The Sting of the Assassin (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine October 2001

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The Sting of the Assassin (Cont.)

MARY NEVER saw it.

Plunging beneath the smooth surface, she glided underwater, savoring the trickling sound in her ears and the warmth of the tropical sea, relieved that she'd made the decision to leave Gil. Then something brushed against her arms. She flinched, startled. Was it seaweed? Then it brushed against her shoulders, her midriff, her back.

Reflexively, the jelly's tentacles contracted, piling themselves in loops onto her skin in an instinctive attempt to apply maximum surface area—and thus maximum venom—to the victim. Each tentacle was studded with millions of tiny venom sacs, called nematocysts, the entire jellyfish armed with an estimated five billion of them. The touch of Mary's skin—indistinguishable, as far as the jelly was concerned, from a shrimp or a fish—triggered the release of coiled tubules with sharp tips that sprang from the top of each nematocyst like a jack-in-the-box. The tubules, each about .03 inches long, jabbed their points into Mary's skin, injecting venom from the sacs.

The jelly's tentacles contracted, piling themsleves in loops onto Mary's skin. Each tentacle was embedded with millions of tiny sacs of venom.

Mary gasped. A stream of bubbles escaped from her mouth. Searing pain burned over her arms and torso. She kicked toward the surface, tearing at the stinging things adhering to her skin.

Gil, leaning back on his elbows and staring impassively through his tortoiseshell sunglasses, watched her graceful dive. The surface erupted with foam. He sat up. It was Mary, her arms flailing wildly. Her screams carried across the calm water.

He knew immediately what had happened.

"I'm coming!" he shouted, launching himself off his towel. He would be the heroic husband, vindicating himself for the caution that she had so derided. He flung off his $375 sunglasses and charged into the water. Then he suddenly stopped.

Would it sting him too?

She was about 50 feet away, in water that was probably just over her head, struggling to put her feet on the bottom. Where was the jellyfish? It could be anywhere. How long were its tentacles? He had no idea.

"Where is it?" he shouted.

It was as if Gil, standing paralyzed in knee-deep water near shore, had also been injected with the jellyfish's powerful, stunning venom. He looked up and down the beach for someone who might help, but they'd chosen this beach precisely because no one was here.

"Can you swim to me?" he shouted.

She raised an arm helplessly, and he could see the whiplashlike welts already spiraling along it as she cried and gagged in the water.

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