Which is why, that night, I chose to swap the ebb and flow of the dregs and derelicts of the streets and alleys for the more literal lapping down on the marina, far from where most of my worries skulked. They would be there upon my return, and could well look after themselves in my fleeting absence. I walked out onto the wooden planking that jutted out before me more than half a mile, and marveled at the light the moon was casting.

My feet started moving, and I stopped thinking, becoming as open a receptor for pure sensations as possible, trying just to look, listen, smell and feel (nothing out here on this pier looked like anything I wanted to taste). It gets windy out here where water meets land, and I had to button up my jacket against the cold (even in these temperate climes, Winter can still inflict a bite when he is so inclined).

The bright moon -- possibly the brightest and largest I have ever beheld -- began to highlight the first shapes: amazing numbers of people fish off of this pier at all hours of the day and night. Sparsely situated, solitary souls looking with blank faces out after near-invisible threads that tie them to the waters and whatever lurks under the waves. The starkness of the moon somehow made their forms and faces even more abstract: lumpen masses of jumbled tissues wrapped around curious facial bones, all shrouded in oversize coats to protect against the chill.

As I passed one man, I saw he had caught something: a small, two-foot long leopard shark, which feebly gasped on the planks where it lay, not even having the energy to flop any longer.

The cruel indifference with which the fisherman was ignoring the death struggles of his catch suddenly enraged me. On an impulse, I bent down and scooped up the shark, and tossed it back into the dark waves below.

The reaction this provoked in the fisherman was not quite what I'd expected. He turned, to catch me in the final moments of my act, and with a calm that couldn't quite hide a sudden, shaking fear, said simply: "I wish you hadn't done that."

He then began laboriously to reel back in his line, apparently preparing to leave on account of my actions. Feeling both perplexed and good about my icthiophilanthropy for the day, I resumed my walk.

There are entire families out there on the dock at night: hunched figures all huddled together for warmth with a host of poles jutting from the singular mass, making them look like some strange anemone. Indeed, barring one loud-mouthed unlucky sod just beyond my encounter with the shark, all those fishing that night began to look less and less human. One had a huge, grizzled beard that moved disturbingly against the wind. Another's coat looked a little too lumpen in parts, and yet another was characterized only by a long, pointed nose that jutted from out of an ominous hood, with no other features discernable.

I abruptly found myself with no further pier in front of me; and then remembered, as I contemplated the jagged edge of wood that served as the final boundary between land and sea, that the final stretch of the wharf had collapsed under mysterious circumstances some three years ago. I stood, smelling the salt, before conceding that I had to turn around and go back the way I came.

As I passed by the general area where I had met the leopard shark, I was a little disquieted to see that, although most of the fishing gear was still in evidence, a weird, viscous trail was all that remained of the fisherman: a trail that went the breadth of the pier from railing to railing, as if something had come crashing over the wharf to devour the man whole before returning to the sea on the other side.
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