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imagine-darksiders · 2 years

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Fish Out of Water

Five Nights at Freddy’s - Security Breach

Daycare Attendant X Reader

Giant mer au.

Summary: What you're looking at is...

Well, quite frankly, it's impossible.

There's a face hanging above you, Lovecraftian in proportion – taller and wider than you are long, with features about as adjacent to a human's as one could possibly get.

For the first few seconds, you remain frozen to your spot, unblinking, half expecting the grinning visage to fade away as sobriety takes you back into its safe, sense-making embrace.A pair of milky, white eyes peer down at you, hanging in the expanse of yellowing skin, like twin pools of alabaster paint.

You'd hesitate to even call them eyes, but then, the damn things b l i n k.

Tags/Warnings: Mermay 2022, Giant Mermen, Amputee Reader, Amputation, Medical Trauma, Depression, Grief and Mourning, Ableism, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Minor Character Death, Car Accidents, G/T, Giant/Tiny, Explicit Language, Loss of Leg, Mental Health Issues

----

It still hurts sometimes. The leg.

Well, what constitutes for the echo of a leg.

'Phantom limb pain,' your physician informed you, 'Unsettling to be sure, but common and usually harmless.'

Harmless. You vividly recall tasting the bile on your tongue, and how you'd barely managed to withhold a bitter scoff as you sat there in that green, plastic chair whilst the spot below your right hipbone pinched and twisted around the ghosts of nerves that used to occupy the now empty space.

Physiotherapy was... disheartening.

Things you once took for granted, like standing up, suddenly became insurmountable tasks in their own right.

As the weeks dragged by, you acclimatised to the basic, clunky prosthetic limb provided to you by the hospital, and the whole while, your bitterness only grew until at last, after twelve, gruelling weeks fraught with despair, rage and terrible, numbing apathy, you were discharged from physio and hobbled right into a veritable slew of legal procedures.

Your paternal aunt had driven you back to the big, empty house on the outskirts of your home town - the house that had belonged to your parents not four, short months ago.

After just a few meetings with their solicitor and a signature or two... or three... the house was promptly handed over to you, along with a generous chunk of their estate.

A leg wasn't the only thing that drunk driver took from you on that warm, summer evening...

Still, you held no ill-will for the poor bastard. In the end, he too had paid the ultimate price.

You heard his funeral was a lonely affair.

The one you managed to put together for your parents was about as fine as you could make it.

Closed-casket, despite best efforts from the morticians. You don't think your mother would have wanted people to see her when she wasn't at her best, after all.

The hall was filled with businessmen and opportunists alike – former clients of your father's – all attending under the guise of 'friends,' and all terribly interested to know what the young heiress plans to do with the family business now that dear, old mum and dad have shuffled off this mortal coil.

The only real family who came was your Aunt, Lucy.

God bless her stamina, she had fielded the untimely questions in your stead. You were quiet for the most part, read a few words here and there, nothing particularly moving, but judging by the amount of people not-so-subtly checking the time on their Rolexes, short and sweet was probably the favourable route to go down.

In the months that followed, you underwent a metamorphosis of sorts, swiftly shifting from socialite to recluse.

Predominantly, it was the comments that rattled you; words whispered around corners after you hobbled by on your crutches, or murmurs you caught wind of over in the next aisle at the supermarket by gossipers who thought that a missing leg somehow equated to terrible hearing.

'Poor dear,' you heard on the daily.

'Such a shame.'

'Glad that wasn't me though...'

But perhaps the worst? 'Used to be quite the catch. All that money. But who wants to look after that for the rest of their life, eh?'

'Could hire a carer for her?'

Suddenly, you'd turned from a promising, young asset to everyone's missed opportunity.

Your parents lives had revolved around money. Their friends' lives revolved around money.

The revelation that in the eyes of the people, your value had decreased significantly with the loss of your leg was a laughable bagatelle... Until it wasn't. Until the remarks came too frequently and for too long. That stiff upper lip you'd inherited from your mother slowly began to wobble, and the walls your father had taught you to build were slowly chipping away, brick by brick. With every pitying glance, every morning that you woke up and peeled back the covers, every time you failed to distribute your weight properly and ended up taking a spill on a crowded street, you withdrew further and further into yourself, into the house, into the wine cellar.

Bitter and festering in a miasma of grief, you helped yourself to the reserves, down there in the dark with nobody but the spiders for company.

A bottle of 1959 Dom Perignon? Hideous aftertaste, but it helped with that phantom pain in your leg and the one in your heart.

And that was your wretched, little life, for several months following the end of your physiotherapy.

Eventually though, as is often the case with wittering aunts who don't know how to mind their own business, Lucy staged a one-woman intervention, all but hauling you out of the house by the arm and dumping you unceremoniously into her Aston. Damnable woman was a personal trainer. And a bloody good one at that. But it wasn't an exercise regime that was on her agenda for you.

“Darling, it's like watching a scorpion sting itself to death!” she exclaimed in that dramatic way that glamorous aunts often do, her scarf flying about in the wind as she sped aimlessly down the country lanes with the roof of the car retracted, “Of all my nieces and nephews, you always were my favourite.”

A bold-faced lie, but you'd appreciated her effort at the time.

