by now every man and his dog had taken what they could, all that was left this morning was a rotting lump of residual flesh that the sharks couldn't reach, it lay up the shoreline stinking the whole town up, there was some blood and guts but the rest was bone, even the eyes were gone, stolen by officials under subterfuge, you could already buy one eye on e bay, 'single genuine optic organ from the newport blue' it said in large print. 
after coffee i plugged into the net and downloaded some sort of potable code that determines market price, fortune was favouring me, i rang the paris office and accepted their generous bid, no doubt the god forsaken stuff would find its way onto the highest of the shelves in top notch department stores retailing at some exorbitant price and smelling much nicer.
being an ambergris hunter means a lot of physical work, wheeling and dealing, you need many faces, have to keep abreast of the market, know when to sell and when to hold but most of all you have to evade the executioner.
it had only been a few days after the soft apocalypse, we were all still acclimatising, no one had rejected the new reality but there was what i would call separation anxiety, only for us ambergris men it would take the form of the executioner. i'm not sure why, there was no obvious answer but i could feel the fear and that was real. the executioner was said to be a man of considerable means, although he was a mercenary  he generally worked for the japanese, icelandic and norwegian conglomerate known as JIN, a group who seemed to want to be the sole traders in whale product. the executioner used various methods to scare or intimidate, none of which spring to mind, but i knew they were to be feared. 
in the new reality i had quite a nice place, fitted with a few security protocols but even without them it would be safe to assume the executioner had already intercepted my transaction, he would be on his way. 
i shipped the ambergris out via a proxy, three packages of australian bush honey direct to three parisian addresses, all three addresses where fake, but they were in the same arrondissement serviced by one postal outlet whom came complete with a corruptible delivery man. the scam had been tried and tested and the parisian dealers approved. i sent them off registered and insured, no need for me to miss the opportunity. 
from the basement i picked up a weapon, it looked like a science fiction type space gun, it had the words, ZAP on the side and had a conical nozzle with a point, a sort of radar like device. 
there were massive gaps in my memory, the new reality was like a tidal force spilling over the old one, fragments from the past surfaced, my life as captain mission seemed to be almost incomprehensible, what was i doing in the old days, i don't really know, i recalled having a completely different life, but none of it was clear, it was being submerged by this new one. 
the weapon looked familiar, i trusted it even if i didn't know exactly what it was. i seem to remember something about the moon. i folded down the radar part and stuck it under my belt, it would be night soon, that's when the executioner would be here. 
i made the new mission control as fortress like as possible and waited, i locked down the laboratory and the communications areas, i sealed off the basement and activated the security protocols despite not knowing exactly what they entail. 
on my mobile phone i accessed the encrypted website we ambergris people use, i wanted to see if he had left a message for me, there was no doubt he would be letting everyone know i was now top of his hit list. there it was in a new post, the captains mission is to stay alive, he had started a new thread, a thousand ways to die and had encouraged people to add to the list, jesus i thought, people are creative, as i scanned down a page of about fifty horrific ways. the one with the most votes would win, which meant he was going to skin me alive or tear out my heart and make me eat it, both were tying at 40 votes each. 
i posted my response, it was expected and i didn't want to let my supporters down, 'love him to death perhaps.'
when he burt into the perimeter it was not what i expected, she was female for starters, all the mythology was wrong, she was quite beautiful, obviously nordic, her tall warrior like features stopped me in my tracks, she moved like a gazelle, leaping over the walls, dodging the lights, rolling with the agility of a gymnast, i was slightly mesmerised but survival mechanism kicked in, i turned the screen off and prepared for a confrontation.
she came in threw the window, i'd made it accessible as i wanted to trap her before she trapped me, i watched her jimmy it open and slide through, she lay low to the floor, dressed in some sort of black lycra mesh, and wearing a black cloak like a superhero, she moved silently, i couldn't see any weapons. 
the air was cold, my breathing slowed down, silence wrapped us, the dusk light fading, soon it would be black, that's when i would surprise her.
i sat there, waiting, she would be searching for a door way down to the basement or up to the attic, but the room was sealed, there were no exits save for the way she entered, only one of us would be able to leave. the new reality was harsher than the old, it was unforgiving and brutal, i was beginning to miss the old one, i wanted the old one and in longing closed my eyes and tried to find something from it i could hold on to, something i could attach myself to that would always be there so that i would differentiate that i had once lived in a pre soft apocalyptic world that was different to this one i found myself in, did i have a family? did i have friends? did i have a dog? nothing seemed to come to me, everything was fading fast, being replaced by ambergris and whale culture. what about a career? i must have been something before, maybe i worked in an office, or a factory? everything was gone.
when i opened my eyes she was there, the point of her sword at my neck.