharp enough.

If he misses one or two early it’s over. The crowd, his confidence, all will devour him.

“Fuck it.” he says, shaking his head in one quick motion like he’s trying to knock something off.

And what board? It’s always the same. A relentless carousel of decisions that probably amount to nothing either way. Any board will do.

At least it can be his pre-loaded excuse. Shouldn’t have brought this one out, he’ll say when he misses one, nodding down at his board. Yeah, yeah. Bit more volume, yeah. Haven’t been getting in much. Yeah.

It’s all bullshit.

None of it really matters. Not in the micro of how much he enjoys his surf, and not in the macro of fucking-everything-else.

He wishes he could shake the feeling of being a fucking fraud.

He remembers more.

He’s squinting at the shaft of light pouring down as they scrape back the heavy hatch cover. The panicked cawing of white feathers tumbling towards him merges with cackling laughter. He can’t tell whether the sound is coming from bird or man.

Mostly it’s gulls they’ll throw into the darkness, but sometimes he’ll get pelted with other things, small octopus, fish not worth keeping, spongy pink growths attached to chunks of sea coal.

He shakes his head again, this time so hard he feels a sickening pressure at the back of his skull.

Funny, he thinks, as the rumble of water over rock snaps him back. He travels this far then gets uneasy about going in. It’s getting harder.

Could he move? Should he? Think about what you’d be giving up. And would you even surf more often, or just be pickier?

Fuck it. Same thought spiral. Still no conclusion.

At any rate, she would never come. And you’ve got the boy to think of now.

As he drove away, both were crying. The entire twenty-four hours before leaving were spent arguing. He’d shouted, said things he knew would cut. It was pathetic, letting his anxiety and guilt about going surfing manifest like this.

The long, isolated drives will catch him open and he’ll want to call her, say sorry. Sometimes he feels like calling within a few miles. But he knows it won’t change anything, apart from quelling his guilt, briefly.

Maybe he’ll call, maybe he won’t. Sometimes he can avoid it and the moment passes. Sometimes it lingers until finally he meanders home. Those times are the worst. Returning disappointed in yourself. A waste of time, a waste of emotion.

He’s thinking about the boat again.

He didn’t mind the gulls. Their squawking, hell-bent flaps were always quickly silenced by the dark as they cowered silently in the corners, just waiting for it to be over.

He shuffles out of the sleeping bag, shivering and exhaling loudly. He leans over the front seats and wipes the condensation from the windscreen to get a look at the reef. Black-clad figures move silently over the rocks, heading for the water in the retreating darkness.

He looks at the crack in his windscreen.

He thinks about the fracture spreading from the bottom corner and into his eyeline like a grim, translucent spider.

He can’t tell if it’s actually growing or not, he thinks it probably is but he can’t know for sure. He should get it fixed, but he won’t.

Instead he’ll try not to see it in his peripheral vision, try to stare right through it as it spreads or doesn’t.

It could shatter at any moment.

He’s sure of that.