This story is by Doris Chu, whom I have known since our Wednesday night writers group was meeting at the now-long-closed Borders store in Waikele ages ago. She’s a genius editor and creatively-imaginative writer with her own unique way of telling a story.
“Haunting Lono” starts out with that imagination. Our narrator is the Hawaiian demi-god Lono. What’s he doing? Paying bills! Yes, he owns a SCUBA diving business. First, he has to deal with a tourist’s daughter who decided she wants to be a mermaid, and knows kung fu so well she can concentrate weight until she’s so heavy no one can lift her from the bottom of the pool … where her dive tank is out of air!
He talks her out of being a mermaid (“Well, you have to eat underwater and poop there, too”), then we’re on to the main part of the story: recovering the body of a friend’s son, whose plane had crashed in the sea off of one of the islands, and figuring out just what happened.
Things are never quite what they seem in a Doris Chu story, and this one effortlessly and enjoyably continues the tradition. So go buy your copy of Dark Paradise: Mysteries in the Land of Aloha immediately and dive into “Haunting Lono”. Yes, I’m so bad that the pun IS intended. 🙂
Dancing Treefrog 