Hunted

The thing wrapped around his ankle. Every foot kick was slowed down. With mild panic, he yanked his foot until it slipped off and disappeared into the vastness of the water around him. All he could see from the netherworld beneath his neck was a blue-green surface. Tiles of blue-green were separated by white lines of foam, some simply ripples running through the water, some crests whipped by the ocean breeze.

Another slumbering giant of a wave came in. The massive body of the wave rolled on slowly, almost obscuring that it was another six foot surge that lifted him high. The wave let him down slowly, while it raced onward to the beach. The sandbank pushed the wave high. The tip sharpened to a menacing threat. Two seconds later, the tip slammed down into the surface. The entire beach vibrated from the megatons of water pounding down. The skirmish of white foam raced to the beach.

Anton was still treading water beyond the break, where the water was jolly and safe like in a pool. He smelled the mix of rotting Kelp and thick sea salt in the air. The winter water temperature were around 50 degrees. The blood was rushing to heat his body giving him alertness. And his butt cheeks felt so free with the water slushing around them and through the butt crack. His board shorts had been carried sideways and wherever by the current underwater. There was no more turning back.

He was butt naked with no clothing or towel in reach. A beach full of evening visitors was ahead of him. There was a thin line of visitors that had come clothes to the water and were fighting their way through the wet sand. Beyond a long expanse of loose sand was the boardwalk. The boardwalk was primed with a busy crowd of groups meandering, people on beach cruisers, rollerbladers zipping in between, and gaggles of people around the public restrooms and fast food stations. Beyond that lay the bustling beach city. 14 blocks in was his house, the safe spot.

His heart skipped a beat. There was the big emptiness of a lack of heart beat followed by the heavy thumping of a single huge beat that made him weak in the knees. His lips were shivering. The winter ocean was draining his body of warmth. The timer was running down on how much longer he could stay out here in the safety of being naked in public without anybody knowing.

The waves were flat all the way out to the beach. They were in between sets. He looked out to the ocean. Weak waves were running in. He kept swirling his limps to stay afloat. There was the mixture of adrenaline making him feel sick to the stomach and excited about life. There was the mild hypothermia that hurt and made his mind dull, the beauty of calming a busy mind. He slowly paddled into position for the next set coming in.

The sea was dragging out with the lack of waves pushing in. The water was swirling hard around his body, when he crawled hard. And then the first small wave came in. The next was a monster. The looming and dooming face of it grew as it neared him. The menace crested dangerously.

He pushed with all his vigor. The wave grabbed him with forceful forklift arms, ripped him six feet into the air. The wave crashed the next moment. The wave tossed him back down into its belly. Tons of water piled on top of him. A civil war broke out among the water with its warriors pushing and running into every which way. Helplessly, he was torn around. His limps were pushed around like a ragdoll. Even his mouth was helplessly ripped open with salt water freely gushing through his mouth and nose.

His lungs were shut, clinging onto the air they had left. Two seconds later, he stabilized his body into a long plank position with the left arm raised overhead to mimic a long board. He was shooting through the water like a torpedo. The roiling white water ripping on his skin, face, hair, cheeks.

Two seconds, five seconds, seven second, nine seconds, he had to squeeze his throat tight against the urge to breathe. He was still deeply under water. And with painful quickness, the sand rubbed against his underside like sandpaper. He pushed his limps against the solid land to get out of the grip of the wave to escape the searing pain of the skin being filed off. There he was naked on his knees in the sand.

His butt was bared. He had a scrawny butt. He was 6' 3" and 175 lbs. He was athletic, yet the scrawny type that didn't have an ounce of extra fat. His chest had ripples from his ribs poking through. His arms were covered with tattoo sleeves. There was the Russian mermaid riding a submarine. She hugged the submarine. The submarine was shooting torpedoes. There was the line drawing of his first girlfriend reclining seductively in tattoo studio in Arkhangelsk, a freezing cold city at the White Sea, where he had been stationed as a young nineteen year old.