“But you're ever so sensitive too, dear!”

Sensitive. A codeword used to describe the outcast who took more of an interest in artistic pursuits than seek to follow in the family business or other entrepreneurial exploits.

“It's a charming little cottage, your grandfather used to frequent with the gents from his fishing days.”

You realised right then and there what she was about to suggest. But you didn't offer up any protest. Not that there'd be much point. Your aunt had inherited the bullheadedness of her own mother, and once her mind is made up, there's little that can sway her focus, short of a chemical explosion.

“You know, Karen Blixen wasn't far off the mark when she wrote-”

“-The Deluge at Norderney,” you'd finished in a mutter, watching the neatly-trimmed verges flash by, there and gone in a moment...

“Well remembered!”

How could you possibly forget it? Any time Aunt Lucy heard of an ailment in the family, she'd come around, armed not with a packet of paracetamol or a cold compress, but with her favourite quote.

A pause ensued, and then the line you anticipated fell off her painted lips. “I know a cure for everything: Salt water.”

You had to endure her expectant gaze burning into you from the corner of her eye until you'd sighed, resigned yourself to your fate, and played along. “Salt water?”

Her response was instantaneous. “Yes! In one way or the other. Sweat, tears, or the salt sea.”

She'd half turned to peer over at you then, her fathomless eyes hidden behind those cat-eye sunglasses she always wore, even in the dead of winter when the sun was just a distant memory. You'd clenched your hands into the leather seats, hating that her focus wasn't on the road. Hating the whole car ride in general, really.

“I think.. a bit of time away by the sea would do you some real good, my dear.”

'But what good could an ocean do?' you wondered in dismissive silence. Certainly, it's true that the salt can help dry out cuts and abrasions and help the skin's tissue grow more effectively, but can it raise the dead? Can the properties of the sea rebuild a broken body, if not a broken soul? What almighty magic could the ocean offer someone for whom magic has been dead for a long, long time?

But then... what could you have possibly done in the way of protesting your Aunt's suggestion?

It was nigh impossible to win an argument against Aunt Lucy, even when you were at your most spirited. What hope did you have then, to argue against her with half your wit intact and a dark cloud hanging over you like smog from a factory's chimney?

“All right, Auntie,” you'd conceded, because to say 'No,' would be less sensible than waving a red flag in the face of a charging bull.

At last, her eyes had returned to the road and you relaxed minutely in the seat.

“Splendid, darling! Splendid! Oh, Daddy would be so happy to see the old place lived in again.”

The look of triumph on her face had eased some of your reservations. She liked to help, even if she did employ the battering-ram approach a little too often.

“I'll take you back to the house-”

You wager she'd have just kept driving until you agreed with her either way.

“-Derek can drive you down to the coast. He's been meaning to take the old Ghost out for a nice, long burn...”

Ah, Derek – the latest accessory that Lucy tended to dangle off her arm like a shiny bauble.

Volunteered for chauffeur duty, he'd pulled up into the driveway of your house just two days later in his pristine, white Royce.

And with a backpack stuffed with a few changes of clothes, your sketchbook and watercolours and of course, your clunky prosthetic, you'd settled tentatively in the passenger seat, offered him a polite word of thanks, and began your journey to the sea.

----------------

There are scarce few things in nature, you reason, that come quite so close to rivalling the splendour of a sunset over water.

You're perched precariously upon the precipice of a tall, chalk cliff, barely a hundred paces or so from the back door of your grandfather's rundown, ramshackle cottage that could use a coat or two of fresh paint to liven it up... maybe a fumigation... an exorcism...

Your legs – 'leg,' you remind yourself sharply – dangles over the edge of the cliff, heel kicking idly against the soft chalk beneath you.

Way down below, the sea swells and retreats gently from the rocks, back and forth and back and forth, wave followed by wave followed by wave.

'Aunt Lucy was right,' you huff with begrudging fondness. The bucolic sight is soothing, to a degree.

But there's only so much a nice view can do to relax the mind.

“God, that's pretty,” you drawl aloud to nobody but the open air before taking a long swig from the beer clutched in your hand. Three empty bottles are strewn about in the grass somewhere behind you whereas to your right, the prosthetic leg sits, unattached but constantly in your peripheral vision like a detested symbol of your missing piece – never coming close to the real thing, but trying its best to mimic a functioning limb.

You don't even notice that you've curled your lips into a sneer until the false is in your free hand and you're glowering hatefully down at the ugly, clumsy thing.

You couldn't really say what possessed you to start talking to it. If your parents were here, they'd roll their eyes and tell you to stop behaving like a child. They used to say similar things if they overheard you talking to your toys when you were very small.

'Only people who don't have any friends talk to inanimate objects,' your mother announced one day, peering down her nose at you, 'For goodness sake, don't let anyone hear you. People will think you're simple.'

You've kept your promise, at least. Even now, there's nobody around to hear you grumble matter-of-factly at your own, replacement leg.

“Everyone stares at you, you know.”

The leg, of course, doesn't respond.

“Tch.” Scoffing, you bring the beer to your lips again and grimace at the taste. “It's probably because they know you're just gonna break down in a couple of months, anyway. Then, they'll toss you in the landfill with all the... the other useless junk...”

