ALL THE RAGE (writer: T.M. Frazier)(13)

And then another.

In fact she looked pissed off. Like my dying was annoying her.

Fucking figures.

Black circles started to take over the edges of my eyes, growing larger and darker as I faded further and further away. My cast, which was seven thousand pounds and ironically scheduled to come off in the morning, pulled me down like an anchor. Further and further I sank until my feet hit the bottom.

I was helpless to do anything but watch the girl above me, her face distorted and blurred by the rippling green water. With one last frantic effort, I called upon every muscle in my arms and shoulders to try and swim my way back up to the surface, but it was useless. I never made it more than an inch or two off the bottom.

I must have been nearing the end because after inhaling another burning lungful of water, I imagined that the beautiful girl up on the surface had dove into the pool to join me, her golden hair splayed out all around her like a mermaid. Bubbles floated out of her nose as she swam toward me. I even imagined that she grabbed me by the wrist. I could actually feel her skin against mine as she hoisted me up through the water, dragging me toward the surface with a strength most grown men didn’t possess.

I guess mermaids are strong like that.

When the sun hit my face like a hot wet towel, I opened my mouth to gasp for air but I couldn’t draw it in. I was floating in and out of consciousness at that point, but I’m pretty sure the girl was standing over me, tapping her bare toes on the deck. She growled like she was frustrated and I’m positive she rolled her eyes before pinching the bridge of my nose and tipping my head back. I could feel the side of one of her breasts against my chest through her tiny bikini top, and if I wasn’t about to f*cking die, it would have been one of the best days of my life. Who wouldn’t want a to feel a little mermaid tit on their last day? She leaned down lower, her face hovering just over mine for a were about to connect with mine…and it all went black.


I was pulled back to reality with a cough that felt as if I’d been stabbed in the lungs, along with a feeling like I’d smoked every one of the cigarettes my gran smoked during her eighty years on the planet. And as a lifetime three-pack-a-day-er…it was a lot. I gasped for air, finally able to pull a little through my windpipe, but as it entered my lungs, it burned worse than the water. Suddenly, I was shoved over onto my side where I threw up over and over again, replacing more water with air in my lungs. This seemed to go on for hours, although it was probably only minutes. I was seeing stars by the time I could actually inhale again without feeling like I was being ripped apart from the inside.

A little tongue licked my eyeball. Murray. He stood over my face, drooling like we hadn’t almost gone down the f*cking river. He shook out his wet coat, sending a spray of water and a dusting of little black and white hairs over my face and into my mouth. I wiped at my tongue with my hand as he sauntered back into the house through the open back door.

She saved Murray too?

Was she even real?

I turned over just in time to see a high and tight perfect ass, which was barely covered in a tiny scrap of white. The bottoms of her ass cheeks on display as she, and said ass, headed down the stairs at the back of the deck.

She was real after all.

She was real, and she was leaving.

I tried to call out to her but all I managed was to cough some more. My throat felt as if I’d taken up gargling glass. “Wait!” I finally managed to scratch out. I struggled to bring myself into a sitting position.

The girl turned around and flipped me off, in the process giving me a great view of her rack, which heaved up and down as she caught her breath. Water trickled down her face framing bright blue-green eyes. I followed the drops as they fell from her chin into the valley between her tits, and suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to be the thin strap of white that was holding the tiny triangles of her top together. “Because of you,” she said, pointing at me accusingly. She then pointed into the house. “And that little tick dispenser, I now have to go visit the nearest HAZMAT unit to ward off the f*cking plague that’s been incubating in that cesspool of yours.”

“Say what?” I asked, not fully able to comprehend what she was saying, but clearly this chick was not happy with me for some reason. I wasn’t unfamiliar with girls being pissed off at me. Actually, I was quite used to it. I’d crawled out of one too many bedroom windows in the middle of the night without ever calling again. But this chick was on a whole other level of mad.

It was hot.

Everything about her, from the way she glared at me, narrowing her eyes, to the pure anger radiating off of her, screamed hatred.

Fuck, maybe I did know her.

No, there was no f*cking way I’d forget that face or that body…or that scowl.

“Clean. Your. Fucking. Pool,” she snapped, enunciating each word separately before turning and disappearing down the steps.

What in the actual f*ck?

I felt this deep-seated want. No, a need, to run after her and drag her back onto the deck by her f*cking ponytail for yelling at me when the bitch didn’t even know me.

And I would’ve run after her, if I could walk, or move…or breathe.

Maybe I was dead after all, because nothing that happened since I’d opened the back door had made any f*cking sense. Or since I’d gotten injured for that matter. I lay back and let my head fall against the deck. I could see the clouds passing over the sun through the thin skin of my closed eyelids.