Sea Spell

Chapter Eighteen

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Swishing blades of seaweed brushed against one another around Lanakila, who cleared her throat simultaneously in her sleep. The girl's murmuring clobbered throughout the seaweed forest, chunks of gibberish ringing in rudely awoken ears. Behind her, quarreling jabs of a huddled argument set off the green strands, shoved them to dance again in a rhythm of hot, short breaths.

(/) (/) (/) (/) (/) (/) (/)

When she opened her eyes, Lana didn't peer down at her blue, webbed hand flopped limply across her tail, or mucky sand piling up around her body. She was instead introduced to a bloodstained white apron, plump, masculine legs and a pair of tethered, brown work boots.

Sandpapered, rough skin was draped around her in flubs, shielding her identity in the lively scuttle of marketers' stands propped up around her. A neon, sparkly sign across the dirty street boasted, "Purple Flamingo's Tourist Trap," complete with a lavender flamingo sporting a grass hat and slick sunglasses.
The business was clearly in it's infant stage, careful and yet to be expanded- though she still recognized it thanks to her mother snarking each time they'd strode past.

She was plunked right into the heart of downtown Guadeloupe- not the present city she had been swept away from weeks ago- but the one she'd grown up in.

A neck, one that felt nothing like her thinner, lighter one, tilted upwards without command, as if it was a rolling projector and her conscious was the audience. A meaty hand swung a butcher's knife at her side, rehearsed and automatically mechanic. Her stomach trembled- she wanted to drop the knife before she accidentally stabbed herself, and the scent of ironed blood is overwhelming. This stranger's grip, however, didn't budge at her internal commands. It was terrifying, because part of her knew this was just another oddly realistic dream... and then there was the part of her convinced otherwise.

The right hand stretched inflexibly upwards to scratch at an itchy mop of greasy ringlets on the top of a head, then fell to steady a crimson slab of pork.

Lana's gaze shifted for a moment, as the heavy head rotated swiftly to face an elderly man with droopy, grape-shaped eyes and a raisiny textured face. The man's back leaned forward, his neck protruding outwards like a curious tortoise. White patches of hair on his head whipped about in the brisk wind. Behind him, a young, honeymooning couple with knockoff tans and tacky floral shirts winced at the meat and discussed their gruesome options.

Innerly nauseated as the hand with the knife raised upwards and chopped the pork into uneven sections, Lana examined the edges of her vision, noticing the wooden frame of what seemed to be a butcher's shop.

Or, in this case, she thought as the whooshes of uptight air traveled across the hairy, exposed skin surrounding her, a butcher's stand.

A butcher's stand, an exact replica of the one her father had ran. The stand that had took him though roll after roll of red-blotted paper towel, the one that made her quiver but also kept ripe fruits and vegetables in the fridge.
Muscled, thick arms. Fleshy, pulpy fists. The same apron swung around his neck, that white apron that Mimi would lecture over if there was a clump of blood in the carpet.

She was- this was- her father.

Lana obediently  shifted, (she had no other option, really) thunking with a harrumph into a white beach recliner behind it that gave out a squeak. The buzzing of a horsefly drawled past, interrupted by a sharp clap from her own sweaty palms. With sunburnt, watering eyes, she saw the squished, bodily remains of the creature flicked to the ground.

"You do it," barked a voice, commandingly from behind the stand.

"Her" head cocked, and it hurt to twist the layers of potbelly into a corkscrew so that the dewy body could face in the noise's direction.