In your misty haze, you'd swear that hateful leg gives you a condescending look.

“Fuck. You,” you seethe venomously, soft as a whisper but quivering like a leaf in gale-force winds.

It's perhaps the first show of real, raw emotion you've released since the funeral.

Fitting then, that it's here, when you're finally, truly alone, nobody but screaming gulls for company that you feel safe enough to let the proverbial walls come crashing down to the ground. The first flood of tears are a surprise and if it weren't for the way your vision blurs and warps, you'd accredit the moisture on your face to the waves that hurl sea-spray against the rocks far below you.

There are no silent stares out here, nor briefly stolen glances or excessive sympathy from well-meaning do-gooders.

Cheap beer from a petrol station mixed with grief and an unhealthy dose of repressed animosity for your situation make for one hell of an emotional cocktail.

Reeling the prosthetic leg back over your head, you turn to face the golden sunset, pinks bleeding like watercolour into reds and yellows as if some, great artist brought out his paints and decided to create a fleeting masterpiece that will only disappear in a few, short hours.

Then, with a shout borne of alcohol-driven acrimony, you thoughtlessly pitch the false leg forwards, hurling it clear over the side of the cliff and watching it soar through the air for several, glorious moments before inevitably, gravity does its job and the prosthetic begins to descend, down, down and down again, all the way to the ocean.

'.... Plop.'

… The resulting splash is wildly unsatisfactory.

Whatever catharsis you hoped to gain from ridding yourself of the embodiment of your disability doesn't come. In its place, you feel the telltale pang of regret shoot through your stomach, growing more acidic after you recall leaving your crutches back at the cottage...

“... You. Idiot!” you reprimand yourself, pinching the bridge of your nose and exhaling roughly through it.

The grass comes up to meet you as you flop over backwards with a heavy thud and fling an arm across your eyes, allowing the tears to spill from their confines and ooze in tiny rivulets down your cheeks and into your hair.

The beer bottles lay forgotten at the side of your head.

For several minutes, you content yourself to simply lay here on the cliff's perilous edge, knowing that eventually, you're going to have to drag yourself back up the dirt path on your belly, all the way to your grandfather's cottage where you'll need to make arrangements for a new prosthetic, not to mention compensate the hospital for the one you've just chucked into the sea like a toddler throwing her toys out of the pram.

Maybe your parents were right.

Maybe it is high time you grew up...

Sealing your eyes tightly shut, as if that would stop the tears from spilling, you remove your arm and stare up at the insides of your eyelids instead.

You could have sworn you'd already hit rock bottom when you woke up in the hospital bed to the news that your parents hadn't survived the crash, only to instantly learn that you'd lost a leg as well.

But somehow, this moment feels slightly more apt for the term.

Alone, misshapen, friendless and an orphan to boot, drinking beers and projecting onto a plastic leg?

This is bedrock. And it's your own, damn hand that's wrapped around the shovel that brought you here.

Way down below you, there's the sound of a particularly large wave crashing against the rocks. A few moments pass by in blissful solitude before the meagre light permeating your eyelids dims considerably.

You wonder, briefly, if the sun has at last dipped low enough on the horizon to bring about the coming night, or perhaps a cloud has simply moved in front of it.

The whispering wind sighs in your ears and whisks away your hitching breaths.

You ought to have known that peace is a fleeting thing, much like a sunset.

All of a sudden, you're jolted to attention by a loud clatter on your right that pulls a gasp from your lips and you fling your head sideways and lurch upright, eyes peeling open to land upon -

“What.. in the world?”

Reaching out with a shaky hand, you run the tips of your fingers along the hard, plastic casing of your very own, runaway prosthetic.

But... didn't you just...?

You cast a bewildered glance at the beer bottles nearby. Three utterly dry, one only half empty, spilling what remains of its contents into the soil.

… Right then and there, you absolve that alcohol probably isn't a healthy coping mechanism.

Still, at least now you don't have to drag yourself back to the cottage.

You aren't prepared to feel and hear the ground shudder underneath you, nor for the sky to tear asunder as if a growl of thunder had just boomed overhead.

“What the... Hell-!?” Your words die on the tip of your tongue as you finally decide to look up, and up, and further up still, until your neck is craned all the way back and your mouth drops open, incapable of stringing together a single, coherent sentence.

What you're looking at is...

Well, quite frankly, it's impossible.

There's a face hanging above you, Lovecraftian in proportion – taller and wider than you are long, with features about as adjacent to a human's as one could possibly get.

For the first few seconds, you remain frozen to your spot, unblinking, half expecting the grinning visage to fade away as sobriety takes you back into its safe, sense-making embrace.

A pair of milk-white eyes peer down at you, hanging in the expanse of pale, yellow skin, like twin pools of alabaster paint. You'd hesitate to even call them eyes, but then, the damn things blink.

Snapped back into your more sensible instincts, you recoil in horror as filmy eyelids sweep horizontally across the beast's sclera, serving as sobering proof that the thing you're staring at is indeed alive.

Throwing out your hands, you begin to scrabble backwards over the grass, kicking uselessly with one leg and at last, you suck down a lungful of air and unleash a scream so piercing, the gigantic face flinches back.

With the distance inadvertently created, you become all too cognizant of the fact that whatever this is, it is so much more than just a disembodied face.

