Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 178
Taryn didn’t open the book or seem to recoil from it in disgust, he sat it down on the ground and picked up the parcel he came with and held it out. He looked…expectant, which was as close as Felecia ever saw Taryn get to looking happy.
Felecia stood up and took the parcel. She didn’t need to unwrap it; the bottom was damp and she could smell it. A show was made of unwrapping and acting surprised anyway.
“Wish I’d a caught it, but the trade was fair.”
Felecia smiled and demurred as much as she cared too, a striped bass the length of her forearm was already gutted and ready to be skewered and turned over the fire.
Fish was a once-a-week meal at Rotary house, usually some offering from the villagers or early on something bought in town. Felecia hated that ritual dinner. The fish was always well cooked, Elle knew how to cook fish as well as anything else. Bass or flounder or cod rubbed with rosemary or dill, drizzled with butter or sauces made from heavy creams.
Felecia hated fish, she would eat only as much as she was required to and often as not would vomit it up later. It wasn’t the taste or the sudden lack of skill on the behalf of the household cook, it was the requirement. Felecia didn’t like fish but was made to eat it anyway, Nana knew she didn’t like it and that was the point of serving it.
That was before her time in the village, in the woods, before the swamps. Felecia had learned to accept eating fish just as she had learned to accept eating almost anything.
They sat in silence for the most part, as the fish cooked, Felecia asked after Phillip and got told the basics of another day spent with an old man whose mind was slowly slipping away. Taryn thought of asking again about what the bother was that morning but shifted his questions to how the animals were doing.
Felecia waited until they were eating before she tried to explain once more just how damaged she was, how impossible things were for and around her. “I wasn’t kidding about that book, that thing is just one small part of a large insane tapestry. There is a massive animal out in the bay, I’ve seen it, and heard it. Jacqueline worshipped it like a God, I’ve had its voice inside my head before. That was what this morning was about, I’m mad, Taryn. Just as insane as the rest of my family.”
The youth was busy pulling pinches of meat off the fish and driving them into his mouth.
Felecia had come to grips long ago that like most villagers, Taryn wasn’t very bright. She hated thinking that way, much less expressing it in the way she thought about or treated others. They had no books, no schools. The villagers were only slightly more intelligent than the animals that Felecia kept, and some weren’t even that bright. That reality didn’t make them less than her, but it made exploring or explaining complex issues nearly impossible.
“Do you know what I’m saying?”
Taryn only grunted and kept picking at the fish.
“I’m insane, I’m going to end up like Phillip, your Pa, only probably worse.”
Another grunt and a lazy wipe of a greasy hand over already filthy pants.
“I have to leave, Taryn. I have to go back to the swamp or deeper into the forest or somewhere else where I can’t hurt other people. I have to leave before I hurt you or Phillip.”
Taryn didn’t grunt or get that hang dog look he got most of the time when talking to Felecia. He didn’t start looking for some invisible spot on the ground either.
“Eyes, teeth, slimy limbs. Dozens, hundreds, thousands.”
Taryn practically mumbled the words in a solemn way that Felecia had never heard the youth speak before, and just like that he was back to pinching meat into his mouth.
“Have you seen it?”
Taryn grunted noncommittally and reached out for another piece of fish.
Felecia found herself standing up, she didn’t want to ruin what Taryn was trying to do but his usual lack of concern wasn’t going to cut it. If Taryn knew about the thing out in the waves, why didn’t he say something sooner? If he knew about it what else did he know? Was the monster controlling him like it had controlled Phillip for a short spell of time?
Felecia closed on him until she stood over him, between him and the fire, between him and another pinch of fish meat.
“Taryn, have you seen it?”
Taryn only shrugged and looked down at the book where he had left it since Felecia handed it to him. “Just stories, what’s told to kids to keep ‘em in bed at night.”
Felecia got even closer and Taryn started to shy away. “No one in the village ever mentioned stories told to children. Certainly not stories about that monster.”
Taryn looked scared at first, as though he wasn’t sure what Felecia might do, then he relaxed his shoulders and tried to grin, the expression looked grim and menacing on his face. “Them villagers always knew you was a Conway, you coulda said the sky was green and they’da nodded.”
Felecia reached out and took one of Taryn’s greasy hands in hers and squeezed, not enough to cause pain but surely enough to get the attention she felt she needed. “Have you, seen it?”
Taryn stopped trying to grin and squeezed Felecia’s hand just as hard. “What does that matter?”
“It matters to me, I thought it was dead, if it isn’t then perhaps, I’m not quite as lost as I thought, or worse, maybe the creature is still controlling things.”
Taryn looked away and stopped trying to match Felecia’s ferocious grip, “I ain’t seen it since I was little, caught a glimpse once by the village beach…”
Felecia tried stepping back and pulling her hand away but Taryn kept her hand gripped in his so she said her piece and spoke over him. “Then maybe its really gone, and I am insane.”
“Pa ain’t got much longer. He’s always asleep, or saying he’s in pain when he ain’t. When its over, when he’s gone, come to town with me.”
For the first time that day Felecia wasn’t thinking about the monster out in the waves or her own precarious sanity. Suddenly there was something else in the foreground, something so absurd that it forced Felecia to fight back laughter.
The urge to laugh grew quick and became such a force that Felecia yanked her hand away from Taryn and drove it over her mouth so hard tears formed in her eyes.
Taryn stood up and took Felecia’s other hand, “Newport then, fuck it, Providence even. I could work the docks, get one of them fancy oil cloth suits for weekends out, give you a proper house to keep.”
Felecia was trying so hard, she likely split the side of her mouth slapping it so hard and yet the youth kept pounding on, the absurdity and absolution of them together in some metropolitan place forced her hand, literally.
The cackle started and Felecia pushed her hand into her mouth until it hurt but that didn’t do it, she started laughing through her hand and gave a thought at trying to force herself to start coughing. Surely a coughing fit wouldn’t be seen as cruel. Then Taryn got that expectant look in his eyes again and the game was over.
Felecia started laughing and her hand came away with a spot of blood on it, she had split the corner of her mouth but that was the least of her worries. The laugh wasn’t because of surprise or shock, there would be no playing it off later as anything but what it was, laughing at the expense of someone who made the best/worst joke possible at just the right time.
Taryn stopped looking expectant and as the waves of cruelty hit him his shoulders slumped and he let go of Felecia’s hand. He waited for a few moments to get a word in, to say goodnight and bow out with what grace was left but the laughter kept coming in waves that Felecia couldn’t control.
When she finally managed a few words through the waves of venomous laughter she punctuated it with a form of honest cruelty she didn’t know she was capable of. “Right, the two Sapphics, surely to be welcomed at every dinner and show on main street. The unkempt sexual deviant and the insane freak with the sewn-up face and scales. Societies elite will line up to pay a nickel to watch us perform at the circus!”