Sand and Suffering Chapter 2: Alcohol can be dangerous, a rent fanfic

NoV: And now, for the second chapter. Heehee. I don't own Jaws.

Quote of the day:

"The more you eat, the more you know."

-Ari-san .

Maureen didn't subscribe to the shaving cream theory and merely put an ice cube on the sting to soothe it. Joanne stood over her as she wallowed on the bed, whining about her pain. "I'm dying," Maureen whimpered.

"You got stung by a jellyfish," Joanne reminded her. "I think you'll live."

"My head hurts," Maureen mentioned. "I don't want to go back to the beach." She began leafing through the hotel brochure. Seeing something that caught her interest, she said, "Oh, pookie! They're feeding the baby sharks in the lobby in ten minutes! Can we go watch?"

Joanne shrugged. "Why not?" she replied.

Roger went up to the bar and leaned onto it, relaying his drink order. He stood quietly watching the beach bum bartender mixing his drinks. Roger looked back toward the beach where Mimi and Angel were just starting to get into the surf. Mimi's teeny bikini was nearly invisible from that distance.

Interrupted from his thoughts by an unnerving creaking sound, Roger looked around in confusion, and couldn't find the source of the noise. That is, until it crashed down on his head. The wooden rim around the roof of the bar was heavily laden with shelves of all different kinds of liquors and flavors. The least sturdy of these shelves lost its hold and fell directly on top of Roger, who fell down immediately under the pressure. Moments later, the bartender had hopped the bar and was at his side, yelling, "Dude! Dude, are you okay? Want me to call an ambulance?"

Roger came to his senses and looked around. He was lying on his back on the sand, broken bottles all around and a wooden shelf on his chest. He pushed the shelf away and tried to sit up, his head exploding into pain. "Ahhh…..shit," he cursed, holding his throbbing head.

"Aw, man," the bartender lamented. "I knew I shouldn't have held that shelf up with thumb tacks!"

Roger wanted to give the guy a piece of his mind, or at least an incredulous look, but that would cause too much pain to shoot across his head. Instead, he attempted to stand without crunching any of the glass under his feet. The pain subsided considerably when he stood up straight, so Roger got to give his incredulous look. He then began to walk toward the umbrella, which strangely he could no longer find.

"Dude, don't you want your drinks?" the bartender called after him.

Mimi felt the chilly ocean water run over her feet and shuddered. "Ooh, it's so cold!" she cried.

"Do you want to get a float like Collins?" Angel wondered, already up to her knees in the water.

"Where is Collins?" Mimi asked. She put a hand to her forehead to aid her in looking out across the waves. She didn't see Collins or his red float.

Angel began to look also. "I don't know," she said. She scanned the water. "He was right there a minute ago." She pointed to a spot where she thought he had been.

"Maybe he got out of the water," Mimi suggested. "Maybe he was thirsty or had to go."

Angel shrugged. "We would have seen him though, wouldn't we?"

Mimi looked back up the beach, not seeing Collins. "Yeah, you're right."

"Collins!" Angel called out in every direction. She began to worry, not getting any response.

Collins sat up on the float. He wondered what was taking Angel and Mimi so long. He looked toward the shore to see what they were doing. He panicked when he realized that there was no shore. Collins looked in every direction, but only saw ocean. He pulled his feet up onto the float, images from Jaws assaulting his mind. "Oh, god," he said. He started to paddle toward the land, but soon realized that he had no idea which way the land was.

"Help," he whispered.

Roger found Mark at last, perplexed that the cameraman was actually laying out on the beach without the umbrella. He sat on his towel and grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler.

A few minutes later, Mimi and Angel came running up to them. Angel looked about ready to cry when she said, "Collins is gone!"

"Huh?" Roger wondered.

"He was out there on the float, and now we can't find him," Mimi explained.

"Ah, he's probably back in the room or at the pool or something," Roger said, rubbing his head. "You probably just missed each other."

Mimi gestured to Mark, asleep, his exposed skin pinking. "What's with Mark?"

"Guess he finally decided to live a little," Roger shrugged. "Maybe he saw a beach bunny he wants to chat up once he gets a little tan."

"What if Collins drowned?" Angel cried, clinging to Mimi in despair.

"No, no," Mimi said, comfortingly. "If he had drowned, we would have found the float, right Roger?" She said the last two words with a subtle tone, which prompted Roger to agree with her.

"Yeah, why don't you go check the pool and the room," Roger suggested.

"Yeah, and I'll wade out in the water a little way and see if I can see him from there," Mimi said.

Angel nodded. "Okay," she said, hiking toward the hotel.

"I'll go with you," Roger said to Mimi.

"What about Mark?" Mimi asked.

"We'll leave him here in case Collins comes back to the beach," Roger replied.

"Hey, where's my pina colada?" Mimi wondered.

"Don't ask," Roger insisted.

Maureen ignored the pain on her tummy so she could squeal over the cute baby sharks. The lobby had a huge, thirty-foot tall, fifty-foot wide tank that was home to six baby sharks: three hammerheads and three tiger sharks.

A man with a microphone stood in front of the tank, explaining shark behavior and feeding regulations. "So," he said in conclusion, "do we have a volunteer to feed the sharks today?"

Maureen jumped up and down waving her arms insanely. "Me, me!!" she yelled. "Pick me!"

"You, in the green bathing suit," the man said, pointing at Joanne, who had just been standing there quietly.

Maureen looked down at her red swimsuit and frowned. "Oh, man….well, go on pookie!"

Joanne went up to the tank and was instructed to climb the plastic ladder to the top. Once there, the man with the microphone handed her a bucket of fish parts and a plastic glove. "Eww," Joanne moaned, even as she stuck her hand into the bucket of chum. She put her ungloved hand on the glass wall of the tank to steady herself while she fed them. Five baby sharks swam up and ate greedily. But, the other one opted to take a chomp at Joanne's other hand.

"Ow!" Joanne cried, as the little tiger shark took a bite out of her finger. Blood gushed from the wound into the tank and the other five sharks went into a frenzy, abandoning the chum for the human blood.

Joanne quickly climbed down the ladder, holding her bleeding finger and yelling at the sharks. She accidentally stepped in the spare chum bucket when she got to the bottom. "Oh, god, ew!!" she screamed, trying to kick the bucket off, not caring who got splashed with fish parts. "Help me, Maureen," she finally said, defeated.

Maureen came over and pried the bucket off Joanne's foot. "Let me see your finger," she said, calmly. "Ooh, it's bad. Let's go to first aid."

"I'm so sorry," the man said. "That's never happened before."

Joanne glared at him and held her finger protectively as Maureen ushered her away.

Mimi, holding Roger's hand, trudged through the crashing waves and deeper into the ocean so she could see further out into the horizon. "Do you see him, Roger?" she wondered, feeling the hopelessness creep in on her. Maybe Collins really did drown. Maybe his float had sunk with him or washed up on some other part of the beach.

"Uh, no," Roger replied, eyeing the waters suspiciously as if some giant sea creature might suddenly swallow them both.

"Let's go out a little further," Mimi suggested. They were up to their necks, standing on the ocean floor. In a few steps they wouldn't be able to touch the bottom.

"No, we can't!" Roger exclaimed, pulling her back.

"What?" Mimi demanded, staring at him. "Why not?" What possible reason could he have for not wanting to try everything they could to find Collins?

Roger mumbled something soft and incoherent.

"What was that?" Mimi asked, not understanding a single word.

"I can't swim," Roger said, meekly.

"Are you serious?" Mimi asked. "How can a grown man not know how to swim?"

"I never learned!" he declared. "I never needed to. My parents weren't exactly beach nuts."

Mimi sighed and looked out into the deeper waters. "Look, go stand on the sandbar back there," she said, pointing to a high spot toward the shore. "I'm gonna go out a little further to see if I can find anything."

"Okay, be careful," Roger instructed, kissing her. He walked back to the sandbar as Mimi swam further out toward the buoys.

Collins sat sobbing on his float. It was bad enough that he was stranded in the middle of the ocean, with his float constantly leaking air, but the second his hat blew away, he had lost all hope. At one point he had hopped off the float to see if he could touch bottom, but that experience was so frightening that he had nearly torn the float apart trying to get back on. Now, he was sure he would die out here, frying under the sun, dying of dehydration though he was surrounded by water.

"Why?" he repeated the word over and over. He looked around, still seeing no sign of life or land.

Angel looked over the pool area morosely. Collins was not there. She felt tears stinging her eyes as she climbed the stairs back to the courtyard.

In the room, she was hopeful when she heard a commotion in the bathroom, but disappointed to find that it was Maureen trying to gauze Joanne's bleeding finger. "Have you guys seen Collins?" Angel wondered, quietly.

"No, not since the beach," Maureen replied, not taking her eyes off her work. "Why, is he missing?"

"Yeah, we can't find him," Angel said softly.

"Maybe he's in the steam room," Joanne suggested.

Maureen gasped. "Cool! I didn't know there was a steam room! Laziest way to loose water weight, I always say!"

Joanne sulked over her injured finger. "Don't worry," she said to Angel, ignoring Maureen's ranting. "Collins is a big, tough guy. He can take care of himself."

Angel nodded, but wasn't feeling very comforted.

Mimi waded back toward shore. She had swum all the way out to the buoys without seeing Collins. She couldn't go any further without putting herself in danger. Just as Roger's head was getting back into her line of sight, Mimi found herself surrounded by clumps of green. "Ew," she said when she pulled her hand out of the water and found it tangled in seaweed. The waves at this point were beginning to get larger and harsher, since she was nearer to the shore. Mimi tried to swim around the seaweed as best she could, but there was too much of it.

Soon, getting closer to the shore, she thought she was clear of the algae. However, this thought soon faded when she realized her foot was tangled up. "Aahh!" she cried, trying to tear at the seaweed. She cringed to think of all the animals living in the weed and wanted nothing more than to be back on dry land. Waves lapped over her, submerging her often.

After a long struggle and inhaling a lot of salt water, Mimi dragged herself onto the shore, feeling her muscles fatigued. Only after she stopped kissing the sand did she realize that she had left Roger behind.

NoV: Wow, I didn't intend for this to turn out so dramatic! (dies) But, never fear, once everybody gets out of danger, things will be funnier.

Next time (!): Mark wakes up and is quite peeved! Collins returns to safety! Roger is stranded! Angel's wig gets eaten!