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There is a storm on the horizon. Alas, that is normal. Your husband has terrible luck with sailing.
Truthfully, it has felt for as long as you have breathed, you have breathed in the calmness before a storm. Anticipation for something awful on your tongue. Dry, warm air before a storm hits in your lungs. There is always a storm on the horizon. You have never seen another type of sky while sailing.
Dark clouds pile onto each other like stones. Icy blue and cold black spreads across the south like rivulets of oil. There is a faint tingling in the air. You look down. So deeply tired, the motion almost causes your eyes to lock close – like when a rocker-eyed doll is tilted. Blankets of goosebumps sleep on your arms. You know with sighed resignation that the upcoming weather will be one of the worser ones you have experienced.
No matter how many waves you sail upon, your husband cannot escape the looming storms, try as he might.
In your hand, you hold a lantern. It walks with you. Burning brightly, it works effectively to prod off the combined darkness of night and storm. Hypotonic red and yellow twirls over each other. A caged calamity which sways somniferous with each step you take.
This is the forty-second time you have paced the entirety of the ship. From stern to bow, croaking wood weeps under your aimless poltergeist motions. Some cuckoo clocks, upon the stroke of each hour, release little trapped dolls to dance and spin in circles upon the stroke of each hour. You are quite similar to them. Except, you are a doll in a broken cuckoo clock who works its dancers tirelessly. Spinning and spinning, stern to bow, then again, stern to bow, repeat, stern to bow.
With each step, the fire in your lantern sways like a hypnotist's watch, undulating red and yellow.
You have been awake for two days so far. However, you only walk at night to fend off sleepiness. In the daylight, you keep yourself busy with menial tasks. Walking helps to fight off the sleep before it envelopes and rains upon you.
Yet, it seems you are making too much noise with your endless pacing. Your scolding comes with the cry of a single creak. The wooden door of the captain’s cabin opens.
Eyes once up to absorb the sight of the creeping storm, the layout of the ship, and any sight you wanted to see suddenly drop down. Eyes now on the floorboards, you listen to the pitter of feet marching down steps. Wind howls in your ears and rakes through your hair. Endless pacing comes to a sudden halt. With retreating eyes, you stand by the shrouds.
When a pair of boots enter your eyesight, thorns wrap around your heart. Panic settles in when he speaks, “Another sleepless night, my dear?”
You have no idea what your husband looks like. Never gathering the bravery to look up and with him never having the want to tilt your chin up, neither of you have made eye contact. His face is like tenebrous darkness casted by storm. Numerous features could lay on it. Numerous possibilities yet no answers. No beard though; you know this when he places a palacting kiss on your forehead where your brain stews with undreamed dreams. No coarse hair tickles your skin.
However, your husband knows what you look like. Taller than you, stronger than you. Knowing your features and face shape in this uneven marriage, that is his right in nuptial laws. Spouses should submit to their husband, he told you when the ship first departed from the dock of your hometown.
Though, you cannot remember your hometown. Or really anything before him.
All of your life (because you must have had one) before him is blank like empty waters. From the Memory Sea, you search desperately for something. No matter how many lines you cast out, all you pull up is stringy, golden brown kelp or thick, ebony black kombu. The fishing rod of your desperation cannot possibly successfully make a catch in empty waters. How foolish of you to even cast a line, Husband/Captain would tease.
You know him only as your husband. He never gave you his name. You heard the men under his command call him captain. He adopts two names on your tongue, Husband/Captain; though you hardly use either.
You hardly address him first. He addresses you.
“My dear (Name),” a finger oscillates gently on your cheekbone. “I do not think the moon is as lonely as I am without you in bed. I miss you.” When you move your head to the side in shame, the finger guides you firmly to look at him – or at least his shoes.
“Speak.”
Lips feeling looser, you weigh your next words carefully. What can you possibly say this time around? Is there anything left to say? Fitful in your resolve, your eyes travel to take in the pulsing glow of your lantern and how it illuminates different colors. The image paints itself in your memory: the empty lantern that is devoid of anything but a pile of ash, the chest in the corner which you are not allowed to open, the bed with its silky sheets that inundate you with dreams of drowning.