Frantic, you catch a glimpse of its mouth that opens like a fissure splitting across barren ground, stretching impossibly wide until each corner nears the very edge of its round, flat visage.

Perhaps it should have come as a relief to you that in the place of nightmarish fangs as you expected, there instead sit a solid line of bristly, baleen plates, not unlike those you'd see in the mouth of a humpback or a bowhead. But a lack of conventional teeth does absolutely nothing to soothe the abject terror threatening to drown you under its icy waters.

“Ho-ohly shit!” is all you can muster, briefly giving up the mad, backwards scramble in favour of trying to get your legs underneath you, forgetting for one, crucial moment, that you have to stop referring to your legs in the plural...

You're too busy staring agog at the slender, sinewy torso rising up from beyond the edge of the cliff to realise that while one foot plants firmly on the grass, the other cannot, and as you attempt to heave yourself upright, you place far too much weight in the wrong hip and end up toppling over onto your side with a grunt of pain.

All at once, the sounds rumbling out of the behemoth raise in pitch. You peel your squinted eyes open again, only to shriek when you see the gargantuan mountain of an entity looming down towards you, that wide, terrible mouth emitting a long string of clicks and clucks that reverberate deep inside your chest.

Pointed, prehensile fins encircle its head and flop backwards to lay flat against its skull at the sound of your scream as the behemoth draws closer – too close for your liking.

“No! Stop! Get AWAY!” you yelp, torn between flight, fight and freeze.

What the Hell kind of cosmic being saw fit to end your life in such an unorthodox manner? It hardly seems fair.

You came out here to escape your troubles, not find newer, bigger ones.

'Nothing ever happens in that lazy corner of the country,' your aunts words cheerfully resound in your ear.

'Auntie...' You send her a quick and spiteful thought. 'You've got a really fucked up idea of nothing!'

Something huge, soft and wet prods at your intact calf and you let out another, desperate bleat, rolling instinctively onto your stomach and bringing your arms up to protect the back of your neck. Futile, perhaps, but this situation is hardly one that wildlife experts cover in their autobiographies.

Keeping the top of your spine covered against jaws that size seems fruitless in retrospect, but it's all you can think to do.

You aren't sure what's worse though - Having to keep the beast in your line of sight or not being able to see what's coming.

Cheek pressed uncomfortably to the grass, you crack open one eye and risk a glance up and behind you, only to instantly wish you hadn't.

Whatever the Hell you've come across seems to be fixated on your remaining leg, which is coincidentally the moment you discover that it has hands.

Four fingers and a thumb on each – eerily like that of a human's – but interspersed by a vibrant, orange membrane.

A webbed hand.

... Definitely aquatic then.

One of its appendages thumps resoundingly on the ground ahead of you whilst the other hovers curiously above your leg. Then, a single forefinger that looks to be even longer than you are extends forwards, nudging gently against your exposed limb, eliciting a flinch and a whimper from you in kind.

'What are you doing?' you pose to it in your mind, 'Checking how lean the meat is?! Go. Away!'

Rather than adhere to your pitifully shrill, internal demand, the creature brings its face in close again, causing sea water to drop from its fins and sprinkle down all over you like a rain shower.

With your heart in your throat, you watch it study your leg for another, arduous minute.

Then, the quiet is dashed like waves on the cliff face when its monumental, blank-eyed stare swings around to lock with your gaze, its mouth splitting into a fluttery, but unmistakable grin.

The sight steals what's left of the air in your lungs.

'It's smiling? How is it smiling?' Smiling would have to mean it's feeling an emotion of some kind. But... what if this isn't a smile? What if this is merely how the creature bares its teeth?

Without so much as a lick of warning, the beast suddenly leans down, parting its mouth with a warble that only prompts a far less sonorous cry to leap clumsily off your lips.

You fly into motion just a second too late, dragging yourself forwards along the ground on your elbows... for all of a few, measly feet.

A solid line of strange teeth close gently around the collar of your old, woollen cardigan and before you even have another chance to shout, you're hoisted up off the ground, yanking fistfuls of grass out in your desperation to remain adhered to the earth.

“No!” you gasp, swinging helplessly from the crooning monstrosity's teeth as it peels itself backwards off the side of the cliff and begins to slide down into the deep, blue waters below you.

“This can't be happening!” you repeat to yourself over and over again, “This is not happening!”

Things like this simply don't occur. You have to be dreaming. Perhaps you've fallen asleep on the cliff and this is all just a big, terrible, beer-induced nightmare.

The world around you turns into a dizzying blur of colours, shapes and motion as your captor heaves itself backwards, dropping further and further back down over the edge of the cliff until you're no longer looking down at the ground, but rather the churning sea that sits in wait, far, far below your kicking leg.

If it drops you from this height, the water will rise up to meet you like a slab of concrete. You won't stand a chance.

It's only in response to the disastrous height that you stop struggling and your limbs lock into place as though they've been encased in cement.

Rhythmic puffs of hot, rancid air flow continuously from the creature's maw and envelop your senses in breaths that stink of fish and seaweed. Paralysed as you are by terror, you can't help but gag at the stench.

