Young Writers Society

Note: This is a terrible short story that my friend persuaded me to post. So, have fun.

Someone once asked me who I hated most in the world. I punched them to the other side of the Merkinch Close for asking me. If you were to ask me that today, I’d punch you too. It was a stupid question, but I pondered it while I drove the lad to the hospital - I mean, I had to have something to take my mind off what the police would say. At the time, I came up with with a few names, nothing special - dealers I’d fallen out with, thieves who’d taken from me, the usual. Now, I’d reconsider.

I suppose a title like that would have to go to Ross. Y’see, Ross is the most stupid idiot I’ve ever met. He single-handedly ruined my life. Or, maybe he didn’t. We had a wretched kind of relationship.

We met at high tide.

-

That night was a tad too cold for October. The North Sea was at its highest, singing and growling like sirens and dragons were drowning together. I stood overlooking the Rosemarkie Bay, clinging to the feeling of the sea-spray on my face, biting venom with the wind to numb my flesh. Behind me, Inverness sparkled and winked like breaking Christmas lights.

My shoes and socks were thrown higher up on the beach, undoubtedly covered in sand. Not that I cared. I was calf-deep in the swirling water. Seaweed tangled around my ankles, coaxing me deeper. I couldn’t swim - again, I didn’t care much at the time.

I cried. I cried, okay? Criminals cry too. I didn’t even know if I could still be called a proper criminal after the events of that day-and-a-half. Quit begging - I ain’t telling you. I don’t know you. I don’t want you to think badly of me.

I threw my coat back onto the sand, trembling and gasping and rubbing my goosebumps as I took a step deeper. Who knew what kinds of grim serpents lay in wait? I wept and stared out into the blackness that lay away from the land. I hadn’t even left a note. I wondered what my family would think. I wondered if my family would care.

The pain in my legs had gone now. There was just a peaceful kind of nothingness. I hoped that the same peaceful kind of nothingness that was waiting out there for me. Now, at this point, I was shaking from my own grief and fear and sobs and just the cold of it all - not just the physical cold, but the coldness of the whole situation. There was no warmth, nothing at all. Just the lulling of the ocean, and the end that it promised.

I was in the middle of those dire, dire thoughts, collecting my courage to take another step, when a seal popped its head above the surface, grinning and mocking me while its eyes shone with the half-moon's light.

“Get g’ing, you stupid animal!” I shouted, voice broken by the lump in my throat. I didn’t want my corpse to be eaten by seals… Do seals eat people?

It came closer. I couldn’t believe it. I’d fruitlessly spent uncountable hours by the sea during my childhood, searching for seals. And now, of all times, it won’t leave me alone. Just my bloody luck.

“Did ya not hear me?!” I hollered, “get g’ing!”

I threw a glance over my shoulder. I was still alone, but I didn’t know now long I had. I stared over the firth to Inverness. There, somewhere, was home. Not that I wanted to go back to it.

“That’s not very nice,” a voice said. It was smooth, masculine. Nothing like my cigarette-induced rasp.

I spun back around to try to scare the seal again. Only, there was no seal there. A young man’s head bobbed above the waves instead. That was strange, because I didn’t remember taking any drugs. I wish I knew what happened after that, but that was the moment that I fainted. It was cold, and I was scared, alright? You’d’ve fainted, too.

I was on the sand when I woke. My arms were shoved clumsily into my coat, and it was buttoned up haphazardly. I rubbed my eyes and sat up. Sand had gotten into my clothes, as I’d expected. The seal-man sat next to me, wrapped in a speckled sealskin, watching me out of the corners of his eyes.

“Seal hunting’s ‘llegal, y’know,” It was lame, I know, but it was all I could manage.

“It’s my skin,” he smiled, “they’ve stopped teaching you about selkies, I see,”

“Oh?” I growl. I can feel anger rising in my chest. I feel so very angry. “Wha’s a bloody selkie, then?”

“I’m a seal in the sea,” he gestured to the bay, “and I’m a man on the land.”

“You’re nothin’ but a hallucination, mate,” I sniffed.

