12/28/2023 0 Comments Izoom water slideIt gurgles, like a purr, and rubs its blue head in my palm. “Hola sirena,” I croon and reach my hand out. My heart quickens but I force my shoulders to relax. Its onyx-colored eyes bulge out of its head, and its fins stretch into the water. Water bubbles through the mermaid’s gills. I’m good at luring but she’ll have to spear. “Pierce the left gill, pull to the boat’s right.” We’ve been out of practice and our experienced sisters like Juana who loved to spear the mermaids, are now dead. But I hope my glare is enough to drive the importance of eating. I want to pull her into a soft embrace, to calm her nerves, to pour into her the confidence that we will eat today because of her, and that I, the oldest, believe in her and us and the mermaid. Don’t mess up like last time.” My voice is raspy and harsher than I intend on my baby sister. “Just concentrate and remember what I taught you. “Are you sure about this,” Martina mutters, her voice fragile, and for a moment, I wonder if I hear nervousness or if it’s simply the lack of food forcing her to quiver. It swims to the boat’s ledge, crosses its claws, and grins all the way to its ears revealing its long sharp teeth. My fingers shake and I force them to keep the rhythm steady not too desperate, not too lazy. From behind me, I wave at Martina to ready the spear. “It doesn’t even know we’re hunting it,” I chuckle under my breath as I jig the casting spoon left and right in the water, luring it to come closer. We cut the engine a few yards from the mermaid. Before it leaves.” We’re thin and our muscles convulse from not having eaten in weeks, but we manage to shove the rusty boat off the pebbled shore and into the lagoon’s night. Martina’s amber eyes squint in the dark, but then gasps in delight. I would not make the same mistake again, not when we are the last ones on the shore dying for food. It’s ready.” I pack the boat and point with my lips towards the lagoon. There’s nothing worse than a skinny mermaid. We’ve made the mistake before, hunting one before its time, nibbling its fat-less bones. “Are you sure,” Martina’s forehead wrinkles and she pushes her matted black ringlets away from her face. We hadn’t meant to kill the first one in a boating accident, but then the kill turned into curiosity, and curiosity turned into our only source of food. Its kind appeared after La Calamidad, the nuclear war, wiped out our lands and fishing farms, and left us starving for weeks at a time. We hadn’t seen a matured mermaid in weeks. I lick my lips and yell at my sister Martina – the last of us – to ready the boat. Even from the shore, I spot its giant lobster claws and blue muscled chest moving with the tide, in and out of the water. For a lingering moment, my heart pounds and my stomach growls as I zoom the lens into the lagoon, currents of hunger flooding my body, and I think I must have hallucinated, like when I hear one of my dead sisters crying in the sea. It splashes again, clear and strong as it ripples across the water like broken glass. Shakily, I peek through my worn binoculars, hoping our food is not a hallucination. A warm breeze wails in from the north of La Ensenada and the ash remnants of the nuclear war settles on the moonlit water like a deceptive fog. Content note: This story contains non-consensual kissing, body horror transformation, graphic violence, and cannibalismįrom here at our fish house, where the downward curve of the mountain meets the shore of the lagoon, my little sister and I, huddled, starved, desperate, finally hear the mermaid splashing in the water and we know it’s time to kill it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |