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The sky was heavy with thick, dark clouds, only moments away from crashing down and becoming one with the ocean.
He had been waiting for what seemed like a lifetime now, wondering if, by chance or blessing, it will take him too; envelop him gently in its wings and let him drown all the way down into oblivion.
The air was buzzing with tension and the vastness above him crackled, lighting up in a single, spasmodic highlight, stretching and curving before it vanished.
The sound was always coming later, spat out by the void of silence that could no longer bear its own weight.
He liked the silence, himself, but it always meant the outburst was drawing near, creeping closer and closer like the truth lurking just behind the bright spot of lies.
In the moments between the light and thunder, however, the rights and wrongs didn’t even matter, as the whole world was deaf to both.
The sand was soft in his palms, slipping between the fingers, or maybe it was his hands that confused its roughness with a gentle touch.
When the sky ripped open and broke down, finally there were no humans alive other than him, but he didn’t even feel like a human anymore. He was one with the earth, with the tears of heaven, with the breath of the universe.
He was nothing.
~~~~~~~~
After the storm it was always like a new world had come. The smooth curves of the shore were ragged and weary yet undefeated, and it was known that with just the right amount of time they will reshape themselves again, like a closing wound.
But the deeper the cuts, the more outrageous scars they leave behind.
And the thing with scars is that the more outrageous they become, the trace of them still remains under the touch, no matter how tightly one’s eyes are shut.
And just like the scar left on the face of the very Earth, he opened his eyes to the shore.
The water didn’t take him this time, either. The ocean, too, didn’t want him.
He wiped the water off his eyelids with his wet hand, the movement as pointless as any, and sat up slowly, feeling the many grains of sand stick to his drenched shirt as a reminder.
The wind cried furiously, and he shivered.
The wind cried again, and he realized it carried a voice with it. The angry yell of someone struggling, someone fighting against their fate. Someone so different from him.
He slowly got to his feet and followed the voice, thoughtless, trusting, like ships following the light from the lighthouses.
The sky cleared enough to let a few single rays of the setting sun blink through the layers of clouds.
There was a water-filled cave, marking the end of the beach, that sometimes pulled ocean creatures inside with the strong current, during the inflow, and trapped them there with the outflow.
The angry shouts were coming from inside.
His tongue traced his lips nervously, welcoming the salty aftertaste into his mouth.
He didn’t as much decide to go in as the legs carried him forward.
The echo carried the desperate sound of someone’s fervent struggle.
“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck this stupid shit, fuck it!” It was the voice of someone who had fought a long, long battle, and, against his will, was starting to lose it. That, he could sympathize with.
His foot slipped on uneven ground and suddenly he found it stepped into a shallow puddle. The sound of the disturbed water rolled through the air like thunder.
The desperate struggle ceased, and for a short moment the waves brushing against the shore outside became the only music left in the whole world.
“Who’s there?” The voice was wary, almost threatening in tone. He had never heard a more beautiful sound before. “Reveal yourself.”
He straightened up and walked around the boulder that hid both him and the stranger from each other’s view.
What awaited him on the other side was the handsome face of a young man, his beauty not hindered even by the slightly puffy, reddened eyes, regarding him tensely. The stranger’s hair was the color of warm chestnut, slightly disheveled and heavy with moisture, sticking to his forehead and cheekbones in wet slumps. His bare chest was smooth and pale like mother-of-pearl, skin turning into grayish scales at his thin waist.
He couldn’t see more of what he suspected was a tail, as it was thickly entangled in coils and coils of rope.
No, a fishing net, and an illegal one at that. It was obviously meant for something other – bigger – than fish.
“You are stuck,” he murmured, more to himself than the other.
“And what of it?” the stranger barked suspiciously, with the almost perfectly covered tinge of fear. Two rows of needle-like, sharp teeth flashed between his lips in that split moment.
He didn’t know how to answer. He wasn’t used to others expecting answers out of him.
The vague memory of a sharpened pocket-knife floated out to the surface of his mind. He turned on his heel, and made his leave.
When he stepped out of the cave, another helpless, angry cry tore through the air inside it.
~~~~~~~~
“It’s you again.” The beautiful, melodious voice was now strangely husky, ragged. It was resigned and lacked the vividly burning fire in it this time.
