Rico was waiting for the swell, and never saw the dorsal fin behind him. Suddenly, blinding pain filled Rico's right hip, and he screamed in agony, gulping down a mouth full of salt water. He lost his grip on his board, and something snapped it in two.
Chad the surfboard reverted immediately to Chad the human being. He was in agony, half of his body floating to Rico's left side, the upper half Rico held on to for all he was worth. Rico screamed, Chad tried to but gurgled up blood, spatting Rico in the face with it. Chad's expression was a study in extreme horror, and it was a mercy he died nearly instantly, because in those few seconds at the end of his life it felt as if he was suffering for eternity.
Blood filled the water, someting bumped Rico's left leg. He pulled his leg up to his body and went under, then came back up, still holding half of Chad, who was now dead, his face a macabre white.
Rico let go of Chad and began a panicked swim as fast as he could, his right side ablaze with pain, and screaming at the top of his lungs. He didn't know how long it was until life-guards pulled him out of the water, but it felt like forever. The only reason he escaped the shark was Chad's bloody corpse, which proved to be a diverting feast.
Rico was in surgery for 17 hours. In the end, he lost his right leg. When he came to, several days later, in a hospital bed, he was no longer the same person - life can transform people as completely and utterly as magic. So it was true for Rico, he was never the same again. He checked out of regular society that day, and became a recluse. He told himself Chad deserved it, that what goes around comes around. But he knew no one deserved that, and he couldn't erase Chad's screaming image from his mind, or that moment that the life drained from his frightened eyes.
And he couldn't erase the guilt. Rico would grow old alone, come to be known as the one-legged drunk of the beach, and finally one day would die of liver failure. He would never be able to outswim the guilt that gnawed at him like a shark in a feeding frenzy, and even though he told himself Chad had deserved it and that it wasn't his fault, he would never outswim the truth that he knew deep down either; he was guilty of taking a life - had it not been for his wrath, Chad would be alive.
As he lay dying on the beach one bitter-cold night, staring up at the flinty stars in the sky, he remembered a line he had heard somewhere before all of the hell that was his life: when seeking revenge, be prepared to dig two graves. He never understood what it meant, but it clicked into place now; he realized the truth of it, and he realied that he had really died on that day, so long ago now, and it was merely a lifeless zombie existance that was coming to an end now. With his final breath, he cursed the only thing left that he could after having cursed Chad, the shark, the ocean, humaninty, God, life and all the other things one possibly could... he cursed himself, and his body shuddered with it's last breath. FInally, after 50 years of living hell, Rico's life here was over. It was only in the next moment, when he felt a new more intense agony and the burning flames of what he thought was a fabled fairytale Grimm... that he realized his unexpected future existance would make the life he suffered look like child's play.