Portals

The steam from the boiling water made the kitchen warm, which was made warmer still if I'd gaze through the glass window above the sink through to a mild autumn storm.

Instead, I avoided this by adjusting my stare on the cooling eggs that bobbed betwixt ice squares. But what had briskly whisked the warmth from mine flesh were the footfalls coming down the stairs.

From the stairwell, a man taller than myself loped all too casually and good-natured compared to his ever-expressionless face into the kitchen, where I stood with my heart seizing and rapidly squeezing its grasp for a non-existent brace.

Yet, still, with steady hands, I tapped upon the countertop to crack and begin to peel them first, a still steamy egg as another shuffle echoed from the stairs, heralding a far fairer leg.

The man's coffee-ground irises firmly forced upon mine a holding, a secret and silent grapple, and he took an all-too-slow bite from the hardboiled egg I'd given him like an apple.

He bade me in a voice unnatural, "Fetch mine coat, whichever you feel to be most casual."

My armpits were damp, and I smelled bad enough, and the sweat of relief expounded this issue when I realized the egg was well-cooked, and things wouldn't get rough.

As I'd led him to the foyer, his presence loomed, with unmistakable hotness, closer than he'd walked. The feminine descent we'd heard moments ago awaited us in the body of a woman who would, or could, never talk.

Her predatorial eyes cracked their focus so violently upon me on my arrival that I felt an agony seize my mind. Her demeanor remained ever-smooth, collected, and kind.

This would be the first time the couple would leave and be genuinely gone, presumably overnight and out of town. And this would be the last night I'd have the opportunity to make sure I don't stay here, even if I must drown.

As I slid the jacket upon the man's well-equipped, solid frame, that thought had waddled its fat way around my mind's rind; I thought I'd seen the woman's face with her still-steady, laser-focused stare shift to be slightly less kind.

I'd wandered about the boardwalk for a couple of hours, much too long a time here, and realized there were no in or out-of-towners.

The few things I'd had on me when I'd arrived had long since been taken or lost; before I had known this place was otherwise uninhibited, I assumed they'd been hocked.

When the wall next to me, to my right and further ahead, as I'd taken a shortcut through a narrow alley, erupted with force so great the wall to my left collapsed in on itself, I couldn't stop my body from soiling my remaining dignity.

The creature stood just a foot, maybe two, lower than most of the shop's rooftops in the area. Its bulk of what I could only assume to be muscle was as white as the snows of Siberia.

I had no time to react as its malleted fist crushed the cement before my feet. Adrenaline, or maybe even the grace of some god of this tragic plane, propelled me in a sprawling crawl as the cascading debris cut and bruised me, and I fell into the open street.

My sister was right - I was going to die here. Her refusal to help me cross over was laced with fury, threats, and tears.

Memories I couldn't afford to think of right now. Memories that cloud my judgment when I have to decide whether to leap left or right, try and fight it off and find out how this thing kills its prey, or off the dock and succumb to the ocean's plow?

It could be the water in my lungs flooding my brain with panic, but could that be a shadow of something hydrodynamic? A fish with what seems to have my eyes, my hair, my stare, under me and on the rise?

My veins, electrified by the process of dying and her hug's gentle squeeze, scream as I flounder my limbs around her, begging her to release me.

The magnificent stone, the color of neon periwinkle and persimmons she gingerly forces into my maw, is absolutely mesmerizing. She begins singing.

I heard the splash of what I could only assume was the white, violent creature that continued its pursuit. The mermaid that looked exactly like me stared through my eyes and into my soul's roots. 

With a flicker of brilliant light, the ocean and its resident mermaid mimic had gone. The pier, the monster, the couple - everything is replaced with a field of russet grass that seems to bow only to the feet of rust-bleeding dawn.