Its owner was laying exhaustedly on his back now, on the considerably dry stone floor of the cave. His tail was still trapped in the net, half-hidden under the water’s surface.
He nodded, and slowly stepped closer, fishing the knife out of the bag he was now carrying with him.
Something flashed through the merman’s deep, red eyes. The sparkle of understanding.
“You came back to kill me,” he chuckled with disbelief and something deeper, darker, like the coldest depths of the ocean. “Of course you did. I bet my scales will bring you a great fortune. My teeth can be made into protective charms against evil. Will you take my eyes, too?”
He didn’t answer. He has learned, long ago, that the words can carry only as much meaning as the listeners are willing to give them.
He crouched down besides the merman and reached out to—
A pale hand grabbed his wrist with surprising force and the sharp nails dug into his skin, releasing a few red, heavy drops from under it. He looked down, tracing the movement of the bloody tears his body cried for him.
“Do you think I will let you, filthy human?” The beautiful face was now close, the words murmured sweetly into his ear like a promise. “You don’t deserve a single hair off my head, disgusting trash,” the voice whispered.
It smelled of the sea and sunset.
It didn’t tell him anything he didn’t know already.
He lessened the grip on the knife, letting it fall, and brought his other hand up to the stranger’s. He touched one of the pale fingers, then tried to delicately pry it off the wrist. It didn’t move an inch.
“What are you trying to do?” the merman asked, puzzledly.
It seemed like he needed to speak, after all.
“I’m going to free you,” he answered quietly and the hand at his wrist quivered and loosened its grip for a second, before tightening it again.
“I don’t believe you. You humans can’t be trusted.” The merman picked up the abandoned knife and its tip pressed against the other’s throat. “I will kill you, then free myself.”
He felt the corners of his lips quirk up as a warm feeling flooded over his heart. The ocean creature’s eyes burned with the will to live again. It was enough.
He wanted to nod in agreement, but the knife’s weight disappeared from his throat suddenly, and the merman’s face twisted in surprise.
“What are you doing?” He scowled. “You don’t believe me? I’ve killed many like you before.” A cold smirk arched the corners of his lips up. A smile as beautiful and precious as any other. “I’ve killed people.”
He didn’t see anything strange within the statement, so he nodded again.
“Are you insane?” The other’s face smoothed into an emotionless mask. “Or you just don’t understand? Do you not fear death?”
He never knew ocean creatures were so talkative.
“How can I fear death,” he forced his voice to work up a whisper, “when I was never truly alive?”
The pale hand left his wrist, leaving a purple-and-red mark behind on his skin.
He was handed his pocket knife back, and so he took it. Faced the tangled mess of ropes.
It was going to take a while.
~~~~~~~~
“Do you have a name?” the merman asked lazily, probably more out of boredom than real curiosity.
He didn’t mind, as he liked the sound of his voice. The problem was, he was being urged to speak himself, and there was no sand nearby to write on.
He thought for a moment, strangely overwhelmed by the feeling he had nearly forgotten his own name.
“Amamiya,” he started, but the merman wasn’t interested in what followed.
“I’ve heard that human names can have various meanings behind them. What meaning does your carry?”
None. He wanted to say. Neither his name, nor his whole existence had one, after all. But he had a feeling that the answer wouldn’t satisfy the creature.
“Two characters.” It felt strange for him to speak so much. It felt wrong. It was frightening, to know someone was listening. “Rain. Shrine.”
He cut through another part of the net and it loosened up considerably, revealing more of the merman’s tail. The lower it got, the darker the scales became. From light grey to a more solid shade of it, intertwined with dark blue stripes here and there.
His work was about to get tricky, however, as around halfway the tail’s length, the fins appeared. They seemed delicate and thin as the finest silk, threatening to tear under the lightest touch. He could feel his heart in his throat just looking at them, layers of azure, cobalt and purple.
The merman tensed up, probably noticing his hesitation, but continued nevertheless.
“Do the names bind you to your fate?”
Amamiya looked up at him without understanding.
“I think I’ve seen you before.” The merman averted his gaze suddenly, when their eyes met. “You are the one who always comes to the beach right before the storm, aren’t you? You wait, and wait, and when it finally comes, you scream together with it, thinking no one can hear you. But I’ve heard your voice before. I saw you pick up the handful of sand and I saw you stand against the storm for the long hours, never backing away. You only collapse when it is all over. Is that the fate your name has bound you with?”