You dream of drowning every time you sleep. When your head hits the pillow, it is like falling into a bottomless puddle that goes much deeper than anticipated. Idiosyncrasy to yourself, you are only one of this swaying ship that fears the reality of drowning.
Below your feet, almost breathing, the ship rocks back and forth. It feels like you imagine how it feels to be rocked gently by a mother. Maternally, even the ship wishes for you to sleep. The captain and his vessel conspiring against you together.
But – you cannot – so you must bargain some way to stay awake until the vessel docks. “I was … I was growing a bit uneasy over the storm. And I could not –.”
Husband/Captain hums and you know to immediately fall silent.
The pattern of the lantern handles indents in your hand. Digging steel hurts like a bad punishment. What a silly excuse. For two months all you have known is encroaching storms, why would you suddenly develop an anxiety over them now? You look out upon the ebony, mature cumulonimbus clouds.
“Isn’t there an old saying: out of sight, out of mind. I’m positive that watching it does little to quell this uneasiness,” he says.
If anything a rainstorm would be a blessing, diverting his attention from you.
“If I’m aware of it, it helps dispel that anxiety. If I’m away from it, not watching it, I feel quite worried about what could happen.”
“I share that sentiment. I’m quite anxious with you out of my sight.”
So it seems, you think, so it really seems. Your husband has pulled you away from the ship’s railings on multiple occasions, hand a shackle on your wrist, reeling you back onboard. Staying within his sight is an unspoken wedding vow.
You tense prematurely, already knowing his next words. You have lost for the night. Oh, how you have lost deeply. “I don’t want to sleep tonight … please … –” in all my dreams, I drown. But you cannot talk anymore because –
“Now hush, love,” Husband/Captain coos.
“Here’s your gown.”
What he holds out to you is rivulets of soft cotton. A sleeveless gown with fragile, ornamented straps which will hang gently on your shoulders. The pattern is a delicate stitch like doyle napkins and a little bow rests on the chest’s center. Ending at the shin, white lace replicates the look of distance waves, twisting up and down.
You take it within your scarred arms. Diagonal slashes racing down and then another group of diagonal scars racing up coat your forearms. Memory Sea has yet to unveil how you got these scars.
“Please,” you plead. It takes so much bravery to say that one word that you feel winded after.
Your head is patted in fruitless consolation.
【☆】★【☆】
The captain is not happy about today’s catch. Not happy is really too subtle of a way to put it. He boils with a rage known of a tyrant’s disposition, body exploding into a mess of volcano-esque fire. It is a strange sight to the men. What they pulled up from their nets would feed the crew without the need of rationing. Their catch was bountiful; what is there to be possibly upset about?
It is because all they caught is codfish. Codfish pyramiding upon codfish. A family reunion of hundreds of generational codfish. Oh, and one common ling. Which he took from the nets, it serpentine amber and white body oscillating in hand, as he howls at his crew, “A fucking ling! A ling!”
Eyes down, you had a perfect view of the ling being dropped to the floorboards and the captain raising his boot to mallet it down upon the fish’s head. Red and white puss splattered in a gory firework, piscine epidermis popping loudly.
Then, the captain stomped off, leaving a one-footed trail of red behind him.
Antipaction and questions lingered in the eyes of the crew. The crew looked upon you with high expectations. Well, aren’t you going to follow the yellow-brick road, the red footprint trail? Weren’t you going to head into the captain’s cabin and help your husband – lie on the bed, stomach down, as he punched fireworks into you, until he worked out his anger? This ship’s crew really has no delicate manner of speaking with their eyes.
Averting your eyes, sheepish, you shake your head. You are not inclined to want pain. Fleeing, you took to entering the kitchen to cook, growing ill at the sight of nets.
Nets. Just the cross-hatching pattern could make you feel consumptive. Like your stomach is empty or your stomach is bloated, it makes you so incredibly sickly to watch the crew pull up their meshwork that cradles school upon school of fishes.
Upon your forearms are scars, scars of an identical pattern.
