Haunted Organic (2014 Watty Award Winner)

Eight: Fish Head

"Maybe try to pry the whole pot off the wall and we can carry the whole thing out."

"Good idea."

"Okay Trinket, we're gonna get you out of here..."

Emerald tried to soothe the girl but she wouldn't look at her. She was beyond comfort and she no longer knew who she could trust.

Trinket hadn't been hurt in any real physical way. Ludivine had given her bits of bread from the store and cups of water. But what was was truly traumatic for this girl, or any other child in her position, was simply being locked away from her family, left alone to cry inside a crab pot, not knowing if she would live her whole life this way. Not knowing when the monster who came to stare at her, and let his horde of eels snap at her feet, would simply decide to gobble her up.

Trinket was so lonely she could barely speak. So scared of every movement around her that she spent her time in the crab pot rolled up into a small ball. She rocked and sang to herself, and hoped she'd see her Mamas. But she knew somehow that Bangkok would never let that happen. She, like Josie, knew what he wanted, could feel it. He would devour her, when the time was right, and she, like all the other human babies, would make him more powerful.

He would never let her go. Even in her young brain, she knew that.

"Got it!" Josie yelled at Emerald. "Just one more wire and I think I can lift this pot off the wall."

"Great!...Did you hear that Trinket, we're going to get you out of here...just hold on."

Josie had busted open one of the bolts and was trying to pry the pot off the wall with the crow bar and mallet. He was making a racket, slamming the mallet onto the bolts. He wondered about the reporters from the news vans, whether they could hear and if they could, if they could do anything about it.

"Um...Josie?"

Emerald stopped cold. She stared straight ahead to the freezer cases.

Josie looked. The doors opened. A stream of frigid air crashed through the market.

"People," Josie thought. But then he squinted and got a better look.

"Uh-oh..." Josie said, thinking aloud.

"Not humans..."

They were more like fish heads with human bodies, arms and legs.

They moved slowly and sluggishly, out of the freezer cases, as if they weren't completely sure how to use their appendages. It was as if their fish heads had been haphazardly plopped onto these weird human bodies and they were told to move.

"Sculpin!" Emerald yelled at him.

She had seen them many times while scuba diving and sometimes in the shallow tide pools at Bondi and Bronte. Sculpin were fish with bony, wide, ugly bobble heads. They were the color of mud, had weird wiggling whiskers, and flat heads. Their faces were so wide that it looked like someone had taken hold of their cheeks and pulled them in both directions. They skulked on the bottom of the ocean, feeding off of whatever bits they could scavenge, tearing chunks off a dead fish or eating leeches and insect eggs.

They were bottomless pits, eating anything that would fit in their mouths. And their mouths were wide and huge. Emerald knew at once these creatures would rip them limb from limb.

Josie and Emerald yanked on the cage, as hard as they could. The Sculpin kept coming, wave after wave of creatures stepping clumsily out of the freezer cases, some of them falling onto the shelves and taking out a soup display, or a rack of cookies. Others walked so poorly, they tripped and knocked down the Sculpin near them. They tumbled out of the cases and were streaming towards them in every aisle.