Fudgesicles

I could see the all the way to the white sandy bottom from my tiny raft, and make out the mangled and twisted sea kelp, but I couldn't make out anything else until it reached the surface. The first thing I saw was four half-eaten fudgesicles bobbing by the raft. The fudge was supple, smooth, and resilient as resin. 

My companion was an adolescent girl with hair so shaggy it never looked wet, dressed in a sack tied about her waist by a rope. She swam ahead of my floating octopus raft, announcing each object that floated by with a sensory tag: "Smells good!" and "Tickles!" and "Very sharp!" Her voice rang across the water like a cymbal in a broom closet. We seemed to be looking for something in the menacing aqua blue water, lit by stars like white paper lanterns. Dead things, half-alive things, and useless things floated by my raft. 

I would not get in the polluted water. I barely fit under the bulbous mass. 

We came upon other people bewitched by the starlight, bathing in the water, using dead fish to rub their calloused feet and elbows. The girl declared, "This is it!" 

I put my arms in the water and paddled as fast as I could, scraping my arms against sharp metallic edges, like shards of broken glass. The raft was barely moving. The octopus was too heavy. I had to get back. This was not it. The girl lassoed the octopus head with the rope from around her waist and kicked us to shore. The shoreline was a rusty color, which seemed to be from the discarded junk and dead sun-baked lobsters littering the beach. The girl swam right over the unpleasantness, pulling me and the octopus to shore. I looked back and saw four half-eaten fudgesicles bobbing in the water.