Split the Sea

. the next chapter: by @MermaidSongspell .

My breath caught in my throat. I stared at Katie's blank, pale face. The glint in her eyes was cold and indifferent. Nothing like the ambitious gleam in her eyes that I remembered from when were kids.

"What do you mean?" I asked, hating the way my voice quaked. Hating that I already knew the answer. My mind flashed back to what Kifu had told me before the police had came.

Appearances can be deceiving.

My heartbeat quickened until it was beating like a violent storm in the sea. "What have you done to her?" I whispered. Katie—no, Kifu—smiled lifelessly.

"What's the matter, Jenn?" She said mockingly. "Aren't you happy I've found a new home?" She rolled her eyes in a way that was so unlike something that Katie would do that I flinched. "Foolish girl. You've been letting me toy with you since that night five years ago."

"You're lying," I snapped, my voice rising in pitch. But my words seemed false even to me. This creature had been playing with my life for years. I was flooded with memories of countless times when I'd let fear get the best of me. I hadn't gone in the ocean since I was twelve. The feeling of cold scales on my skin plagued my dreams, my waking thoughts.

I said nothing. I could feel the fight fading from my soul. Kifu knew it. She smiled coyly. A shock ran through me at the realization that despite the familiarity of all her facial features, I didn't know her anymore. Katie was gone.

A piece of me hoped that she was gone, so she wouldn't have to suffer through anymore of this pain. I should've told her to come back to the shallow water that night.

The door opened. I recognized the face of Katie's mom. Worry was etched into her features.
Kifu looked at her and smiled, but I saw no emotion behind her eyes. "Mom," she said. "I missed you."

I inhaled sharply. She could mimic Katie's voice almost perfectly. Almost. Her voice was too high, too flat, to ever be Katie's.

Her mom seemed to notice something was off, but she said nothing. "I'll just leave you two alone for awhile. After all, you haven't seen each other in years." She left the room, casting another worried glance at Katie before disappearing down the hall. I almost wished she had stayed, so I wouldn't have to be by myself with Kifu.

The thing from the ocean turned back to me. "You know what I want. You can make this easy and give it to me. Or you can be difficult, and I will hurt you."

"Actually, I don't," I shot back. What was she talking about?
"Oh, but you do," Kifu tapped Katie's chest. "It's in here."

I hesitated. "You want my emotions?"

Kifu frowned. "No. I...want your heart." She glared. "Give me yours, and you can keep the one in this girl's body. You'll both be better off."

My eyes widened in horror. "What? No. Never. You're not taking her away from me again."
Kifu glared. "I suppose I'll have to do this the hard way, then." Then her hand shot out and her cold fingers curled around my throat.

It felt like my insides were imploding. Hot, searing pain tore through my sides. I raised a hand, shaking from pain, and batted it at her face. She opened her mouth and bit my wrist. The pain doubled, tripled, and I screamed. My free hand felt for something, anything I could use to fight back. But there was nothing.

I forced myself to stand up and stagger forward. My free hand latched onto Kifu's shoulder. I screamed as I shoved her back. Her temple crashed into the metal bedpost and she slid down onto the pillow, unconscious. Her hand fell away from my neck and I pulled my arm away from her teeth.

I was shaking, hard, and I couldn't stop it. A tear escaped my eyes, just as a stream of blood trickled from Katie's head. I put her blanket over the place where she was bleeding to stop the flow.

She slept peacefully, and I let her. Eventually, her eyes opened. I tensed. But then I saw the look of clarity in her eyes, and I knew that it was Katie, not anyone—or anything—else.

"Is she gone?" Katie whispered. I looked around the room. There was no way to tell for sure, but it felt like we were actually alone in the room.
"I think so."

She bit her lip. "What is she comes back?"

I hesitated. "I don't know."

A few minutes later, a nurse came in with a glass of water and handed it to Katie. She stare at it for a moment before taking a sip. Relief flooded through me when nothing happened. In fact, it seemed to help Katie, as she propped herself up more with the pillow. "Even when the voice wasn't there," she started, "I could always sense its presence in the back of my head. But...I don't feel anything now. It's like it just disappeared."

I was silent, lost in thought. Kifu was gone. But where was she now? Had she returned to the ocean? Or, I thought with dread, had she gone on to find someone else to haunt.
Maybe we'll never know. The thought rang in my head. I sighed. I could come to terms with that. Maybe we were all just too exhausted to keep searching in the ocean for the things we had lost.
I placed a hand on my heart. Kifu had said she'd wanted mine. Why? But all the answers had vanished with Kifu, and the question drowned in the water. There were some things in this universe that no matter where you looked, you couldn't even begin to understand them. I guess that's just how life was, and would always be. There would always be something you couldn't quite grasp.

But I could hold onto the things I knew, and keep moving forward. Let life pull me along, but never let the riptides whisk me away. In the end, we were all at the mercy of the sea.
"Jenn," Katie whispered. "Jenn, I'm weak."

Hot tears formed in my eyes. "You're going to be okay," I told her.

Katie nodded slowly. Her eyes fell closed and she slipped into a deep sleep.

I went home two hours later, but Katie stayed at the hospital. The doctors said she'd be there for at least a month. I made it a promise to myself to call her every day.

My mom decided to let me stay at home until she got out of the hospital. "Besides, you need the rest." She told me. I was grateful. I was exhausted beyond belief.
We got a call on the landline at four in the morning from the hospital. My heart went cold, fear rippling through my brain. My mom slowly picked up the old telephone. I waited in silence as she murmured a thank you and hung up.

She looked at me with sadness painfully clear in her eyes. "Jenn, Katie..." she took a deep breath. "Katie is dead. She passed away a few minutes ago in her sleep."

And then the tears flowed freely, flooding my face. My mom pulled me close, and I cried even harder. I held onto my mom and sobbed my heart out, until my eyes were dry and there was a wide Katie-shaped gap in my soul. I knew there was no way I could ever fill it up again. My best friend was gone. I felt empty, cold. Incomplete.

Katie.

It took me a moment to realize that I'd said her name out loud. My mom hugged me tighter and a fresh bout of tears fell down.

@MermaidSongspell did an awesome job with this. I love it so much. She took things in a direction I wasn't expecting. This is the first thing I have ever read as fanfiction off my story and it makes me so happy. Thank you so much! I personally think that she is as good of a writer as me.