it stares up at you silently; eerily. the net digs into its face, all the way down its spotted tail, tangled in its flippers. its eyes are wide, haunted, though it blinks methodically from where it lays on the rocks below you, under your raised arm and your rusted, quivering harpoon. the tide pools ripple, the overcast sky dims with approaching storm clouds, and you know you need to get this over with—however unpleasant it may be.
when you step closer, the creature’s mouth opens into a wide snarl, and its stomach jumps with a silent noise. you think it barks at you, but you can’t be sure; whatever noise the creature makes is drowned out by the roaring of crashing waves.
uncertainty fills you. something in its eyes reads understanding, intelligence unbefit a monster. is it wrong to harm something you know is human, underneath the pelt? do you care? is it wrong if you don’t? does that make you a monster? again: do you care?
you think you do. it’s hard to tell what exactly is guilt and what is disgust. you know that the seal is something more, something that can walk on two feet and speak and feel the way humans do, even if it is merely a cheap replication. so, you can’t kill it; the part of you that wants to is outweighed by the part that couldn’t bear whatever outcomes your actions would wrought. the only solutions, then, are to either let it go—which could bring its own complications, if the murderous look it’s giving you is anything to go by—or take it with you.
then begs the question of what you’d do with it. you hadn’t thought this far when you set the traps; all you’d known was that the fabled beasts had been sighted, and that their pelts were expensive and well worth the struggle of coming into possession of one.
this particular beast was one you recognized. you’d seen it before on these very rocks, a few seasons prior, when a storm had stuck it under large debris and it had needed to shed its pelt to don its legs. you’d watched it all from the cliffside, at a spot that overlooks the cove, in a horrified but amazed silence. however much you’d seen in all your years in that creaky old cabin, working the lighthouse, would never quite compare to seeing a human step out from a seal carcass very much whole and healthy, with surprising grace and agility—like every movement was a stroke through the water; a ballet in the sea turned to waltz on land.
although, how you recognize it is not for the scars on its flank from those seasons past, nor the specific freckling on its pelt, but its eyes; wide and sentient and green. green like the moss that grows on the rocky paths around the lighthouse, the sea glass that washes ashore, the evergreens that grow along the rocky edges between forest and coastline.
it is a quick and easy thing, to knock it out with the blunt end of your harpoon’s shaft.
the unfinished basement of your cabin becomes its new home; stone and dripping ceiling replaces the vast seas at the same moment that freedom becomes a passing dream rather than something obtainable. you leave it down there, bloodied and scalped, to wake alone and dazed from the drugs you injected into its system; a bit of pity lingers in your chest when its horrified, human screams reach your ears from your kitchenette, but not nearly enough to bring yourself to let it go. you have it, now, and the way its pelt shines from its spot above your sink, glistening there while it dries, makes you all the more reluctant to part with it.
there was something cathartic about shucking the silky smooth skin from the monster; the way its limp body laid there, nerves trembling with the aftershocks of such cruel violation, brought you peace and excitement and disgust and arousal. the act of forcefully removing its flesh was perverse, admittedly—that’s partly why you did it, after all—but that morbid curiosity has had you in a vice for far too long, far too many seasons of watching, waiting, hoping. taking its pelt was inevitable—simply another part of your nature.
it’s rocky at first; dealing with the beast, feeding and checking on it, keeping it sedated and tied up tightly enough so it can’t escape, but not so tight that it loses complete circulation in its limbs. it’s a work in progress, and not one you take lightly. you learn quickly that its diet is, for the most part, similar to that of a human; except for the fact that it turns up its nose at anything canned, and growls whenever you try to slip your old tuna preserves into its small meals. fresh and raw is preferred—and it’s let you know it; the floor of your basement is still stained from the (very obviously intentional) purging of a meal or two, which had earned the culprit a week without food. the problem does not arise again.
so, for the most part, you keep it fed and warm and give it a musty old mattress to sleep on, blankets to cuddle at night (to replicate its pelt, which you mount above your fireplace, and eat in front of every morning and night), and you draw it a hot bath every three days. it doesn’t speak, not to you, so you don’t bother keeping conversation. the pair of you have no real relationship other than captor and captive, but that bothers you little; at least, not until it bleeds for the first time since you brought it home.
admittedly, you haven’t paid much attention to its physical form since the night you’d stripped it of its pelt. you’ve been more concerned with keeping it alive to be studied and observed than anything else; your sadism about the subject extended more to the torturing of its mind than to the harming of its body.
when two weeks pass with little thought of it in your mind, there comes a quiet morning where you check on the beast before your chores, only to find its legs are stained bloody under the old nightshirt you’d dressed it in. long, pale skin is streaked in clotted, dark red and brown blood, and it cowers on its now-stained mattress while you stare it at from the bottom of the basement stairs.
it is only when you’ve crossed the room and squatted before it, eye-level but still not at all equal, that its stare turns defiant and strong. it squares its shoulders and clenches its jaw, prepares for the absolute worst you can give. you do nothing. your cock tents in your pants but you do not move, and you do not go to touch. you want to; god knows you do, but something holds you back. you’re not sure what, but something needs to give.
it makes a noise. soft, uncertain; not-quite-human but a decent enough replica. its eyes keep darting down to your crotch, to the bulge that gets more prominent with the creature’s attention, and it looks conflicted. you can’t be sure what it’s thinking, feeling, fearing; all you know is that the abrasive look on its face shifts ever-minutely into one of shame, of all things, and something inside of you breaks.
you’re on top of it in seconds.