Once you get your first, proper glimpse of the beast carrying you, icy tendrils of dread slither around your neck until it seems you can't even take in enough air to properly scream.

A rawboned, yellow torso tapers off about halfway down the cliff and seamlessly blends with a long, fleshy tail that disappears into the waters below. You can't tell whether the shimmering scales are simply reflecting the last, dying embers of the sunset, or if they're really that vibrant meld of reds and oranges, highlighted here and there by swirling patterns of the most indescribable gold that would have turned Midas himself envious.

Gradually, as the creature lowers itself down from the cliff to join the rest of its body in the ocean, you're struck quite fiercely that it might have finally happened.

You may have actually lost your mind this time.

There is no rational way to explain why you're being accosted by a giant, ethereal mermaid. Now that really is crazy.

The water all around the beast suffers a massive displacement when it drops its upper body in amongst the waves, bringing its face – and by extension, you – just above the water's surface.

“Wh-what are you doing!?” you splutter at what you're hoping and praying is just a vivd figment of your imagination brought on by trauma, grief and alcohol. Maybe those beers had been laced with something, after all.

In apparent response to your squeaked question, the creature hums behind your head, sending your teeth clattering against one another before it promptly peels its teeth out of your cardigan and allows you to drop the last few feet into the water with a startled yelp.

Salty liquid instantly rushes up your nose and floods into your mouth as you choose the worst possible moment to cry out.

For several, disorienting seconds, you continue to sink further below the surface, the cold of the water shocking you into stillness despite being dragged down by your thick, woolly cardigan.

Though your eyes sting already from the salt in the water, you force your lids to separate and peer through the slowly dissipating bubbles at the murky depths beyond them.

There is something inherently human to feel such paralyzing dread that comes with being in an open body of water alongside a predator. You discover that dread all at once when your vision is filled with that enormous, round face looming just metres in front of you in the water, its eyes squinted nearly all the way shut thanks to the smile that stretches its cheeks to their limits.

Together, the pair of you hang there in the vast, fathomless ocean, gazes inextricably locked, perfect strangers from entirely different worlds.

Behind the monster, its immense tail zips sporadically through the water in unpredictable motions that remind you an awful lot like a cat twitching its tail.

Is that what this is? Are you just the mouse being toyed with before a giant sinks its teeth into your vulnerable neck?

The creature's smile begins to wane the longer you float there until its entire head abruptly spins inquisitively to one side.

It's only now that you finally start to feel the burning discomfort enveloping your lungs, and all of a sudden, an entirely different kind of panic sets in.

You haven't yet been swimming, not since you lost your leg. You never learned how to get by in deep water with a missing limb! And your heavy cardigan is already so water-logged, doing its utmost to drag you further towards the seabed in spite of the salt trying to keep you afloat.

All coherent thought is torn right out of you and replaced with the very rational instinct to seek out the closest route to safe, breathable air.

In an explosion of limbs, you start to kick and flail like a mad thing, reaching out with laden arms to pull at the water around you whilst your one, remaining leg jabs frantically out beneath you.

Sunlight on the surface is quickly fading, but some still filters through like gold dust, too far away to reach, and the precious little air you'd sucked down starts to leak out from between your sealed lips and nostrils in small bursts.

In your frenetic scramble for the surface, you miss the way the beast balks at your behaviour, parting its teeth and releasing a confused warble into the ocean, as if the hulking thing can't work out which swimming technique you're aiming for.

The helpless display must perturb it however, because the next thing you know, a soft, malleable snout is nudging underneath your thigh, coaxing you gently up a little faster. In response, your whole body tries to lurch away from its probing face, but the beast easily keeps up, guiding you to the surface with careful bunts and pushes from its flattened nose. You don't even register that it's incremental to your journey upwards until your head finally breaks through into the open air and you gasp raggedly, spluttering, floundering to put some distance between you and the monster.

Below the waterline, your unusual acquaintance gives your leg another, scrutinising stare, glugging thoughtfully to itself before its eyes light up and it turns its massive bulk around in the water, shooting off with just a single beat of its immense, billowing flukes.

You feel something large pass underneath you, disturbing the water, but you're too busy fighting off your cardigan to pay it much mind. With a final yank, you peel your arms out of the heavy fabric and leave the article behind in your wake, dooming it to the bottom of the ocean where it had tried to drag you not moments ago.

That finished, you swivel yourself clumsily about in the water until you spy your next objective: the cliff walls. You hardly care that the waves are hurling themselves up on the jagged rocks, you only care to get something solid under your foot as soon as possible and get out of the sea.

Spitting another mouthful of salty water, you begin your slow, arduous paddle towards the cliffs.

Time and again, your head dips under the waves and you have to kick and claw your way furiously upwards again, knowing that you're only going to tire yourself out if you don't keep moving in as straight a line as you can manage.

With every passing second, you wholly expect to feel the teeth of the almighty beast chomp down around your ankle and drag you into the drink once more.

As you start to draw within spitting distance of the rocks, you feel the strength behind the waves really pick up as they surge behind you with terrifying force.

Safety is so, tantalisingly close, if you could just keep -

- A watery howl reverberates through the sea around you.

Your assailant hasn't given up the chase, it seems.

