The Sunshine Beneath the Starless Sea

Trigger warning: rape, kidnapping, body horror, murder

I remember the sand was cold under my feet that night. I walked down to the shore with the strange, silver-haired man I had met the week prior, and it all seemed so romantic under the stars and the moonlight. The waves were roaring in the wind, but he tugged me towards the water anyway.

“Did you see that! Is it a fin?” I had seen the signs on the boardwalk, bidding visitors beware of the creature lurking in these waters.

“Are you afraid of sea monsters, niñita?” He asked, playfully shoving me further towards the edge.

“Of course not! I only meant a shark or something.” But I shrieked when the water touched my toes, and he laughed. I didn’t run away even though the water was icy and I was positive I really had seen a fin. When my teeth started to chatter, he grinned and led me back to our spot on the dry sand to sit.

            “It’s so cold!” I was shifting from foot to foot while he grinned up at me.

            “Just sit down. It’s not that bad. Here, use my jacket,” he said.

“Won’t you be cold?” I asked, staring at his bare forearms. Not a single goosebump.

            “Of course not.” He brushed some sand off the jacket beneath me. It was the same color as the seaweed I had seen on the shore. “Careful with that though. It’s my favorite.” He moved close enough I could feel his body heat radiating against my thighs. I should have worn leggings with my skirt.

            “You’re a chivalrous one, aren’t you? Thanks though, really, for letting me use it.” I gazed up at the royal blue sky and the constellations winking at me from within it. My fingers traced cancer in the sand, wiped it away, and started on scorpio. He gave my knee a tight squeeze in acknowledgement. 

“I’m not particularly interested in chivalry, but I could make an exception for you.” 

            “Why’s that?” 

            “You’re too innocent to handle me at my worst,” he said, winking, “which is a pity because that’s when I’m at my best.” 

            My finger paused on virgo. “You don’t know anything about me. I’m not as innocent as you think.”

“Really?” He grinned at me again, and the laughter in his eyes made my fists clench.

“It’s just this baby face and that I’m so small.” I smacked the sand with my hand, wiping out the constellation beneath it.

“Relax, niñita. You’re going to burst a blood vessel,” He was openly laughing at me now, and when he reached out to tap my nose, I bit it. “Little monster,” he said, but he put his hand back down. “You have the cutest button nose.” 

I looked away and silently cursed the blush spreading across my cheeks. “Do not.” The royal blue sky and the twinkling stars were hidden by bruise-colored clouds now. 

“Your teeth are chattering again,” he said. I was surprised he could hear it over the cacophony of wind and waves. “I could warm you up.”

My nails dug into the sand, and I could suddenly feel my heartbeat thrumming in my chest, crawling up my throat, and pounding wildly in my mind. “Okay, but you’ll have to teach me.” For all my talk, I hadn’t so much as held hands with a boy in years. My palms were sweating despite the cold, but what harm could come from a simple kiss? 

“You’re kidding,” he said, but his hands were already pulling me closer to him. My feet and legs were going numb beneath me, so he lifted me into his lap. He kissed me, and it felt as good as sin. My lips were clumsy against his, but he pushed his tongue between them anyway. The heat and force of it made my head spin. It was too much. I couldn’t keep up with his lips and tongue and teeth and hands. When I opened my eyes, still gasping for breath, he was staring at me.

“You’re trembling,” he said. “I’m going to take over, okay?” But it didn’t sound like a question, and it didn’t feel like one either when he stood up, taking me with him. My arms hung uselessly over his shoulders as he laid me in the water. 

He pushed me under, but I couldn’t fight back, couldn’t even begin to resist. I was drowning for an eternity that probably lasted seconds. When he pulled me back up to the surface, the shore had vanished, and I found myself floating in an endless sea of night. 

We had traveled impossibly far, but before my mind could catch up to my eyes, his mouth was on my neck. His teeth grazed the skin, and they felt so much sharper than they should have been. I opened my eyes, searching frantically for his face in the darkness. The white of his eyes were gone, replaced with an unnatural inky black, and there were gills along his neck. Grey scales had replaced tanned skin, but worst of all was the teeth. Three rows of jagged, sharp teeth filled his mouth and gleamed like abominable stars in the dark. 

He ripped my white blouse in two, and I let him pull my arms out of the sleeves before he started on my skirt and underthings. I didn’t speak, didn’t push him away, just floated there in his arms. I couldn’t swim away; no one had taught me how.

