The Seafest Queen

The puffed sleeves of my peacock blue dress graze my cheekbones as I feather them a murderous shade of strawberry. I cough as I spray in just a bit more Aquanet, the floral bouquet of chemicals filling my lungs. That’s the price you pay for hair teased as high away from hell as possible.

My heart swells in my chest, roaring in time with the tide crashing outside my bedroom window. My bare ankles cling to the cold steel legs of my vanity stool. The mirror reflects back a portrait of myself —a living, breathing over the top paint palette—yet no amount of frosted shadow can doll up the soulless mud puddles I have for eyes. 

My lips are like dry rose petals; I run my tongue over the briny cracks. Growing up on the Atlantic, it feels like every damn pore in my body is permanently saturated with salt. Smiling through gritted teeth, I’m a far cry from the Seafest Queens before me.

Jesus Christ, Michelle. You look ridiculous. Who do you think you are? Madonna?

Her poster is sticky-tacked above my headboard, actually. She burst into superstardom just weeks ago, like a magician conjuring her from a dissipating smoke cloud. Me, on the other hand, I had to drive forty-five fucking minutes into town just to buy her cassette along with an 18x24 printout of her. 

I used to get down on my hands and knees in this very bedroom, elbows on my bed and fingers clasped under my chin. My fingernails digging into my knuckles, I’d plead in desperation—not for salvation, but to become the biggest star to ever enter this orbit…and to get a hundred million miles away from here.

I recall the glimmers of my early childhood, back when my life itself was a moving prayer. I didn’t have to kneel at any kind of altar, because goodness found me simply because I existed. My days were brimming with joy and whimsy. When I was a child, there was make-believe and skipping stones and collecting seaglass; everything was magical. Nowadays, it’s as though any charisma I once had that attracted good things to me is gone forever. And well, why bother praying when you know no one is listening? 

My eyelid twitches, noticing the time on my dresser clock. Its arms are gleefully fixed at ten and two, like it’s doing the freaking YMCA.

10:10 am. Only three hours till go time, you crazy bitch.

You see, I was raised on the Bay of Fundy which boasts the highest tides in the world, receding each day by almost fifteen meters, only to charge back ahead the same distance. That’s a big claim to fame for this coastal town that’s otherwise as insignificant as a fart in the wind. 

If you’ve never been here, you might romanticize it for its clean air, fresh seafood, and charming wooden houses in primary colors. When you live here, the reality is the fisheries and devout Catholicism being a front for the grim drug underbelly that actually keeps the town afloat. People’s misery manifests in hurtful gossip behind your back, veneered with a toothy “Hey! Are are you?” to your face at the grocery store. If this town were to invite you over for dinner, it would serve you one big heaping pile of fried bologna and call it a filet mignon. 

Maybe that’s why there’s such a lead up to the Seafest Queen pageant every summer. Why talk about unemployment checks, or how fat you think so and so is getting, or how you haven’t had sex with your spouse in over a decade when you can adorn life taffeta and pearls? Being crowned the Seafest Queen is the ultimate illusion to these people. It’s pathetic how bad they want it, and my mouth swirls with sour, metallic vomit with how badly I want it, too. 

I’ll never have it, though. I don’t have what it takes to represent such an honor. You see, this town may be trash, but my family is the gum stuck to the bottom of the bin. Nothing about me is congenial. In fact, I’m so cynical it could be considered a medical phenomenon. My appearance is meek and lanky and unnoticeable at best (I hear them in the hallway, “Hey look! If it isn’t Mousy Michelle!!! Squeak, squeak, squeak!!!”). 

I’m not what this town views as a debutante. I didn’t marry a fisherman straight out of highschool. Hell, I graduated four years ago and still live with my parents. I have no real ambitions other than my disillusions of becoming rich and famous. I bite down hard whenever I see red carpet starlets in magazines, knowing the closest I’ll ever come to fame is through my escapism of flipping through pages. 

All that’s going to change after today, though. This afternoon, my name will be just as renowned as the tides that keep this town on the map. 

Let me explain. 

There’s a legend here about a hopeful pageant contestant from many moons ago who, much like myself, never made the cut. There’s not much on record about her life; probably because this town swallowed any sparkle she once had and spat her out, bland and discarded. I know that feeling.

