Brackish Devours

Black murky water sweeps haphazardly around me as I swim for my life. Something short of a beast, is close on my tail, it rips at my fins, whenever I slow to rest. I must continue; I must swim faster. I can’t breathe enough and my lungs- gills burn with the effort of keeping me alive. I am already a dead fish, but hope is a fickle thing. I gasp for it with every fiber of my being. I will not die here. After 2 days and one night of what feels like a never ending swim, I decide I will not swim any longer. It is time to face this beast, or die trying, either way I will no longer act like prey.

I slow to an almost immediate halt and whoever- whatever has been hunting bumps into my tail. It’s too dark and murky for me to see whatever it is. They’ve backed away from me a bit for a moment, I get poised to strike at whatever it is. I uselessly whip my eyes back and forth straining to see anything. I can sense whatever my pursuer is about six feet away from me. Seeing as I am not dead yet, and it is still and not trying to kill me, since my sudden halt. I wonder what it is doing...is it studying me? I try not to let my panic overtake me. Maybe my sudden halt made it think I am indeed not prey?

I have no clue, in all my years as a mer, I have never been attacked. Humans would foolishly think sharks or larger ocean animals would attack us. Normally they would not, seeing as we are the apex predators, they have been known to go for a dead mer though. Either way I do not think the thing hunting me is that of the human world. I feel my breathing coming in staggering gulps. Whatever is hunting me just keeps sitting there, waiting...watching. I don't dare move, for fear of eliciting a reaction from this new monster. My imagination tries to run rampant, but I steady myself for whatever is about to happen as best as I can.

I am not prepared for the attack from below. A hard cold granite like hand clasps around my lower fins and yanks me down into the inky cold depths below. I don't even know how deep these parts of the ocean are, I should never have stopped. My scream is garbled and there is no one coming to save me. I can feel the temperature dropping as I am pulled deeper every second. The water pressure makes my chest tighten as well. This may just be the end for me. There’s only so much I can ask out of my body and after swimming for nearly three days, I don't have the energy to fight and this thing knows it. Now my panic grips me and there is nothing I can do except quail in it’s enormous presence. I think I have stopped breathing, that or I am being pulled so quickly I cannot get the oxygen from the water that I need.

Deeper and deeper I go, blood from my fins eddies around us like pretty little ribbons. I can taste my blood and whatever grips me can too. We stop and it lets my fins go, I attempt to swim, but it had destroyed the membranes I needed to control the water. Something tears into my side and I scream again. A deep eerie growl reverberates through my chest before something slams into it and the remaining air I had is gone. I don't take another breath.