Chapter Text
Hermès Costello was shaken. You could tell because of the way her lukewarm coffee jittered in the cup as she failed to take a sip without spilling. Milky brown droplets splattered over the table. She hastily pulled a bunch of napkins from the metal dispenser and wiped it up. Hermès discarded the balled up wad of soggy napkins next to Jolyne Kujo’s water, ensuring the condensation would further reduce the clump into a pulpy mess. Jolyne was two whole pages deep into a google search of Floridian cryptids, taking notes in the margins of a zoology textbook she wouldn’t be able to get the deposit back on. Her own coffee sat untouched, having drunk the shitty shelf stable creamers already like bland, dairy free shots. Hermès took the liberty of pouring the rest of her black coffee into her own half-filled mug in an attempt to heat up the remains. Jolyne mumbled something, squinting at her phone.
Hermès was losing a grip on herself.
“What the fuck was that?” She said. That was the question of the night and was the only thing on her mind since the encounter in the swamp that evening. Jolyne didn’t look up, just squinting back and forth between the book and the phone.
“We won’t know until the next time we see her, but if she’s still out there,” Jolyne wavered. She blindly reached for her coffee mug, only to find it empty. She unstuck herself from the vinyl booth seat and took a sip from Hermès’s mug before handing it back. Hermès looked down at her cup.
The rim was now smudged with two different shades of green lipstick. Her own deep, forest hue and her girlfriend’s lighter lime green. She rubbed the remnants with her thumb, leaving a bright green smear on her fingertip. Below the indirect kiss was an IHOP logo, faded by years of daily dishwasings.
‘ She?’ Can we confirm that thing was human at all?
Hermès really didn’t want to say it.
“Maybe we’ve both fallen under some sort of collective delusion, like a Folie a Deux ,” she offered, avoiding the conclusion she had come to. Jolyne flicked through a page and shook her head.
“No, we were both sober by then. However, I’ve heard that certain sound frequencies can cause fear responses and hallucinations,” she said, trying to be uncharacteristically clinical. That was Dr. Kujo’s job.
Not Jojo’s.
She looked up and smiled hesitantly.
“But those are usually found in ‘haunted’ houses. Not in the backseat of a fifteen year old car.”
Hermès set the cup down and clenched her hands. If Jolyne laughs at her, she will deflate and hope that the remnants of her body float off this planet from embarrassment. God. Fuck.
“Jolyne I think we saw a mermaid,” Hermès finally spit out. Jolyne looked up, wordlessly. Her wide eyes bore into Hermès before slowly drifting upwards. Between them, two plates of achronological breakfast foods were set down by a waitress who had appeared sometime in the last five seconds. She sunk into her seat. I’ve done it. I’m That Person now , she thought to herself.
“Strawberry french toast with bacon,” the waitress announced. “And a two by-”
“We went to the aquarium!” Hermès blurted out, fake grin plastered across her face. “You know, the one in Tampa? Sometimes they have like, actors dressed as mermaids in the tanks. Yeah!?”
Jolyne’s mouth curved into a nervous smile, but the intensity in her eyes didn’t change. Her attempt to save face was only taking a nosedive into the crazyzone.
The waitress didn’t care. It was 2 am. It was always like this.
“Yeah. Sure. Enjoy your food,” The waitress said unceremoniously before swiftly leaving. She was getting a big apology tip, for sure.
Ignoring her pancakes, Hermès shriveled up into her seat. She buried her face into her jacket sleeve. We’ve bypassed the crazyzone straight into the shamezone.
“Hermès,” Jolyne said. She closed the textbook, using a sugar packet as a bookmark.
“God I’ve lost it. I’ve fucking lost it, Jojo,” Hermès croaked into her elbow. “I’ve become the kind of person who thinks mermaids are real. God why would I even say that,” her voice trembled. No way in hell jojo believed her.
What’s next, Hermès? You sucked off the Skunk Ape behind an Arby’s? Is it worth loving someone who believes in unicorns and fairies? She shrank herself down as much as she could. Butter dripped down her untouched pancakes.
“Hermès, babe ,” Jolyne said, more forcefully.
“I know the it was dark as fuck on the side of the road but whoever that was- whatever that was - she had gills and scales,” Hermès unfurled herself and braced her arms across the table. “And I think she fucking grew fins.”
Jolyne gently cupped one of her hand and gave it a squeeze. Her brow furrowed and lips curled into a goofy grin and one expression of puzzlement. There she is . Hermès’s head dropped. Her voice was low.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I didn’t want to say it out loud,” Jolyne spoke softly. “But you put into words exactly what I was thinking.”
