The Lochtopus Monster
They stand by the water of the wave pool, staring as the
shallow tide slides through their toes. The little girl in the one-piece
swimsuit wades forward. One foot splashing the water like ice chipping from a climber’s
cleat.
And then the rest of them dissolve.
There is something bulbous rising in the water. Swimming
rapidly forward with torpedo speed. Static absorbs like an orb around the
little girl in the one-piece swimsuit. She is desolate in her bubble, her ears
bursting to emptiness. She can feel the surge of the oncoming water, how the
thin lines of the tide have gotten stronger and shifted from low to high.
Surging onward, a plastic orange head with cancer spots juts
out of the water like jetsam from a shipwreck. She thinks the thing in the
water must be stranded, could be hurt, but she does not move a muscle, and
cannot. The head plunges down and a stringy, spongy tentacle whips through the
air. The tentacle suctions to her ankle and pulls.
The sphere around her breaks, dissolving into the stream.
There is a child size bathing cap on the shore as the rest
of them return to the wave pool. Her father reaches to grab it. But the tentacle
is faster.
The tentacle snatches it down, down to the depths of its
garden.
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