11

Sabrina

I die tonight, and I’m oddly comforted by the fact. This show is the last time Barnabie will pull my hair, grab my tentacles, and fondle my breasts while the audience laughs and cheers. The weights on my wrists make it impossible for me to fight him. My humiliation ends tonight when the full moon rises. The tentacles that landed me in this freak show will fuse into two legs. The leering men in the crowd—including Pastor Richard, who attended alone—will finally take a glimpse of my cunt as my drowned human form floats to the surface of my tank. I hope they enjoy the view.

Despite my early demise, I have no regrets. I loved hard and whored harder. I used my human and Kraken form to bring joy to myself in everything I did. Teeth, my soulmate, sails in search of me…but he’ll figure out I’m gone. Eventually. The thought of my hot-blooded pudding-head makes me smile. He’s free. On the high seas, he’s above the law and conquered time by becoming a legend. Everyone knows and fears Captain Teeth. As Barnabie holds me aloft from my tank, shaking me so my breasts jiggle, I grin like a grogblossom because Barnabie is a quarter of the man he wants to portray. His stories puff himself, but never to the stature of Captain Teeth.

“When I lifted the beast from the depths of hell, imagine my surprise. The mighty Kraken was but a little girl—no match for me, eh lads?” Barnabie’s question is answered by a chorus of laughter. The humiliation used to bother me, but soon, I will be free.

I lock eyes with Pastor Richard. Without a brood of orphans or my gorgeous sister to distract him, his attention is locked on me. He sipped from a flask during the others’ presentations, but not mine. Leaning forward, eyes wide and hands folded over his tented trousers, I’m his singular focus. I’m as confused as I am disgusted. My sister walks on legs, so he must have consumed her soulbeak. She wouldn’t have given it to anyone else, nor would she have accidentally lost it in a casual ride on the St. George. If he accepted her soul and chose for them to live as humans, then why isn’t he making children with her in his drafty chapel? Why does he hunger for me when he has my sister in his bed?

Or does he? I long for one more conversation with Bettina to be certain she will be okay when I’m gone.

Barnabie releases the leash and my hair, so I slither into my tank. I open my gills to suck the clean water through them. My traveling tank stinks with rot, and I’ve transferred some to this tank. The sudden churning of the water kicks up my waste from the bottom. I have a few precious breaths before the contamination spreads the rancid taste.

Dolbie and Rufus wheel my enclosure to the farthest wall so the patrons can wander around the four exhibits. Tonight, I’m on display—like every night—with the bearded lady, a man with a lion face, a four-armed woman, and a man who stands less than a foot tall. Where does Barnabie find these people? Were they stolen like me?

I count five men who walk with obvious military posture in plain clothes. The remarks and gestures the men made at my tank used to scare me until one took it too far in Nassau, and the hidden security sprang into action. They protect Barnabie’s treasures. Will one of them release me from the tank when my gills vanish and I drown? Will they be able to lift me when the eight weights on my tentacles reduce to two weights on my ankles ?

The sky blushes from the blue of twilight to a rosy hue. I gaze at my last sunset through the door flap to the tent until some impossibly tall man blocks my view. He wears a giant feathered hat, which adds to his impressive height. The harlot on his arm enters first. No honest woman would wear feathers on her piled-high hair or a shocking red dress cinched at mid-thigh…except maybe me. She brings a smile to my face as I’m overcome with nostalgia. Her hair is red like mine, so I can put my younger self in her shoes.

Pastor Richard stops his advance to my tank to gawk at the beauty.

She’s striking. She’s stunning.

She’s my prissy, stick-up-her-arse sister!

Her tall companion ducks through the tent flap and out of the sun’s masking glare. He tips his hat at the bearded lady, who blushes at his attention. Blond hair glides over his wide shoulders. The hand he holds over his sheathed sword has four fingers. I bet the hand in his jacket, as if it holds braces—not a gun’s butt, has three fingers. A plain townswoman fans herself as he bows to step around her and her portly husband. I carefully school my face to avoid giving away the ruse. Oh, my soul, Captain Teeth’s muscular body, cleaned and dressed to the nines, is exactly what I hoped would be the last vision I see.

That answers my questions about Bettina’s relationship with Pastor Richard and how she will survive without me. She will take my place at Teeth’s side. They look like they belong together if you ignore how she holds her belly, fisting her flimsy dress. Her rejected soulbond to Richard must hurt like hell. If I get one message to Teeth, it will be to keep Bettina as far away from Trinidad as possible. With distance, the soulbond fades, but it roars to life when they share the same room.

I open my mouth in hopes Teeth can lip-read when he runs a finger down the glass over my face. He repeats the action on the left seam of the tank. He flicks his eyes to the finger. Oh! I’m supposed to follow his movements like we’re playing a game. I sway my upper body to the left edge, careful not to touch the film on the wall. He repeats the finger smear in the center and then the right seam. My body follows like a charmed snake in a basket. In reality, my behavior isn’t too far from the truth. I’ve tuned out the room as my soul focuses on his expression of deep concentration.

