Big Salmon Lake i imagine death so much, it feels more like a memory

panic was beginning to rise in merrick’s chest; he fixed the face of his beloved shadow within the eye of his mind and renewed his assault upon the dragging jaws locked around his limb.
lashing out at the man’s throat, underbelly, flanks, with the remaining three, merrick scrabbled wildly in the silt beneath his spine, kicking pawfuls of it up toward the burning eyes much as he himself had earlier been taunted with water.
the deeper lake loomed inches from reach 
daddy don’t
and within its depths, the stone faces he had spied earlier
merrick gave a great twisting arch in the man’s jaws in an attempt to tear free.