He was acutely aware of his groomed penis hanging between his legs. The area was shaved smooth. The cold water had made his penis shrivel. A couple was walking nearby with their arms around each other. They had a little dog walking with them, which was illegal at the beach. She was chubby and wore old leggings, like one of those inland people.

Wet sand was over half of his body. The water was running out to the ocean past his hands. The water was taking sand with it. His open palm was sinking into the sand. He pushed himself standing, like a sprinter, his body stood diagonally in the air, while he launched forward into a sprint. The woman jumped and screamed in surprise. "Pinche cabron!"

When being in front of people, there is that nervousness that propels us. His feet sunk deeply into the sand as he was running up the sand embankment to the high water line. He had long limbs. He had dark hair and blue eyes. He reached the top. The blue lifeguard house had the windows closed with wood boards. Winter didn't bring swimmers to warrant having lifeguards around.

Five hundred feet of empty, loose sand was ahead of him, eager to wear him down and exhaust him as every foot step would slip back. It was empty here. People would only see him from the distance, a last respite of being quasi alone. Ahead was the busy ocean boardwalk. He felt the auto-erotic feeling of doing something forbidden and being exposed. His penis was swaying hard left and right with every stride. He was well hung. So, there was a lot to fly around.

The burning set into his lungs the moment that he made plans to cut through the foot traffic of beach goers. A girl was sitting on the concrete barrier with a guitar and a sign for donations. She had folksy socks with rings going up her calves and a yellow flower in her hair. A group of four thuggish, black young males with their pants beneath their butts was strolling around, holding their pants from sagging even farther. Two forty year old women with big fannies, tight and bright workout clothing were power walking with their hands high and the sun visors way low. A college student was pushing the pedals of a beach cruiser in a skirt. Her kid-party-colorful dotted panties flashed with every stroke.

He strode ahead. Suddenly, the boardwalk crowd engulfed him with all their multi-colored clothing. A family father was dragging a blue body board over the ground. Anton jumped over it. The bizarreness of modern polite society is that nobody stared. He looked at the college girl on her bike and her multi-colored panties flashing him. She looked ahead as if he didn't existed. He had to pause to let a black guy with a seventies haircut and a boom box playing seventies music path. Antsy, he was jogging in place for three treads.

"Put some clothes on," the angry sound of a male arouse from somewhere in the crowd. It was always the guys that got offended. Women rarely complained.

He almost crashed a speed biker in slipstream smooth biking clothes. There he was past the crowd. A group of three changed out of wetsuits at the back of a VW bus. Surfboards were leaning against the bus. A yellow-red towel was wrapped around someone's waist turning the neoprene sleeves inside out. Ahead of him was a long spring across the parking lot with garbage on the ground, oil spots, and dirty sand. His heels, uncushioned by a sneaker, pounded the pavement hard.

His legs were getting weak like soggy bread. He had to push on. Beyond the parking lot and beyond the stairs leading up to the city were hiding spots. Out here, he was in the open, exposed and vulnerable. The palm trees and blue sky of the Southern California winter were indifferent to his rushed escapade. A sense of unreal sunk into him. He was naked. There was no trouble. Pushing up the stairs with the arteries at his neck pounding, he sunk deeply into his head. Was it all imagined in his head? Was he at the quiet before the storm of getting into real trouble?

An old woman sat on a bench at the top of the staircase. She held a walking cane with both hands in front of her. Her lips were slowly chewing in the air. When she saw the naked Anton, her eyes widened. She poked her husband next to her with a long pokey finger. "There is a naked Russian," she said matter of fact. The husband looked up, "Oh, you're right."

Anton had already moved on to the street crossing. He dashed across it. The first row of houses were posh beach residences. A restored El Camino with flames painted on was parked off the street on a resident parking spot. Anton ran behind it and squatted down. His bare feet were on the dirty ground. His butt was hovering right next to his Achilles tendon above the ground. His butt was barely padded, yet the muscles were tough. He hugged his arms around his shins with his head high ever cautious and scanning.

