The Pain of Becoming

At first I thought it was the bends. Vertigo pinned me to the floorboards and my skin crawled, but the lightest touch from my fingernails drew blood.

I’d known I was coming up too quickly, but fear overruled logic in the dark. There was something unnatural down there, in the deep. There are no such things as sea monsters, Doc kept telling me, but he hadn’t seen it. He hadn’t felt it.

I’d had my fair share of brushes with the sea’s most dangerous, and the scars to prove it. But I’d never felt anything like the pain and panic that overtook me when that creature rose from the depths. I'd known the second I saw movement in my periphery that I was in danger. That this creature had locked its inky eyes on me, and it wouldn't retreat back into the deep until it got what it wanted.

I'd had no chance of escape, I knew that, but I tried anyway. I set my own sights on the light dancing on the surface of the waves high above me and exhausted my limbs swimming toward it. Then there were knives in my thigh and my stomach, poisonous tentacles slithering tighter and tighter, slowing my progress and then finally reversing it.

Its touch had set fire to my nervous system, and nothing I did could put out the flames, even days later.

I stayed curled up on the cold hardwood floor. Even the sheets on my bed felt like sandpaper on my skin. Only it wasn’t skin anymore.

I opened my eyes once, when I tried to soothe the fever that overtook me with a splash of cold water on my face. But after seeing what was becoming of me, I resolved never to open them again.

Iridescent scales grew over my wrists and ankles, my fingers and toes webbed by a translucent membrane, purple veins spanning the distance between digits. My tongue flicked over teeth that looked and felt as if they’d been filed down to sharp points. My gums raw and bleeding. The taste of metal a constant companion to the pain.

The sun seared my scaly skin and my feet left slimy footprints behind as I ran to Doc’s house. He tried to soothe me, but I saw the fear in his eyes when they landed on my hands, my skin, my face. When reassuring words did nothing to soothe me, he tried to restrain me, but I shook him off easily, his hands slipping on my skin like water on goose down.

My voice no longer sounded like my own, and it took me a moment to recognize the screams I heard as my own plea. The same one, over and over: “Take me back.”

I tasted bile on the back of my tongue with every rock of the boat as he sailed us back out to sea. When the motor went silent, I lunged for the water. Doc caught me in his arms and I let out a shriek that even I knew wasn’t human. He sprawled to the deck at the monstrous sound, eyes wide in terror, and I threw myself over the side.

The fire in my nerves sizzled to embers as I sank through the water. The sunlight dancing on the surface -- the beacon I'd used to try to escape these depths -- drew further away. Soon I was back in the dark, and the pain of my becoming finally, mercifully ceased.

The creature got what it wanted after all, in the end. Because this time, when it wrapped its electric tentacles around me, my lips stretched over needle teeth as I smiled.

And I let it take me deeper.

***

That vile, searing sun draws closer as I rise from the deep. I want nothing more than to sink back down into the comfort of the dark, but hunger twists in my belly, and to fill it, I have to venture into the light.

The electricity snapping at the tips of my tentacles tell me there's prey in the water above. And sure enough, as the surface draws nearer, I see the blurry shape of a diver. His limbs draw him slowly through the water, and my tongue flicks over my lips. Easy prey.

He spots me before I've made my move, but no matter. I shoot through the water, limbs stretched out in front of me. I remember when they ended in hands -- five fingers on each one. Fingernails painted pink. But that seems like centuries ago.

I wrap the diver in my electric grasp and feel his flesh seize beneath my grip. I know what he is feeling -- fire. His skin boils with it, and he fights me with every ounce of strength in him. His mind knows he is already dead, but survival instincts order his muscles to save him anyway.

He manages to wrest himself free and swims quickly -- too quickly -- toward the surface. I don't give chase. I don't need to.

Because nothing will ease the pain of his becoming. Nothing will break the fever.

And when he can bear it no longer, my diver will be back.