Sleep with the Fishies

Part 1: Keyboard Smash

     It took four months to get free. Four fucking months. When I was buff enough to pull the weights above me, I started hauling myself up, inch by agonizing inch. By the time I was high enough along the masthead to snap off the part behind me, I was ready to murder Hemming and her idiots. I found a sharp bit on the bottom to cut through my bonds, and I swam myself to freedom with a fucking masthead still in my chest. Removing it and the mean little barnacles that decided to grow on my face would need a second pair of hands.

     Managed to not get in a fistfight before reaching my neighbourhood. I popped into the nearby clinic through the back and got 'em removed, no questions asked. Reason why I live where I do.

     The convenience store's bell jing jinged ominously as I entered. I'd attached one strap on my overalls to cover the gaping hole in my torso. Nafi glanced up and did a double take. "Oi, I thought you were dead!"

     "Thanks for the confidence." I snatched a pack of fish sticks from the hot shelf and inhaled them, then another. I'd been having cravings for four months. The absorption works with nutrients too, but if you've ever gone on a no-solid-food diet, you'll know I could devour the sun.

     Nafi scribbled a note of how many I was eating. "My boss is going to kill me when she realizes I fed you again."

     "If I starve to death, I'll never pay off my tab."

     "Your tab's paid, Joanah. That's why we thought you were dead. Boss just said if you came again not to start a new one."

     I sat back. "Hemming actually stuck to her word? Neat. I should get murdered by the mob more often." I brushed off my hands and made for the door. "You're the best, Nafi. I'll be back."

     "Stay safe."

     "Too late."

     My apartment was three minutes away. Someone had broken in while I was gone, but there was nothing to take, so everything was fine. After four months underwater, I didn't want to look at a shower. It would be good to change though.

     I threw my overalls on the table. And heard the tinkle of glass shattering.

     Shit, the bottle of hellgae. Tiny tendrils emerged from beneath my overalls, quivering. It went taut as it sensed me. I leapt across the room for a plastic box, scraping it in before it could murder me.

     Four months underwater with me and the little fucker hadn't lost any rage. It slammed against the lid, forming and reforming into unknowably disturbing shapes. Cold keeps hellgae dormant, so I popped the container in the freezer with the other eldritch horror: five-month-old lasagna.

     A cellphone started ringing. There was a sleek black one with an uncracked screen—so not mine—placed very carefully on the cleanest part of my counter. I picked up. "Fuck you, Hemming."

     "Seems like you're not actually human."

     "You guessed it, I'm part I'm-going-to-murder-you."

     "My hellgae went missing the night you should have died. I do hope it's not in your possession." The connection went dead.

     I smirked at the phone. Hemming was getting desperate. Maybe the hellgae was the last piece to calling Cthulhu back. Speaking of which, I didn't want it destroying its container when it got hungrier, so I opened the box long enough to drop Hemming's phone in, and watched the little monster fill the space with indigo jelly. When it receded, the phone was gone.

     Hellgae's a pest in R'lyeh, since it eats just about everything except humans. Those it kills for sport.

     I taped the lid shut and chucked the container into my sturdiest duffle. Sooner I could pass it off to the cops, sooner it wasn't my problem.