Page 1 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
Words are hard.
They came easily to me. Once. A long time ago. Great waves of words, spoken too quickly for most to grasp.
Now they slip away. Most I’ve let slip. They are meaningless. Noise to break the silence.
But some I’m lost without.
Indigo. My love.
Alistair. My name.
Onyx. The one who stole my words.
These I repeat as I swim in the murky waters I now call home.
Indigo.
Alistair.
Onyx.
There is little life beneath these waters. Most creatures flee.Afterseeing me. I am too big. They feel…fear. Of me. I can’t calm them, not when all I know are words, and they don’t understand them.
And my words slip. More each day.
Indigo.
Alistair.
Onyx.
I fear the day I lose all my words. The day I stare into the waters with nothing in my head. When all I have is feeling. The ache in my belly that tells me to eat. The restlessness in my fins that pushes me to travel. The burn of my runes when I am being called to the surface.
I fear the day I lose my words.
But I alsolongfor it.
When all the words are gone, I won’t remember to miss them.
It will be easier. To spend the rest of my days wandering the waters as a mindless creature.
Cursed.
I am cursed.
Cursed to lose my life. Mywords.
Cursed to hold a broken heart that will never heal, even as my memories slip.
Cursed.
“Good afternoon,Mr. Hollingdale. This is Pippi calling from—yes, sir. Pippi. Like the movie. Yep. Oh yes, I’ve got the big red hair and everything…Don’t often wear pigtails, but I guarantee they’d stick up just like Pippi Longstocking’s.” I leaned back in my office chair, fighting to grasp the phone in my sweat-slicked hand. My smile was so forced, sophony,it made my cheekbones hurt.
But the phony smile helped tilt my voice into a chipper pitch.
“Ahhh, I’ll bet I just aged myself getting that reference though, huh?” Old, stuffy Mr. James Hollingdale wheezed into my ear. “Young-sounding thing like you probably don’t get many men your age talking about such an old movie.”
Young-sounding thing…Gosh.