When the men take to dumping their catch into a circular, steel tank that is about the size of a Queen bed, you thank them in a whisper. Looking into their eyes is like falling off a cliff, missing the water, and landing upon a bed of jagged stones. Eyes like stone, not resentful but still dangerous. You work to keep your head down until they all leave.
With the captain so vexed, you delegate yourself to preparing his meal first. The rest of the crew can wait until mid-afternoon. So, you prepare a dredging station with quick work. Find a shallow bowl, cut the lemon, mix together a double serving of spices with the flour. Your husband is fond of sharp herbs mixed in with fish.
You have learned to cook with his guidance. Webbed fingers and tentacles moving about on the station. He likes to say, “A country’s cuisine reflects their culture and history. It’s a fascinating field of study.” Then, ordinary human fingers guide you with firm resolve to work upon dicing, cutting, and slicing.
Now, you are almost a veteran at preparing fish. Mostly codfish, though you would have longed to experiment with a ling – you remember the pomace of oozing brains and otoliths, multiple streaks of red like lightning on the floor.
But you suppose you are not allowed to. It is probably for the best. Staying with your routine.
Seasonings scenting the air, you hear your stomach growl. Ah. Perhaps just a bite won’t hurt.
Triple-checking, you make certain that none of the crew lingers by the kitchen. No curious eyes are peeking through the window. When you are assured in your resolve, down to the bone and up to the skin, you crouch down by the bucket. Into the pool of threshing codfish, your hand swims.
The one you take out is a medium-sized portion. Green and yellow skin a similar hue of summer moss. As it squirms wildly, you turn it belly-side up. It takes a great deal of effort with such dull teeth. Yet, after a bit gnawing, the piscine epidermis finally breaks with a loud pop in your omnivorous mouth.
Rotating it around like corn-on-the-cob, you munch down upon the live and raw codfish with ravenous hunger.
【☆】★【☆】
A fortnight after, you wake up gasping for breath. Saliva is like a second tongue in your mouth, overcrowding. Unhesitant, you turn over the edge of the bed and wait for a soup of briny seaweed, torrential waves, and a codfish to splatter upon the captain’s bedroom floor. A single jellyfish tail of bubbly saliva is all that hits the ground.
Lungs so incredibly strained cannot comprehend where all the water went.
Coughing, you cringe against the sensation of water in your mouth. The natural lubricant of saliva is suffocating, pressing hard on the walls of your buccal cavity.
And though your lungs kick painfully, there is nothing more to spit out the tiny dime of water already spat out. Coughs come and go until they ebb to you panting softly in bed. Fatigued breaths eventually wither, to you just breathing steadily and staring off to the only light source.
Pointed spirals of light move in a kaleidoscope pattern. Leather red brightens to a bloody crimson. Rich blue wood absorbs the glow. You are a bit unsure what is really rocking back and forth, swaying with such somnolence: the boat itself or the chest where a star is locked inside.
The chest you are not allowed to open.
In your ears, you hear the ocean gnash and moan.
【☆】★【☆】
Blech and blarghhh. Blech and blarghhh, you go.
Over the bow of the ship, you puke.
Bile falls heavy into the awaiting waves below. One teary, squinting eye watches the pallid greenish-yellow sludge sink. Your nose is sour by the scent of imaginary citrus oranges; your head is a spinning dreidel. On the night of your three month anniversary on the ship, you woke up from another drowning dream with a secondary heart heavy in your throat. Prisoned, it banged and banged for release. So, you rushed up to the bow and granted its plea for freedom.
To the sea, let me go to the sea, your bile begged. And you listened.
A powerful blech and blarghhh has you stumbling feverishly. Your feet skid on wood like a lynched cowboy’s who kicks fruitlessly to feel solid ground. Stomach and railing biting each other, you lean far with the force of your next hurl. Far enough where you too could fall into the awaiting waves below.
Your heart spikes because you realize, puke only halfway out and face winking in agony, that you are falling in. You have gone far enough. Cerulean waters seem to reach out in an awaiting embrace.
Just as your feet start to lift from the ground, the saltine noose around your neck pulling, a hand wraps gently yet firm against your waist. You gasp wetly, bile lipstick thick, as you find yourself back on solid ground.
