The Great American Novel

The Great American Novel
By Phil M.F. Allen

Chapter One:
Americock

    John Q. Bearcock was thinking of only one thing as he punched a shark in the nose and that was having a sandwich. Specifically, he was wondering how large of a sandwich he could fit inside his mouth in one bite. For a while now, he’d been toying with an idea for a sandwich comprised of steak piled on top of steak, with steak sauce and steak in place of the bun. He was going to call it the, “Colostomizer,” because he thought  that it sounded quite a bit better than, “Colossal.” The main problem he was running into was how much steak he could reasonably cram into one bite. He assumed it would be quite a lot, but what if it was too much for him to handle? Even he had his limits. He certainly wasn’t the shark he was now facing, with it’s vast gaping maw with rows upon rows of teeth waiting to bite into his bronzed flesh.
    John scowled at the shark, which he knew from experience wouldn’t deter the animal. Typically, punching a shark in the nose was more than sufficient when facial expression failed. Sharks were basically Nature’s pussies. One good hit in the schnozola or the gills and it was down for the count. Dolphins knew this, and so did good ol’ Bearcock. The difficulty lay in positioning yourself so that you might actually hit them in either of their two major weak-spots. When a shark isn’t circling you while waiting to eat you, it’s actively trying to eat you, so your entire perspective is essentially that of the inside of it’s mouth. The nose and gills, therefore, are somewhat out of reach. It takes split-second timing and manoeuvrability to launch yourself against these two points. Having punched many a shark to death during his years, John had these innate skills mastered. In his weaker moments, he almost pitied the sharks.
    This particular beast, however, was proving complicated. As said, a good punch in the nose should deter the most aggressive shark. This one seemingly shrugged off his blow as if he had laid a handkerchief to his nose instead of hard knuckles. Already, it was turning itself for another pass at John.
    That’s when John got mad. Not that he wasn’t already. He hated sharks, hated him with a passion. That’s why he spent every morning in the sea with the intention of fighting them bare-handed, often to the death. That he was still alive after all these years was a testament to his prowess in shark-fighting.
    Not that he fought sharks exclusively, mind you. With shark populations declining the world over, mostly due to fishing practices, he could go months without finding a shark to fight. He would often amuse himself with fighting a jellyfish, a seal, or an endangered turtle in their place. Anything in the ocean was fair game. Once he had fought a sea mine left over from WWII, just because it pissed him off. He had strangled it with it’s own anchor chain before it finally erupted. When he came to he continued by fighting the floating bits of shrapnel, even those he had pulled out of his chest.
    Sharks were no match for him, yet they always thought they could be. This particular brute, weighing many times his own weight, thought very highly of himself. That could be considered a poor decision at best. The Seven Seas were a graveyard for his foes, and John did not take such arrogance lightly.
    John was not the fastest thing in the sea. He could not hope to chase after a shark once it turned tail and fled, but if it chose to advance on him, he had him by his shark balls.
    Beyond placed where a shark could be punched, John didn’t know much about the anatomy of a shark. He didn’t know, per se, if sharks had balls. It stood to reason that some did, as sharks managed to procreate. He couldn’t tell you, though, if this particular shark had any balls. All sharks seemed to have were these flaps that looked peculiarly like a vagina, and he wondered as he often did, if he could fuck it. Not that he would, but he would if driven to such measures. He had always longed, in his heart, to rape a shark. To truly let that shark know who the dominant species was. His shortcomings in shark anatomy had kept him from doing the deed. What if it was a man-shark that he mistakenly raped? That would be kind of gay.
    In any event, he punched the shark in what he was reasonably sure was it’s balls. It was hard to say. The water was already murky with the blood from the sharks he had previously murdered with his bare hands, and in one case, his teeth. Blood was his friend, though, especially when it came to sharks. Sharks went ballistic for blood. It didn’t matter who’s it was, as long as there was a lot of it. Murdering sharks always led to there being more sharks in the vicinity, which led to more shark murder. This shark seemed to be the last of the pack., assuming that sharks had packs. John didn’t know what to call a group of sharks. Usually, he just called them pussies.