Page 36 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
In anger? Or hunger?
I was probably like a decadent slice of cheese to him—a delicious morsel of taste and texture—just enough to satisfy a craving that’d been itching at him.
I pictured him gnawing me between his teeth, savoring the squirt of juices (my blood) over his tongue, closing his eyes in ecstasy at the satisfying crunch of my bones as he chomped them.
A great hiccupping sob surged out of me.
The monster made a low sound, like a growl, as his flesh rippled beneath me. And I figured this was it. This was the moment he flung me into the air and macerated me between his teeth. Like a dog catching a treat off the tip of its nose.
“Can you…h-hear me?” That thick, aristocratic voice inundated my brain again.
My sobs stuttered. “I…ummm…uh…Yes. And listen, I’mreallysorry I snapped at you. Really. I’m not a snapping person. Usually. I’m just…” My lower lip quivered, mashing my words. “Please don’t eat me.Please. I’m sorry I disturbed your slumber. I didn’t mean to…We were…Jackson and I….It was shallow…and then the wave came and…” My breath hitched. “Please don’t eat me. It was an accident.”
“Why would I…eat?”
Those rumbling words might’ve sounded kind, if they hadn’t been so resonant—the deep timbre of a creature fifteen times my size—and so strained.
“Because that’s what monstersdo, isn’t it? Stars, and I had flipping fish and chips tonight. I should’ve had the burger. Listen, I know I might smell like your regular diet, but I promise I won’t taste the same. I’ll probably be tough too—I spend most of my time sitting at a desk. Or…Oh no. That’d make the meat more tender, wouldn’t it? Forget I said that. I—AGGGGHH!”
The monster whipped his head to the side—not harshly enough to send me tumbling, but quickly enough to have my belly catapulting.
“Noisy,” he grunted.
“Please, please, please—Ooompfh!”
His head paused and gave a sharp, downward slant, a very “get the frick off” motion that sent me skidding down the tip of his nose and plopping onto his back.
I stood, swayed, and yelled when my feet flailed, struggling to get traction on the slimy slope.
“Hold”—he blew out a long breath and bumped his muzzle against the spikes on his spine—“here.”
I grasped on to one of those spikes just in the nick of time. A wave smacked into him, its foamy crest nearly swallowing the hump of his back. Icy water chomped at my toes and pulled, trying to rip me back into the sea. I clung to that spike for dear life and…Ugh.It wassquishy. Not a spike at all, more like a pliable pillar, with translucent flesh webbed in between…
A dorsal.He had a webbed dorsal.
“Better?” Warm, briny breath fanned across my body as the Loch Ness Monster stared down his nose at me.
Andno. This was not better.
Because he looked absolutely massivefrom this angle.
The slope of his back rivaled the size of a ship—and this was only the top of it. Several dozen feet of scaly flesh remained concealed beneath the churlish waves. The webbed dorsal dotting his spine stretched clean over my head. And hisneck…
I didn’t even want to take aguessat how long his neck was, and he currently had it all smooshed into a U-shape so he could keep his eyes fixed on me.
His cold, mean-looking orange eyes.
Mean-looking because the exaggerated downward curve of his brow hung a permanent scowl over his snout. And thatsnarling face, partially shrouded by the wispy fog, was framed by those two wickedly sharp horns, which curved from either side of his temple.
The Loch Ness Monster was a colossal titan. Master of these violent seas.
And I was this teeny, tiny, little spec on his back.
A morsel. A cookie crumb.
The shiver had started in my lower back and spindled up my spine, fanning out along my shoulders. When the icy water grabbed at my feet again, the shakes exploded across my whole body.
The monster made a low noise and puffed another breath at me. Which smelledfoul—oh my goodness, that was an odor to rot my stomach—but was blessedly warm. And it seemed deliberate, as though he wastryingto thaw my frozen limbs.