“Easy there. Easy. I got you,” Husband/Captain murmurs. He presses a kiss to your neck but does not hold your hair back when you gurgle again. Throat fluctuating with heaving breaths, he lies his nose on that weeping patch of skin. Salt is thick on you. “Sudden sea-sickness will pass. Happens even to the veteran sailors.”
Not this extreme, you want to argue. You are too cowardly to object. And besides … Vomit acts as a reliable tape over your hatred. You wish his hand would stop rubbing a thumb on your stomach and instead gather up tendril-esque hair.
“Though I would have never expected you to succumb to such an illness,” he says, awestruck as if you are breaking some bodily law. The thumb on your stomach becomes more pressing. “Perhaps … perhaps it is not the matter of the seas that turns your stomach so.”
You realize with a cold sweat what he is referencing. “It is not that.” A helpful hand (your own) rises up to start wiping off the pallid greenish-yellow cosmetic. Fingers fling and flick the remains of your regurgitating stomach into the waves.
“I would be able to tell.”
“Is that possible,” his voice doubts. “How could you?”
“Of course I could. It’s my body.”
Husband/Captain chuckles like you have told a funny joke. Now it is not his sole thumb that oscillates back and forth on the skin of your nightgown, he opens up his hand like a flower. He takes to rubbing your stomach until his hand goes down to cradle the spot between your legs.
You wish the ocean would take you.
The night sky is full of stars. Stars are a rarity. You never get to see them often because of how normal it is for your husband’s ship to be caught in a storm. Tonight, all is tranquil. Tonight, you are in the embodiment-al heart of the calm before the storm. And, lastly, tonight, you will try something new and exciting. You will use those pinpricks of light to paint pictures; you doubt anyone has ever thought of such a fabulous game before.
It takes a while for you to get into the groove of it. When there is this strange, thrusting force behind you, bile pops out your lips like blood. Stars align to make a teddy bear, fashioned with a little bow. When your tears fall into the awaiting waves, they catch them with so much tender sorrow.
There is a melody in the air. A little different from blech and blarghhh. Far different from the harsh hit of his hips. It howls below you. Water licking on the side of the ship seems to say: dont worry dont worry i will save you.
【☆】★【☆】
When you strike the match, it hisses and balloons with a fierce flame before shrinking down to something petite, something weaker. With great care, you press the match through the open lantern panel. It transforms with a fiery jump.
You stick the match between your lips once you wave it in the air harshly, killing it. Lantern panels now all closed, you hold it up to illuminate the revolutionary sight before you. It has been a day and three months … you have to know what’s in there. The rich blue box sits in your path with all the magnetism of precise metals. You crouch before it, nun-like.
The top of the wooden chest is an arch, so you rest your lantern to the side. Out of your sock, you pull two fishbones – ones you had cleaned down with your tongue and whittled down to points with a kitchen knife.
You cannot remember anything of your life before this boat. Against his wishes, you have been trying to remember what could have been of you before this boat. The storybook must have more pages, a prologue of sorts left unsaid. This boat … nothing but him lives your memory. Hand outstretched like thorns, sand, snakes, poison, fire, and nightmares. A hand that puts a glittering circlet on your ring finger. Your first memory is being wed.
Into the mouth of the lock, you slowly slide in the first fishbone. Behind you, the sound of a blanket hitting the floor thumps. Thin and fragile, the fishbone snaps halfway in the lock as you rise to your feet – and you rush, hand just managing to grab the lantern, as a raging storm at your back runs at you.
“YOU UNFAITHFUL FUCK!”
You run up the stairs three at a time, heart jackrabbiting with fear.
Tears are already in your eyes before you comprehend them. Your hand depresses on the door. Wood clatters and shakes with tremendous rage below you, growing closer. Run away, you scream at yourself, just as you realize there's nowhere to run to. When the door opens, water pelts your face in a thousand exploding fists.
This is the closest the storm has ever been. But it was clear yesterday ? – calm before a –?