Just as you'd feared, you feel those teeth upon you. But it doesn't aim for your leg, or any other of your dangling extremities. Instead, with unbefitting dexterity, that enormous head emerges from the water behind you and it slips its teeth around the elastic waistband of your trousers, lifting you slowly out of the water.

“Woah! Hey!” you squawk, attempting to squirm out of the undignified position while the beast swings its great, finned head around, carrying you away from the rocks at the bottom of the cliff.

So, it didn't appreciate your attempt at escape. Well, what on Earth did it expect?

Dangling above the waves once more, you notice a shape moving to the surface and realise, with a jolt of panic, that it's the creature's hand, rising through the water to rest just below the surface, palm facing the darkening sky. It plops you down on your stomach in amidst those webbed fingers and draws its head back, waiting for you to spin haphazardly onto your back before it aims a gentle frown at you, teeth clacking together in apparent agitation.

It's all you can do to gape up at its face.

If you didn't know any better, you could almost imagine that you're being scolded by this behemoth of the deep.

From what you're gathering, the rocks are out of bounds.

“I.. I don't -... Please!” you blurt out, scrubbing at your face and smearing tears across your stinging cheeks, “Please, just let me go! I don't know what you want from me!”

You let your shout bounce off the cliff walls and watch how the beast's fins quiver in response to the noise, flaring with interest as it stares down at you in silence for a moment longer before it.... appears to heave a great, big sigh through its teeth, head sinking down to you once again, jaws peeling apart.

“No!” Cowering backwards against its curled fingers, you raise an arm to aimlessly protect your face, only to yelp in alarm as something tumbles out of the creature's mouth and lands with a wet 'slap' in its palm beside you.

When you chance a glimpse, you have to do a double-take.

It's... a fish? A half-alive trout, by the looks of it.

You can't help but stare openly down at it, your brows slowly drawing closer together as the slippery, silver fish gasps for breath in the too-shallow water gathered in your captor's palm.

Speaking of whom.. Above you, it lets out a croon, low and deep as it grins, seeming all too pleased with itself for some reason and casting expectant glances between you and its catch.

… What in the world does it expect you to do with this?

The silent question goes unanswered when the poor trout suddenly flops sideways and slaps its tail against your ankle.

“OH! EW! Ew, ew – heugh!” Grimacing, you nudge the fish away with the toe of your shoe, pushing it towards the edge of the gigantic palm. But just then, the behemoth holding you huffs a loud breath through its flaring nostrils and you snap your head up to eye it warily as it bends down to crowd into your space once again, forcing you to press your spine back even further into the cage of fingers surrounding you.

The fish had been halfway to freedom when it's suddenly plucked up between large but nimble teeth and, to your utter dismay, dropped right into your lap.

This time, your squeal of protest is much more emphatic and you shove the fish off your leg, squeezing yourself away from the face hovering in front of you, tilted to one side, as if you're the one confusing it.

Undeterred in its unknowable quest however, the giant hums anxiously and gathers the rejected fish in its teeth once more.

With a single chomp, the seemingly benign baleen that had once held you captive slices clean through the fish's body, leaving the head of the poor animal to fall uselessly onto the creature's palm once again, dead, unseeing eyes staring up at you where you sit with your hand clasped around your mouth, expression contorting into one of abject horror.

Tears begin falling in earnest now and your chest heaves in and out with each, shuddering breath you take.

With the other half of the fish still dangling by the tail from its teeth, the beast brings its head in close to you again and you blurt a cry of outright horror as it tries to press its mouthful to your lips.

Of course, you react as any sane person would to having a raw, dead fish-end so close to your tongue and nose.

You slap both hands over your mouth, squeeze your eyes shut and shriek out a muffled, “FUCK OFF!”

It responds by attempting to shove the 'gift' more insistently against your fingers, all manner of clicks and whinges spilling out of its bobbing throat.

Horrified that this is all feeling far just a little too real for you now, you turn sideways to try and escape, burying yourself into its clammy fingers and trembling around sobs that wrack you from head to toe and cause your chest to burn with the effort.

The last of the sun's rays finally disappear below the horizon, slowly turning the ocean around you a sinister and inky black. If you ever make it out of this alive, you don't you'll ever go near a body of water again...

Lost to your delirium, you don't notice the shift in the air and the breeze falling still... But your captor certainly does...

It can feel the vibrations shudder through the water, growing stronger with each passing second, and it can hear that deep, sonorous hum that travels along the waves like the roll of faraway thunder.

Disheartened by your refusal to eat, the behemoth reluctantly withdraws, swallowing the fish in a single gulp. No use letting good food go to waste. Then, it raises its head and turns its gaze out to sea, emitting a lilted croon in response to whatever had called it away from the tiny creature in its palm.

You finally notice that you're no longer being hounded by a dead fish and risk a glance up at the giant's face, surprised – and a little relieved – to find that its attention has turned elsewhere. But that relief is short-lived when you start to ponder over what has captured its focus.

Sniffling, you twist yourself around at the waist to stare out between the gaps in its fingers, even daring to put a hand on the membrane and pull it down a little to see.

And what you see turns the blood in your veins thick and cold and draws all the life out of your cheeks.

You'd thought the beast holding you was terrifying, but it pales in comparison to the monstrous entity rising like a monolith out of the deep before your very eyes, sweeping its gargantuan body through the waters towards you, silent and fluid as a ghost.