Hermès snapped her head up in shock, her braids tousled.
“What!?”
Jolyne sandwiched her hand in her own.
“I saw that the way the skin on her glimmered and she was sticky like a hagfish,” she giggled. Her grin was wide but she was dead serious. Hermès relaxed and sank back into the pleather. Not alone.
“So...a mermaid?”
“Or some honest-to-god cryptid frog thing, babe.” Jojo put the book away and focused on her toast.
She was a unique one but of all the weirdos out in the swamp, Hermès was glad to have been swamped with Jojo. Her little quirks, from her wild hair to her insistence on stealing cutlery from chain restaurants, it was a weird blend of unrestrained energy. She had an intensity that seemed on par with whatever aura Hermès was told she exuded. Jojo was good at listening to her even when other people ( cough Annasui cough ) seemed to bore her to tears.
She was cute.
She unwrapped the provided bundle of silverware and slipped the cheap shitty knife into her backpack.
“Hermès I need to know what it was,” Jolyne chuckled before digging into her french toast. The cold sweat rushed back to Hermès and her heart sank into her stomach.
“Also I want my shoe back,” Jolyne added, revealing a foot that was clad in only a muddy sock.
“We’re not going back to Gwess’s,” She pleaded, but Jolyne just nodded at her, eyes mischievously wide and grinning madly.
An hour and a half earlier, Jolyne and Hermès had been at a house party hosted by Iris Gwess. Gwess was one of Jolyne’s classmates. They had been roommates in freshman year but had grown distant within the first three weeks of living together. Jolyne turned 21 before Gwess did, which resulted in the impish little woman using Jolyne as a booze mule before she could legally drink. The upside to this was that Jolyne would lie about how much money a fifth of fireball costs and would pocket the rest of the money. They maintained a formality of humoring each other’s college debauchery but were otherwise not friends when sober. Gwess’s house was often the host because she was renting with three or four other students and the living room and kitchen were just large enough that a small army of drunken college students wouldn't be constantly clamoring over each other to navigate the house. It was located just off the south end of GDSU campus, at the barrier between college town civilization ending and the swamps of the Everglades began. Heck, what constituted her back yard was more of an expanse of mud that occasionally was solid enough to stand on.
“Yeah dad, I’m fine. Yes I’m studying. I’m not lying. Ok, I am lying. You know I stay safe, right? If anyone tries anything I can kick their ass,” Jolyne tucked the phone between her cheek and shoulder as she went through the motions of a Poorly Timed Call from her father, who was not a fan of Thursday night partying.
Or anything else on dry land, really.
“How often do I skip Friday classes? Actually, don’t answer that. Love you too. Bye.” She hung up and slipped the phone back into her waistband. She was very glad that she didn’t take any of her father’s classes.
Jolyne passed Hermès some shots of bottom shelf vodka and the two played beer pong with an assortment of acquaintances. Despite the intoxication, Hermès could deliver a volley of flourishing tricks and Jolyne had a deadeye with accuracy. Neither frat bro nor grad student could trump the girlfriends, despite many a young man’s best efforts to explain their own game to them.
“I’m going to go get water, babe. Want me to bring you some?” Hermès offered, a few rounds of shots and games later.
“Yes please,” Jolyne accepted with a peck on the cheek. As Hermès snaked her way through the crowd, Jolyne stood by their undefeated end of the table.
“Excuse me,” said a shaky voice behind her. “Do you need a partner for beer pong?” Jolyne spun around to see a short, unassuming girl with otherwise vibrant green hair.
Atroe.
She didn’t know her first name, but she sat behind Jolyne in a few 100 level courses back in freshman year. Had it been anyone else and Jolyne would have ducked out, but something about the girl gave off the air of patheticism and deep down it would do more harm than good than to reject this total stranger at beer pong. She looked over at Hermès, who was engrossed in a conversation with her lab partner from last semester. Two drinks in hand. She looked back at Atroe, who’s expression was blank with a hint of disappointment. Ah, shit.
“Yes! Do you want to rack up the cups?” Jolyne accepted. Atroe looked at the table sheepishly before figuring out what she meant.
“Oh yeah I can do that.” There goes the evening’s winning streak.
Jolyne took the ping pong balls and washed them in the pitcher of water that sat on the table. Atroe re-formed the plastic solo cups into a triangle and refilled them with the same dirty water from the pitcher. Only once did accidentally mistake a game cup for her own cup of beer and it was somehow the nastiest thing she drank all semester.
