What Time is it, Mr. Shark?
David Sandner
David Sandner is a member of the SFWA and the HWA. His recent works includes a novel, Egyptian Motherlode (Fairwood, 2024, co-written with Jacob Weisman); a novella His Unburned Heart (Raw Dog Screaming, 2024), about Mary Shelley and her husband’s heart; an edited collection The Afterlife of Frankenstein: Mad Science, Automata, and Monsters Inspired by Mary Shelley, 1818-1918 (Lanternfish, 2023); and a poem, “Futurisms” (Asimov’s, 2024). Forthcoming are: short story “Night School” (also with Weisman) in Abyss & Apex; “For the Dead Travel Fast” in Dracula Beyond Stoker; and poem “Notes on Monsters I Have Loved” at Penumbric. A novel in progress, The Frankenstein Singularity, builds on the Shelley novella. Find him online at davidsandner.com.
Time, when you’re drowning, stretches fragments of your life into frantic eternities. These are your last moments. What’s remarkable about dying—even as you claw and strike at the hand holding you under the water—is the preternatural clarity of your thoughts. The body is desperate, the lungs searing as adrenaline fuels the heart to hammer and muscles twitch and twig, but the mind is abstracted, serene. You have time to think. All the time you need.
Here’s what you’re thinking: you knew you’d die underwater. But not like this, not just drowning, and that totally bugs you. It was supposed to be Mr. Shark, your recurring nightmare, that got you. Mr. Shark swims in your dreams and shakes you to the core. You knew Mr. Shark would get you someday, so how could it be that it’s just some idiot bully holding you under and laughing who’s going to kill you? It’s not fair, that’s what you think as the bubbles escape your mouth in a scream you can’t stop from releasing.
“Come play Mr. Shark,” the other children—none of them your friends, of course—would say to you, taunting.
Here’s how the game always plays out:
“What time is it, Mr. Shark?” the swimmers would shout.
“Three o’clock,” the chosen “shark” player might reply, and everyone would edge in three splashes closer—one, two, three!—closer to being caught. Would the player “shark” turn to chase everyone, to screams of joy and laughter? Or would he or she call out a new time? But here’s the thing you knew: meanwhile, Mr. Shark, the real one below them all, would rise, with every call, and every splash and kick.
Staring from the water’s edge, refusing to play, you could see it, in your mind’s eye, Mr. Shark, rising, behind the opaque undulations of the windswept surface, maybe there in the deep end, sliding below them sizing them up for the kill, the hungry bulk of Mr. Shark, just out of sight, but rising fast.
“No!” you’d finally shout. Your mom would laugh nervously, embarrassed as she removed you from clinging to her. “Go play,” she’d say. But you would not—and when she insisted you swim, you stuck near others, in the shallows, where Mr. Shark couldn’t get you first. And, all Summer long, whenever the other kids at the public pool would begin the game, calling out, taunting each other—“what time is it, Mr. Shark?”—you’d leave the water if you could and stand, shivering even in the sun. You knew what you knew was unbelievable, so you never told—but there was Mr. Shark, unconcerned about what you believed, circling, below always the kicking legs in the deepest end. Someday it would kill them all. And you knew, somehow, even as you stood at the water’s edge, that you would not escape. It would get you, too.
Worst of all was when Uncle Bob visited. He had leathery skin and his gums bled when he ate corn from the vendor selling beyond the fence. He took you to the pool sometimes and even got in the water and always there came a time when he said:
“Hey, what time is it, Mr. Shark?”
You would say, “no time! no time!” Meaning, you didn’t want to play.
The very first time he did it he had been confused, and looked at you, smilingly, head turned, and said, laughing to himself, in a harsh whisper: “it’s always time for Mr. Shark.”
You had screamed until Uncle Bob told you to shut up and avoided you ever after, looking at you sidelong with disgust. He would still call out to you—“what time is it, Mr. Shark?”—but now he did it to scare you so he could shake his head and spit. But you knew what you knew.
How ironic, really, after all that, that Jimmy Turintell would kill you instead. The local bully—mean and stupid and mundane as any of them—just holding you under while no adult or lifeguard noticed, and that’s it. You supposed, the last bubbles of your final scream finally forcing themselves out of your open mouth, that he’d probably learn a lesson…that it would haunt him into adulthood. But you didn’t want to teach him a lesson. You wanted to kick Jimmy in the head until he begged you to stop, and then you wanted to kick him again. But really, you were angry with yourself and you knew it. You were angry that, worried about Mr. Shark, you had let yourself be caught by a dumbass like Jimmy T.
