Too Dark to Sea

***

I was born without lungs. My mother always told me it was a miracle—I, was a miracle. It was a blessing from God that I could breathe air without having lungs. But it felt much less than a miracle to me. Ever since I turned seven, I have had a strange life. But mother never knew of it. She was too busy being happy that her child was healthy, even after years of living in fear that I might not wake up one morning. 

Oh, how I wish I would not wake up one morning. Put an end to this miserable life of neither belonging, nor being exiled. 

It all began with the first time I jumped in the lake. Mother had told me it was full of algae and very gross, “lakes were like that” she had said. I was seven and a dreaming child, expecting to find a different world in the depths of the still water; and find a world I did, but it was nothing like the colorful and happy sight I had hoped for. That was the first time I met her. 

She told me she was a mermaid, a caretaker of the lake and the protector of every being that came into it. Her feet were replaced by a fish’s tail, with dark eyes and teeth so sharp, poking into her lips like needles, as she smiled—explaining to me her job. Even though every beat of my heart nudged me to tread this moss covered ocean floor lightly; I trusted her, and maybe I should have known then. 

Mother pulled me out of the lake and held me, sobbing, making me wonder what had transpired for her to weep so raggedly. She said I had been in the water for 20 minutes—an unnatural thing for a human, much less a child, to hold their breath for so long. 

When told to father, he rejoiced—only then mentioning how he had used his unborn child for an experiment he wanted to perform all his life. He mutated my cells to that of an amphibian—one he had found in that very lake—and hoped to create an extraordinary being. My lack of lungs was his only consolation and had dulled down his previous excitement but my now newfound discovery relivened hope inside him. Mother, on the other hand, cried for nights after that, only coming out during the day to hold me close and smile— at least I was alive and healthy. There was so much she hadn’t known, and if she did, she wouldn’t feel the same about me.

Every night since the ‘discovery’, I would fall asleep in my purple velvet bed, but wake up in the lake. Every single time that I woke I would be standing underwater, surrounded by moss and gray fishes—because nothing in here had any colour, only shades of gray and green. The mermaid, who had now become my sole guide in these unknown waters, took me a little further towards the middle of the lake. At first, I was afraid—it kept getting darker and darker as we moved in—but with days, it became routine. I would walk, she would swim. We’d go deeper every night, only to return back to the shore before the first ray of sunlight. 

I never saw her in the daylight, she would vanish before I could get a good look at her. I wondered what she was hiding that was so frightening (or humiliating) that she needed to vaporize before I could look at her.

Years passed, and Mother passed away, too tired to bear the burden of her husband’s sins towards their child. Father would, as usual, hide in his office—one I had never seen in all of fourteen years—and if he were to ever step out,it was just to look at me from his cracked open door as I had my meal, promptly returning back to his chores after I was done. I had learnt to survive on bread and Jam for all of my meals now. I continued with my nightly rambles, now aware that I wasn’t put in the lake, but rather I put myself in every night. The mermaid, who told me her name was Alyssa, still never stepped in the light but had started speaking more—telling me stories about the lake’s beings.

My steps became bigger and the middle of the lake got closer every night. Tonight had to be when I would find out what she told me was the biggest secret about her. I did not sleep and waited for Father’s lamps to turn off. Once assured that the lamps were cold, I  left. Stepping inside the lake, I realised for the first time how cold the water really was at night. Alyssa stood smiling, needle like teeth shining in the minimal moonlight that slipped inside the water.  Her mermaid tail whooshed around as she beckoned me to go with her. 

There it was. The place I had heard so much about; the place that was the core of everything that Alyssa was; the place she told me was a hub for beings like her. But it was nothing like I imagined. No mermaids or mermen swooped in to greet me or make fun of my human feet—because nobody was there. Or to put it more bluntly, nobody there was alive. Hundreds of pikes were lined up haggardly across the lake’s floor, and on those pikes were what looked like dead people, tied and left to die.

“Are those—”

“People, just like you and me.” She shivered as if in agony herself.  “He invited us into his home as friends, and then tried to turn us into beings of fantasy; but when he couldn’t, we were disposed off as debris.” 

I was confused. The sun was losing its red and turning yellow, but Alyssa didn’t hide this time. “I was an accidental success, one he wasn’t aware of. I turned inhuman years after being spiked.”  And when the sun glared right on top of us, I saw it. Her feet were rotten and fused together by the water—there never was a tail.

“Who did this monstrosity?” I think I already knew the answer.

“It was your father.”

***

This is a single chapter story, and here is how it ends! I'm planning to do more of short stories since I can't seem to have enough time for my half written novels!

Let me know which one you prefer better
->Full fledged novels in Romance
->Full fledged novels in Horror
->Short stories in Horror