Chapter 13 Mrs. Smith
Mrs. Smith
Mrs. Smith used a tentacle to push the boy’s severed arm down her throat.
The boy was a Pure One.
As she chewed his flesh, her mouth filled with his salt-laced blood and the neurons in her brain exploded, filling her vision
with a searing light. She was blinded by ecstasy.
The euphoria hurtling through her cells was so powerful that she was temporarily stupefied. She drifted in the water, belly
up, her eyes rolling back in their sockets. Her jaw hung open, revealing the strips of skin and strands of hair caught in
her teeth.
Like a shark, she’d entered a state of tonic immobility. Her muscles relaxed. Her breathing slowed. Lost in pleasure, she
had no awareness of her surroundings.
Her children writhed in agitation. They swam over her and under her, trying to conceal her from above and below. The eels
knew she was completely helpless—susceptible to propeller blades or fishing nets. Vulnerable to discovery.
The Mother of Eels had already taken a huge risk by capsizing the boat.
She’d arced her lower arms through the water, sending them crashing into the centerboard just as the little craft was tacking.
Struck from the side with incredible force, the centerboard caused the boat to careen violently to one side, the mast toppling like a felled tree.
The sails landed in the water with a helpless slap. The young humans shouted in surprise. Seconds later, she saw a pair of
legs frog-kicking. She saw sunlight bounce off a watch face. She paused for the briefest moment, watching the laces of an
untied shoe dance in the current. The wriggling strings looked like glass eels.
Then, she struck.
She wrapped a tentacle around the man-child’s ankle, pulling him under the surface with a vicious tug. She ripped off the
life jacket with her teeth as the human screamed. The sound was muted by the water as a frenzy of bubbles poured out of his
mouth. Mrs. Smith witnessed his final exhalation with mild amusement before biting into his torso.
Enveloped by clouds of blood, she waited to be electrified by his flesh. But this man-child was not a Pure One. He was sweet
and delicious—a vast improvement over shark or whale meat—but she feasted on him quickly, eager to capture the second human
and drag him to the bottom.
The other boy, the one climbing onto the centerboard, had to be a Pure One. She couldn’t have taken this risk for nothing.
She’d read the yacht club’s newsletter. She’d researched the rules. She knew the skippers were too old to be Pure Ones but
that the crew members were the perfect age.
Mrs. Smith crushed the first boy’s bones between her jaws. A nimbus of flesh and clothing fragments floated around her head.
The eels darted in and out of the murk, swallowing every tiny morsel.
Maddened by a frenzy to feed, they inadvertently bit their own brothers and sisters. Lacerations appeared on their black skin. More blood oozed into the water. The eels wriggled and twisted in excitement, their lust for meat equal to the Mother’s.
Eager to taste the second human, Mrs. Smith didn’t bother consuming every bit of the first boy’s body. Leaving several digits
and a whole ear to her children, she swam toward the surface.
She saw the boy—the Pure One—long before he saw her.
He clung to the centerboard with both arms, his legs hanging limply in the water. As she approached from below, he tried to
pull himself onto the hull of the capsized boat, but his life jacket kept getting caught on the edge of the centerboard. Finally,
he dropped back into the water and unfastened the life jacket. He kicked and flailed, fighting to free himself of the cumbersome
garment.
Now you’ll taste better, thought Mrs. Smith.
Watching him struggle with the life jacket, Mrs. Smith recalled the days when her sacrifices would walk into the ocean without
a stitch of clothing on their backs. Even in the dead of winter, with clumps of ice bobbing in the water, the Pure Ones would
enter her realm as naked as a clam without a shell.
Too often, they would die before she could eat them. Their pink skin would turn blue. Their lungs would fill with water. They’d
slip into oblivion without experiencing the searing pain of her teeth.
Sacrificial man-children were convenient, but Mrs. Smith preferred a fresh and lively catch. This boy, for example, with his
frantic splashing and kicking, was vibrating with fear. His heart hammered like a finch in a cage. The neurons in his brain
were firing at the highest speeds.
Terror would make his flesh taste even sweeter, so Mrs. Smith decided to let the boy see her.
She slowed her ascent, allowing her tentacles to unfurl like a flower opening to the sun.
She stretched her mouth into a toothy grin and hovered a few feet under the boat’s hull.
At this depth, the sunlight still penetrated the water.
It put diamonds in Mrs. Smith’s black eyes. It made her teeth gleam like pearls.
Having lifted himself halfway out of the water, the boy stared across the centerboard and looked down.
He looked down and saw her.
At first, he seemed confused by Mrs. Smith’s humanoid face. But then he took in her hungry stare and open maw. He saw her
massive, squid-like body spreading like an inkblot under the boat. He saw tentacles and claws. He saw the squirming eels.
He was arrested by the sight of her. She had to be an illusion. A nightmare.
Whatever she was, the boy knew that he was staring down at Death.
The boy didn’t move. He didn’t make a sound. He clung to the centerboard like a barnacle. All Mrs. Smith had to do was pluck
him off.
She didn’t want to give him the chance to call for help, so she gave the boat a violent shove. The boy slid into the water
like a coin. A shiny treasure minted just for Mrs. Smith.
She wrapped him like a mummy in her tentacles and dived to the bottom. Resting on a jumble of rocks and broken shells, she
severed the man-child’s left leg first, rejoicing in the jolt of energy that filled her mouth.
It was like swallowing lightning.
After that first bite, she couldn’t control her desire. She bit and chewed, bit and chewed. She ate until there was nothing
left. When she was done, she succumbed to the rapture.
The eels watched as she floated, belly up, inches above the sandy bottom. She’d succumbed to tonic immobility, which meant the two young humans in the other boat were safe.
Mrs. Smith was senseless. The eels, simple as they were, recognized the danger in this.
The rocky shore offered no refuge for the Mother. She was too big to slide between the boulders and wait for nightfall. She
would have to stay close to the bottom, seeking protection in the deeper waters, until it was safe to return to the boathouse.
Mrs. Smith didn’t hear the boy with the red hair scream. She didn’t know that a severed finger had popped to the surface of
the water like a cork. She was still in a trance, unaware that her children were battling over that finger, torquing and splashing
in an effort to get a nibble before one of their larger brethren could swallow the morsel whole.
The red-haired boy screamed again. And again. And again.
The eels couldn’t hear well, but the noise vibrated through the water and pulsed inside their heads. In an instant, they became
nervous and unorganized, swimming in figure eights and winding their bodies around one another like licorice twists.
They returned to the Mother and tried to rouse her. They nudged her with their noses. Caressed her with their slimy skin.
They nipped her with their little teeth and slapped her with their tails.
By the time she responded, it was too late to capsize the other boat.
The humans heard the boy’s cry. They’re coming to rescue him.
The purr of distant engines grew louder as the V-shaped bows of motorboats cut through the water.
Mrs. Smith knew that the boats would converge above her, and the humans would begin searching for the missing boys. Soon they
would blast their air horns and fire flares into the sky. They might even enter the water.
When they found nothing, they would become frightened. That fear would soon turn to anger.
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.