The Cartoonist by Sean Costello

open his mouth, his lungs, suck in air. He looked up dizzily to the surface, to the light, the air...so damned close! And he fought, spending himself and his precious reserve of oxygen.
    But it was pointless. He was stuck. And the rotations of his body as he thrashed frantically about were entangling him in weeds like a fish in a net.
    Another gulp of air escaped the tightening vise of his chest.
    Why doesn’t somebody come? Bob! Krista! Please! PLEASE!!
    Scott Bowman thought about dying. He was twelve feet below his own dock and he was going to drown.
    There was a greenstick snap! inside his head then, and his mind went white with something pure and primitive, beyond the simple images of fear. The need for air would no longer be denied. It was everything now, the center of a shrinking universe, and Scott’s body obeyed its bellowed command. Helpless, he opened his mouth and inhaled. Water found passageways it had never been meant to find.
    Scott’s eyes bulged as suffocation roared like a brush fire through his brain. His chest clamped down furiously in an effort to expel the water from his lungs. Distantly he heard the mechanical clatter of Anderson’s outboard—or maybe it was the rattling bones of the Reaper, he no longer cared, was no longer capable of rational thought. Wholly desperate animal now, he lunged with a fierceness that flayed tendons from their bony tethers.
    But his leg would not move.
    His brain started to swell. Myriad bright-colored images capered crazily in. Water replaced air.
    He was drowning.
    Through darkening mists Scott saw the anchor, cutting the water like some macabre sea creature, all silver scales and spear-headed fins. Beyond understanding, edging on some oddly seductive and deadly euphoria, he watched its approach with idiot awe.
    Then he saw the yellow nylon rope.
    Bob Anderson’s boat was passing directly overhead. And it was dragging its anchor.
    Spurred by that most compelling of instincts, Scott fixed an eye on the rope and lunged. And when he had it, when it grew taut in his grip, he planted his free foot against the pinning rock and pushed, one last time.
    Topside, Anderson gunned the outboard.
    And Scott’s leg came free.

6
    RELEASING THE ROPE, SCOTT THRASHED blindly upward, seeking the light and the healing air. He surfaced beneath the dock, rapping his skull on a barrel, and thrust his face into the meager foot of air space. His fingers poked up between the cedar slats and dug in like gaffing hooks. Hacking and sputtering, he opened his mouth and sucked greedily at the air...the exquisite air, the living air. The sound of his daughter’s voice—high, hectic, shrieking his name in a pitch of terror—filled him with a strange kind of exultation. Hearing it meant he was alive. He hadn’t expected to be.
    Now Kath was on her knees, squinting down between the dock slats, grasping Scott’s fingers. Then Krista was there, her voice escalating hysterically, echoing her daughter’s terror.
    “Scott, Jesus Almighty, are you all right? Oh, sonofabitch, you scared me. Can you get out of there? Oh, God...oh, God. ”
    Then Bob Anderson and Fred Mills were above him, and Scott could see them all, peering down at him through the cracks with fish eye-lens faces. Lunatic laughter bubbled up in his throat and he coughed it out. He spluttered out mouthfuls of lake water, stared up with burning eyes between the dock slats...and breathed.
    The panicky gallop of female voices was interrupted by Anderson’s booming command: “That’s enough. He’s okay. We got to get him out from under there, that’s all.”
    “Oh, Scott...I thought you were...I...”
    “Fred, take the missus up to the house—”
    “No,” Krista said, clutching Anderson’s jacket sleeve. “I’m okay. I want to help.”
    Bob went down on one knee and gazed at Scott with his calm brown eyes. “Can you get your ass out from under there, Scotty?”
    Scott hacked violently as he tried to answer, the sound like an