Haunted Organic (2014 Watty Award Winner)

Thirteen: Prey (Part 2)

"He's playing guard dog!" she said.

"You know he thinks he's a doberman."

He smiled a little. This gave him comfort.

"We're here, baby," Emerald said to Trinket, tapping lightly on the window to get her attention.

Trinket was in bad shape. She was balled up into the corner. She was smaller, so the water, pooled around her neck. Her face was scarlet, almost blue, and puffy. And she was unable to speak or shout out. She crunched down in the corner, her lips were two blue quivering caterpillars.

That's when they heard the shower of glass, metal scraping against metal, the rush of water, the hiss of eels.

"We don't have time to waste. Let's do this!" Emerald screamed.

Manhattan jumped up on the top of the tank in one jump. She was so athletic and agile, Emerald thought for a second she might be a super hero or something. Emerald threw Manhattan a screw driver and a hammer and she jammed the metal end into the corner of the tank, and tried to pry a hole there.

"It's not coming!" Manhattan screamed.

"Why isn't it coming?"

"Because he wants these kids!" Emerald said, wedging her crow bar between the lid of the tank and the glass. She pushed down on the crow bar. It caught and the bar went flying off over her shoulder.

"He's not getting these kids!" Manhattan screamed back.

Emerald watched her crow bar slam to the ground and slide out toward the cookie aisle.

"Damn!"

She ran out to retrieve it. She could see that the market was filling up, just like the tank. It sloshed at her knees. She bent down to find the crow bar, feeling along the floor with her hands. Nothing Nothing. It disappeared.

"Damn it!" she shouted, as if swearing might help.

She needed the crow bar if they had any chance of wedging off the lid.

Then she felt it, something, grabbed it.

And then, from around the corner, meeting her face-to-face, its jaws wide and slamming, an eel. She dropped the crow bar and fell over, shrieking. The eel was in her face, rasping, its teeth bared and hissing, it's tongue pulsing.

She felt the crow bar with her foot.

"Keep it together, Emerald" she coached herself, as the eel made it's way around her, and would itself up close to her, its slimy coldness touching her, its tongue dancing on her cheek, the stench of rotting fish blowing onto her face.

She swore she heard the eel say, "Tasty", as it opened its huge mouth and came down on her neck with blunt force.

She felt the slam on her body, teeth puncturing skin. Her whole body crumpled up on her.

"Stay calm...stay calm," she told herself.

She pushed her foot to the end of the bar and stepped on it, hard, so that it flipped up through the water and into the air. She caught it with one hand, and brought it down across the eels head, so that it screamed and wailed and fell off her body, taking with it small chunks of her flesh, and leaving her bleeding and scraped.

Emerald raised the crow bar over her head and drove the whole long spike into the soft flesh of the monster, right between its eyes, and right through the head into the wooden floor, so that it writhed and wailed and contorted in the water, its head nailed into the wood.