He didn’t say a word when he entered me. I wasn’t even sure he could speak with his mouth crowded full of those awful teeth. It didn’t hurt like I expected. It should have hurt, I thought afterwards. I stared into the darkness above while he took his fill, and I felt nothing. 

I’m not a virgin anymore. There’s a man inside me. I’m not a virgin. There’s a man inside me. Was he even a man? I’m not a virgin anymore. How did this happen?

When he was done, he pushed me under the water, and I drowned for the second time. I saw the sunrise far above, a pin prick of light, but when I tried to reach for it, my arms were too slow and weak, and it couldn’t or wouldn’t reach back through the depths for me. 

We emerged in an enclosed sea cave, and I stayed there for days, weeks, months. There were no cracks or holes in the cave walls, so I played house with the monster. I didn’t know who I was anymore except that I was his. 

“Don’t wander,” he said when we had first arrived in the cave. I didn’t ask why or what would happen if I did. I already knew there could only be more darkness and teeth. Those horrible teeth that haunted me awake and asleep.

            He left me alone most nights while he hunted. When he came home, he’d pull me into his arms, kiss me, and lap up the blood he shed. I learned not to cry because it made him angry. I started to greet him when he returned each morning. I would kiss his scaly cheek and sit on his lap, cling to him, and ask him not to leave me alone anymore. His teeth cut through my skin less often then. I hated him, but I hated me more.

            “You’ve changed, Niñita,” he said one morning. He bared his red stained teeth in a mock grin.

“How?” I wiped my lips with the back of my hand. I’d grown used to the taste of iron and salt.

“You’re becoming like me.” He took my hand in his larger one and traced it across my neck and shoulders. The skin was peeling, cracking away, and, worse, something was growing underneath. I screamed, and the dam I’d built in my heart broke; the tears poured down my cheeks, gathered in my mouth, and dripped into my lungs. I screamed as I drowned for the third time. I clung to the darkness now, dug my nails deep into its flesh. I would not emerge this time. I would not hope for breath.

When I woke, he was gone, and the curse, for that was what I knew it must be, was spreading down my arms and across my back at an alarming rate. I traced the protrusions with my fingertips. They felt like a thousand knives piercing my flesh as they bloomed across my skin. 

He stayed away longer than ever, and I decided I had little left to lose, so I did what I had not had the courage to do before. I wandered through the cave, and I let my heart feel the horror and the loss and the rage. 

I didn’t stay away for long, but every day I walked a little longer, a little further, until the skin of my palms was raw from gripping the unforgiving stone walls. In my mind, I mapped out each twist and turn in the darkness, each crook and cranny, too. Finally, I began to trust my callousing feet to walk freely and then more quickly. 

The first day I ran was the morning after a storm. It was the loudest one since I’d been brought to the cave, and it raged all through the night. The ground and walls shook from the thrashing wind and waves until I was sure it would wear the stone away, and it did, but just a little. I found a soft sunbeam spilling out of a freshly worn crack.  

I wanted to bathe in it, to pour it down my throat, to drown in that glorious warmth. I stayed for hours and marked the spot in my mind before I left.

“Where have you been, niñita?”

“Nowhere! Just stretching my legs,” I said, and I hated myself for running to his embrace. 

“It’s dangerous to wander. I told you that before,” he said, petting down my neck and across my shoulders and arms. “And besides this cave is mine. It’s not yours to explore.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“No more.” 

I didn’t cry when his teeth tore through my flesh; I just nodded and buried my in his chest. 

He stayed for three days after that. When he finally left, I didn’t dare take the bait. 

Time passed more slowly, but I made use of it. I found a jagged rock, and I worked tirelessly until it was sharp enough to cut through skin and bone and more. 

And I started to whisper in the dark. Just my name. 

“Summer,” I whispered, and a thousand echoes whispered with me. “My name is Summer.”

I woke one morning in a bed of wet feathers. Blood. I could smell it, taste it. At first, I thought he must have killed some great bird or a flock of birds. It wouldn’t have been the first bloody nest he’d dumped me in for his amusement. 

I tried to pull them off my skin, but they were too sticky. I bathed in the saltwater pool at the center of the room, but still they would not budge. The realization that they were attached, that it had been my own blood I’d washed away, came slowly.

 This time I did not scream. I felt oddly at peace. I was nothing like him. I was something entirely different.

With that realization came another: he had known. He had stored me away, fed and groomed me, to be slaughtered and feasted upon. 

I needed to leave. Now. If I could get to the light before he returned, I could follow it, and I could fly away from this place.

