The Lone Whale

One day the earth trembled and shuddered, tore itself open and swallowed up a little girl.

My daughter.

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"Mom, what is that?"

"That, sweet darling, is the ocean."

Iris looked at me. Sometimes I saw her in those eyes, but I dare not think about her. If I did I might walk into the depths before me and bury my head beneath the surface until I died choking on salt and water. In those last, gasping moments I like to think that I would picture tucking the hair behind her ear as I whispered “I love you”. Were I afforded a measure of peace in this life, I could be content in my last moments.

But I do not walk into the depths. My daughter is gone, but I have another: Iris, named after those moments when she looked at me and my body convulsed with pain and grief. When I first saw Iris I swore to the Earth that it would never claim her. I held her in my arms and mourned a soulful song, like the lonely whale sailing through the deep.

Together we stared at the endless tide. Crests of churning white water danced across the black, glossy surface like bleached bones sticking up out of a field of ash. I steadied myself. Closed my eyes and imagined, for a moment, a blissfully sunny day where families threw towels on white sands and laughed into the ocean breeze.

I opened my eyes and Iris was standing at the edge of the surf. Visions of her floating, bloated corpse infected my mind. I carried this disease everywhere I went. If I looked at her while driving I saw a shattered windshield ripping her skin apart. If she ran ahead of me on the sidewalk I saw myself turning the corner and seeing her skull bashed in, brain matter splayed across the concrete. When you don't know, when you can't be sure, then any death is possible. The floating corpse; is that what happened to her? Dying wet and cold and screaming into the depths for me?

Iris turned around, and I knew the question before it fell before me.

“Mommy, can we stay?”

How could I say no to those eyes?

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We took the years the rising and setting sun gave to us and built our life on those deserted shores. I found a place so close to the water that we could step outside and feel the sand on our feet. It was perfect; a secluded cabin tucked away at the end of the beach, a forest creeping up one side and the crushing surf on the other.

I often felt as the house must have: a lone figure caught between the invasive growth of nature and the erosion of time and gravity. Though Iris was always with me, I could never shake the feeling that somehow we would both be better off if one day I walked out the door and joined the other lost, wandering souls. Iris would forget my name, my face, my hands as they tucked her hair behind her ear.

Then she would laugh, or cry, or call my name and a warm, smothering sensation would envelop me. Iris was there, right in front of me. The Earth had not swallowed her up. All thoughts of leaving would roll out like the tides, and for a time we would be happy.

Until he found her.

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When we first settled, whenever people came to the beach I would close the blinds and keep Iris inside. I kept finding her trampled on the sand, crushed by the swarming masses invading our beach. I watched her sucked beneath the surface by a raging torrent of arms and legs as I flailed around hopelessly, begging the ocean to release her. But as time passed I grew to find a level of peace and comfort I had not known since before she was taken.

The day that he came felt different from the moment I opened my eyes. She was standing there….no, it was Iris, standing at the foot of my bed with her favourite beach towel in one hand and a red plastic pail and shovel in the other. I always said no, not when people are out there, but there was something about the way Iris was looking at me that made me waver. I dared to hope that maybe it was safe, that mercy had made its home on our shores and granted us a life that we could enjoy, free of the burdens that weighed me down with every step I took outside.

“Okay,” I said. “Let's go.”

She squealed with delight the whole way out the door and onto the sand. I couldn't help but smile. The action felt foreign, like my face had been split apart by a rusty hatchet.

I could see in the distance an uncomfortable amount of people, but I allowed myself to breathe. No one would come this far. I sat on the sand and watched Iris build something in the surf. I wanted to tell her to stop, to warn her that the water would swallow it up; it was an living, unrelenting organism that did not care if she was sweet and kind and beautiful. But the calming sound of the rolling waves and the warm midday sun proved to be my downfall.

I fell asleep.

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I was in pain. She called out to me, screaming. I tried to reach out, but my hair was caught. My scalp began to rip away. I could hear skin and tissue tear apart, and as blood began to pour into my eyes I woke up. Iris was tugging at my hair and visibly upset.

“Mommy, who was that man?”

I bolted upright. I looked in every direction but no one was around us. Picking Iris up into my arms, I asked her what happened, but she put her head into my shoulder and cried. I started to stroke her hair when I heard a harsh snapping sound. I saw Iris’s leg break apart. Shaking my head and willing the vision to leave me, I whirled around and I knew. Someone was in the forest, breaking twigs apart with heavy boots.

