Gills

by Eve Greenlow

I always knew drowning was the way I’d go. When I was a kid, I would park myself in front of the refrigerator in the dead of night, a plastic cup in my hand. Over and over I would refill the cup with water and empty it down my garbage chute esophagus. I wanted to be prepared when it came for me. I would drink until it felt like my stomach would burst, pregnant with tap. The water would leak from my eyes, nose, ears, any escape route it could find. Standing there in a puddle, I would toss the cup in the sink and head to bed, satisfied with my Sunday night ritual.

At first, I am surprised when Lot shows up at my grandfather’s beach house. But I know him, and this is exactly what I should have expected. He walks right past me and my objections and tosses his drenched sweater on the floor. It has been raining for two days. He has never been one to plan.

Lot sits across from me, pale arms crossed over a damp white tank top. We’re sitting at opposite ends of my grandparents’ simple wooden table, and the soft sandy glow from the nipple light above us casts his features in shadows. This house was left to my father, and my father left it to me. I spent almost every summer visiting my grandparents, watching safely from the porch as the waves struck the shore. It felt like the universe was laughing at me, like it was setting me up on a tee and getting ready to swing. The house is perched on the edge of the Pacific. It is the only place in the world that feels well and truly like home. I brought Lot here on our third date, over two years ago. He disliked the salt-soaked air, said it made his nose itch, his hair frizzy.

“Say something,” he quietly demands. His knee bounces up and down and up and down.

“You’re the one who showed up here,” I whisper back. We are both speaking so softly.

“You wanted time to think, you got it. But now I deserve an answer.”

My head turns away from him, towards the heavy grey clouds outside. I left a window open, despite the rain, despite the cold. The song of crashing waves has always calmed me. If I was able to hear them, I would know if they got too close.

“I gave you an answer.” I meet his stare. Sea glass eyes rimmed with exhaustion and desperation.

“Give me a different one.” His hands join his legs in their fidgeting. Lot interlaces his fingers and squeezes before momentarily releasing. Then he tightens them again. Over and over.

“Lot. Please.”

I turn back towards the window, already tired of a conversation we’ve barely sunk our teeth into. Far out in the water I see a smooth movement among raging ones. A fin cutting through the waves, easily ignoring the pull of the current. The tingling sensation on the back of my neck tells me it’s the same fin I’ve seen for years, always on the periphery. I tried to tell my parents about it, but they never believed me. My sister never saw it. Eventually I stopped trying to convince them. Swallowed the excitement every time I saw a flash of silver. If no one else could see it, then maybe it was only for me.

“I’m sorry for loving you enough to want to spend the rest of my life with you,” he snaps back, breaking me away from whatever lies beyond my window. “I’m sorry that I can’t understand how you’re able to throw me away so easily.”

“Nothing about this is easy.” I stand and walk to the kitchen. My throat feels dry, like his sad eyes have stolen all the moisture from the room. I reach into a cabinet and pull out a mug decorated with screaming children and bright colors, a token from an amusement park I must have visited when I was too young to remember. I fill it to the brim with cold fridge water and chug it like it’s oxygen, like it’s a lifeline.

“Could’ve fucking fooled me,” he hisses. He tracks my movements like a shark, but remains seated. I settle back down at the table, choosing a seat that allows me to face the window head on.

“Look, I don’t know why I can’t marry you, I just know that if I do, I’ll kill myself.” I’m not really paying attention to what I’m saying because I can see it, the thing in the waves, and it sees me. Whatever lies under that rogue fin has finally breached the surface, and it’s looking right at me.

“Jesus Christ, Cori.” Out of the corner of my eye I see Lot move his hands into his mess of hair and pull tight. “What is wrong with you? Why would you say something like that?”

“It’s how I feel. And I know how stupid it sounds, but it’s truly not you. I just don’t think I want to marry anyone.” I stand again and move towards the window. I can make out the shape of its head, human-like apart from the fin. Its skin is dark and almost reflective, like a pool of water under a midnight moon. Is it really looking at me? Can it see my eyebrows drawn together and my lip tucked tightly between my teeth from that far away?

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean?” I repeat, my focus threatening to fully shift to the creature.

“Cori, don’t piss me off. What do you mean you don’t want to marry anyone?” It’s the intensity of Lot’s emotions that draws me back to the conversation and into a seat at the table.

“I mean,” I suck in a breath. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to put into words my disdain for marriage. My parents never divorced, but they should have. They stayed together because that’s what married people do. Despite the fighting, the resentment, the infidelity. The whole concept has always left a sour taste in my mouth. “I don’t know Lot, it’s just not something I ever saw myself doing.”

He squints his eyes slightly and cocks his head to the side. While I can always tell how he feels, I rarely know what he thinks.

“Even with me?” He clenches his jaw, sharpening his features. Preparing his shield.

“Even with you,” I whisper. I watch as his eyelids drop close and his neck arches back, a large swallow bobbing his Adam’s apple like a buoy. His shaggy autumn hair falls out of his face, but a few wet strands manage to stick. He’s beautiful, even more so when he's devastated. A drop of sweat or rain or maybe a tear rolls down his cheek and onto his neck, and I’m overcome with the want to lick it up.

“How long have you felt like this?” he finally says, eyes still closed, neck still bared.

“Like I don’t want to get married? Forever, I think.”

“No, that you didn’t want to spend your life with me.”

I open my mouth to respond, but am stopped by the most breathtaking thing I have ever heard. Someone down on the beach is singing, their voice buttery and deep and piercing. It’s not a song I recognize, but it calls to me all the same. I see my father drawing dots on a piece of paper and telling me to connect them, to find the hidden picture. I smell my grandmother making tomato soup and grilled cheese on a stormy day. I feel Lot the first time he was ever inside me, our sweat and spit and bodies inextricably intertwined. The song holds my favorite moments from my life and it is like I am reliving them all at once.