A scream tears from you as a reaching hand misses your arm, his dirty nails almost tickling the goosebumps coating your skin. With reckless abandon, you jump down the flight of seven stairs just outside of the cabin. The deck catches you with all the care wooden arms have – which is very little. Wide yet still finite, the deck faces off with you in the fierce, piercing rain. Where to escape to , it asks, as violent waves rock below.
Left knee bleeding and a section of your nightgown ripped, you sprint towards the bow. And from the south, a savage, ravening storm follows. Dark clouds pile over. Icy blue lunges. Maybe it would not be so bad to fall off the edge. Is that what all those ceaseless dreams of drowning meant — you have to drown to finally be at peace?
An ethery scent explodes in the rain. The marriage of the sounds of breaking glass and petrified screaming kisses in the gusty air. In the blimp of chaos, both of you hit the floor, right next to where fire from a broken lantern starts to eat up the wood.
“No … No, please,” you cry. “Please no!”
By his hateful hands, you are turned on your side. Before you can make eye contact, he punches you across the face with an intensity reserved for crewmen in brawls. The wind howls mournfully in your ringing ears. Blood pops out of your mouth in tiny lightning bolts.
As ringing and blustery winds ebb in sound, you catch the last of your husband’s words, “...I know what is best for you.”
“Scold or hit me! I cannot go back to sleep! Please!”
He grabs your head in a vitriol grip. Acid burns pierce where his fingers dig in. Husband/Captain lifts you by his hold on your head, like a lion might do with a cub by the scruff of its neck. Eyes stomp shut in fear. You fear the intensity of his face will overwhelm and drown you.
“Help me! Someone! Please, help me!”
“Now hush, love.”
“SOMEONE! ANYBODY PLEASE –!”
“Here’s your gown.” Then, he slams your body on the ground. Your head cracks with the fragility of an egg. Molten dreams with rainbowing incandescence slip out from the lightning-shaped fractures, spilling all over deck.
【☆】★【☆】
The moon is full tonight.
You feel in your bones that you have not seen a full moon in a very long time. Despite it being a monthly occurrence, storm clouds shield it away; even when unveiled, the nude moon is caught waning or waxing. This phase of the lunar sun kisses uncloudy skies with a powerful completeness. How you missed it with a whirlpool fervor. You feel so at peace.
A silver eye not missing any weight or heft. Hanging on a vertex, it hums with the sprinkling song of moondust and moonlight. With that melody, it shaves the weight of weakness that has shackled you. Avoirdupois lightens; the full moon brightens.
I have not seen a full moon this serene since I was a little boy/girl, you remember that much. It is such a wondrous sight that you do not notice the water rising up by your ankles.
No – not water, bedsheets. Bedsheets that snake serpentine like individual rivers connecting together. With a fluidity unique to water, white linen slithers across the curve of your calf and climbs up in gusts of silk to the tendons in your hamstrings. Moisture still clings to you; dry sheets juxtaposingly soaking you.
I am going to drown again. You frown delicately at the sentiment. Yet, despite the acknowledgement that watery suffocation is going to repeat itself, you think this time it will be a metamorphosis. Something different from previous dreams.
You only think this because moondust and moonlight hug your slowly submerging body and tell it to you. Reassures you of it, to wade off fear of drowning.
Sheets climb up to your sternum. With rocking motions, they purl and lick at your shoulders. Ribbons weaving in and out of each other, pulsing up in gigantic breaths to climb upon you. Cloth falls over your mouth and silences you. Tendrils of linen rush into your nostrils. You keep your breath for as long as you can. As the bedsheets engulf you, you keep your eyes trained upon the full moon.
A silver eye not missing any weight or heft. Complete. I want to be complete again.
Once fully submerged, you open your eyes. There is a tentacle in front of your face.
【☆】★【☆】
There is a tentacle in front of your face. It lies on its side. Facing you like how two lovers might turn to pillow-talk at one another. About as thick as an elephant leg, it stretches fully across the deck, dipping down into unseen depths over each side of the ship.