Amamiya looked at the merman without understanding. He didn’t know who he was talking about. He was not that person. The one in the story seemed strong, unwavering. Rebellious.
He shook his head and got back to work, every movement trailed by that deep red gaze.
~~~~~~~~
“So you won’t ask me why I’ve killed all those people?” The merman was lying comfortably on his side while Amamiya fought against the net entangled in his fins. “You won’t tell me I’m a monster?”
“I guess it was your right to do so,” Amamiya answered truthfully, knowing already that the merman could hear him even as he whispered. “What humans do to your home is unforgivable. What they do to the ocean creatures is murder. Directly or not, they are all responsible. Lives are still being lost, no matter their intentions. Passiveness in the face of wrongdoings is as sinful as pulling the trigger.”
“Say, Amamiya,” his name on the merman’s lips feels like a song, so different from when others said it, alternative for a curse. “Why has humanity forsaken you?”
Amamiya stopped for a second and looked down at his hands. The smooth hands of someone who never worked hard enough, of someone who was never enough.
The words sounded like a lifetime sentence in his mind, but when he thought about saying them out loud, they seemed to transform into whiny complaints of a brat. It wasn’t like anything he said would ever be enough to make someone else understand him. One of the reasons, among many others, why he has chosen the silence.
“You don’t seem hurt,” the merman said with apparent interest. “Is the truth about it so deeply ingrained in your being? Is it a part of your reality?”
Amamiya… didn’t know. It was just words. And the time when the words could have still hurt him has passed a long, long time ago already.
“I should finish soon,” he said instead, gesturing at the merman’s tail with his chin.
“A pity,” the other said with a wide smirk of amusement that stretched and stretched under it parted his lips and revealed the rows of sharp teeth. “I almost regret you won’t entertain me much longer.”
“I’m hardly entertaining,” Amamiya murmured.
The merman shifted on his spot, sitting up and leaning in close to him, his breath tickling Amamiya’s ear like a gentle morning breeze. “I decide that,” he said and in the next moment his hair was entangled in Amamiya’s hair, yanking his head back with no little force.
He heard a single startled breath leave his own lips, throat as shoutless as his whole being.
“You won’t scream?” the merman asked quietly, one sharpened claw tracing the line of Amamiya’s throat. “You won’t fight back?” For some reason there was no mockery in his voice.
He shook his head, breathing a bit more heavily, thoughts just slightly more foggy than they were normally. He tried to straighten back to his previous position, but the merman pulled at his hair again, startling him into a choked gasp.
“You spoke so prettily of your fellow humans, haven’t you? Wasn’t it because you want me to let you go freely when you are done?” His voice brushed against Amamiya’s ear again, then his jaw, then his neck.
He closed his eyes as the merman tugged at his hair, hopeful or not that it would lessen the pain a bit. A sharp finger drew spirals on his throat, down and down until reaching his shoulder.
He finally shouted - for the first time since back when his memories vagued into a hazy blur - as the razor sharp teeth bit into his collarbone, that lone sound stealing all of the air from inside his lungs and throwing it against the empty walls of the cave.
Amamiya’s eyes flung open but he couldn’t force them to look down, where the hot droplets of blood mixed with saliva trickled down his chest. He focused on breathing instead, or more accurately, on trying to catch at least an ounce of air and take it for himself. The muscles on his stomach tensed almost unbelievably, like if his guts collapsed onto themselves and wanted to suck in every other bit of him too.
The merman’s mouth left his collarbone with a wet sound. When Amamiya looked down at his face, it was all teeth in a wide bloody grin.
“Ah, so you can be louder,” he purred.
Amamiya observed, transfixed, as the trickle of his own blood ran down the merman’s mouth onto his chin, where it hung in the form of a single fat droplet. He was reaching out towards it before his mind even registered the movement of his own body.
His fingers - not really feeling like his own - brushed it off, smearing it on another’s jaw like a crimson paint on the clear canvas.
He was finally able to take a shuddering breath, almost despite himself this time. It felt like the slightest change in the air could be a gust of wind to sweep along the image before his eyes like it sweeps the foam from the crowns of the sea waves.