His lungs were panting hard. His whole body was shivering from the exertion and the copious lactic acid that had built up. The nubs of his spine poked out of his curved back. Pearls of seat water ran out of his hair and down his back until it dropped off his butt cheeks to the ground, leaving dark, round marks. The crescendo of cars and city sounds was around him. Anyone could have seen him run behind the El Camino. However behind here, he was shielded pretty well. He thought about how hard he would pound his dick at home at the memories of his exposed naked run. He was looking forward to it. The formerly cold shrunk penis was relaxing to the normal, flaccid size. He could hear a woman walking by talking on her cell phone, "Et puis nous allons à la plage." Her flip flops had that smacking sexy sound of naked female feet. A small, untrained dog was barking at something.

His eyes glanced at his arms. Part of the tattoo sleeve were druid power symbols, circles and lines laid out in ancient order. They belonged to Androgur, a river spirit who had the powers of subversion. Androgur controlled the people of the nearby village of Kalisbur to worship him. Androgur would insinuate thoughts in the citizens minds that slow grow until they were urged to act out on them. It is said that the wearer of those symbols will slow align his environment to serve him, like an enchanting song that sets ideas into the people's mind to serve and please him. All obstacles become simple, pure, and obedient.

His breath had slowed down enough. He had to keep moving. There were another fourteen blocks to cover to his idyllic beach city home with the yucca tree and desert plants in front of it. He inched to the front of the El Camino peaking over the hood, the sidewalk was clear. He started with a hurried jog.

Car were waiting at a red light. There were plenty of people in those cars that had nothing better to do then watch him. The first honk sounded. He felt the shivers and titillation caressing his butt. He assumed that's where people were staring. The sound of his bare feet hitting the concrete flat pounded in his head. The second honk sounded from five cars away. By now everyone must have been staring at him from the safety of tinted car windows. People in cars feel immune to being caught staring.

He kept running on. He ran across the street right in front of a dozen waiting cars on each side. A girl with a nose ring and tattoo on her throat, yelled a happy "Party on! Show me that ass!" That's what he liked the most, the unabashed sexual celebration by bold and confident women. An angry drawn out honk by a mad, ugly, fat guy killed the joy quickly with dark clouds of anger.

He was across the street. "Photo!, Yeah, photo!" yelled a woman with big black glasses, super high white heels on platform and tiny white hot pants with white leather strings. Her accent was thickly Italian. He paused. She quickly put her hands on his shoulder. She had a quarter size bubble gum pink stone on a ring. Another ring had a three finger wide golden circle. She was wearing a white furry handbag. She raised one of her heels into the air for flair. Her friend waved them to get even closer with the phone camera in hand. The Italian girl fake pretended to bite his nipples. Right after the photo, she hobbled as fast as she could on her high heels to her friend to see the photo.

Anton realized that lull and that he needed to keep moving. His heart had the fuzzies from the flirtatious air of sexy women. He past the beach businesses, the open air cafes, beach apparel stores, and frat house bars. The next streets were quiet and residential. There were plenty of quirky beach touches, like nice gardens, a little art here or there, and benches to watch the pedestrian parade strut by.

Then he spotted the first police car coming out of and disappearing into a side street. Anton jumped over a low fence onto the soft, lush lawn. The grass felt good under his feet. Yet, the utter panic had drowned all joy out of his run. He felt barren, primitive panic. The police car had a slowness about it like as if it was looking for something or someone. Chances were that a guy had called the cops on him. There would probably be a crisscrossing grid search by police cars. The well-healed beach community had plenty of bored cops.

He looked behind him just at the right time. A police cruiser was making a right turn into his street, he dodged behind a green garbage dumpster. He pressed his bare unprotected back against the filth to have as low of a profile as possible to be spotted from the sides. The police cruiser with the authoritative black and big bulky car body drove at 10 mph carefully searching. Once it past, Anton followed it slowly in a crouch behind the row of parked cars. He had to keep moving. He was the hunted now.

The dragnet of police cars would only get tighter as more of them would arrive. He had to keep moving out of the center spot. The next intersection was tough. He could be seen from four street directions. It was clear. He rushed across the street. He felt like an animal, primitive, without defense, and mercilessly hunted for sport.