If the beast cupping you in its palm embodies daylight, then this gruesome atrocity must be its midnight counterpart. Polar opposites, but terrifyingly alike.

Where your captor's fins are bright and eye-catching, the creature looming towards you out of the darkness has a sail of the deepest indigo stretching from the top of its head down to the small of its pale, white back. It's face too is round as the moon, but the eyes...

You can't suppress a vivid shiver at the sight of those terrible eyes...

Like two, black tar pits that could swallow any light that tried to permeate them, save for the pinprick glow of two scarlet pupils hovering at the centre of each socket, somehow defying that very rule.

Below the waves, you notice dark, swishing shapes pulling the giant along, vast tentacles, eight of them, each one the length of a football field and roughly the width of a redwood tree and flecked with silvery speckles that resemble a galaxy blanketed with stars.

'Good god,' your mind supplies, 'It's part-fucking-cephalopod.'

The huge tendrils draw the newcomer up close to its fellow leviathan and it drifts to a graceful stop, blood-red pupils flicking down to you before returning to the other beast holding you hostage.

And then, it bares its teeth.

You barely manage to stifle a whimper.

Row upon row of sharp, jagged fangs jut from the top and bottom of its elongated mouth, gleaming in the pale moonlight that shines down from overhead as it hisses at its brethren, causing you to wonder if they're even affiliated at all.

Is it about to attack? It certainly doesn't look too happy from your angle?

But the beast holding you doesn't seem to be concerned, and instead, it suddenly lifts you up towards the other's face, eliciting a series of, 'No, no no's' that stream incessantly from your lips when you find yourself staring straight into that fang-filled mouth.

The new creature takes a second to peer down at you, its pupils glowing brighter with something akin to interest. It's a Hell of a thing to have that gaze searing into you, studying you, dissecting you with its blazing eyes.

... There's intelligence in those eyes...

In the next second, you flinch as it suddenly shakes its head from side to side and snaps its teeth at its softer counterpart, grumbling low in its throat and getting a click or two in response. To your untrained ears, they appear to be having a conversation of sorts, although what a pair of creatures like these two have to discuss, you don't even want to hazard a guess.

The smaller, brighter one ducks its head at a particularly sharp rattle from the larger beast, yet it still huffs out a response and lifts its other, unoccupied hand to place a slender finger against your leg.

Reflexively, you snatch your limb away from the touch and try to tuck it underneath yourself.

Ruby-red eyes drill holes into you as it falls eerily quiet, only the waves rocking gently against its hide make any sound. Then, after chuffing shortly at its opposite, the darker one holds out its enormous, webbed hand, crooking its fingers as if to tell the other beast, 'Hand it over.'

You're awfully certain that the 'it' in question refers to you. If it boils down to a choice between the two, you'd prefer to be killed by the beast without glowing, red eyes and a mouthful of shark teeth.

In response, your captor's orange fins flatten miserably against its head and it draws you close to its chest, but after receiving a withering glare, it concedes to hold you out once more, presenting you like a dainty morsel to the far scarier juggernaut, who wastes no time in extending its arm towards you.

No matter how much you might fear the beast to your back, there's no way in Hell you want to be anywhere near the one in front of you. You truly are stuck fast between a rock and a hard place.

Sinewy fingers, each tipped by claws as long as your hand, quickly eat up the distance between you and the newcomer. Gulping like that dying fish, you try to shove yourself backwards across the water-slicked palm beneath you, and you'd likely have taken a tumble right over the side if the approaching hand hadn't suddenly struck like a viper, propelling forwards and wrapping around you at a startling speed that knocks a wheeze out of your lungs.

“-Ack! DON'T!” you holler, but it's already far too late.

Like serpents, the fingers wind around your torso and leg, yet they leave your arms free, and you waste no time in trying to scrabble furiously against the solid bands of muscle constricting all around you.

“Get your hands... off me!” you demand shrilly, bristling like a cornered kitten and sounding about as intimidating as one too. The entity, however, hardly seems bothered as it lifts you close to its face and tips its hand, fingers unfurling until you find yourself sitting in the cup of its palm, where it swiftly places its thumb across your stomach, holding you still, content to ignore the feeble shoves you give to the heavy appendage.

To the rear of your odd trio, the yellow creature is croaking and mumbling through pursed lips, wringing its gigantic hands as if something has made it anxious, yet it draws close up behind its counterpart and keeps its eyes glued to the side of your face as you remain helplessly in the secure yet surprisingly cautious grasp.

The new beast doesn't squeeze you to a pulp, doesn't try to stuff you between those fangs or wrap one of its tentacles around your neck to choke the life of of you... Instead, after peering down at you for a few, awful moments, it turns about in the water and begins moving, not further out to sea, but towards the cliffs you'd come from. You barely have time to process this strange turn of events before you're suddenly tilted in its palm and brought up against a cool, clammy chest, pinned there by dextrous fingers as the beast stretches four of its prehensile tentacles up towards the top of the cliff.

Incapable of escape, you watch in horrified fascination as the suckers on each limb adhere themselves to the walls and it begins to climb, hauling itself up and over the edge with you still clutched to its pasty chest.

