Bloodlust

Some might call them monsters but she had lived long enough in these dark waters to know the truth; monsters weren’t so easily killed. Their first mistake was going to the surface. If you want to stay alive, stay in the environment where you have the greatest advantage. That’s why she always stayed deep, deep down where human eyes dared not prey.

One couldn’t expect the same from a shark though. Glorious as they were, they were still beasts, animals who relied on instinct over intellect. So when the smell of fresh blood comes calling, so plentiful it seems too good to be true, so fresh it would be foolish to ignore, they couldn’t help themselves. The delicacies called to her as well, but she knew better than to chase them.

Sometimes it was safe to linger out in the open water, so long as she didn’t drift too close to the surface. Humans didn’t venture out too often but that didn’t make them any less of a threat. On the rare but terrible instances when the dark forms of their ships hovered above, blotting out the sunlight like an ominous cloud, she knew to hide deep in the waters and stay very still. She’d seen what they’d done to the sharks they deemed terrible enough to be monsters. Whatever would they make of a creature like herself? She was not keen on finding out.

It didn’t comfort her that she was prepared. Not on days like today when that horrid silhouette appeared on the surface and dread pooled in her stomach deeper than the ocean itself. How many lifetimes ago had it been since she herself was a passenger on such a vessel? Not long enough for men to have sated their desire for blood, it seemed.

When she was a girl she remembered the tales sailors told of ocean monsters with terrible teeth, ink black eyes, and razor sharp fins whose sight was a death sentence to anyone in the water. What false nightmares they had spun into the mind of a little girl. They didn’t even all have black eyes. Some were narrow slits, like those of the cat that had curled on her lap as she’d listened in horror to the stories.

Once she came down here she learned just how false those stories were. At first she’d shrunk in fear at the sight of the creatures but they were not driven into a frenzied hunger at the sight of her. In fact, the sharks usually looked at her with apathy. She was too much bone and not enough meat for their taste. Sure, there were the territorial few but she’d developed a mutual understanding with them. Now they both kept their distance.

Humans knew exactly how to turn sharks into the monsters they wanted them to be, she realized as she watched the red stain spread along the surface. Promise them the same thing every desperate animal wants and they will come. Promise them food.

And so they began to swarm. Mighty and victorious before their downfall, not realizing that the temptation of fresh meat was the Trojan horse disguising their doom.

She knew what happened next. It was a terrible sight but it seemed an indignity to ignore the deaths of such beautiful creatures. One by one they were snatched up, the way parents fear for their children being snatched up by a stranger with ill intent. Then they were thrown back butchered and broken, still alive but not for long. Their fins were brutally hacked off leaving blood trailing after them as they sunk.

She couldn’t look away from the horror, perhaps because it was so similar to her own. The horror that made her the creature she was now.

Back then, women rarely sailed. Sailors would whisper about women being bad luck, cursing ships to sink to a watery grave. She thought herself so lucky when a vessel agreed to give her passage over the sea. That was until the ship was hit day after day with storms, the waves crashing higher every hour.

It didn’t take long for the whispers to start.

“It’s the woman’s fault. She’s bad luck.”

And,

“We never should have let her on board.”

Those whispers grew louder until they were not whispers at all. Until the men grew bold enough to tie her arms and legs and throw her to the waves.

She sunk as they knew she would, like a shark without fins. Panic seized her but there was nothing she could have done. Her eyes, clouded with water, could barely make out the shape of the ship as it sailed away. She struggled to hold her breath but the water broke through her, filling her lungs. In those last moments when her mind was almost gone it seemed more peaceful below the waves than above. The thunder was muted down here and the violent current had turned into a gentle sway she let lull her to sleep.

When she awoke there was no longer rope binding her legs, in part because she had no legs at all. She panicked at first when she drew in a breath of water expecting to choke, but it ran through her as smooth as water ever had. She ran her hand along her new form finding fins, scales, gills and teeth as sharp as a shark’s. She learned she needed them to hunt for food down here. She was something between woman and fish. She could never return home and she wasn’t sure she’d ever want to.

When she was a girl, a real one with legs and lungs, the sailors told her sharks were monsters, creatures controlled by bloodlust. Funny how in all her days she’d never seen a shark draw as much blood as a man.

Some may call them monsters but she’d been around long enough to know who the real monsters were.