Suckers squirm like a breathing wall before you. Voluminous in numbers. Almost replicating plasma barnacles of the underside of aquatic vessels. Individual suckers purl and roll with fake breaths. Fluctuating up and down in uneven patterns, unorganized hive mind motions. Most of them were a vibrant lavender yet – like moles on a wrinkled face – cheetah spots of violet-whitish squirms in slower beats. Moving like bubbling lava, lavender stirs and beckons.
You cannot resist. Pushing your hand upon the breathing wall, you breathe in the scent of salt.
There is an ocean beneath the surface. Blood and plasma swims warmly underneath the skin. Despite the cold and salty water that falls like tears over shells of suckers, there is a warmth. An alive warmth.
It cannot wrap itself around you; this particular tentacle is wrapped from one edge of the boat to the other like a behemoth bow strangling a Christmas present. However, touch is reciprocated in other methods. Like an expanding stomach, lavender pushes into your starfish spread out fingers. Suckers harmonize in a circle around the area where you put pressure.
Hypnotic, eldritch beauty finds primitive comfort in you. Even though the side of your head is still sticky with clotting blood, you think you feel comfort too. It is only ripped from you when a crewman shouts, “God, help us all! A Kraken! By God, a Kraken!”
Beyond the goliath, shielding tentacle, the ship and its crew are in discord. And once it reaches your ears, awareness of it crawls into all your other senses. Drawing away from the tentacle, you realize while standing up that the scent of ether in your nose is overwhelming. Half of the deck is engulfed in flames. Warmth from fire blankets you in heavy sheets. And –
“Someone! Anybody please –!!” And men are being dragged off the boat and killed by twisting, gnashing tentacles.
The boat tilts. Stumbling feet are magnetized backwards; you trip over the tentacle you were just touching. A shriek that pains the wound on the side of your head erupts from you as you are rolled across the deck like a dice across a game-board.
Your tentacle (the one you caressed) does not reach to steady or save you. Instead, it squeezes tentatively on the vessel ensnared in its grip. Splintering wood spreads up like a field of pointy grass. Then, after a moment, it slithers back into the ocean just as your spine hits the railing of the tilting ship.
Over your shoulder, you see a raging sea. Waves curve into each other, resounding claps of exploding water striking your ears. Above, bullets of water clip fast upon the awaiting ocean. That familiar saltine noose reemerges around your neck, as your feet lift with gravity. Everything happens in a millisecond and in an eternity, dream-esque.
Your knees hit the deck when a hand pushes you away from the edge. You suck in deep breaths in a panic, prematurely housing oxygen away before you were doomed to fall in. But you had not fallen in … because … because there was a hand. Sprawled on the wet and burning deck, both elbows down on the ground, you turn over your shoulder one final time.
His hair is the color of the sea. You never expected to see hair a different shade than black, brown, or blonde, perhaps a rare red, but his is breathtakingly blue. Coping, your mind fixates on it because you cannot comprehend the three-points of fins growing where his ears should be. There must be a mystified expression on your face regardless. The man smiles at you with covetous patience.
“Hello, (Name). I wanted to be first to say on behalf of us, we are terribly sorry for our delay.”
Delay? “I don’t understand.”
“Do not stress. A great deal will soon resolve itself. Are you hungry? Can I do anything for you?”
Kindness is far more alien to you than the sight of piscine traits that your mouth falls open in a tiny circle. Words fail to form. Just as your bottom lip starts to quiver, the man amends, “Is there perhaps something you don’t want me to do?”
Meekly: “Do – Don’t go.” Apologetically (and quickly too): “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that.”
Desperately, you wish you had something to hide in but all that you wear is a slim cotton gown. It is innate to leech onto goodwill after such a drought of it. An amused warmth settles of his features, then it softly falls into a deep sadness. Once more, you fumble for words, upset that you have upset him … “I’m sorry – I –!”
A loud noise breaks the moment. There is a pyramid of hundred or so noises caterwauling in this storm, mixing together like how a tornado tears up earth and neighborhoods to mix a smoothie of different items. Something salient breaks through all that cacophony – Husband/Captain shouting, “Give that back, you beast!” And then three consecutive popping sounds as he fires his gun.
