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[short story] an offering to the sea
🕑 Added 2023-03-05 07:58:46 +0000 UTCA short story I wrote a while ago. It's unrelated to angels, but it's got hungry monsters, and I hope you enjoy ♥
Tana removes her white scarf when the monsters climb down from the hilltop. She has her fur-lined coat open in case she has to run. She wants them to smell her, the menstrual blood on her clothes, and the remnant aches of the fever she’d survived. This will make them unsteady. The cold races down the hills with the monsters who glisten under the full moon.
“Where is the meat, girl?” asks Ragsavan. His barbed, rumbling voice fills the night air. His four wives claw the dirt, their scaled faces fixated on Tana. Their tongues flicker as they taste her on the breeze, saliva dripping down their sharp chins to hiss on the earth.
She straightens her shoulders. “I have a huge harvest for you this time,” she says. “We had illness cut through the village. Nobody could fish, and many of us starved.”
A wide, sharp-toothed smile stretches across Ragsavan’s dark-scaled face as he drops to all fours and sniffs her. “How many?” he asks, his voice trembling with excitement.
The wives move closer, anticipation making them purr. “Are there any young ones?” whispers the largest. Her belly sags along the ground, and Tana can’t tell if she’s pregnant or growing fat off the villagers.
Tana turns away from the rancid breathing and leads them back to the village. “Too many to carry here,” she says, trying not to choke on the words. The illness went through each household like wildfire, claiming Tana’s young daughter Jing as well as two dozen others.
She’d wanted desperately to give Jing a proper burial at sea. To set her body adrift, her wrists and ankles bound in flower bracelets, offered to the sea gods. But how would she look the other villagers in the eyes and claim that her daughter was more important than all they’d lost? She had Jing’s little body prepared and thrown in with the rest.
“Where are your people?” asks Ragsavan. They follow her through the village, their footsteps making the houses tremble. Not even the stray cats stir.
“Hiding,” says Tana. When Ragsavan and his wives first came down from the hills, they tore through the village. They raided the food stocks, ate through the fishing boats, and slaughtered anyone who fought back. Blades and arrows couldn’t cut through their hard scales. Knives that easily cleaned fish couldn’t scratch the monsters. They feasted on the chief, Tana’s husband.
It was Tana, shaking with anger and fear, who approached the full-bellied Ragsavan and his wives and offered them a deal. The dead for the living. A constant supply of flesh every season.
Even if the villages cursed her more and more with each passing season. “We belong to the gods of the sea,” they’d tell her, clinging to the deceased and ordaining their bodies with flowers. “Not to the demons of the land.” They called her a traitor for sending the bodies to the monsters instead of returning their spirits to the sea.
“Where are our gods now?” Tana would plead. “How do we fight these demons?” This treaty ensured the village’s survival. It kept the monsters from hunting them to extinction. It let everyone else live. She thinks of her daughter as she leads them deeper into the empty village.
“How many?” whispers a wife. The others echo her question as they crawl atop the rooftops, sending debris skittering to the road. One of them scratches the front door of a house.
Tana shivers as Ragsavan reminds them to honor the agreement. He trawls right behind her, his breath hot on her back.
“They are on the boat,” is all she can say. Clutching her arms and trying not to picture Jing’s fragile limbs curled up beside the others. The vacant look on her face. The cold and clammy texture of her pale skin.
The fever sticks with Tana still, and she knows her bloodied clothes and frailty stroked the monsters’ appetite. She wants their focus on her and the meal she promises.
When they come to the other side of the village, to the sea, Tana points to the large boat bobbing gently on the high tide. It’s decorated in blue flowers from the fields, a gesture of faith from the villagers. Torches line the beach, brightening the way. The waves are dark and heavy.
“Why a boat?” asks Ragsavan. His wives rush into the waves, their glistening hips and shoulders swaying violently as they splash towards the boat.
“The sickness,” says Tana, stifling the urge to vomit as a loud crack fills the night. The monsters tear into the boat, pushing each other to get to their meal. “It spread through contact, so we kept all the dead here, away from us.”
Ragsavan licks Tana’s neck, and both of them shudder. “I smell so many bodies,” he whispers to her throat. His drool slides down her back as his rough tongue flickers against her spine. “We will not forget this kindness.”
The wives crawl into the boat like shadows escaping the rising sun. Ragsavan leaps into the water with a splash and climbs in after them. He lifts a body from the pile and brings it to his jaws.
There’s a lump in Tana’s throat. She wants to burn the monster’s saliva off her back, but she can’t look away as the crackle of bones fills the night. The sounds of teeth tearing apart flesh. Slobbering and swallowing. Snorting. Unmistakable slurping sounds like one might do with soup. The boat is large enough for the monsters to vanish inside, completely devoted to the feast.
Her stomach twisting, her head spinning, she wants to collapse. But the villagers appear with spooled nets and pitchers of kerosene, their tired faces silent and righteously angry. Their numbers are thin now, but anger rages hotter than any fever.
