“They’re here, boy,” his father told him. “They’re always here. This is their home. But it’s a beautiful home, isn’t it? If we want to experience life, we must accept the possibility of death.” Cobus’s father then spun on his board and kicked into a passing wave, leaving Cobus alone just beyond the breakers.

Cobus sat alone for several minutes on his board, the dark water beneath haunting him, his brain converting every oscillating shaft of light into a large silhouette spearing at him from the deep. Suddenly, a burst of seawater startled him, and he spun to see a bottlenose dolphin breaching several meters away. The dolphin was soon joined by several others, including a calf that was scarcely larger than a rugby ball. They weaved around Cobus, diving under his board for the fish that lived on the reef beneath. A wave finally came that could take him to shore, but the young man let it pass. He turned his eyes from the dark water skyward, to see the awesome tumult of gulls, terns, and other seabirds that had come to dine on fish with the dolphins. Though the sharks were down there, they didn’t come for Cobus that day.

In the blackness of the abyss that had swallowed him, Cobus once again heard the seabirds calling out from above. He cracked his eyes open to see a gull banking gracefully, then pumping its wings to accelerate. At first, he thought it was some type of dream—perhaps his life flashing before his eyes. Then his gaze fell on children playing soccer and flying kites in the Waterfront Park. The shark had spared him once again.

The police officer jostled Cobus. It was only when he strained to get himself upright that he realized the immense pain he was in. Every joint ached from the spasms and lactic acidosis that had ravaged his body. He rubbed his cheek, which was still stiff from lockjaw induced by the poison. Cobus had ingested all manner of alcohol and drugs during his military days, but this was an apocalyptic hangover unlike anything he had ever experienced.

His brain foggy, Cobus absorbed the fact that he had escaped death. But instead of serving as some sort of resurrection that instilled new purpose and direction in him, the ordeal had the opposite effect. Of all the people to spare, he asked the universe, why me? He had seen so many good creatures who brought light into the world killed before his eyes, while he, a man who brought only darkness and death, somehow slipped between the raindrops. Ironic that even now, when any just god would have allowed him to be felled by his own hand, he somehow still endured.

As Cobus struggled to process his situation, the officer placed a rubber-gloved hand on his shoulder and asked whether he needed to see a doctor.

Annoyed, he waved the policeman off. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”