“No, I’m not.” the selkie insisted, “you shed seven tears into the ocean at high tide, you get a selkie. So, what’s wrong?”

I told the selkie everything - c’mon, don’t tell me you wouldn’t’ve too - and he told me all about the selkies in return. And that was that.

I had hoped that we wouldn’t meet again, but that wouldn’t make for much of a story, would it?

-

“You ‘ere to finish me off, darling?”

A few weeks afterwards, after I’d sorted some things out (like discovering that people I’d fallen out with had been picked up by the police - nothing to do with me, I assure you. What kind of foul play would that be, hmm?) I was walking down the Ferry alone. At night.

Y’see, the Ferry is a crappy little scrap of land by the water. I like it there, okay? I don’t have to explain myself to you. The point is, I got attacked by a street cat of a girl. She had knives for claws and syringes for teeth. I’d seen her somewhere before, but I didn’t have much time to think before she’d pounced.

I’ll spare you the gory details. She’d let me topple into the Moray Firth when she’d finished with me. What can I say? I’m not one for fighting women. Not that I like ‘em particularly, but just that I don’t care if I die or not. So I let it happen.

I’ve never quite understood why she did it. Did we take out her dealer? Did someone in my crew do her wrong? Does she remember me from some kind of turf spat? I’ll never know.

One thing you’ve got to understand is that the Moray Firth is cold. I mean, really bloody cold. It’s the kind of cold that makes you gasp and cramp up and inhale the water. That’s how it gets you. That’s how I’d die.

It was dark already, and there were no boats out. I laughed in my head, delirious, at how the police would find my body, riddled with knife wounds and pincushioned by the sharp bits of those awful empty needles that she’d stuck in me. I’d be long gone when they’d find my body washed up, maybe at Avoch or Kilmuir or by the airport.

I was happy. She’d done me a favour. At least I didn’t have to do it myself.

-

I hadn’t expected to wake up again.

But then again, I hadn’t expected a lot of things. I’m not the best at looking into the future, you see. I certainly hadn’t expected to come around propped up by pillows and wrapped in bandages. A cup of water sat on my bedside table.

I was in my bedroom. My cramped, dingy bedroom. I reached out for the water, crying out and dropping the cup as pain spasmed around my abdomen like someone who’s taken too much crack. The glass broke. Great I’d thought to myself, flopping back down onto the pillows. I sighed.

A sob made my wounds hurt. I didn’t care who’d saved me. Saved me? I’d scoffed, whoever did this just damned me further. I reached under my bed, hand closing around the hilt of my machete and the strange relief it gave me.

I hiccuped. The door opened. Green eyes met mine. I didn’t stop.

-

We sat on the roof of my apartment block an hour later, staring out into the winter sunshine. I had fresh bandages running up my arms. He clutched his rolled-up sealskin, wearing some of my too-small clothes.

I s’ppose you want to know what happened after he walked in? Gah, of course you do. Don’t hate me for it, okay? You’d’ve tried it long ago if you’d been in my life, I promise you.

I hadn’t stopped. He’d jumped out of his skin and leaped forwards, trying to wrestle the knife off of me. He’d shouted something I’d rather not think about. I’d screamed something terrible back. My arms were bleeding badly at this point. I mean, blood was pouring over the carpet and the bedsheets, so it was pretty bad. He wouldn’t stop shouting. He kneed me in the groin to try to get me to drop the knife. In the end, he’d prized it away from my fingers and cleaned up the cuts.

We’d both gone quiet after that.

I took a long, deep drag of my cigarette. “Why?”

“We’re just like that,” he shrugged. “I don’t like letting people die.”

“I didn’t want any o’ this!” I exhaled smoke while I talked. I had become a dragon. “What if I didn’t want you t’save me?”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry…” he said, coughing on the fumes.

I glowered into the distance. I was so, so angry. But that wouldn’t change anything. Feeling sorry for myself and moping wouldn’t change anything.

“So,” I said, “you’re like a guardian angel, but covered in blubber?”

