A.C. McAnelly

I avoided the hanging body as I moved to one side of her.

I didn't dare touch her mouth.

I laid my hand on the side of her face beneath her eye and imagined the cold in my hand moving into her, imagining Morgan in my arms, kissing me.

Please give him back.

The cold of the ocean left my body, and instead, a warmth filled me.

The light that started in her lure ran down the length of her spinal fins and through her gills.

The bloated body hanging above her face began to twitch and things moved beneath the skin, filling it up.

The decaying blue hue got replaced with a pearl white glow.

An arm swelled.

The skin shed and revealed a hardened black shell with a pincher at the end where the hand once was.

A scream ripped from the mouth of the body, the face still flowing and reshaping, until I saw Morgan's face, half-hardened with that brackish shell, leaving a gaping hole on one side where his other eye should be.

A compound eye, stretched long and thin, hanging from a stalk that seemed so small, emerged from that gaping eye socket.

Morgan?

He dropped from the rod of the creature like ripe fruit.

His crab arm hit the sand and he looked up at me.

His human eye was no longer brown but pale blue like the ocean.

His voice was not quite his.

It was deeper, with more rumble, but he said my name with heat.

I wasn't sure if it was anger or passion, and I was almost afraid for him to touch me.

But ever since I pushed my power into the creature, a calm took over me, like I was exactly where I belong.