Sea Loch Ness Monster

Monsters don’t hide behind scales or hulking bodies. They don’t wait underneath beds or roam the deep blue for human victims to feast upon.

   I cannot tell you if Bigfoot is cruel, if Dracula enjoys tearing apart his prey, or if these creatures even exist at all.

  But, from my own experience anyways, there is more to beasts than their legends. 

  As I gaze at the sleepy Sun, stretching its last rays on the Hawaiian sky, I rock myself to lull away the sleep settling in my joints. The ocean wind slaps my tendrilled hair, playing an incomprehensible game of Patty Cake to pass the time. I hum to the beat of ocean waves, recreating Mother nature’s tune in awful pitch.

  And all the while, I wait patiently on the deserted beach for my monster.

  Though perhaps the word “monster” isn’t appropriate. In the distance he approaches, massive even a mile offshore. From the way his neck rises from blackened waters, he certainly did look like a monster. Fifty feet of pure muscle, his gray-black scales could bounce back bullets. Barbed dorsal fin, ten rows of impossibly yellow teeth, eyes cut like slits, he has the capacity to do more damage than a nuclear missile.

   A watchtower, he looms over the beach, observing me with his cold, reptilian glare. A weapon, crafted by the forces of destiny, shaped to be a mighty warrior of the seas.

   But physicality is but a shell. I scramble to my feet, cracking a toothy grin.

  “Hey, handsome.”

  He bows as I approach the water, and I tickle his outstretched chin. Where his outer scales are armor, his supple underbelly beckons like a stuffed bear to be hugged. My hands do quick work of his gray chest, and those deadly hindquarters pound against the ground as he purrs. 

   A puppy. Just a big, spiky puppy. 

   I pat his stomach. “You ready, big boy?”

   He yowls, the sound reverberating across the island like thunder.

   I climb onto his back—monster scales make great footholds. I squeeze my legs tight against his scale-plated torso, and he barely gives me time to get a hold on his delicate whiskers before doing a one-eighty turn back towards his ocean, his home. Like a loyal steed, he nickers, kicking back sand with his grotesque talons to give him traction.

    Then, he flicks his impressive tail, propelling us into the water, further and further out until Kamuela becomes a speck in the vast horizon.

  In unison we scream—our bottled up frustration and anger becoming a riot that quivers the water around us. I howl, laughing into the violent winds, my voice merely a whisper compared to Mother Earth’s hearty ocean cries. With a low sound like a chuckle, my monster dips his head below the water, drowning me down with him. 

   Thrump, thrump, thrump.

   Only the sounds of my thrashing heart meet me down here—a canon in the water, the essence of the very life fueling me. It pulses in rhythm with his as the salt stings my eyes and the goosebumps freckle my bare arms, but I don’t care.

   Because it’s only down here, on the back of my monster, do I finally feel free.

       For a brief moment, their faces flash before my eyes—plastic and makeup, short dresses and nasty snarls. Wolves in sheep’s clothing, they could beat me down with a well-placed word, could shred through my clothes, my stretched skin, my acne, my round face, with a single manicured claw. 

   But the moment I chose to defend myself, the moment I brought out my childhood best friend from the shoals, they ran to their pack and hunted me down, banishing me far, far away.

   I lived in London before they kicked me out of school. Before Mom sent me to Kamuela, to ‘get in touch with nature’ to calm my raucous spirit.

   Everyone thought I was a beast.

   Everyone except for him. 

  The Sea Loch Ness Monster.

   Maybe he is a monster because he looks like a monster; he growls like a monster; he is feared like a monster. Maybe he is a beast because the world needs someone to blame for shipwrecks and the merciless terrors within the deep blue.

   But the world forgot that my monster’s heart wasn’t meant to cause evil.

   It was meant to be loved.

   I suppose that’s why he followed me out here to Hawaii.

   Together, we break the surface, the night a chilly embrace on our backs.

    He swims in smooth, slow strokes, and I lay on his strong back, watching the dewdrop stars. In the near-silent sound of the roaring winds, our heartbeats thump in synchrony. Idly, I trace the harpoon scars jutting like mountains on the expanse of his sides, his back. Tracing the millennium of hate, healed and torn apart, healed and torn apart, over and over again. 

     He was just trying to save the sailors from themselves, to keep them from killing one another out of hate they didn’t understand. It worked, I suppose; their hate became fear, as hundreds of them shot him until he was forced to go away. Every time he tried to make peace, he was the scapegoat, bombarded by people only desperately trying to save themselves.

   He was meant to be a guardian protecting the seas, only to be driven into hiding. 

   He was destined to be a hero, only to be hated because of it.

   But it’s not the people’s fault, really—the lore was never passed down between the generations. To them, the Loch Ness monster sure looks like a killer, so who’s to say he isn’t?

  How do you tell the difference between an angel and a demon if they all look the same?

  Back on the small beaches of Kamuela, I brace my elbows underneath me as I watch the sunrise. He dips his head, growling. To everyone else, it may sound like a battle cry, but after ten years I’ve learned to understand his groans and grunts as a second language.

  ‘You are the only kind thing the world has ever given me.’

  I stroke his charcoaled scales, so translucent in the dawn’s light they could be onyx crystals. Absently, I listen to his ancient words plop into the water.

   “The world doesn’t deserve your heart,” I say. 

    His heartbeat thrums like an ecstatic dance. 

   Behind the Kamuela hills, the Sun lightens the sky, signaling the end of our adventure. I climb off his upturned snout, smooching him on his flared nostrils, promising to come back in a week. He whimpers, but I shush him with a finger.

    “I will never leave you. But now you need to go, okay?” Silently, he nods, and I smile, retreating a step back.

    “I love you. Don’t forget to look out for monsters.”

     In his eyes, I read his sad, silent goodbye. With a splash, he bellyflops back into the sea.

   When he’s gone, I observe the scrapes on my wrists and forearms, blistering pink from his scales. I rub the blood with my damp shirt, smiling.

     Then I wander down the sandy streets, past all the sleepy houses, past the early morning fishermen and surfers, and back to the boarding school, until I’m immersed once again back into the world of monsters.