You watch the figure of your husband, his spine facing you, wrestle with a tentacle. Like an obsidian tongue, the tentacle emerges from the door to the captain’s cabin and sways back and forth, trying to tug something from your husband. It is a tug-of-war with a predictable winner.
Strength evolves into desperation. A shout undulates into the rainstorm as Husband/Captain is thrown up. His body somersaults in the air. The tongue churns back into the mouth of your bedroom like a retreating snake. Clutched in a protective grip is the blue chest. Defeated, Husband/Captain pushes himself up on his elbows, nose broken.
Through sheets of rain, you two make eye contact for the first time in ninety-two days.
People say he is the fairest of them all. Women and men in the town swoon over him. And with a husband/wife to match, those jealous men and women think when their eyes land upon your awe-striking beauty. Yet, when you look upon him now, all you see is a hideous man. Like a swan (yourself) marrying a condor (him) – he is ugly beyond putridness.
His bloody mouth moves. His shaking hand moves. You do not move.
You cannot tell if the next sound you hear is the ring of a gunshot or the bang of a lightning bolt.
It is like when I bite into the codfish, you think deliriously, watching red soak your nightgown. Hah. What a strange color. You think the man with the blue hair is trying to get your attention but the crimson color has you in a trance. Like mold, it grows slowly on the wrinkled creases of your nightgown, a little bit below your ribcage. So much – so much red.
Yellow interrupts your mesmerization. Cheeks squished together, you look into a black pupil ringed by a honey wedding band then backdropped by a white planet. The triptych of color has you equally magnetized as the man takes his dominant hand and settles it under your rib.
“Breathe in.”
You do obediently.
“Breathe out.”
Once more, you follow instructions. With your exhale, the wound in your abdomen closes up like a sleepy eye. He cards his non-dominant hand through your hair with excellent care. “There, there, are you feeling better?” When you nod, he whispers lovingly, “I’m so glad to hear that, my dearest.”
He smiles and reveals a collection of cutting instrumental teeth, shark teeth.
The man looks like he is about to inquire more yet a voice interrupts in a lazy drawl, “Caaan I kill him now?”
You turn to see your husband covered in red, down to a level where it almost looks like a second skin or a set of clothes upon him. His body is bent over the railing and a man with almost identical features holds him by the top of his torso, a piscine hand tight around his throat. “Kinda gettin’ of tired of his squirmin’ – he’s all sticky.”
Jade knows that is not a truthful admission. Floyd likes when they squirm. Jade wants that vile man dead too with as much intensity as his brother does but – “Come now, we are not barbarians. We have rules for our way of life.”
“Don’t care. He made Sealy cry. I’mma tear off his penis.”
“Please, refrain from such violence for a moment longer. Sir – well, that is too polite for you. Hm, Captain. Captain, we have customs where we challenge the owner of a particular vessel to a certain game. Will you play along?” The only response is an opaque red-white trail of slime dropping from his trembling lips. “Good. I will say the first two lines of a poem. You must complete them.
“Floyd, if you would, please.” The squeezing hand releases and your husband gasps for breath as if he has just escaped drowning on dry land. Shadow and light from the flickering flames shudder across his choking lips. “ O my Luve’s like a red, red rose / That’s newly sprung in June.”
“Get off my fucking boat!”
“Hm, another verse then. As fair as thou, my bonnie lass, / So deep in luve am I.”
“I’ll roast you alive, you overgrown fish! (Name), get away –”At the mere utterance of your name, the man returns to strangling your husband with an explosive vitriol that it almost seems his gold and olive-brown eyes will bulge from his face in anger.
“Shut the fuck up.” He seethes with rage.
The other man responds to your husband. “Sorry but the responding lines are: And I will luve thee still, my Dear, / Till a’ the seas gang dry. Go ahead, Floyd. ”
Red. So much red. It sprays out when Floyd rips off the skin enveloping around your husband’s throat. Glittering seafoam rivulets that arch beautifully. Leaping and pirouetting through the air. Thicker rivers start to follow after the initial misting, jetting shower. Some of the spume lands upon your temple. Already sticky with salt and blood, you do not flinch at the sensation.