On pageant day, the alleged woman walked into the ocean at high tide. The cruel wind had been hissing from the North-East all morning. The waves were relentless as they surged, assaulting the shoreline. The conditions were hazardous, but the ominous woman didn’t flinch. She wore a crooked, plastic tiara and pageant dress (some say it was bubblegum pink, some say emerald green… others might say it looked a lot like the one I am wearing now). 

Mascara flooded down her cheeks as she turned to onlookers through the fog. Raising one finger to her lips in a “ssssshhhh”, she was no sooner sucked away by the violent undertow, never to be seen again. She was only twenty-two. 

The lore says that if you go to the ocean at high tide on the day of the pageant and say “Seafest Queen” three times, that the perished woman will resurface from her watery tomb and wreak havoc on the town that once made her feel worthless. People here don’t like to talk about her death, probably because no one wants to assume any kind of responsibility for what happened to her. And as far as I know, no one has ever attempted to resurrect her, either. I’ve always had a sick fascination with it all, though… and with her. 

The Bay of Fundy takes six full hours to go out, and another six full hours to come back in. Today, the ocean will have filled the entirety of the seafloor floor by 1:06 pm. It’s at that exact time this afternoon that I will walk waist deep into the drink—pageant dress and all—and do what no one before me has ever worked up the gusto to do. I’m going to summon her: the long, lost Seafest Queen. 

Together, she and I are going to ruin the pageant, and more importantly, make sure this town—and the world—know exactly who the fuck we are. 

Today is a big day. It’s perfect, actually. 

I carefully place my own bejeweled, plastic tiara atop of my head and clasp my watch around my wrist. 11:35 pm. I tap myself in the face when I notice I’m not breathing. 

I set out. 

The gravel is like a bed of nails beneath my feet as I walk alongside the main drag. I don’t know why I didn’t put shoes on, to be honest. This is painful and stupid. But I do know my eyes roll to the back of my head whenever it comes to my own suffering.

It’s chilly for high noon in August. The sun is beaming, but I can see a gray thicket of gloom rolling in on the horizon. Cars sparsely zoom by, and not one single person turns to look at me. I’m a literal barefoot, paper bag princess, yet still: I am invisible. My cheeks run hot as blood rushes to my face.

I hold up the skirt of my dress as I turn down the winding road of cracked pavement that leads to the lighthouse. A seagull gawks at me from atop a lamppost. Its cry is a shrill siren against the unsettling backdrop of the crashing surf. I rub my hands against my forearms. I know the fog rolls in quickly around here, but I can’t help but feel that it just suddenly: appeared. The hairs rise on the back of my neck. 

12:43 pm. I roll out the tension in my jaw. Squinting my way through this hazy purgatory, the lighthouse reveals itself in the distance like a ghostly apparition. The corners of my mouth lift across my face like I’m the Cheshire cat. I picture the likes of Jenny and Sandra and Debbie on the pageant stage, singing karaoke level performances and calling themselves ingenues. With a deep bellow, my shoulders go up and down. 

They have no clue what’s coming for them. 

I don’t consider myself to be a downright evil person… but I’m certainly not good, either. I might seem like a vile anti-feminist, but I assure you, all these perfect pageant women are all bonafide backstabbers, too. The only difference is: I’m honest about it. 

The beach rocks sound like a bag of marbles as I make my way over the crest, past the paint-chipped lighthouse and towards the ocean. It’s 12:57 pm. My heart wails in my throat like a grapefruit sized mound. The waves tower in, the white foam a few feet higher than usual, I’d say. This is the ocean’s last stitch effort at churning up to its highest point, which is now in…

Two minutes.

I gasp as my feet plunge into the bay. The temperature never used to phase me back in childhood, but I’ve weakened to the elements with age. As I push my way against the incoming current, a wall of water slaps into me. I spit out a mouthful of saline and shake it off. I bite down on my lip. Determined, I grab my dress with clenched fists, and keep going.

Torso deep, I stop. I’m panting, and it’s as though Mother Nature slows down to take a breath with me as I catch my own. Out of nowhere, the ocean sways like glass. My eyes widen at the sight of the fog, shimmering like a disco ball. I pull my slicked hair off my collarbones and toss it behind my shoulders. I instinctively place my hands on my chest. They’re shaking. Fifty feet away, I see a rounded wave drumming up and propelling towards me. My toes grip the rocks as I wonder if it’s too late to change my mind. But no…

It’s time.

My voice is hoarse as I shout into the abyss. I must sound maniacal. 