A couple set up at the opposite end of the table, a gangly man in a white hat and a pastel, twee-looking woman Jolyne didn’t know. Probably some of Gwess’s friends. They set their drinks down, indicating that they were joining this round.
“Are you starting or are we?” Asked the woman. Jolyne clapped her hands together and grinned.
“I’ll give you the first throw, I’ve been hard to beat all night,” she said smugly. Atroe seemed at first to parse this with fear but relaxed a little when Jolyne gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. The couple looked at each other slyly.
“Oh, if we’re doing it like that, then-“ he threw the ball perfectly into the apex of the opponent’s rack. He struck a triumphant pose. Atroe gasped. “Your luck may have run out.”
First cup. No big deal. The woman threw her ball and that one, too, landed perfectly in the right hand side cup. Alright. A run for her money.
“Good job,” Jolyne said as she cleared the cups. The woman handed the ball to Atroe, who looked at Jolyne for instructions.
“Go ahead.”
Atroe took aim and threw the ball off the table. It landed on the floor with a plink! Before rolling away on the sticky floor.
“Aw shit,” Atroe said under her breath. The ping pong ball disappeared into a crowd of partygoers. It wouldn’t be worth getting your hands and fingers trampled underfoot of drunk college students. Jolyne produced another ping pong ball from a package nearby.
“It’s no big deal,” Jolyne mumbled. It was her turn now. She turned the ball over in her fingers. The angle was easy to calculate. If she threw it just so it would sail over into the apex cup and they’d be down only one point. She took a big sip from her beer, readied her shot and—
her eyes locked onto a shock of long pink hair over in the crowd of dancing partygoers.
“Oh FUCK ,” she spat, the ball tumbling from her fingers. It bounced onto the table before rolling off. The couple laughed. Jolyne’s blood went cold. Atroe scrambled to pick up the ball before it was lost again.
“Is something wrong?” She asked quietly. Jolyne instinctively tried to hide behind the much smaller woman, or at least make herself look unnoticeable.
“Fucking Annasui is here,” Jolyne hissed. She nearly crumpled her half full beer in hand. Atroe parsed this info with a sigh and a slightly furrowed brow.
“Weren’t you dating?” She said. This turned the heat on Jolyne’s cold blood back to boiling.
“Like fuck I’d ever date that creep!” Jolyne whisper-screamed. “Who told you that?!”
Atroe turned red and shrank.
“He did.”
“I have never been nor will I ever be with Annasui and he can’t pound that into his brain dead skull hard enough.”
Narciso Annasui was a tall, beautiful man with a creepy stare and the most unrelenting obsession for Jolyne which turned into outright nastiness to anyone and everyone she was friends with. They talked once at freshman orientation and to this day Dr. Kujo gets emails from him begging him to let his daughter date him. Annasui ignored all of Jolyne’s rejections and flat out refuses to acknowledge that she’s currently in a loving, long term relationship with her girlfriend Hermès. He had come up with a way to get as much face to face contact with Jolyne as possible just shy of legally stalking her. While he loved her with all his heart, Jolyne hated him with all her guts. And the way this was going, Annasui was one more rejection away from a life sentence.
Jolyne could hold her own, but there was safety in numbers. There was safety in Hermès.
She downed the rest of her beer.
“I’m going to have to duck out,” she told Atroe. “I’m sorry, I promise I’ll play with you another time.” She waved to the now-peeved couple on the other side and fled the scene.
Did I say something wrong? Atroe thought to herself, looking down at her cup. Figuring nobody else was willing to play with her, she forfeited the game. Atroe wandered over to the back door, slid it open, and stepped out into the marsh for some fresh air.
Over by Gwess’s makeshift bar, Hermès was becoming aware of the ballseyness of drunk young men again. She shouldn’t be surprised but Jesus Horseback-Riding Christ the creativity of the bored, stressed youth.
“... So he just has a crossbow?” she asked, still in disbelief.
“Yeah, he brought it here.” Gwess confirmed flatly.
“You mean the party!?”
“Well, yeah. Johngalli was fuckin’ pissed.”
Jolyne appeared beside Hermès and laid her head on her shoulder. She was hot to the touch and a little shaky. Hermès pressed a glass of water into her girlfriend’s hands.
“Here’s your water,” she said. Wordlessly, Jolyne tipped the glass to her mouth and took a long, smooth sip. Her face was red. Something was wrong.
“Babe are you ok?”