Heavy boots that had made prints in the sand.

We ran inside and bolted the door. What else could I do? Even if I wanted to call the police, they would do nothing. They did nothing. When the parasitic journalists had scurried away she became a file, stored away, never to see the light of day again.

Then I stopped myself from tumbling off the cliff. If someone was walking around, what did that really mean? The beach, the forest behind our house: they were public areas. So what if someone came walking through?

I put Iris down and looked into her eyes. No, not you; I want to talk to Iris.

“Sweetheart, tell Mommy what happened. Did the man talk to you?”

She nodded her head slowly.

“What did he ask you?”

“He...he wanted to know my name.”

My stomach dropped. An icy finger scraped down my spine.

“Did you say anything to him?

Through the tears in her eyes, I saw something change. It was a flicker, an almost imperceptible motion. But it was there. I felt as though the sand beneath us shifted, that the Earth was ready to open up and swallow us whole.

“No,” she said.

For the first time in our lives, Iris lied to me.

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I was paddling through a current, a swift riptide that threatened to suck me down and suffocate me. We stayed inside for weeks afterwards but her incessant whining and crying broke me. I only allowed her to go outside early in the morning when the beach was deserted. But every time she was out there I felt a sickness, a smothering darkness that crawled up my legs and brought me to my knees. Someone was out there, in the forest, watching us. If only I could see them, know for sure they were real, then we could leave. A nagging tick in my brain kept me from grabbing Iris right then and there and escaping this life, starting anew. It was paranoia; an unrelenting notion that at the end of the day I was not sure I could trust myself.

Nights became interminable. Sometimes I heard voices coming from Iris’s room. Once I burst through the door expecting to see a man hunched over her bed, sharp teeth glinting in the moonlight, but I only frightened Iris. As I hugged her, I felt the air in the room shift. My body froze when I saw the curtain billowing in front of the open window. The window I closed after I tucked Iris into bed.

“Did you open the window Iris?”

She shook her head vigorously, and I knew she was telling the truth. I looked around and saw things had been moved around. Picture frames had shifted. A book lay on its side. Her hairbrush was in a different spot. And it was clean.

Someone had taken her hair.

I did not put it together then. I should have known, should have seen what was coming. But the pull of Iris was too strong. She was the moon and I was the tide, completely at the mercy of her gravity.

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I died the day my daughter walked out of our house and into the void. I was reborn when I saw Iris for the first time.

I died again on a day that began like any other. Iris stomped around in her bathing suit, pouting and crying until I gave in. We walked out onto the shore and I scanned the horizon. The beach was empty. The forest behind was calm, deep in an ancient slumber.

I was in the eye of the storm.

Iris turned around and waved, but not at me. She was waving to the man behind me. I smelt him before I saw him, a sweltering waft of sweat and pain and anger. He was standing fifty yards away on the beach, swaying like a dead corn stalk in a soft breeze. A cool mist had formed where the water still soaked into the sand, blurring his features. I sensed his presence more than anything; more than the ever-eroding waves crashing against the cliffs, more than the squawking cry of a lone seagull overhead.

As he started walking towards me, I glimpsed gaunt features, wiry sinew that rippled across his legs. I did not need to see his face to know who we was, and I trembled, felt a roaring, rumbling quake that quivered and groaned. I took my last look at Iris and tried to imagine our lifetimes, to watch as the whole world blossom around her. But in her eyes there was a void. She knew who I was. Knew what I was.

I ran.

I ran from the man whose daughter I stole. Iris, her chubby legs shaking the wooden bench with excitement as the man in a dark, clean-cut suit ignored her. His soul, drained from the technologies that ruled his life, taking for granted his most precious tether to the world. When I lost her I lost my tether. I was a decaying branch, clinging to its mother like an arm cut down to the bone at the elbow. As I snatched her away I felt the tether form once more.

“Hi beautiful. I’ll be your Mommy now.”

As I trample fallen leaves on the forest bed, I can hear the sound of rotating blades in the air above me. Sirens, strange and haunting in this place, converge on the house. I feel a shudder tear through the sea air I have left behind. I lost her. I have lost Iris.

I will not lose another.