The Girl

CW: This story contains implied pedophilia but nothing explicit is shown

The kitchen lights are beginning to hurt my eyes from how long I’ve been staring at them, trying not to look my wife in the eyes. The fluorescent glow of the white-hot bulbs is searing itself into my retinas as she speaks. I’m trying not to look her in the eyes. I don’t want to see all of the anger inside of her. The flour on her shirt. The strands of gray streaked the inky black hair that used to look so beautiful on her. The way she’s clutching a dirty dish rag in one hand. Or see the way the baby is screaming in her other arm, even as she holds him. He doesn’t understand what’s going on. All he can do is cry.  But I can’t comfort him and I can’t look at her so I look up at the ceiling, at those white-hot lights, trying to burn my frustration away with their brightness.

She doesn’t understand. How could she? This girl. She’s so beautiful. I suppose it’s only natural for women to be jealous of each other. Especially women like my wife, Alma. She’s always been petty and I think it’s fair to say that her younger days are behind her now. It makes sense that she would be jealous of such a beautiful young girl. She’s everything that Alma used to be, bright-eyed and and slender-bodied with pearly skin and silky hair. But now, Alma couldn’t be more different. She has wrinkles to show for her stress and has gained stubborn weight that refuses to be shed, even after her pregnancy. 

I’m snapped out of my thoughts by my wife’s rising temper and voice.

“-bring her here? Where did she even come from?”

“Honey, please,” I try to speak calmly and logically, “I only saw her after I picked up the cloak. There’s nothing I could have done. Don’t you see that she’s special?”

I point to the shivering girl standing in the middle of our kitchen. She doesn’t look special aside from her great beauty. She looks scared, pale, no older than 15, and small wrapped in the thick blanket I gave her to cover herself, her hair like chocolate-colored taffeta covering the sides of her face and falling in front of her eyes. I think about how Alma’s hair hasn’t looked soft in years, her thick black mane starting to go gray. I’m holding the plush tawny brown fur cloak I assume she must have been wearing before. Well, before I saw her but after she transformed.

“What the fuck are you even talking about, Frank? How the hell is she special? She’s just some random girl. I mean, where would she have even come from? We’re the only house around for miles.”

I sigh, chewing the inside of my cheek as I try to keep my frustration in check. I should have known I would have to explain things to her.

“Don’t you see this?” I hold up the piece of fur in my hands. “I found this lying on the beach this morning and the very moment I picked it up, I saw her. She was standing right in front of me and, god, just looking at her eyes I knew she wasn’t human.”

Both my wife and our child have stopped screaming at this point and are staring at me dumbly but I know that I have to keep talking.

“I took a class on this kind of stuff in college. Folklore. Irish or Scottish I think. They’re called selkies. She used to be a seal but now that I have her cloak, she must be a human. She’s bonded to me now.”

What I don’t say is that she can’t return to the sea unless she gets her cloak back from me.

Alma walks up to the girl slowly and whispers something to her that I can’t make out. The girl looks at her with wide eyes and shakes her head. Alma nods, turning to grab her coat and the baby’s hat and gloves before moving for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I can’t be here right now. I don’t know what’s come over you but this isn’t right. She’s your problem now.”

At the same time that I reach out to her, she slams the door coldly, crushing the tips of two of my fingers.

“Fuck, that hurts!”

There’s no response from the other side of the door so I know that I’m alone with the girl.

I grit my teeth and turn to her, trying not to reveal the pain I’m in. I walk over to her cautiously, hoping not to scare her any further.

As I crouch down slightly to get on her level, I ask her gently, “Do you have a name?” She looks at me blankly. “Something I can call you?” 

I get no reply, just the same blank stare.

“This is pointless.”

If she can’t understand me, why shouldn’t I say what I’m thinking out loud?

I get up, trying to ignore the ache in my knees, a painful reminder of my age, as I go to pull together whatever meager food we might have lying around for my dinner.

-----------------------

It was cloudy that night. I couldn’t tell what time it was, but it was late. Alma still hadn’t come back with the baby yet. The girl had gone to sleep in the living room hours ago and I figured I’d leave her there. 

I have to move now. I hold the brown fur cloak that I’ve been gripping tightly ever since I found it this morning in one hand. Every footstep that I take sounds impossibly loud on the perpetually sandy wooden floor. As I stand in the doorway connecting the hallway and the living room, I listen to the girl’s breathing, so soft that it’s practically indistinguishable from the sound of gentle waves just outside. But I know that she’s there and that this is where she belongs. 

I think back to when I found her. It was only hours ago but it feels like weeks. It feels like I’ve known her forever. Just seeing her standing there, like Venus naked on the shore, I knew that she was mine. She’ll understand. She has to.

As I close the door behind me, I can’t stop thinking about her. She has to stay here with me. And I’m going to make sure that she does.

I make my way to the shed in the back and try to move as quickly and quietly as possible, fumbling around in the dark for a shovel. I have to bury the cloak before Alma returns. Before the girl wakes up. I can keep us all together here. We can be happy together. I can teach the girl to talk and Alma will learn to love her too. Besides, it’s not like we couldn’t use extra help around the house.

My hand grasps a wooden handle in the dark. The shovel. I grab it and head for the door of the shed when I hear something. It sounds like someone talking. Or maybe they’re singing. My first instinct is frustration that my wife interrupted my perfect plan but then I pause. When was the last time I heard Alma sing? I can’t remember but as I think, I notice that my feet have been moving towards the sound since the moment I first heard it. If it’s Alma then I don’t want her to find out what I’m doing but something tells me it’s not her. It sounds too soft, too melodic to be her voice. I have to know who it is. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before.

I’m walking so quickly now to the source of the voice that I hardly notice that the grass beneath my feet has turned to sand. I’m back on the beach. Right where I was this morning. But I don’t notice that. I notice her. The Girl. She’s out there in the water. It shouldn’t be possible for her to return to the ocean but I can see that the water isn’t even touching her. She must have found a sand bar at low tide and stood there, waiting for me to find her. God, is that her voice? I’m so close now that I can hear her song clearly. I can’t make out the words but I know that it’s a song about love. But the song isn’t what’s important anymore. It’s Her. I have to reach her. I don’t even notice that I’m stripping off my clothes. The cloak is lying on the sand next to my feet with the shovel on my opposite side. The water is so cold. If it was for anyone else I wouldn’t be doing this. But it’s not just anyone. For her, I keep walking. The water reaches my knees. Then my fingertips. Then my elbows. 

If I could look back to the beach I would see Alma kneeling in the sand with the baby in her arms, crying, pleading for me to stop, for me to come back. But I don’t look back and I don’t stop. I keep walking. I’m so close to her now that the singing almost drowns out Alma’s screaming. But just as my fingers reach out to touch the Girl, my foot slips, and I’m sinking fast. I’m trying so hard to stay afloat, to keep the water out of my ears to hear her voice, but the waves are stronger out here. They’re crashing over my head. They push me down. Once. Twice. Three times. I know that I’m dying but all that’s left in my mind is that I’m hers. I’m hers. I’m hers. She has claimed me. I understand now that Her song was never about love. It was about passion, spite, an obsession. I can feel her wrath like blood in my mouth. And then, in an instant, She’s gone. And so am I.