Jolyne wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, lime green lipstick smearing off to reveal her plush, pink lips. She glared over at Gwess, who had been idly sipping a cup of something as she recounted some dude named McQueen “borrowing” another dude named Johngalli’s crossbow it and shot it into the bog.
Did she mention that Johngalli is blind?
“He said he uses air currents or something to hunt but hey he can skeet shoot like nobody’s business,” Gwess droned. “I’ve seen it.”
Jolyne glared at Gwess.
“Were you the one who invited Annasui?” She stated accusingly. Gwess sneered. Hermès groaned at the mention of him. He never learns, does he?
“Of course not! I once sneezed during recitation and he called me a plagued rat.” She poured herself another cupful of bagged wine. Gwess was less of a rat and more like a noisy parrot but at least she knew when to keep her beef to herself.
“It doesn’t matter where he came from, it's that I’d rather not be here anymore,” Jolyne said as she wrapped her arms around Hermès, burying her face in her shoulder. Hermès kept her eyes peeled for the pink bastard but came up short.
“We could probably just leave out the back,” she suggested. Jolyne took Hermès by the hand and snaked her way through the crowd and through the door leading to the backyard.
It was a bit cooler out here, as the day’s heat faded into the Florida night. A couple of students stood under the porch light like stationary moths. Bottles in hand, they passed around a vape. The patio on which they stood transitioned bit by bit from chipped brick to mud to native saw grasses. Beyond the reeds, the pulsing glow of the party was swallowed completely by the swamp’s darkness. Behind them, a bassline thumped away into the wee hours and the handful of idlers chatted indistinctly.
“Are you in CompSci 210?”
“Yeah.”
“Which prof? Kakyoin?”
“No, Polnareff.”
“Fuckin’ Jean-Pierre? Rip in piss for you, dude.”
A few of the older students laughed at a joke Hermès didn’t understand, but every department has that One professor that nobody likes. Everyone in environmental biology seemed fairly level headed though. She liked that. What’s a joke she could make now?
Goosebumps creeped up her arms. Without thinking, she let go of her girlfriend’s hand and zipped her jacket up. Jolyne untied her plaid shirt from her waist and slipped it on, the deep wrinkles in the fabric projecting valleys on her stomach in the low light. Oh, to be in the flannel landscape beyond her mere scope of still-developing knowledge. What’s something impressive she could say?
“Hey Jojo,” Said Hermès.
“Yeah?” Jolyne replied.
“You know the Everglades is a really slow moving river?”
The two stood in their own silence for a moment as the wind rustled in the grass. Their lives continued behind them. Another burst of laughter from the programmers.
Finally Jolyne spoke.
“I think I heard about that a while ago, when I was in elementary school or something.”
“Yeah, it’s like, fifty miles across and goes all the way down to the ocean. But because the river is so big, the current is almost unnoticeable if you’re standing in it.”
“Then where does the water come from, ‘Mez?”
Hermès was trying her best to play it off cool, like she felt like she had to--always, all the time. But Jolyne asked, and Hermès knew that she cared. Her cheeks grew hot.
“Oh, when it rains, the water drains into Lake Okeechobee. When it gets full, it spills over into the river of grass.” She drew from a prepackaged speech from her freshman year environmental bio class.
“And we’re standing there now.”
“Yep.”
There are times where you find yourself just wanting to share something that brings you joy. It spills over and makes you happy that you are a solid being, otherwise they’d have to clean you up with a mop. And sometimes it's merely shooting the breeze with your best friend. Your girlfriend . Your lover. Being still together and sharing a thought. What brings you joy.
Jolyne’s fingers brushed her hand and good lord did she hold on .
Jojo leaned into Hermès’s shoulder and whispered.
“Hey can I-” The question was obvious. So was the answer.
“Yes, please.”
Jolyne leaned in further, gently cupped Hermès’s cheek, and kissed her.
They say that when you have a passionate kiss that time stands still. To Hermès, it doesn’t feel like time stands still, but it certainly feels like time doesn’t matter.
She didn’t know what she was supposed to think. But here she was. And she and Jolyne were on the same wavelength and she was glad to just be here with her.
Her lips were soft. She tasted like cherry lip gloss. The grass rustled. Jolyne’s hand slid down from her face and rested on her lower back. The grass rustled. She pulled in closer. Hermès fingers caressed her head. Something groaned.
No.
Something cried. The grass rustled.
Jolyne pulled away, half curious and half afraid.
“What was that?” She said. Something cried. Someone was sobbing. The grass rustled. A hand of fear gripped Hermès’s heart. The goosebumps returned. She held her breath.