smooth skin gives way to red beads and tight flesh clenches around you, the smell of copper and sweat mixes in the air, heady and all-consuming. you don’t know if this is a dream. its cries are piercing and its punches strong, always strong, and the fight makes your blood rush throughout your body in waves of sickness. it’s disgusting. it’s monstrous. your desire is an unstoppable force, your arousal an instrument that brings agonizing pain and want and need. you need this more than you’ve ever needed anything. more than light and air and sustenance. this is the same but it is also more than that. this is humanity. this is malice. this is pleasure. this is greed. this is hunger.
its screams and thrashes alight you with the thrill of pure adrenaline. when you hold it down, it makes a noise it’s never made before; crooning, achingly morose calls that bounce off of the basement walls in vibrating echoes. it fills your body with instinctive fear, and your hands are quick to muffle the beasts song. sweaty, calloused hands pressing its mouth firmly closed while you violate its cunt. the way it clenches around you, slick and tight and addictive, makes it all worth it; every sleepless night and bleach-fumed haze; the time and energy wrought into keeping your secret just that: a secret. just the drag of its abused hole against your cock makes all the effort fruitful. you learn you love the combined smells of blood and cum.
you don’t stop after the first taste. breaching that thinly veiled line of reasoning and morality flips a switch that only seems to enlighten you. you grow hungrier, needier; you don’t deny yourself the pleasure that comes from taking away the creature’s heartsong. you break its legs when it dares to call to its own kind. mending the bones is a tedious but enjoyable process; violating in a completely different, more intimate way. you take away its ability to flee and force it to become utterly dependent on you to help it heal. it tolerates every touch and strives to behave, you can tell. it wants to follow the rules you’ve set. more than anything, it wants to use its legs again.
you bathe it and it hisses and whines at the lapping of the bathwater. you hold its head under to teach it a lesson, and you like the panic in its eyes before you dig your hands in its hair, the way its limbs flail and the sounds it makes while screaming underwater. you like the way it flinches when it hears the sound of running water. you teach it to fear the very thing its soul belongs to.
this process of torturing it into compliance is one you relish in. but like anything: it bores you, after a time. you grow tired of its cowardice and strangle it half-dead in the middle of the night. you starve it so you can study its reaction, taking note of its spike in affection after you finally feed it. you train it to trill welcomingly to you when it hears the latch unlock at the basement door. you beat it black and blue, rape it whenever the mood strikes, waterboard it every full moon when it finds its heartsong again. you don’t notice that it hasn’t menstruated since that first time; and if you do, you chalk it up to stress or dietary problems or something else. you don’t consider that you never once pulled out, or that sailors have been fucking mermaids and the like for hundreds of years, and that they’re rumored to sire children from them. you don’t think about anything until the thing starts showing.
you don’t have the heart to do anything about it.
the creature carries. its diet is adjusted and—for the first time since before your net caught the beast—you treat it like any other human. the boy receives supplements and three meals a day, clothes and better heating, a comfier bed and gentler care. you don’t know what to do with the approaching change, and so you stay with him more often, trying to figure out the plan. in doing so, you grow comfortable in his presence; not just as what he previously was to you, but what he could be. you’ve been lonely. everyone in town knows it, but they leave you be. it’s been a very long time since you’ve done more than sleep with the occasional stranger and you’re loathe to admit it, but…you’re only slightly surprised when you start seeing him as a potential wife. a mother to your children. someone to warm your bed.
it’s a pipe dream. a part of you knows that, but it’s hard to rationalize when the prettiest creature you’ve ever seen stares up at you with such deep, soulful eyes. you grow to love the sounds he makes, the sea-salt smell that clings to him, the feel of his rounded stomach when you rock into him. you think he starts to grow fond of you, too. you hope so, at least. his legs heal and you bring him upstairs. you give him a space in your closet and a bedside table of his own. you teach him words and songs and your name. you give him one of your own choosing. you’re halfway convinced he likes it.
there comes a night where you get a little too drunk after tending the light. drinks pour heavy and you’re not eating as much as you should be because the boy gets some of your portions. the haze of alcohol and the sight of a pretty thing laid out in your bed makes you dumb, and you’re too eager to spread its legs and fuck into it the way you used to. its chest is swollen and so is its stomach and you love the way its cunt looks wrapped around your cock. you wake it up that way, moaning and whining while you rut into it. you get heavy handed. you get rougher than you mean to. the thrill of being overtly cruel to it seeps back into your mind and you can’t help it, really you can’t; it looks up at you with the most conflicted expression, of desire and resignation, and you see a flicker of something else there.
there’s a knife in the drawer of your bedside table. the same one you used to shuck it of its pelt.
you grab for it. clumsily. drunkenly. half-jokingly.
kill me, its eyes are saying. kill me, kill me, kill me.
your knuckles flex around the blade in your hand, and the boy’s eyes flit down to the movement; a small, quick flicker of burning flashes in those sad eyes, and you know that, like many other’s before it: this moment was inevitable.
you’re only human, after all.
when you do it, it is not an act of mercy. it is not quick, nor is it painless; you take your time, relish in its heartbroken cries, bathe your hands in its blood like all those months before on the rocks. it writhes and panics despite the mutual agreement, twisting and calling for something, for anyone to help it. you help it. you do. with your cock and knife inside it simultaneously, you help free the creature from your own selfish ways. that’s what you tell yourself when you cum and your stomach rolls in disgust. that’s what you repeat in your head while you take and take and take. still you take. you love him. is it so wrong that you free him this way? you love him. you do. you promise him that you do. he does nothing. he is silent and he is still. he is everything. he is beautiful.
you bury the boy at the edge of the cliffside, steps away from where you stood so many seasons before and watched it shed its skin. you do not take the pelt down from where it is mounted above your hearth, and you do not sell nor part with it, not in any of the long years you live your mortal life. even in death, he is yours.
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