I have to go to it. Every cell in my body feels like it’s on fire in the best way. I stand from the chair and brace my fingers under the window, but it is cold and wet and I struggle to grip it tightly. Luckily, it doesn’t take too much force to push it up.

“Cori?”

I raise my right knee up and thrust it out into the cold. The opened window provides enough space for me to snake my body through it, so I straddle the edge of it while ducking my head underneath the pane.

“Cori what the fuck are you doing?!”

I let my right foot fall until it hits something solid. The deck. The rain stings my face as I look up into the sky. I pull my other leg through the window and turn to the ocean, and it’s still there. My creature. Its body is halfway out of the water, and it looks more human than I ever imagined. Two eyes, two arms, and two lips. Two lips that are singing. I take a step towards it.

“Oh fuck this,” I hear from somewhere very far away. I hesitate before taking another step towards the heavenly melody. I’m forgetting something. But what?

“Cori,” the creature coos. My name has never sounded like that. Filled with so much promise and desire. I feel something inside me unlock, and it feels like I’ve just shedded a blanket of pure heaviness. My feet move without thinking, and I run full speed towards the waves, toward what, my whole life, I thought would kill me. I stumble down the steps and onto the sand, my feet barely able to keep up with my desperate movements. The sand is cold and clings to my feet, and every time I make contact with it, it feels like a hand trying to keep me in place. The land doesn’t want me to go to the water, to her.

I’m only twenty feet from where the waves are lapping against the shore. I see her fully. The fin that has haunted me since I was a child looks deadlier than I imagined. Three webbed spikes crown her head, dark blue with flecks of black and threads of bright green. Her eyes are almost fully black, almost the color of her deep cobalt skin that reflects the light edging out of the clouds above. My breath hitches in my throat, and my feet slow.

I’ve reached the water. It bites at my ankles, and for a second I question what I’m doing. I look to her, and her song, but she’s stopped singing. She’s maybe fifteen feet away, bobbing in the water, waiting for me. Panic rushes through me, but I don’t take a step back, not when she’s so close. I can make out the gills carving her ribcage, following the curve of her breasts. She’s magnificent. She might kill me.

“What do you want?” I yell loud enough that she can hear me over the rain and the waves. She lifts her chin slightly, her lips curling in the corners.

“Cori,” Her voice is silky and damn near tangible. I can feel it caressing my cheek, rolling over me entirely. I move a few steps closer to her, farther into the water.

“Why?” I beg her for an answer I know I won’t receive. There is no why, it just is. She wades closer to me, closing the gap between us. Only seven feet now. My breathing picks up, and I know she notices my chest rising and falling, rising and falling.

“Cori.” It is a whisper on her lips. Water crashes around us, and I know that I must be the one to close the distance between us. I pull my feet high enough out of the water so that the sand no longer drags me down. Three feet. I can smell her now, salty and musky and a tiny bit fishy. It’s intoxicating, everything she makes me feel.

There is less than a foot between us now. I feel warmth radiating through her skin and onto mine. I thought she would be cold. She reaches a hand towards me, and I freeze as her wet fingers brush some hair out of my face. As soon as our skin touches, a spark of something sharp and unknown shoots through me. I am cold and wet and it’s raining but my body is on fire with need. I slowly reach my hand out and cup her face. Her skin is slippery, and the thought of it sliding against mine creates a shiver of heat in between my thighs. She leans her head into my hand and looks at me like she knows exactly what I’m thinking, how my body is reacting to her. She pulls away from my hand and I almost cry at the loss of touch before she rushes and crashes our lips together like the waves surrounding us. Our motions are frenzied, and I waste no time slipping my tongue in between her lips. I need to taste her, to devour her, and the moans escaping her tell me she feels the same. Her hands grip my shirt before ripping it to shreds like it was nothing more than a piece of paper. I’m fully exposed to her, as she is to me, and I can feel myself throbbing with anticipation. Her hands glide the length of my torso, down my stomach then back up to my chest. She snakes one hand around the back of my neck and grips it tightly so that my head rolls back into her. With my neck stretched bare for the taking, she moves her lips to a spot just below my jaw and sucks. I gasp as I feel something scrape against my skin. She releases my neck, but I remain as I was, begging her not to stop.

Her hands return to my body and her fingers lightly trail the outside of my breasts as I puff my chest out to increase the contact. She smiles against my neck, but only moves her hands further down until she is gripping my rib cage. I feel a sharpness push into me before a searing pain strikes. I scream and look down to see she has carved into me, four identical lines on either side, just below each breast. Bright red blood runs down me and mixes with the water, now a shade of inky black. My eyes widen, and when I look at her and her large midnight eyes, I only see myself. She smiles wide, exposing rows of sharpened teeth, before lunging at me. She bites down on my shoulder, drawing more blood into the water. It is everything.

I close my eyes and turn my head to the sky. Rain kisses my face and thunder sounds off in the distance. She moves along my collarbone, biting as she goes, adorning me with scarlet. Tears fall down my face and I laugh. I laugh at the sky, at myself, at God.

I look down at her, at my creature, and smile so wide it feels like my face might rip. All those nights drinking water until I could barely move, so afraid of when it would finally come for me, when all I needed were some fucking gills.

Eve Greenlow (she/they) is a black and queer writer who is based out of New York City. Her Scorpio nature gave her a love of writing, horror movies, and true crime podcasts. Her personal experiences often bleed into her work, leading to a strong bond formed with every word she writes. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The City College of New York.