So, finally, at the end, it came with some satisfaction when you felt the powerful sinking of the teeth into your thigh and the insistent tug from deep below. A strong pull downwards that shook you both. You could have shouted with joy, but had no air left. You’d been wondering, how could you have been so wrong? Down you went, fast in razor-lined jaws. They hurt like hell. And more: you knew, just as you knew this is how it should end, pulled under into the red shadows, out of sight, that you were certainly too scrawny to fill that hunger; now Jimmy, too, would know—he would learn a lesson after all: it was always time.
This is your last thought before a terrible rending of time itself: Uncle Bob was right. Completely right. Jimmy T would know soon when Mr. Shark came up to finish his meal.
What time is it? It’s always time for Mr. Shark.
Here’s what you’re thinking: you knew you’d die underwater. But not like this, not just drowning, and that totally bugs you. It was supposed to be Mr. Shark, your recurring nightmare, that got you. Mr. Shark swims in your dreams and shakes you to the core. You knew Mr. Shark would get you someday, so how could it be that it’s just some idiot bully holding you under and laughing who’s going to kill you? It’s not fair, that’s what you think as the bubbles escape your mouth in a scream you can’t stop from releasing.
“Come play Mr. Shark,” the other children—none of them your friends, of course—would say to you, taunting.
Here’s how the game always plays out:
“What time is it, Mr. Shark?” the swimmers would shout.
“Three o’clock,” the chosen “shark” player might reply, and everyone would edge in three splashes closer—one, two, three!—closer to being caught. Would the player “shark” turn to chase everyone, to screams of joy and laughter? Or would he or she call out a new time? But here’s the thing you knew: meanwhile, Mr. Shark, the real one below them all, would rise, with every call, and every splash and kick.
Staring from the water’s edge, refusing to play, you could see it, in your mind’s eye, Mr. Shark, rising, behind the opaque undulations of the windswept surface, maybe there in the deep end, sliding below them sizing them up for the kill, the hungry bulk of Mr. Shark, just out of sight, but rising fast.
“No!” you’d finally shout. Your mom would laugh nervously, embarrassed as she removed you from clinging to her. “Go play,” she’d say. But you would not—and when she insisted you swim, you stuck near others, in the shallows, where Mr. Shark couldn’t get you first. And, all Summer long, whenever the other kids at the public pool would begin the game, calling out, taunting each other—“what time is it, Mr. Shark?”—you’d leave the water if you could and stand, shivering even in the sun. You knew what you knew was unbelievable, so you never told—but there was Mr. Shark, unconcerned about what you believed, circling, below always the kicking legs in the deepest end. Someday it would kill them all. And you knew, somehow, even as you stood at the water’s edge, that you would not escape. It would get you, too.
Worst of all was when Uncle Bob visited. He had leathery skin and his gums bled when he ate corn from the vendor selling beyond the fence. He took you to the pool sometimes and even got in the water and always there came a time when he said:
“Hey, what time is it, Mr. Shark?”
You would say, “no time! no time!” Meaning, you didn’t want to play.
The very first time he did it he had been confused, and looked at you, smilingly, head turned, and said, laughing to himself, in a harsh whisper: “it’s always time for Mr. Shark.”
You had screamed until Uncle Bob told you to shut up and avoided you ever after, looking at you sidelong with disgust. He would still call out to you—“what time is it, Mr. Shark?”—but now he did it to scare you so he could shake his head and spit. But you knew what you knew.
How ironic, really, after all that, that Jimmy Turintell would kill you instead. The local bully—mean and stupid and mundane as any of them—just holding you under while no adult or lifeguard noticed, and that’s it. You supposed, the last bubbles of your final scream finally forcing themselves out of your open mouth, that he’d probably learn a lesson…that it would haunt him into adulthood. But you didn’t want to teach him a lesson. You wanted to kick Jimmy in the head until he begged you to stop, and then you wanted to kick him again. But really, you were angry with yourself and you knew it. You were angry that, worried about Mr. Shark, you had let yourself be caught by a dumbass like Jimmy T.
So, finally, at the end, it came with some satisfaction when you felt the powerful sinking of the teeth into your thigh and the insistent tug from deep below. A strong pull downwards that shook you both. You could have shouted with joy, but had no air left. You’d been wondering, how could you have been so wrong? Down you went, fast in razor-lined jaws. They hurt like hell. And more: you knew, just as you knew this is how it should end, pulled under into the red shadows, out of sight, that you were certainly too scrawny to fill that hunger; now Jimmy, too, would know—he would learn a lesson after all: it was always time.
This is your last thought before a terrible rending of time itself: Uncle Bob was right. Completely right. Jimmy T would know soon when Mr. Shark came up to finish his meal.
What time is it? It’s always time for Mr. Shark.