“Jojo is that an alligator?” Hermès froze. Jolyne hesitated for a second.
“I don’t think so. It sounds like a person,” Jolyne said, faltering.
She waded into the mire. Muck sank into her shoes, and with every step the mud released them with a wet shlorp . The grass rustled.
“Hello?” she called out.
A human knee jutted out from the brush, pale and slick. Jolyne sprang forward, parting the sawgrass with her hands. Before her, half sunk in the mire, was a woman. She was small, naked, and slicked with sweat, but most chilling was her unmistakable green hair. Atroe lay half conscious in the water.
“Holy fuck-” Jolyne blurted. She knelt down, afraid to touch her. “Atroe! Are you ok?”
Hermès scrambled into the swamp, nearly falling in. Oh god. Atroe’s lids fluttered, hot tears running down her face. She wept, drawing up a hand and pressing it to her side, still submerged.
The answer was obvious and the answer was no. Hermès dug around for her car keys. Jolyne turned to Hermès, panic stricken.
“Help me get her up!” she shouted. Hermès nodded at the ready.
The two plunged their arms into the water, lifting the injured woman from underneath her shoulders. The pond scum clung to Atroe, making her slimy and difficult to grasp. Hermès and Jolyne steadied the woman to her feet. She was still crying. They feared what had happened here, out in the dark.
“Jojo we need to take her to the hospital,” Hermès decided. Jolyne slipped off her flannel shirt and draped it over Atroe for modesty.
“Th-tth-thhankssss-” she struggled to whisper. Jolyne helped one arm into the sleeve, but Atroe wouldn’t budge with the other hand, pressed firmly into her side.
“Come on, we got you,” Jolyne spoke softly, in an attempt to comfort her. She gently touched Atroe’s gripped hand, but it brushed a long, slender object instead. A yelp let loose from her mouth. Atroe winced in pain.
“What the-”
Hermès dug around for her phone and shined its flashlight on the two women. Atroe reeled and covered her now-blinded eyes with her free arm. She wasn’t slick with mud, but with blood.
An arrow—
No
—a crossbow bolt was sunk into the side of her stomach. Her hand was in a death-grip at the wound, fiercely preventing dark red blood from oozing any further through her fingers. Jolyne’s eyes locked on her girlfriend.
“Hospital.” was all she said.
Hermès dug for her keys and sprinted to the driveway. In a rush of adrenaline, Jolyne lifted Atroe bridal-style into her arms and ran after Hermès. As gingerly as she could, she sprang from the mire. A flood of cold water soaked her foot. The next step was uncomfortably wetter than previously. One of her shoes was surrendered to the swamp.
“God dammit,” she hissed, padding to the car.
Jolyne was now down one pair of Vans slip-ons. She knew she should have invested in shoelaces.
Ultimately, that was not the concern now. Though she and Atroe were not friends, something had happened to her and she needs to make sure this girl is safe. Jolyne and Hermès have each other, but she doubted Atroe had anyone. And she knew she couldn’t sleep at night if she let the last person she talked to slip into injustice.
Jolyne didn’t know if she would be relieved or deeply disturbed on how nobody noticed or cared she was holding a bloodied Atroe in a social event, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to let anyone stop her. A pair of headlights flashed on in the distance.
Hermès backed the car out of the driveway and into the street.
It would be easier to just go around Gwess’s house rather than through it as that would:
- Make it the most direct path to Hermès’s 2003 Honda Accord.
- Minimize the likeliness she will step on broken glass in her half barefoot state, as this is a college party and college students love breaking bottles.
- Prevent all chance of coming into contact with the human plague known as Annasui.
All of these goals were successful, as she flung open the door to the sedan and lowered the girl into the backseat.
“I’m going to sit with you, is that ok?” Jolyne asked. Atroe’s eyes struggled to focus.
“Y-yesss,” she whispered. Jolyne slid into the backseat and held her on her lap. Hermès put the car into drive and pulled out onto the road. In the darkness, the only things she could see were the reflectors on the road and the bright shine from street signs as they caught the headlights. Thank the lack of permanent taxpayers in the college town of West Lucie for the crumbling infrastructure.
“I’m going to the hospital on Carriage street,” Hermès stated. She didn’t know what else to do in this situation, and it seemed like putting on the radio would be a Bad Idea somehow. She’d rather not go to that hospital, but it was the only one she had known of. Hermès was certainly familiar with it, between broken bones in her left hand and twelve stitches on her forehead but the last time, seeing her at the morgue....
