Short Stories

The Qalupalik.

   There is a creature that lurks under the cold waters in the Arctic North. You may think mermaids but it's nothing like that. While it does have similarities such as half human half fish, they're nothing like the mermaids we fantasize about. The Qalupalik (as the Inuits, the indigenous people of the Arctic call it) is a creature that has scaly skin, dorsal fins and webbed hands that help with treading water but it also helps with snatching any child it comes across. 

  It's said to posses a human like body while also looking like the fish that surround the water as well. It has long hair that resembles seaweed, webbed hands with long, sharp fingernails, scaly green skin and a sulfuric stench. According to the stories told by many of the people there, the Qalupalik tends to hunt on the shorelines in the frigid waters of the Arctic. It's evil intent is to lure children to the waters and snatch them so no one can hear their cries for help. 

  The Qalupalik lets out an eerie humming sound that catches the attention of nearby children. Once they reach a weak part of the ice the creature will then snatch the child and drag them into the freezing waters, putting the child in it's amautik (a commonly worn parka that Inuit women have to carry their children on their backs.) 

   No one really knows what the Qalupalik does to the children it snatches. Some say that it keeps the children as it's own. While others say that the Qalupalik feeds on the childrens youth and innocence once they are put under a trance-like state and that is why the creature stays young and strong.