An excerpt from Part Three: Slyvia

15.

And the fish of birth here 
at the embryonic sea
came at me from between
her arms, or this fish
had human hands
which gripped me
in an unbreakable
grasp.

But this was not a dolphin
or any other charming fish
that offered a kinship
with human beings;
instead, its great head
narrowed as it rose
from the sand between
my legs, and abruptly
its mouth opened sharklike,
and I saw rows and rows
of pointed teeth now come
snapping and grinding
at me.

I yanked my arms backwards
but could not escape the shark's
grip, and only succeeded
in pulling the teeth closer
to my legs.

The fetid breath of hell
hotly blew from this beast,
stinging my eyes.

Again I yanked, and again
brought the snarling head
nearer to me.  I was lost.
The teeth ground into
my legs, and I felt my bones
snap.

Still held by my hands,
I was actually now standing
on stumps inside the grinding
head of the shark.  The pain
was all terror, and this new body
of mine did not register the torment,
or perhaps the pain was so great
I did not yet realize the disaster
to my new flesh.

Inch by inch I sank into the mouth,
the gnawing, piercing teeth
of the beast eating my legs
away.  How many times
was I meant to die?
And if I died in hell,
did that mean the end
of my very soul?

Now the sounds of the teeth
became the greatest torture,
the noise of gnawing bones,
shredded by the incisors 
of this terrible fish.
And as I watched in horror,
my waist entered the machine
of the shark, and the fish
now shook me back and forth
as if it could sever me in half,
as if it could ingest greater
chunks of me.

I am doomed.
I am meant to disappear
into the teeth of the shark.
I am meant to be gone
from the face of hell,
gone from the community
of souls; yet even condemned
to hell, I was still within
the conspiracy of souls
of the human beings --
I was still of the collection,
but now I was meant
to be gone . . .
the fish grinded me,
the fish ingested
my bowels,
and I felt this new pain;
I felt the extinction of me,
I felt my passage
from what it means
to be of the human.

At last the fish released
my hands, most likely
a final insult, for the shark
now gnawed into my torso
even more feverishly,
and I could only pound
my fists into the slimy
head of the beast who
devoured me.

Again the shark jerked
my body back and forth,
and I now spied a woman's
head rise from the dark green
waters of the lake, a beautiful
woman with wet blonde hair,
and soon her tunic-clad body
was fully upright there in 
the shallow waters beyond
the wrenching head of the beast.
This sweet woman looked at me
calmly, catching my eye,
as though she offered her
friendship but waited for me
to ask, like a woman at a party
who must allow the protocol
of the man speaking first.

"Help me!  I beg you!"
The horror of my soul's
extinction led me directly
to begging.

The woman nodded,
then kicked through the water
to the head of the shark
where she slapped the beast
near its deathly black eye.
The shark, on command,
expelled me, coughed me
out onto the beach.

The beautiful woman next
pointed out into the lake,
and the shark obediently
extricated itself from the sand
then dove into the dark
green waters of the lake.
In only a few seconds
I had gone from being prey
to seeing the beast vanish.
I laid my head back on the sand
and looked into the green sky.