Then, the man, the man named Floyd, falls spine first into the thrashing sea, taking your husband with him. It takes a few moments before you realize the other man is gone too.
You are not sure how long you stay sitting on the deck, letting rain drench you. It could be three or thirteen minutes of absent minded staring at the skies. Cords of white lightning are thrown across the canvas like spools of yarn, wavy and disorganized. Water pelts your face angrily; the weight of it hurts. Below you, the watery depths wail with ghastly noises.
The noise does not lessen or quiet to announce his presence. He simply emerges. One tentacle pushing up from the railing is followed by a hand which is followed by another hand. Then, hovering about three feet in the air above you, the Kraken analyzes you.
Wind picks up, howling. If you were standing, it would be a very real threat to push you off the ship. Tangible winds pick up tendrils of your soaked hair and cheerfully play with, whipping it back and forth in painful, fast-paced oscillation. Entranced, you watch the Kraken’s very dry hair flow in the air with gentle grace.
“Hello.”
You almost faint. His voice is each raindrop, sleeping in each ebon cloud, racing through each electrical bolt that shatters in loud cracks. Blue eyes with a horizontal, pill-shaped pupil squint in worry at the shiver you give at his voice.
“Are you cold, angelfish? Ah, here,” only two behemoth tentacles have to umbrella over your form to completely stop the downpour. You lose sight of the man due to the massive, lilac parasol of muscle that covers you. He enters your sight again when his upper body slithers forward under his tentacles. “Is this better?”
He is so inhumanly gorgeous that he leaves you spellbound. Around you, his numerous tentacles wrap across the deck and into holes he has made into the ship’s helm like hungry snakes in a garden of mice. Prism-like, Stygian black glitters with each rain freckle that races down the arches of muscular tissue. Light shimmers evangelical on each part anatomical droplet.
Yet, his real eldritch splendor is in his human-mimcing top half which leans towards you amorously.
Silver hair, like the color palette of a full moon has dropped into it, sweeps across his face gracefully. The skin of his neck and collarbone pulse with each measured breath. A blue much mellower than the typical rough ocean hue shines in his eyes. His lips move and your eyes dilate just a smidgen.
He whispers to you in your little pocket universe. It feels you two are floating on a planet designed only for the two of you, heave ho-ing back and forth on waves made of stardust. He speaks so softly.
“I’m,” his voice breaks slightly like a chipped mug, “I’m terribly sorry for being so delayed. We tore down countless ships before we arrived upon this one … That is no excuse though. I should’ve been stronger and taken all of them down in a week.”
You do not really get what he is talking about but you still ask, “How many did you take down?”
“A hundred and thirty seven. Each one just another bleak joke. My angelfish, I’m so sorry.”
“That’s quite a number.”
“Ah, yes, I suppose. We would have done a thousand more. Floyd, Jade, and I –”
“Who’s Jade?” Then, as an afterthought. “Can I please know your name as well?”
He blinks at you in confusion. After a heavy, contemplating moment, he states resolutely, “Let’s get you out of this wrong skin and into something proper.”
“Proper?” You blink in replicating confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“Hush now, hush love,” Azul says, more tender than – than someone that has drowned in Memory Sea, never to be remembered again. Honestly, you do not recall there being any reasons for apologizing.
The parasol of tentacles peels apart and, hand in hand, Azul guides you towards the railing. You take care not to slip.
“Here’s ya gown.” The man who had ripped out your husband’s throat – you do know his name is Floyd – holds something out to you, leaning over the railing.
What he holds in his hand is unlike soft cotton. It is wetly sleek, patterned with black and white which diffuse into each other with freckling gray. There are no straps for your arms to slip and where the train of a dress should end is hind flippers. A dog-esque face with long whiskers stares at you with hollow eyes, awaiting for you to slip it on. It is a seal pelt.
Boldly, you look into his eyes. Gold and olive-brown, warm eyes. They are so earnest that you have no inclination not to believe him. That is your possession in his webbed hands, and he is returning it to you.
In the span of three months and one day, you have had seventy-three dreams where you drown in them.
In the span of three months and two days, you rejoin the ocean where you were always supposed to be, sunrise and clear skies on your tail.