I took my makeshift dagger, and I ran. I ran until my legs burned and my lungs ached. I didn’t stop running until I reached the light. 

The crack was thin, but it had been growing, making a trail for me to follow. But if I could follow its path, so could he. So, I ran, and I didn’t stop running.

“Niñita,” His voice cut like a knife through the darkness, and the light I had so desperately been grasping seemed to vanish just as it had all that time ago. 

“Where are you, little birdie?” 

I clasped my hands across my mouth and forced myself not to breathe. I counted my heartbeats, willing them to slow. Seconds passed and he said nothing. I couldn’t hold my breath forever.

“Where are you running to, Niñita?”

A little closer now. I breathed in slowly. It was far too loud. Surely, he would have heard me.

“There’s nowhere for you to go.”

I focused on trying to find the source of his voice amongst the echoes. 

            “No one that could want you now.”

            Tightened my hold on the dagger. Mapped out the area in my mind.

“You have no name, no home, no future.”

He was just around the corner to my right. 

“You’re nothing without me.”

I didn’t stop to think as he stepped around the corner; I just lunged, aiming where I knew his eyes must be. I slashed through one of them, barely registering the teeth ripping through my flesh. 

I felt my own blood splatter across my cheeks, tasted it on my tongue, but he was stumbling now. I couldn’t afford to hesitate. I aimed for his stomach, pulling up on the knife as it entered his thick skin. When he fell, I fell with him. 

He tried to kiss me, but I slashed at his throat. “You’re going to die here, Niñita.” He was laughing. He was still laughing at me. “You gave yourself to me. You’re ruined, and you’re mine.”

“No,” I said, and I buried the blade in his mouth. “You’re a liar.” I carved through his flesh until his jaw hung loosely, no longer a threat, and then I reached down his throat, clawing my way to the light he stole. “I’m not going to die here. You are.” It was reaching back. My hand curled around the burning shards of my soul.

I held the broken pieces, and their warmth spread through my chest as they found their home. I was just a little more whole, just a little more myself. And he would never gorge himself on me or any other again.

The light returned then, pouring out of the cracks in the stone around me, and I followed its twisting, turning path. It took days, weeks, months maybe. I walked slowly this time, resting often to heal my wounds. I whispered my name a little louder each day. 

A ray of light struck a small pool of water on the cave floor where I was nesting, and I saw my new reflection for the first time.

My feathers had grown thick and long in shades of red and gold. I was beautiful, and I was nearly whole. 

“My name is Summer,” I said. 

“Hello, Summer.” My reflection replied with a smile. “I’m you.”

I remained for several days, speaking to my reflection whenever the sun was awake.

“Summer,” My reflection said.

“Yes?”

“You can’t stay here forever.” It was the first time I saw her frown.

“Why not?” I had grown comfortable there. How could she ask for more after all I had suffered?

“You have so much to do. Too much potential to waste.”

“But I don’t know how to leave, and I’m not even sure I want to,” I said.

“You do.”

She was right, I did know, but I felt the shadows creep in, heavy on my chest. “I don’t know if I can,” I said. My hand found my throat. The scars he left had long since faded, but I could feel them lurking beneath. “What if he was right? I knew better, and I didn’t try to fight or even run!”

“You couldn’t have fought him, and you couldn’t have run. Not until you knew the way.”

I shrugged. 

“What would have happened if you had?”

“He would’ve caught me,” I said. “I would have died I guess.”

“Yes.”

“It really wasn’t my fault?” This was the question that had haunted my heart and made me retch when I woke up with his taste in my mouth. “I didn’t deserve it?”

“Did I?” She asked.

“No. Of course not.”

“There you have it,” she said, and she left in a sudden flash of red and gold wings. 

Was it that simple? Of course not. It would take time, but I had plenty of it. So, I got up and walked. And as the cracks grew larger, more life trickled through. Gentle winds, fresh rainwater, birdsong. I hummed along until I grew bolder, and then I began to sing.

My name was Summer,

Before I was stolen,

By a Starless Sea,

Where my bones sank beneath,

And none called to me.

Then I was nameless,

Prey to shadows and teeth,

A whisper in darkness.

Til’ a storm raged through me,

Left a crack in my soul, a sliver of light.

Now name is Summer,

Reborn in July.

I once dwelled in darkness,

Now my wings are the fire,

Of redemption and life.

            When I found the sun, I ran to her with arms spread wide. My name was Summer, and I was still alive.