“She looks to be your twin,” Rufus sneers at Bettina.

“You ain’t be hiding tentacles under your skirts,” Dolbie sneers, licking his cracked lips.

“Where would I hide them? This dress is a little flutter of nothing,” Bettina says, lifting it to flash her garters at them.

“Open the tank,” Teeth says in an icy whisper that sends a shiver down my tentacles. “Release the Kraken, and I will take her quietly.”

“Not on your life!” Rufus shouts while Dolbie searches for Barnabie. The nutmegs can’t make such a decision without the boss’s say-so, even though Teeth holds a flintlock pistol at waist height.

“Oh, it will be your life,” Teeth whispers. This time, both my abusers anxiously scan the crowd for Barnabie.

“Bettina,” Richard scolds, interrupting Teeth’s rescue. “What are you wearing? Don’t you realize Christ is always watching? People will think you have forsaken our Savior!”

“Richard, I haven’t forsaken anything,” Bettina sneers in a voice I’ve never heard her use. “But have you? Were you performing for your savior when you rubbed your sugarstick as my sister was tortured on stage, or was it for the amusement of your new wife? I didn’t see her when I entered, but if she’s in attendance, I must say hello. She will want to hear my tricks to get you off faster.”

“You’re a monster—”

“Maybe that’s why you climaxed in my mouth so quickly…ev en though you never saw my monster form. Perhaps your pious little wife is a lost cause—”

Richard turns beet red and lunges at Bettina. She gasps with her hand over her bosom like the weak little flower she is. I blink frantically at Teeth to save her, but he’s absorbed in finding the tank’s weaknesses. Why does he think Bettina can hold her own? How do I tell him she’s not fierce like me without giving away to the handlers that I know them?

Teeth steps out of Richard’s way. He tucks his gun into his holster with a sleight of hand. I wouldn’t have noticed the maneuver had I not been studying him already. What’s caused him to hide the pistol?

“We’ll have none of that,” rumbles one of the disguised officers. He grabs Richard by the collar and drags him to the tent’s exit flap. They must wait for a short, red-haired man and his buxom companion to enter.

“Five!” Teeth’s shout startles my heart from my chest. Five what? Five holes in the tank, five seams to cut, or five minutes until I transform?

“Aye, aye,” yells the couple at the entrance as the man pulls a machete from his belt.

Richard lunges for the well-endowed lady, who stabs her tiny knife into his throat. She shrieks, which alerts her companion. With a slash of his machete, Richard’s guts spill onto the ground. He trembles as he drops and flops about like a fish out of water.

The lady steps over Richard’s flailing body as she retrieves her knife. Blood splashes on her lacy dress and shiny boots. I can’t believe my eyes when threads burst from her wrists to wrap around two other plainclothes officer’s necks. As they struggle with the bonds, their heads turn purple. The lady leans back to tighten them as her short companion fights his way through the excited crowd with his machete raised. As he beheads the first disguised security man, the lady sags with exhaustion against the tent.

Clouds form in my peripheral vision. I force my gills to open, but they are shrinking into my rounded hips. The cuffs of six weights plunk to the sand as my tentacles absorb into my legs. I claw at the glass to lift myself to the top. My neck strains as I tip my head back as far as possible. When my lips breach the surface, I heave and cough. My arms paddle with the weights resting in my palms.

I don’t know how long I will last.

“Aye, aye,” is shouted from all around as the tent is pierced in a ring at the top. Sword points extend a foot through the canvas as they rip down the sides. The tent flaps in ribbons as the loose pieces fall to the ground. A pirate steps through each of the new openings, surrounding the show’s occupants. They pull women and children from the tent's confines so the presumed innocent can scamper home without injury.

“Aye, aye,” yells Bettina, to my astonishment. She removes a cat-o-nine tails from her waistline. I thought it was a decorative belt, but as she whirls the leather around her head, I know better. She copies my favorite way to drag sailors from their boats but uses the whip instead of a tentacle. The leather wraps around a disguised officer’s neck as he rushes toward Teeth. She tugs it to the left to sweep the man off his feet. Instead of hitting the gentle waves of the Caribbean like the sailors I torment, he crashes to the unforgiving dirt floor. Blood puddles bloom around his still form.

As the strength drains from my aching arms, I smile with pride at her.

“Chub, Catalina, free the prisoners on your side,” Teeth calls over the mele. A tingle resonates through my bones with the volume, authority, and overall timbre of his voice.

“Aye, aye,” replies the spider lady and her companion.

“Eze,” Teeth calls to the tallest man on the north side of the tent. “Free the gentleman closest to you.”

“Aye, Captain,” he yells as he sheathes his short sword. Another pirate steps close to his left side to cover him. The two men hold fingers in their ears as Eze shoots off the lock.

The shot is louder than expected as Teeth shoots the lock off my tank. His furrowed brow presses against the glass as he checks on me. My lungs seize as water flows down my throat. Not enough air. My thoughts cloud. When did my limbs become so heavy? I blow a kiss to see him smile one last time before my eyes drift closed.