Sam

``Sam, is that you?'' I asked a little uncertainly.

``Tim? `The Tinman'? Why you old dog, where have you been?'' The bearded figure replied with a look of surprise.

``All over the place apparently, something about how life catches up with one,'' I replied. ``What are you up to recently?''

``Well, there's this injury that I had,...'' And so Sam began his tale.

``It was a long while back, as far as I can remember, when I was about eighteen. Roughly the year that we started to lose contact of course. I was a sailor, as you might have remembered, all the sailing competitions at the national level and stuff like that.

``It was the Laser `A'-Division boys competition. I was slated to win the national level of the competition to take part in the regional sailing meet. Of course I did my best to train my form, working out every day and going out to see on my Laser sailing boat every other day to train myself out.

``On the day of the competition, I was all set for the race. The weather was fine and I never felt any better. There was a bounce in my step as I walked to the registration table to put my name down. And then I saw him.''

``Who?'' I interrupted at what seemed like an appropriate time.

``Raj. Raj `the Regal' Ramsamy, the literal King of the Waves. He had been out of competition for a whole year for personal reasons, but now he was back. Before I became a major name for sailing, he was the true leader of the pack, the one who was always viewed as the undefeated champion. But an incident a year prior disqualified him from competitive sailing for a whole year, and it was because of that that we didn't see him for quite a while.

``Rumour was rife on the cause of the disqualification, but nothing was ever verified. Besides, I was the hot favourite at that time, so it didn't matter much to me---I was going to win, no matter what. So when I saw him at the registration table, I just nodded to him to acknowledge his existence. He just stared at me silently.

``Soon enough we were out on the open sea, near the starting point on our Laser-class sailing boats. The wind was perfect and we were all waiting eagerly for the starter gun to go. Anticipating.

``Sure enough, we got the resounding bang and we raised the sails on our boats and off we went!

``I was taking the lead for most of the leg of the race, with Raj closely following behind. I was at my peak form and I knew that Raj was not going to be of any threat to me. How he managed to maintain his closeness to me in spite of not competiting for a year was not a thing that I was thinking about during that moment.

``Suddenly, I found my sailing boat sinking. It was a weird thing, one moment I was riding the waves with the wind in my back and the next I was taking in water from all sides.

``Raj zipped past me on his sailing boat, and his face was one full of gloat. Before I knew what was happening, something really hard hit me in the head and I fell into the rising water, my leg simultaneously striking something really hard.

``When I came to, I found myself in hospital with my leg in a cast on traction. From what I heard, Raj was disqualified from the sailing competition again, this time permanently.

``Try as I might, I never did find out why he was disqualified permanently.''

(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 20 Oct 2010 14:10:52)