Mrs. Smith opened her mouth and emitted a sound beyond the range of human hearing. She swam under the moored boats, moving faster and faster as she headed for the mouth of the harbor.
Diving deeper, she felt the caress of an eel’s body. And then another. And another.
Soon, there was a swirling, writhing cloud of eels. They swam in a mass above her, shielding her, camouflaging her. The eels turned her into a shadow. A meaningless smudge on a ship’s sonar screen. An anomaly.
An anomaly is precisely what she was. She moved withsuch speed that it was difficult to distinguish her body from the water. She was a harpoon in animal form, swimming with her viper-shaped head jutting forward, her arms pinned to her sides. The thrusts of her lower tentacles were explosive.
With her children swimming above her, Mrs. Smith entered the deep waters of the Sound. The eels couldn’t keep pace with their mother. They were not the giant eels of old but their smaller, slower descendants.
Still, they were legion, and as one swarm tired, a fresh swarm would suddenly appear to take over. Together, the dark, undulating mass continued moving east until the land forked.
Here, at the northern tip of Long Island, in a place the humans called Plum Gut, Mrs. Smith would wait for her prey.
The waters in the channel between Orient Point and Plum Island were turbulent. The rip currents were strong even when the surface of the water was smooth as ice. Squalls manifested out of nowhere, whipping the sea into a frenzy and effortlessly capsizing small boats.
This is exactly what Mrs. Smith was hoping for.
At sunrise, the sea looked deceptively glassy. Mrs. Smith knew the commercial fishers and sports fishers would listen to the weather forecast one last time before loading their boats with supplies and motoring away from their safe harbors.
Their misplaced faith in science would drive them into the channel where she lurked. They’d lower their nets, hooks, and traps into the water, their engines excreting noxious gas and oil sheens. They’d launch aluminum cans and food wrappers over the sides of their boats. Flick cigarette butts. Dump piss and feces.
Mrs. Smith smelled every contamination, no matter how small. She tasted every corruption. As she drifted along the bottom, her children weaving back and forth above her like threads of yarn on a loom, the abuse of her domain enraged her.
Her fury seemed to summon the storm.
Birthed to the Bermuda Triangle, the system was inconsequential at first. But as it passed over the jet stream on its way to the shores of Long Island, it collided with a mass of cold water. And just like that, it had teeth.
Mrs. Smith felt the storm long before the fishermen knew of its existence. The bigger boats with their larger crews saw the future on their radar screens and fled, but many of the sports fishermen, ignorant of the incoming squall or too full of hubris to run, stayed put.
By the time they realized their mistake, it was too late.
The wind struck the boats from the side, making them rock back and forth like bathtub toys. The rain pelted the decks and men fought to keep their feet on the slippery surfaces. Some were pitched into the lifelines, which saved them from catapulting overboard. Others reached for the same lifelines and missed.
The instant their bodies were flung into the roiling sea, Mrs.Smith felt their terror. It aroused her appetite. She salivated as she imagined curling her tentacles around their legs and pulling them down, down into the dark.
Her first victim wore an orange life jacket and rubber boots. Mrs. Smith severed his left arm in one bite. Blood poured from the wound, feathering around her face and flooding her nostrils with its sweet scent.
After devouring the other arm, she shredded the life jacket with a single swipe of her claws. Embracing the lifeless body of her prey, she ate greedily.
It had been too long since she’d tasted tender flesh. Rich blood.
She felt a shark approaching from below, rocketing up at her with its jaw open in a lethal grin. She smashed it with a tentacle while sinking her teeth into the dead man’s neck. The looseligaments in her jaw stretched and her mouth opened wide enough to take in his whole head. Then she clamped her jaw shut, crushing the skull like a conch shell. As the brain matter slid down her throat, she waited for the flood of euphoria that came from feasting on a man-child.
It did not come. The human had been too old.
When her second victim arrowed into the water, Mrs. Smith left the legs of her first victim to the sharks and darted to the surface to collect a more valuable prize.
This human wore no life jacket. Unlike the man she’d just eaten, he was a strong swimmer. He’d barely stopped his downward trajectory before he began to scissor-kick toward the surface.
Mrs. Smith could practically feel the air burning in his fragile lungs. She watched his pale, ineffective limbs for several seconds, delighting in his weakness, but then her hunger surged, and she grabbed him by the feet, reeling him in like a yo-yo on a string.
The man-child couldn’t see her in the darkness, but he was aware of her shape and the rubbery tentacle curling around his ankles. She sank her teeth into his torso, puncturing his heart and lungs, and his world went black.
The blood pumping into his chest was nectar to Mrs. Smith, pure and bright and strong. It electrified her body like a lightning strike, instantly healing and regenerating her tired cells.
As she crunched the man-child’s bones, her spine arched in ecstasy.
Humans were perfectly ripe only once in their short lives. This occurred during the two or three years when they were caught between childhood and adulthood. During this time, their hormones surged, flavoring their blood with possibility and promise.