“Ah-ah, there it is…” The merman chuckled lowly, darkly as he caught Amamiya’s wrist. He didn’t take it off his face, though. “What else do you want to take for yourself, human? It is in your nature to take, isn’t it? The secret treasures, the rare beauties, anything you lay your eyes upon.” His slick tongue licked the blood off Amamiya’s fingertips.
“Take me,” Amamiya whispered, almost only to check if he is still alive.
The red eyes, a swirling vortex of freshly consumed blood, glanced at him, pulling him in, deeper and deeper until he felt like he was drowning.
“And of what value,” the melodious voice brushed against his ear like a gentle wave welcomed by the shore, “is your useless life to me?”
“Drown me,” he begged, because there was no value to him other than being able to give the ocean creature before him that satisfaction.
“Ahhh…” The merman hummed with understanding, almost softly, almost caringly, as he placed a soft kiss on the inside of Amamiya’s wrist, his character ever capricious like a tide. “And then? What then, Amamiya?”
“Forget me.”
Like everyone else did.
Like he almost forgot himself.
“So you really don’t wish for anything else than death.” The merman let go of his hand and pulled back, setting himself comfortably back on the stone like it was padded with layers of soft seaweed. He moved his tail weakly. “Make use of those hands before you lose the ability to, then.”
~~~~~~~~
When the merman slipped back into the water, it didn’t wrinkle ever so slightly. The ocean was his home and it welcomed him back without hesitation. He belonged there and both him and the water knew it.
Amamiya himself never belonged anywhere.
But he heard, once before, that the ocean welcomes everyone, regardless of who they are - good and bad, poor and rich alike.
When the merman turned towards him and stretched his hands out, open to him, a smile on his face that a shark would not be ashamed of, Amamiya almost cried with relief and gratefulness.
The first step, the second, and next and next, and he felt his clothes getting heavier and heavier, tugging down at him, welcoming him to stay forever.
But it was not there, not yet where he wanted to go.
and
then the
merman took
his hands into his
and the water’s embrace
was one he always sought,
even as the bite mark on
his collarbone stung
on contact with
the salt. But
the pain
was
all he knew
for so long that
its presence felt
warm and the pale
skin against his
was even warmer
even if stained
with so
much
blood.
When Amamiya opens his eyes, the shore is far away.
It’s not weird. The land always seemed to be out of his reach.
The ocean, too. Until now.
He lets himself hug into the warmth of the merman holding him. He doesn’t think of the consequences.
For him, soon, the consequences won’t be a concept anymore.
The only emotion he is capable of is relief.
He is relieved that he ended up here.
Relieved that he will end here.
The heartbeat of the ocean creature drums a steady rhythm on three.
The merman doesn’t say anything as Amamiya buries his face in the crook of his neck.
Doesn’t say anything when he sobs quietly.
Maybe he can’t hear through the call of the ocean.
Maybe it’s on a whim that he lets Amamiya do it.
“Answer my question, Amamiya,” the merman says in the end and pushes him off himself, the sudden distance between their bodies sending a chill through Amamiya’s self. Only their hands are connected now and the tides bring them up and down.
He thinks for a moment but there was only one question he didn’t answer.
Say, Amamiya, why has humanity forsaken you?
He feels like he owns him an answer. A price to pay for the little favor.
“They said I’m like a crooked mirror. That when they gaze upon me, the only thing that reflects is their sins.”
The merman smiles and this time it’s not sharp or deadly.
“Ah, Amamiya,” he says as he lets go of one of his hands and brings it to Amamiya’s collarbone, where he left the mark. He presses on it, seemingly unable to be just one, comforting or hurtful. “It is not you that is the mirror. It’s your eyes. Those are the eyes of someone who can look up at the sky and have its attention back.”
Amamiya looks up at the sky for the last time.
It’s stormy grey.
When the strong force pulls him down he manages to take his last breath, cursing himself in his mind.
There is no reason to prolong this.
He lets it all out in a cloud of bubbles and they escape, up and up, towards the surface, like a curious shoal of fish.
He watches them go and his mind blanks slowly, his consciousness fades away.
Amamiya barely registers the rough press against his lips, the metallic aftertaste of blood.
It seems like the only thing left in the world is his heartbeat.
He counts it, the steady rhythm on two, as people count sheep when trying to fall asleep.
One.
Two.
One.
Two .
Three.