You vividly hear the sound of glass smashing as its tentacle lands of top of the discarded beer bottles, but aside from twitching its frills at the sound, the behemoth doesn't outwardly react.

With slow, loping movements, it begins to pulls itself along the ground using its tentacles, perturbing you even further with the knowledge that it can traverse both land and sea.

Near-enough silent, its limbs swish through the grass and carry you up the slope, right to the back door of your temporary domicile.

By now, you've essentially given up attempting to make sense of the goings-on around you and resolve to simply remain still and limp in the creature's grasp, hoping for the best, but definitely expecting the worst.

Yet, as if the two entities haven't surprised you enough, you're further stupefied when the one holding you lets out a resonant hum and lowers you to the ground just in front of the back steps, by the door. It doesn't let go of you though, keeping you securely fastened underneath its thumb for several seconds, ample time for your initial captor to heave itself over the clifftop and drag its cumbersome body up to the cottage as well, chirruping as it catches sight of you again.

It's no surprise that the tentacled beast had an easier time lugging itself over the ground thanks to all its additional limbs.

With safety beckoning only a few feet behind you, you attempt to struggle against the thumb once more, but you soon go rigid as the creature of midnight blue lowers itself down onto its elbows, sending a quake through the ground when it makes contact with the Earth.

Holding your eye – because really, how are you supposed to turn your back on something that large and horrifying – it slowly extends its neck towards you, the wicked teeth inside its mouth prying themselves apart.

The sudden reminder of those very real threats hits you like a sack of bricks and you start to fight against its hold in earnest, batting at its thumb with clenched fists and choking out a desperate plea, “Oh, god! Please don't!”

Vivid memories of that dead-eyed fish spring up unbidden in your mind's eye.

You... don't want to die. Not like this, at least.

Your parents were ripped away from you against their will, through no fault of their own.

You never realised how badly you want to be in charge of your own fate until now. The very thought of being chewed on as nothing more than a snack for this wretched, undiscovered sea monster turns your heart to lead.

Through bulging eyes, you can do nothing but watch on, morbidly transfixed as a slimy, pitch-dark tongue creeps out from between the creature's barbed teeth and begins to slither towards you, prompting a string of curses to dribble off your lips.

Stuck with nowhere to go and almost seeing double from the panic fizzing in your brain, you clamp your eyes shut and dig your fingernails into its fleshy thumb, waiting with bated breath...

A sudden, unexpectedly damp sensation swipes against the bottom of your damaged thigh and you splutter out a gasp, flinging your eyes open to see the grotesque tongue ghosting over the scarred tissue that mars the bottom of your stump.

Pulling a face, you give the fraction of a limb a twitch and jerk your opposite leg across to kick feebly at the creature's encroaching tongue.

“Hey! Stop that!” The reprimand hardly comes out as anything more substantial than a meek whimper, but the creature does draw its tongue back behind its teeth with a huff. You have no idea what kind of bacteria live in that saliva, but an infection is the very last thing you need right now.

The beast pulls itself away and you're filled with an almost insurmountable urge to weep with relief when it finally, finally peels its thumb from your stomach and begins to tilt its palm forwards, allowing you to slip off onto the back step on your rear, gaping up in shock as it pulls its hand away again.

Free at last but still aghast at the thought of turning your back on not one, but two, aquatic deities, you shuffle backwards up the step until your spine hits the door behind you with a loud 'clunk,' rattling it inside its flimsy frame.

One of the darker beast's tentacles begins to approach and you snap your head in its direction, wondering if you could get to the key beneath the mat and unlock the door before the twisting appendage reaches you... but once again, it seems your apprehension is unfounded. A small flash of white catches your attention, half hidden by narrow coils, and as you stare, the beast raises the limb a little closer to you, then drops its captured item by your foot, slowly retracting the tentacle once its deed is done.

You blink owlishly down at the object.

It's your prosthetic leg.

“I...” But words more compounded than single-syllable vowels fail you.

Why would they return this? You'd almost forgotten all about your missing limb, deeming it comparatively mundane when seen next to a pair of colossal, otherworldly beings.

Movement, again, this time a flash of yellow and orange has you raising your eyes just in time to see the ichthyic creature all but shove its counterpart out of the way in its haste to stoop down and thrust its face out towards you, and before you even have the wit to lift your arms in some sort of meagre defence, it's enormous, red tongue darts out and slaps wetly against your chest, dragging a rough line up over your throat, face and hair and leaving a delightful trail of slobber behind as a parting gift.

The urge to vomit becomes increasingly difficult to ignore. It wasn't so long ago you watched that mouth devour the lower half of a trout, bones and all. Spluttering incoherently, you raise your hands and swipe the creature's saliva out of your eyes, shooting it an exasperated glance that goes utterly ignored.

With a roll of luminous, red eyes, the paler of the two grabs the smaller beast by its wrist and begins the arduous task of dragging it down towards the edge of the cliff.

Before they leave however, your initial captor offers you one last, longing glance, then it turns to let itself get tugged along by the other creature, and with a quick swish of tentacles and flukes, the two of them vanish over the side and leave you wonderfully, blessedly alone on the back step, wondering whether to call the police, animal services, or the nearest mental health unit.

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