“Not exactly. Blubber? Yes. Guardian angel? No.” He chuckled, “and what about you? A delinquent who accidentally summoned a sea-demon?”

“It sure looks like it,” I sighed, killing the glow of my cigarette on the back of my hand.

-

We continued to see each other after that. Of course, he’d gone back to the ocean later that day and I’d kept a keener lookout than usual for seals while I’d tried my damnest to get my life back together. Not that it had worked very well.

We usually met at a beach about an hours’ drive North of Inverness. It was usually empty, especially in the winter, and especially during our favourite meeting time, the nighttime. I’d told myself that I wouldn’t get overly attached to this seal-boy, but things don’t often work out how I tell myself they will. Of course, I ended up looking forward to our meetings far too much.

We’d relied on the lightening of the sky, the slight tainting of a star-strewn ocean, to tell us when to part. We’d been meeting like this for months, sometimes twice a week - whenever I had some free time away from a course on English that I’d managed to get myself into -, and we talked about everything. It was nice, actually, to have someone so different to confide in. I’d learnt that he called himself Ross, and he was very, very old - even though he didn’t look it. He’d told me stories from centuries ago, and folklore from people he’d said were my ancestors.

My reluctance to leave got worse with every meeting. The sky was getting light again.

“It’s getting light again,” I said grudgingly.

Ross unrolled his sealskin. It would never fail to intrigue me as to how exactly a young man could just step into a seal’s skin, and then become a seal. No matter how many times I watched the transformation and turned it over in my mind, I could come up with no solution.

I reached over and snatched the silky fur out of his hands, scrambling unsteadily to my feet and up the pebbles to where the scrubby, almost-tundra moorland began. He’d told me that a long time ago, mortals used to steal selkies’ skins and then the selkie had to stay with them, forever searching for their skin.

“I could take this,” I said loudly, holding the skin up like some kind of sick trophy, “and you’d have to come home with me.”

“I would,” Ross said, watching me. He didn’t look at all angry, or particularly scared. Just slightly amused, “but I’d find it eventually. And then I’d have to return to the sea. It’d be a lot of trouble for nothing, y’know.”

I say nothing and toss the skin back to him. I slump down next to him, defeated. I let him put an arm around my shoulders.

-

He didn’t turn up again after that night. I stayed on the beach most nights, until dawn, freezing and half-conscious, lulled to sleep by the waves. He hadn’t told me that he wouldn’t be coming. I missed him. What? I can have friends, can’t I? And he’s just a friend, okay? Stop it with your pervy thoughts. I missed him and how he talked and his cold hands and even that weird fishy, ocean smell his hair held. Had I scared him off? Was he finally finished with my rubbish? The thoughts saddened me.

I satisfied my concerns with a mediocre excuse, constantly drowning the undead worry over and over as I nosed around the high street for Christmas presents.

I’d decided to buy Ross some sealfur gloves - that is, if I had enough money. A kind of sick joke, if you will. He needed a paid, after all; his hands had felt too cold to be comfortable. I sidled into a fur shop, nosing around mink, fox, and wolf skins. My nose wrinkles. Perhaps it was too sick of a joke.

“Can I help you, sir?” the shopkeeper asked, making his way between racks of musky pelts.

I faltered. Was I seriously going to ask this? “I was, uh, looking for some sealskin gloves?”

“We’ve none in stock, but we can make you a pair. For Christmas?” he gestured to the back of the shop, “we have a few new pelts in at the moment. All legal, don’t you worry. From Canada, I think…”

I follow him, cautiously, to the back of the shop. Three seal skins hung on a rack. One white, one black, and one speckled wonderfully in a way that reminded me of a sea-demon.

My soul ran cold.

A sea-demon. Lifeless eyes gazed out of the mottled, shrunken head. Lifeless, green eyes.

I cried.

-

I bought the skin and took it back to the ocean. What else could I have done? I waited until high tide, and set it afloat into the Rosemarkie Bay, standing calf-deep in the freezing North Sea like I had done all those weeks ago.

I felt hot tears down my face fall down into the water.

I waited.