I pulled the spear back and brought it straight up, like I was getting ready to hit a two-hundred-pound piñata. Bill covered his head with his left arm, and I brought the spear crashing down on his right arm. The knife fell from his hand and thudded to the earth.

Bill knew he wouldn’t stand a chance with me continually clubbing him, and in the half second it took me to raise the spear back up, Bill rushed me. His head was down, his arms out, and he dove at my midsection.

I brought the spear down on his back, but he was too close to my hands for the impact to do much.

He crashed into me, and the two of us went sailing backward. Instinctively, I let go of the spear to brace my fall. My elbows smashed into the earth, followed quickly by my head.

I was dazed, but still acutely aware of the giant sea lion atop me. I smashed my fist into the sea lion’s side, but between the lack of power behind my blow and the dense layer of fat girdling Bill’s midsection, it had zero effect.

Bill pushed himself up a foot, then slammed back down on me. His only advantage was his weight, and he knew how to use it. The wind was knocked out of me, and I found myself wheezing.

I guessed that Bill must have wrestled at some point, and while I struggled to pull in a breath, he straddled me, squeezing his knees in against my ribcage. I sent a flurry of jabs at his face, but he warded off my punches with his forearms. A left hook somehow snuck through his defenses, hitting him in the cheek and sending his tinted glasses sailing.

He shook off the blow, then wrenched my left arm down and tucked it under his leg, locking it in against my thigh. Within ten seconds, he’d done the same to my right arm.

I thrashed my body up and down, but he had me pinned under his weight, his knees locking my arms to my sides, and his hands pushing down on my ankles. It was the position an older brother might use just before he starts dangling a loogie over your face.

Bill gritted his teeth and squeezed his knees even deeper into my sides.

He wasn’t a sea lion.

He was an anaconda.

With my diaphragm unable to expand, I was fighting to get even the smallest of breaths. And with each exhale, Bill constricted me tighter and tighter.

“You should have just let me cut off your head,” Bill said with a light chuckle.

I wanted to tell him to fuck off, but I lacked the airflow to form words.