“Seafest Queen! Seafest Queen! Seafest Queen!”

Where is she?

I scan the ocean, left to right. Nothing. I clear my throat.

“Seafest Queen!”

The bottom of the sea floor rumbles like a bass drum. My mouth goes agape. I start to tread backwards but the undertow current is too strong, pulling me further out. As the titanic wave approaches, I block my face with my forearms to try and protect myself from the oceanic monster that is about to engulf me. Just as the weight of the Atlantic comes crashing down on me…

I hear screaming.

I gasp and gurgle as I emerge from the deep. It’s euphoric as the oxygen fills my lungs, as though I haven’t breathed in the stuff in decades. My eyes blink open and I’m facing the coastline, where I find the source of the screams.

It’s a group of teenagers—young adults, maybe?— in dresses and accessories that don’t look quite like mine.

Why Converse sneakers with a pageant dress? 

They’re all holding some kind of rectangular object I don’t recognize. They’re pointing them at me. They are petrified, yet stay fixated on those things that are fixated on me. I thrash and struggle as I rise from the ocean, burning with rage that no one is helping me. I feel like I am floating. No, wait. I am growing, higher and higher. From my bird’s eye view, I notice the lighthouse, once battered by years of salt and wind, now gleams with fresh paint. I am completely disoriented. I don’t understand what’s going….

Oh my God. Sitting at my vanity. My dress. Walking barefoot on the gravel. The lighthouse. The ocean. The undertow taking me. I’ve done it all before. Over, and over, and over, and over…

I’m intoxicated as I remember who I am, savoring the fruits of my long awaited malice. An animalistic growl echoes miles into the distance as my mouth opens. The girls shriek and stumble as they back away, their rectangle contraptions still held in my direction. I’m high and mighty, and far more threatening than the sheet of storm clouds overhead. My peacock blue dress rips at the seams as I hold my fingers up like claws.

I realize now that amnesia plagued me as I lurched through purgatory. I repeated the day of my death for decades until now, when these little twerps—from a time in the future I do not know—finally summoned me. I may have forgotten who I was in limbo, but my mind is sharp as a tack now. I’ve waited a long time for this revenge. 

The ocean molecules swirl like tornados towards my palms. I must be holding the entire Bay of Fundy in my hands. As I hold up a tsunami of my own making, one of the girls throws down her rectangle and puts her hands up.

“Please!!!! Please don’t kill us!!! We were just messing around!!”

The girls all drop their rectangles and cover their ears as a piercing laugh erupts from me. I pull back my ball of tumultuous ocean, as though I’m about to launch a slingshot. They fall to the ground. For a moment, I see them, innocent and grappling to get up the crest of rocks in these gail force winds. The tension in my arms ease off. 

What did these girls ever do to me?

That’s when the one with the purple streak in her hair throws a rock at me.

“Go to hell you fucking loser! Who the fuck do you think you are!!!!?”

I snarl. Looming in close to their dear little pageant queen faces, my whisper is so jagged it could saw through bone.

“My name is Michelle Ross. I am the Seafest Queen.”

The town’s population howls in unison as I launch the entire energy of the Bay of Fundy onto them. The sonic boom of glass shattering, wood splitting, and cars smashing are deafening, even to a wicked oceanic terror like me. 

These small town folk will not live to tell this tale, but now the whole world will know my name.

I always knew I’d be a star. 

As I cackle and spit and seethe, the ocean filters back towards me like blue lightning. The water gushes up towards my face. I groan and jolt as I try to slap it away. I bellow like a beast as I’m blinded by the liquid. I feel myself being sucked down…way, way down…I can’t breathe. Just as my surroundings go dark…

I wake up on the ground. Pushing myself upright, I cough blood and salt water. I rub the gravel off my cheek. My teeth chatter. I’m drenched. My peacock blue dress is ripped and soiled. I look around to find a desolate scene. I gasp in the silence.

The town is destroyed. Driftwood and bodies are stacked where houses once stood. Cars are scrunched together like lego. There is not one tree left in sight. This is not the purgatory I once knew. This one is the aftermath of my revenge. And I remember everything this time. 

I stand up and limp my way down the road. I may suffocate in panic. 

“Hello!? Hello!??? Anybody???!”

I fall to my knees. I never thought I’d pray again, but I shriek in horror as I look up to the heavens. 

I’ll be stuck in this town forever. And this time, there’s no one here left to summon me.