Haunted Organic (2014 Watty Award Winner)

Eight: Fish Head

EIGHT - Fish Head

There she was. Trinket.

She was inside a crab pot, a steel cage fishermen used to hunt crab out in the deepest parts of the ocean. The fishermen put bits of fleshy eel meat into the cage and dropped it into the ocean so that it settled at the floor. Crabs went in for the eel. Crab pots were good for imprisoning crabs and little girls. Once they were in, they weren't getting out.

Trinket was slouched into a corner of the crab pot. Her back up against one side of the metal cage. She didn't look happy to see Josie and Emerald, in fact, she looked petrified. Whatever had been happening to her this whole time in the Organic Food Store, had left her quiet, submissive and so scared she could barely move.

Josie noticed she was trembling. She couldn't even look at him.

He pulled at the cage door and the thick lock that secured it. The crab pot was stuck to the wall with chains and bolts.

"Trinket, Trinket....You're okay," he said.

The baby cowered in the back of the cage.

"No," she spat at him through her pacifier and shrunk her body away.

Josie fumbled with the lock, and Emerald handed Josie some wire cutters and a mallet she had in her back pack.

"I'm going to need more than these. The wires are thick," he said, but he went to work anyway, trying to bust open the cage and free her.

"Honey, honey..." Emerald spoke to Trinket.

"I'm Emerald and this is Josie. We live next door to you."

Trinket ignored her.

"We are here to help...We won't hurt you," Emerald tried to talk to her the way her mom had spoken to her when she was scared. She almost couldn't remember it anymore. Memories of her mother were starting to get loose and flimsy. She could barely imagine what it would be like not to remember her.

She pushed the thought away.

"Bangkok," Trinket squawked, and hid her face in her knees, which were scrunched up around her chest.

"Bangkok isn't here. We want to take you home, Trinket," Josie said firmly, trying to whack a bolt with his mallet.

He wasn't lying. Josie knew Bangkok wasn't there yet, but he could feel him coming closer. He had fed well in the shallow reefs off the coast, mostly an appetizer of groupers and hammer head sharks. Then he went out deeper, where he found tuna, Great Whites, humpback and pygmy whales, dolphins and blubbery seals. Josie knew it, because he felt full and satiated.

Bangkok wasn't going to eat Trinket now. He would devour her bone by bone later when he needed to make himself more powerful. Children made him stronger and meaner.

No, this time Bangkok didn't need to eat Trinket. He wanted Josie. He wanted Josie to become his human extension, to do his work, to find children that would fill him with energy, youth, everything the monster needed to become unstoppable.

"Mama," Trinket squealed and started to cry.

She sucked on her pacifier nervously.

"Yes, sweetheart," Emerald watched Trinket come apart.

"Mama. Go see Mama."

Emerald wiggled a couple fingers in the cage, hoping Trinket would take them. But she didn't. Trinket kept her head rolled up against her legs, rocking back and forth.

"How's it coming?" Emerald asked impatiently.

"It's not." Josie banged the cage with the wire cutters. "Dammit, it just won't come."