The sedan hit a pothole.
Atroe screamed in pain. Hermès jolted back to earth.
“I’m sorry!” She shouted in earnest, “Jojo, is she alright?”
“Fuck!” Jolyne swore, “Be careful!”
In the backseat, Atroe writhed in Jolyne’s arms. Her sobbing got louder, evidently the sudden bump in the road hit the foreign object sticking out of her side. Jolyne was no medical expert but there was no way a crossbow bolt was good for your internal organs. Her breathing strained. Oh god . Thick droplets of sweat beaded her forehead. Jolyne wiped Atroe’s forehead with the corner of her shirt. She was drenched but what caught Jolyne’s attention was how viscous it was.
Whatever Atroe’s face was slick was, it clung to her shirt like snot on a tissue.
“What in the…?” she said to nobody in particular. Blood oozed between Atroe’s fingers, but it was thick and globby. Jolyne held her hand over the wound.
“Here let me hold that,” she said, but Atroe slapped her hand away.
“Nnnno,” she gasped.
“If I don’t put pressure on it, you’ll bleed out,” Jolyne said, trying to draw knowledge on crime shows she’d leave on in the background while studying. She firmly held her hand over the wound, at the base of the arrow. She tried her best not to brush the shaft. Jolyne turned on the light in the back seat.
“I can’t see!” Hermès yelled, more annoyed than in danger.
Atroe yelped at the sudden light, but Jolyne could better see the state she was in. She was clearly alive but better resembled a corpse slathered in vaseline. Her face -- no -- her whole body was inhumanly pale. Dark veins ran around her eyes, but no color was in her face. Her green hair was plastered to her face. Atroe’s chest heaved. However most concerning was the sudden appearance of thick, deep slits in her neck, that fluttered with each exaggerated breath she loudly drew.
Jolyne withdrew her hand. Underneath, surrounding the wound, the skin had turned an iridescent steel gray, which bloomed out from the laceration like spidery tendrils across her skin.
Jolyne looked down at her hand, which was now dripping in the mucousy sweat and blood discharged from the injury. Little flecks of gray skin peppered the mixture.
Fish scales.
Jolyne gasped.
“What in the fuck-”
Atroe kicked her into the door. She scrambled to the other end of the backseat, bloodshot eyes wide with fear.
“Guh-Get-GET AWAY F-FFROM MEEE!” Atroe screamed. Her free hand grasped at the handle of the car door, desperately pulling on it. Hermès slowed down.
“What the fuck is going on back there?!” She yelled, still focused on the road.
Atroe yanked the bolt out of her stomach, splattering the backseat with goopy blood. She screamed in agony, her skin bloomed into iridescent gray before returning to any human skin tone. She threw the bolt aside and clawed at the door.
“GET AWAY FROM ME!” Atroe yelled again, before finally finding the child safety lock and flinging the door open.
Jolyne dove after her, but she had already tumbled onto the road. Hermès slammed the brakes, flinging the two remaining women forward. Jolyne sprang from the seat and practically fell out of the car, too. But instead of seeing a young woman become roadkill, she witnessed a drenched, mostly naked Atroe half-sprint, half-limp to a drainage ditch by the side of the road.
She lept in and vanished in the sawgrass.
Hermès parked the car and ran over to the shoulder.
“Atroe!” She called out, but nothing answered. Panic filled her chest and gripped her by the lungs. “ What the fuck? What the fuck? ” was all she could say. Jolyne was stunned.
“Hermès?” She finally croaked out.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t think that was Atroe.”
Once, when Jolyne was still in elementary school, her dad brought her to work at the department laboratory. He was, and still is, a professor of marine biology at Green Dolphin State University. All of the tanks had some form of obvious life in them, like corals or fish. There was one big tank that looked like it had only rocks in it.
“Help me feed this one,” Dr. Jotaro Kujo said, nodding to the seemingly empty tank. She tugged on her dad’s white lab coat.
“But it doesn’t have anything in it,” she pouted. Wordlessly, he produced a tub of fish food scooped a small amount into her hand. He lifted Jolyne up to the top of the tank and opened the lid.
“Just sprinkle it in,” he said.
Jolyne threw her fistfull of shrimp bits into the water, but as they drifted down, one of the rocks sprang to life. In a flash, its skin changed from lumpy gray to vibrant blue. It uncurled its tendrils and darted upwards, obliterating all traces of food.
“This is a giant cuttlefish, Jolyne,” introduced her dad. “They’re like real-life shapeshifters.”