They’d cursed her for seasons, but when she told them her plan, they praised the gods and blessed her. She’d been holding the overheated body of Jing when she gathered the village folk. “It might not work,” she’d said, stroking Jing’s hair.
Jing was the one who gave her strength. “We’ll leave it to the gods.”
Tana, carrying a torch, leads the villagers down the beach into the churning waves, her jaws set with determination. The sounds of the creatures grow louder and louder, but the villagers get to work.
The nets are cast overhead, covering the top of the boat with many layers. Kerosene is hurled on the wooden sides. When it’s properly drenched, Tana shuts her eyes and listens to the world. She can feel the villagers’ hopes buoying her up. She can feel Jing and her husband, guiding her hand. She tosses the torch onto the boat. Several more are thrown in, and then everyone rushes back up the beach as orange light blossoms and flickers on the sea.
She tumbles to the sand, her clothes soaked with seawater. The flames illuminate the frightened faces of the entire village, and Tana prays for the first time since the monsters came down from the mountains.
Shrieks erupt inside the boat. Howls tear the night apart, but the entire thing is caught in the blaze. The monsters scramble to escape, clawing at the nets and tangling themselves.
The villagers shout in unison, chanting prayers. The monsters’ wretched howls carry all over, to the ends of the sea and back to the village. Tana stands with her fists clenched as she offers the bodies on the boat to the gods. She offers the monsters. She offers herself. Bury this nightmare at sea once and for all.
The flames burn through the rope holding the boat to shore, and it drifts away, gloriously ablaze. Hope makes her heart thunder.
“Is it over?” a boy asks, standing beside where Tana in the sand. The only sounds now are the wreckage burning and the waves. She holds her breath, not wanting to answer him or anyone until she is sure.
There’s a violent thump. Then another, followed by a crash. The entire burning body of the boat shudders before it erupts. Sparks shoot toward the full moon. Burning fragments rain down on the waves, and Ragsavan stands in the water. His scales glistening sickly as they melt off his body. The limp figures of his wives and the sacrificed villagers pour out of the boat like guts spilling out of a slit fish.
He races to shore, and once more the village fills with screaming. He is screaming too, something painful and heart-wrenching. The sounds fill Tana’s head like thorns as he cuts through the beach, flinging people away and tearing apart anyone who lunges at him with a torch or a spear.
“Where is the bitch?” he roars.
Tana stands, shaking. “I’m here.” She raises her scarf and says it again, louder. She lets the white cloth trail behind her as she runs up the road, tears flowing down her cheeks as the burning body of Ragsavan chases her into the empty village.
They’d killed the other monsters. It’s just one remaining, and he was badly burnt. And maybe if she can buy enough time, then the villagers can regroup and finish him off.
She turns onto another road as Ragsavan crashes into a house, clawing desperately to find his footing in the rubble. She screams as his claws strike the dirt beside her. The scarf slips out of her fingers when she dives into her home and bolts the metal door shut.
Ragsavan roars, his claws scraping against the metal. He throws himself against the house, making everything quake. Making shelves collapse. She scrambles to the back where she keeps her husband’s things. She rummages through the fishing gear and the books as Ragsavan rips apart the house. His cries deafen her thoughts.
When he lifts the roof, showering her with debris and the stench of burnt flesh, she finds her husband’s speargun and unlatches the safety.
Ragsavan reaches for her, his voice laced with anger. “We had an agreement, human.” His claws dig into her thigh, cutting through her muscles. “I should have feasted on your soft flesh so long ago.”
Biting her tongue, and about to pass out from the pain, she raises the gun and fires at his ruined face. A spear bursts through his throat, and he stumbles back. His claws slide out of her as he grabs his neck. She curses, her hand against a wall to steady herself. She resets the gun.
Then she stumbles onto the road, blood streaming down her leg.
The monster is on his back, clutching his throat and quivering as black liquid gushes from between his claws. Smoke billows from his skin where most of his scales had dissolved away. He makes a pitiful sound, gurgling. “My wives,” he gasps.
The villagers crowd around, all of them armed with knives and torches. If the wives had gotten up, she didn’t think the villagers would be here. They must have perished on the burning ship, and she breathes a sigh of relief. The gods of the sea answered her prayers after all.
In the flickering light, Ragsavan’s burned body seems almost insect-like, and she remembers everything that he and his wives have taken from the village. She steps on the monster’s chest, ignoring the searing pain in her leg, and presses the end of the speargun against his ruined face. The weapons couldn’t touch him before, but now, with his scales partially melted, he was finally, utterly vulnerable.
Ragsavan’s arms fall to his side as a rasping, grating sound escapes his throat. He sounds like fish do, struggling to breathe as they flop on the deck.
Tana’s arms tremble. She wants to make a prayer to the gods. She wants to scream at the monster and tell him about her family, about the villagers. She wants to swear to him that he won’t be buried in the dirt or at sea. That his soul would never be set free.
Her words catch in her throat. She knows screaming won’t bring anyone back. She knows pulling the trigger won’t bring Jing back. She looks into the obsidian depths of his eyes and fires again.
