Da Lady

You'd expected more frustration and anger than what he was giving you now. It was like he wanted to know the exact conditions you created to lure the creature back here, as if he'd never wanted it to leave in the first place, years ago. What could you say that would fulfill his expectations?

There were no grandiose details to relay; you had gone outside on a bright night and sat down on the edge of the dock with a glass of wine in your hand. You recalled letting your legs submerge to the knee and wading them around in the black water while sipping your dry rosé and scrolling social media. The stress of the day still had a grip on your nerves, but the gentle movement of the water wrapping around your legs had fast worked a lull over you.

Then, you had felt a cool current underwater.

It rushed through your legs and stopped suddenly, returning the water to the temperature it had once been. Goosebumps erupted across your body, and the needle-thin hairs on the back of your neck stuck straight out. Instincts had taken hold of you rightfully, prompting you to hurriedly lift your legs out of the water to get up and head back to the house.

Yet, as you pulled one leg out and half of the other, long fingers shot up out of the depths and seized your calf. A hand tried to pull you back down. You did what was reasonable for anyone in these circumstances: scream as loudly as you could, throw your wine glass at the pale arm coming out of the water, and launch your phone at the pale arm as well.

The water was disturbed, splashing as if by a very large fish, and the pale arm and hand and long fingers recoiled back into the inkiness. You didn't stay to scout the thing out; you fucking sprinted for the house, shrieking, bolted the doors behind you, and stayed in your room until your usual alarm sounded to give your client his first dose of medication for the day.

Later that same day, you returned to the dock in broad daylight to find your phone bobbing on the wooden slats, bone dry.

You gave the man your explanation, still massaging his legs while he listened quietly in his recliner. Once you were finished with your retelling, the man spoke solemnly, "I think it's chosen you. Don't listen when it calls."

To you, that had come across as the nonsensical babbling of a terminally ill man beginning to lose his mind to delusions, so you did not heed his warning. You hadn't considered that it was one until the chill of sea air at night touched your skin, softly rustling the hair on your head, and you opened your eyes to the wide eye of the moon and clusters of stars in the sky.

Why were you outside? How did you get there? You just remembered rubbing the man's legs and sitting down on the sofa once he fell asleep in his chair.

No, wait.

You remembered a man's song. His singing voice was unlike anything you'd ever heard; you doubted it could be replicated by human tongue and vocal cords. The words were incomprehensible, yet your mind perceived them as if they were language and something you knew. Something that told a sad story of melancholy and suffering, a lifetime of immense yearning so potent that the singer was prisoner to his own heart, his loneliness.

He had called out to you so sweetly, his words like a silk thread woven between your fingers. There were so many things he wanted to say to you, so many things he wanted to show you. If only you would come to him… come to him… come to me… come to me… come to me…

Now, as your senses adjusted to your surroundings, you realized you were lying on the docks. You were close enough to the edge to see down into the black depths, the water stirring with movement beneath the surface. Something was there; it had been waiting for you to wake up.

One long hand shot up out of the water and grabbed the dock, then another. The fingers were inhumanly long with nails tapering into thin points. Its skin was the same sort of pale from the other night, grayish and translucent. As it hauled itself onto the dock, you noted the sharpness of its elbows and shoulders, how its wrongness was in its imitation of what it thought a human looked like. Below the torso, still halfway dipped into the water, was an enormous black tail with scales that glowed silver under the moonlight.

Now, however, you were fixated on his face and how simultaneously beautiful and horrible it was. He looked at you serenely, inexpressive, almost, as he dragged himself over your body to examine you more closely, deep-dark hair draping over you like a wet veil. His face was long with a tapered chin, black eyes without pupils, and lips a cold shade of purple and blue. Where the prominence of a nose should've been were two symmetrical nostrils formed into slits.

You weren't sure if you thought he possessed an otherworldly beauty, or if he was terrible and monstrous. Your mind couldn't make sense of all of his features existing on one face and body.

And then, he started to hum. It rose from the back of his throat, soothing and sonorous, warm and comforting despite his freezing hands touching your skin, caressing your face. You felt him kiss you, his cold, blue lips pressing slow and hard, still humming to subdue you.

Those long fingers of his continued to explore you, fondle you, learn your body more than you knew it yourself. His lips sank to your chin, molded into the shape of your neck when you moaned and moved, and tried biting through your clothes when he could no longer feel or taste your skin.

He appeared in front of your eyes again, this time with a gentle, accomplished smile. His sweet humming had yet to cease, your vision was smeared, and the limbs of your body were leaden. Even as the creature shrank back into the depths of the black murk, pulling your legs off the edge with him, you could not move.

You were paralyzed and utterly at peace with it.

Suddenly, a bellow cracked through the stillness of the night, and the man appeared with a rifle in his hands. He cried out into the air again, startling the creature in the water before shooting a harpoon at it. The spearhead missed the creature by inches and vanished into the blackness without a sound, but it had done its job.

The creature emitted an enraged, mournful wail as it released you and flipped its tail into the air to escape back into the void where it once came.