The Children's Horror: Cursed Episodes for Doomed Adults by Barb Patrick

Author:Barb, Patrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Northern Republic
Published: 2024-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

Your Selkie Lover

You wait on the rocks one last time, with the cold and damp soaking through the windbreaker you picked up at the hotel gift shop. The salt spray from crashing waves is all too familiar now. Still, you breathe in deep, hoping to pick out a trace of her scent, some early sign of her approach. You repeat the familiar question over and over in your mind, Will she come back this time?

***

But your heart already knows the answer, whether the rest of you is ready to accept it or not. It’s gone the same way every morning since your sunrise-tinted descent from the pier following the first night of your vacation—when Jeff didn’t wait for you to come to bed and instead rolled over to face the wall, clad in his stained crew-neck t-shirt and fraying gray boxer shorts. Snoring with an intensity to match the hotel’s box fan in the window. You slammed the room door when you left, but you know he didn’t move a muscle. The certainty lingered deep in your bones.

Once you struck the water, the current took you, or so you believed. Knocked unconscious from the impact of your body, covered in that thin, silken nightgown, against the harder-than-it-looked surface, but awoken by saltwater in your nose and mouth, filling your lungs when you turned the wrong way, you floated along. Merrily, merrily. You thought maybe it was true, maybe life was but a dream. You moved through the water with a purpose divine, until reaching the rocks. The same rocks where you’re standing now—nearly one week later.

On the first morning, something nudged you harder than lapping waves and forced you to scramble up the rocks. Slick, oily fur brushed your exposed backside. It tickled. So, you laughed. The adrenaline rush of leaving the cold water to enter even cooler air took hold and your laughter transformed into a howl.

There you were on the rocks, shivering. Crying. You couldn’t tell if the tears came because you were happy to survive or because you were sad for the same reason. Finally, you wiped the salt-stung sides of your hands beneath your lower lids and took in your surroundings.

Seaweed dredged up from the water decorated the rocks like verdant fondant. Under the risen sun, every stone shimmered, enhancing the magical aura of this strange outcropping. Down at the water’s edge, you observed the still, silent presence of a brown and lumpy misshapen thing. A boneless mass of smooth auburn hairs.

Setting aside the weariness of your muscles and bones, setting aside the chills wracking your body with additional teeth-grinding pain, you stood on loose legs. You held a hand out, stretched toward the pile of fur low on the rocks, waiting where land and water mingled.

Then, she made her presence known. Appearing behind you, like she was with you all along.

Her hand rested on your shoulder, providing a light touch still firm enough to stop you. You turned your head and found her there. Where

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