Perhaps she’d drowned.
Perhaps an accident. Knew it wasn’t.
I motored further, crunching the bow into the sand, and found three wallowing near the shore. All dead, drowned or strangled or poisoned, what did it matter how it had been done?
I heard him walk up behind me as I stood staring, mind blown by grief.
“What did you do?” I choked, blinded by tears.
“This is the suffering.”
“What did you do?” I demanded, if quietly.
“They volunteered, as you will. Recorded a video, wrote their little notes, and walked into the sea.”
“I won’t.”
But I was lying, wasn’t I.
“Tsk. You’ll do whatever I ask. You know that.” He put his hands to my shoulders. “Go out there and talk to them. Don’t kill yourself. See what you’ve done, this night.”
The cruelest thing he could have asked me to do, was this.
I couldn’t say no. Of course I couldn’t. I waded out and kneeled in the small surf, among the bodies. The sting from my wounds faded in, out.
There were five in all. All of the girls were gone.
They washed against me.
Trailing hands, swimming hair.
Mouths sucking on my skin as their faces rubbed past my thighs.
Suffering, it was this.
The young girl mocked me most.
Small fish nibbled on them, scales flashing in light.
Crabs found the fingers of the one who strayed closest, her eaten hand delicately feeling the sand on the bottom. Loosened pieces of her skin eroded and washed away, drifting in the froth and eddies.
What did you do, Red?
I wept forever. Though warm and soft, the ocean drained everything of use from me, my hard-fought righteousness, my worth, my sanity, and left me empty.
And he came and took something from inside me, from my head, rummaged inside me and took.
“There. Wasn’t hard. I have my answer now, broken girl. My extra broken girl.”
He kissed my nape and swept me up. Water dribbled and dripped from my swaying arm and hand. Down below were his feet and sand. I spewed water and watched it fall away in a trail as we walked.
Upside down, I watched the girls get further and further away then I shut out the world.
Warmth.
His eyes bored in from above and fingers hooked at my mouth, probing teeth, tongue. “Don’t die on me, Red. I can make more of you but I like you. A lot.”
Then he wrapped me in blankets on the floor. Cocooned in pain.