Page 17 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
And I share it with people. WithIndigomost of all.
I sharemany—groups of those colorful things.
It brings mejoyto share them. Because it brings others joy to receive them.
And that’s the image I see—a cluster of the colorful things, wrapped in a long, pale hand that had once been mine.
What is theword? Why can’t I remember it?
I swim, following the waters left restless in the shadow’s wake. And hope.
Maybe these humans will give me a word back.
As people flockedto the rear of the ship, where the woman was still stammering that she’dseenthe monster, my belly pulled. Not up, as it’d been doing this whole ride.Down.As though an anchor had wrapped around my gut and was trying to rip it straight through the hull of the boat.
“Where is it?”
“It was there!Right there.”
“Where?”
“I don’tseeit.”
“There’s no way she saw it. Not with these waves.”
“Wait! He’s here! See there…Look at that big-ass shadow!”
“That’s the shadow from the ship, you dolt.”
The mass of people clamoring at the railing, shoving at each other as they tried to get a clear look at the monster, smudged my vision. Their screeches and hollers made my ears ring. Sweat ran in long, meandering lines down my back, making my skin prickle. Itch.
There was too much. Too much noise and movement. Too muchemotion.
It was suffocating me.
My hands jiggled—a nervous tic that drove most peopleinsane.
“Babe, why d’ya have to shake your hands like that?” Jackson had bemoaned on more than one occasion. “You look like you’re about to explode.”
Because itfeelslike I’m about to explode,I’d always wanted to say. But I could never explain the why of it. How sometimes I felttoo much. More than what my body could handle. And the hand-jiggling helped get rid of the excess.
It wouldn’t make sense to anyone. Because it didn’t make sense to me. So I clasped my hands together instead, twisting my fingers around each other until my knuckles popped.
“That’s him! That’s his tail!”
“Daddy! I wanna see the lock monster.”
A small blur warbled in my right peripheral just as a wave of impatient desperation niggled at me to turn that way.
A little boy—he couldn’t have been older than six or seven—was half swallowed in the wall of adults along the railing. He stood between his parents, a tall, heavily muscled man and a willowy woman, and he kept tugging at the man’s sleeve, crying, “Daddy! I wanna see!”
“Why can’t I remember it?”
I blanched when that odd voice coiled around my brain again. And my stomach abruptly took another nosedive, leaving me doubled over, wondering if I was going to faint or vomit or do a bit of both.
“Miss, are ye alright?”
I choked out a startled“gah”in response to the man who’d spoken into my left ear.