He heard the roar of a Dodge Charger. Immediately, he lay flat in the gutter between the sidewalk and a Ford SUV. The grime of the street and the sharp pebbles of the street were pressed against his soft flesh. The police Dodge Charger sharply accelerated through the street and paused at the next intersection, as the cops were looking around. They were hunting him, trying to cover as much ground as possible to hunt down the naked man. By day or shall we say night, Anton worked in a basement bar. Quite a few cops frequented the establishment. They were all docile to him, because he controlled the alcohol. Out here, he was at their mercy just a bare skin.

Anton was lying in the gutter. He could smell the heat from the Ford parked next to him. He could smell the oil on the ground. He saw the underside of the Ford SUV, because it was raised high. Anton had three rules. #1 Never cover your groin. Strut with your chest high and shoulders back. #2 Never stay in one spot too long. That's being a chicken. Enjoy the rush of the hunt. #3 Don't get stupid and willfully caught. The romance of getting caught and police brutality are incompatible.

So, he got up, rubbing his hands against each other to clean them. His back was strong from the time in the Russian navy and the near daily workouts in the gym. The bulges were beautiful. The individual muscles were clearly defined.

Tenth Street was past him. The neighborhood was so quiet here that any car engine sounded from three blocks away. He meandered casually. There'd be plenty of advance notice to find cover. He sunk into his thoughts. Why was he doing this? His therapist had asked him the same thing. There was definitely a sexual component to it, the friskiness of being naked. The bigger part was the catharsis. His whole life, he had the feeling of being discarded, of being without value, and of being without grace. The Russian Navy pushed him around, humiliated him, ripped him away from his girlfriend, made him eat dog food, so that the captain could vacation at the Black Sea. The American immigration system had no care for him. When he joined the Russian mob, they took away his free will. All the while, people told him how lucky he was to be at the Navy and in America. They looked up to him for the status with the Russian mob. When he was hunted down naked and defenseless, he could really feel how he felt.

His therapist had kicked her leg nervously, "How could such a strong, tall man like you feel like a thrown away animal in a cage? You were a leather jacket. You have tattoos all over your arms. I felt a little scared of you the first few sessions."

"You don't realize how many overlords I have and how desperately I have to please them" was his response. He rubbed the five-pointed star on his shoulder. That was his first rank in the Russian mob. It was the pledge that opened middle class life in America to him, freedom from the poverty and intellectual oppression in Russia. Yet, it had put him into an entirely different prison. Idyllic family houses lined the street past him. There was a swing set on a tree that spoke a dream about joyful childhood laughter and innocence, a thing that he didn't have growing up in a world, where religion is for the weak of mind that can't handle the intensity of daily danger. He had grown up, when Russian tanks were shelling houses. Every day, there was a lottery game for dinner or no dinner, when he rushed through the rubble of a destroyed city playing desperate adventure games to bring food home to his parents.

Birds were singing in the big oak tree. A squirrel was twitching its tale while calculating the next sequence of jumps through the leaves. The leaves made a ruffling sound with the evening breeze coming in. The moon was already a pasty sight low on the sky. A green garden hose was discarded on a lawn.

"Don't you wanna run? Give us a little chase at least," the taunting female voice was right behind Anton, so close that it sent chills down his body. He stumbled on his toes. He swirled around. He looked into the taunting brown eyes of a young female cop. She was confidently leaning back in the police cruiser passenger seat. Her long curly hair was tied together in a ponytail. She already had blue latex gloves on to tackle crazy street people. Her lip stick was thick red. She had a giggle on her like a fresh academy graduate. Two short whoops from the siren signaled Anton to run. He cautiously started running, a little confused. Once he was moving, they turned on the siren full blast. That scared him into a full out spring. "Shake that ass for me," cheered the young female cop callously.

He ran as fast as he could. The police cruiser stayed behind him. The engine purred like a sleepy cat, while his heart was doing mad jumping jacks. "Get me closer," called the female cop behind him. He heard a heavy bounce so close to his heels that he had to look. The driver had driven the two tires on the right onto the sidewalk. Anton feared that the bumper would hit him in the knees anytime. His brain painted painful imminent images of hard steel crushing his tender, biological body.