Eventually, there will be a vengeful mob. There will be torches.
It was what happened whenever her dwelling place was discovered. The humans would band together, their courage growing with their numbers, and take up arms against the monster. Grim-faced and determined, they’d come for her, the orbs of fire on the ends of their sticks punching holes in the night.
As soon as the flames of her home rose into the sky, they would find their voices. They’d curse her to their god, debase her with the vilest language their thick tongues could produce. They’d howl like animals as the fire chewed through wood and blackened walls of stone.
Mrs. Smith had been caught unawares only once. The humans had almost killed her. All these years later, she could still taste the ash in the back of the throat and smell the acrid odor of her charred scales.
The pain had been like nothing she’d ever known. Even after she’d crawled into the water and the salt began to cleanse her wounds, the burning sensation had continued.
It had taken her a long time to heal. For many moon cycles, her new scales were softer than the shell of a molting crab and her tentacles were no longer tipped with hooked claws but impotent black stubs.
Back then, Mrs. Smith had longed to return to the village where she’d been assaulted. She wanted to sink every fishing boat and tear the men apart, limb by limb, until the water turned red with blood. She wanted to hear the women wail, to know that their children would go hungry. She wanted to see their babies shrivel in their cradles. She wanted crude wooden crosses to bloom in their fallow fields.
Despite her rage, she did not return to her ruined home. She could not risk being wounded again. Until she ate her fill of Pure Ones and began a new life cycle, a harpoon could pierce her tender scales and puncture her heart. Without her claws, she couldn’t free herself from their fishing nets. She couldn’t fight back if they dragged her onto the beach and stabbed her with spears or pointed sticks. Worse still, they might douse her in whale oil and set her ablaze.
For the first time in her existence, the humans had gotten the upper hand. Mrs. Smith had been forced to swim away until she was strong enough to face them again. She’d hidden under ice, hunting seals and whale calves. In the cold, dark waters, she’d found solace. She went into semi-hibernation, drifting among the ghost-white creatures of the Arctic deep.
She didn’t know how long this lasted. She ate and swam, ate and swam, until her pursuit of a killer whale brought her close to the surface. Close to the wooden hull of a boat. A boat with nets and a heavy metal anchor.
At the sight of those nets, her anger flamed.
She was herself again. She was scales and claws, teeth and hunger.
The time had now come to seek out humans again. Not only would she feed on them, but she would mate with one of them, too.
Mrs. Smith could rejuvenate her aging body by consuming Pure Ones. She could also wake her dormant reproductive system by mating with several human males. Their competing sperm would stimulate an atavistic need in her to perpetuate her species. She shared more genetic material with her prey than she cared to admit, but it was these commonalities that allowed her to mimic their appearance for periods of time.
Like certain starfish species, Mrs. Smith was an asexualanimal. Her kind procreated through binary fission and reproduction. Unlike the starfish, which sacrificed one of several arms to create a new being, Mrs. Smith had to tear herself in two. While her offspring would survive the ordeal, there was a chance she wouldn’t.
She’d come close to reproducing once before, but her own self-preservation had kept her from completing the act.
Now she had no choice. The humans were multiplying at an alarming rate. She had to bear an offspring. And she had to survive the process. If she succeeded, there would be two creatures to collapse oil rigs and sink tankers. Two beasts to puncture the hulls of submarines and trawlers. Together, they would pull thousands of humans down into the dark. The sharks would feed until their bellies were bloated. Until the ocean floor was littered with teeth and bones.
Mrs. Smith was repulsed by the idea of sex with a human, but she would do it. Once they’d given her what she needed, she’d swim to an underwater cave along the Maine coast and undergo the agony of binary fission.
She’d chosen this cave after her long period of hiding and healing.
Abandoning the ice floes and frigid water of the Arctic, she’d traveled south in search of fishing coves. She’d been stunned by the number of boats populating the harbors and inlets. There were nets and traps everywhere. The shores were dotted with buildings. Humans crawled over the land like ants. They’d built machines. They’d tamed the wilderness with steel and guns and fire. While she’d been in a stupor, they’d claimed dominion over the world.
The Mother of Eels had been relegated to the shadows.
However, the shadows in the bay adjacent to Cold Harbor were not deep or dark enough to conceal her for long. She had just devoured two humans, and their absence would notgo unnoticed. Mrs. Smith needed to escape. To do so, she had to rely on her children.
The eels swarmed, swimming above her as she traveled east past Huntington Bay. She headed toward the shores of a vast nature preserve where the water was studded with sharp rocks. Boats kept a wide birth of the area, which made it the perfect place for Mrs. Smith to digest her food without being discovered.
The flesh of the Pure One burned in her belly like a star. She wanted more. Many, many more.
But for now, one was all she needed.
Soon, she could transform into a human woman.
She would join humans at their dinners and cocktail parties. She would eat their sugary foods and sip their bitter drinks and smile while they talked about their dull jobs and pathetic dreams. She would listen with genuine pleasure when they spoke about their children, imagining how she would savor the flesh of their Johns and Janes with the same relish they exhibited when masticating a chunk of raw, bloody steak.
Elaine K. Bernstein had already told her where and when these children would gather in a large, delicious group. All Mrs. Smith had to do was secure an invitation, and she would have all the Pure Ones she needed.
She would arrive at the party as a beautiful human woman, but she would leave in her true form. She would shed her human skin and swim away as the Mother of Eels.
And her belly would be full.
