by Kim Foster
"Did you ever think you could raise a child murderer?" Botany asked, sticking her microphone in his face, but the question was too much, too pointed.
"No more, please, no more," his mother said, bursting into a fireworks display of tears and moans. She put her hand up to the camera. Portland put his arm around her and shuttled her away.
Then Botany looked straight into the camera.
"I'll be talking to the parents of Josie Brown later, but first, our 10 things to look for if you think your child might be a serial killer."
Then, Botany smiled, "And now, back to the studio, Dan."
Emerald was right next to Josie, feeling his weight.
"Don't think about this," she said, encouragingly.
"It's not over yet."
But Josie sensed it was. The kids were not in the crab pot. He could see it from where he was standing. The pot was sitting there, torn up, pulled off the wall, empty.
If they didn't find the kids before Bangkok got there, he knew he wouldn't be strong enough to fight him, or save them. And the kids would die.
"We have to look for them," he shouted, and started through the shop.
"They have to be here somewhere."
The three of them tore off through the shop, upending displays and looking behind counters, under shelves, anywhere two kids could be stashed.
"They aren't here," Rasha said, meeting Josie and Emerald in the middle of the market, after they had looked in every possible crack and crevice.
"We aren't going to find them, are we?" she asked, her eyes filling with tears. She was sure of it now - she wasn't going to see her brother again.
"I'll find him," Josie said, his eyes as sure and as confident as he could muster.
"I'll find both of them," he said, and he meant it, he wouldn't stop until he found them.
"But, but...how?" Rasha wanted facts, a plan, a way out.
He knew he couldn't explain how or what would happen next, but he was going to get those kids back or die trying.
"I will. I will find them."
Bacon started barking furiously.
And that's when the black discarded cloth next to the cheese case started to move. It squirmed at first, wiggled, and then, rose up as if it were a towering black bear reared up on its haunches. The three of them screamed, and Bacon barked ferociously, attacking the creature at its ankles. The creature moved toward them. It's arms long and outstretched, trying to tackle them, grab them, eat them.
The creature kicked at Bacon, but he persisted. He bit its ankles, and growled and snarled, and bit the black cloth until he had bitten a hole, and then using his paw, pulled the black cloth off the creature.
They all gasped.
Grotty Greg. With his iPhone camera trained right on them.
"Gotcha!" said Grotty.
Emerald rolled her eyes. "Got what?"
"You don't know anything," Rasha said, "And you are stopping us from finding my brother and Trinket, so get out of here, creep."
"He's going to save your brother because he's the one who took him," Greg said, his voice flaring like hot steel and pointing at Josie.
"Where'd you stash the kids, Baby Killer?
"Greg, you need to get out of here, " Josie said.
He felt his head and thoughts grow dense and he knew Bangkok was close, so close. He felt the hunger again, the kids, the monster wanted the kids so bad.
But this time, Josie could see that Bangkok knew where the kids were, and how to get to them. He saw them in his minds eye, the kids terrified, wide-eyed, shrieking, but encased in something.
Josie closed his eyes and tried to delve into his mind harder. That was tricky, he knew. There was a point where he couldn't bring himself back. Where Bangkok would take over and take him. He didn't care. He focused harder, went deeper and deeper into his brain to see where they were.
They were in a tank. A fish tank?...No, no a lobster tank. The one in the back of the shop. The big one in the shop room that they use to hold the lobsters before putting them out in the market.
It was working. He pushed his mind harder, and fell, almost through a hole in his brain, falling, falling, tumbling down, until he saw them. In the back of the shop, in the lobster tank.
And there was water streaming in, rancid, dead sea water, streaming, and soon it would fill the tank and they would both drown. Trinket was a wreck, withering into the corner, coughing out the water, as it slopped and splashed around her. Musa was fighting. He was old enough to know that he wouldn't be able to breathe when the water reached the top, so he pounded the cover of the tank trying to wedge it open.
They were terrified, cold, their lips purple, their eyes searching frantically.
Josie had to tell Emerald and Rasha. He tried to climb out of the hole in his brain, fight the smog, come back to them. But Bangkok was on him, slithering through his brain, kicking him back to the murkiness, pulling him down, down.
Josie summoned all his strength, pulled it in from the core of his belly, thought of Teta, her words like a prayer his head. Not her exactly - she was gone - but remembering her grounded him. He imagined her there, talking him through it, that warm, soft, low voice, a whisper of Arabic, a swirl of her magic.
He fought back from under the murk that swallowed him like ocean. He pulled at the monster, and pushed against him, harder and up, harder and up, swimming up through all the confusion, until he saw light coming up, the surface, his head exploding back into reality.
"The kids are in the lobster tank!" he screamed at them, not seeing them, but hoping they were still near and could hear him.
He heard foot steps, running. It was the girls. He heard their steps moving away from him. Bacon was still there growling. And then his head was pulled under the force of the water, the crush of blackness, the sensation of being ripped from the surface, dragged down, the cold of scaly fish skin, the rasp of eels, the wet hunger, the hunger ripping at him from his belly.
Bangkok. Bangkok, the tentacles slamming around him. Going under. Total black.
Josie Brown fell into a clump on the floor. His mind dark and empty. Completely taken over by the monster.
He didn't hear the first tentacle slam it's way through the freezer case of the Organic Food Shop.
✽✽✽
Glass flew everywhere as one giant, slithering eel tentacle slammed through the glass doors, and then another, and, another, until the freezer cases along the far wall were obliterated. With them came the rush of sea water pouring in.
The doors gave way and flew out into the market, a rush of green sea water slammed through the aisles. The eels slithered through and over the aisles, counters and shelves. They hissed and grabbed boxes and bottles of food and tore them open with their knife-teeth and spit out whatever they didn't inhale back out onto the floor.
They were oily, these eels, and when they moved they secreted a black oily stink, that made trails behind them, so that the room was like the bottom of the sea, while the beasts searched for prey to ease their hunger, in one aisle, down the next, their rabid eyes always searching, their bodies slithering, always moving.
Grotty Greg stood there. Not sure what was happening or where to move. He picked up the imbecilic dog that was attacking his feet. If the eels wanted food, this dog was going to be a little snack. He plucked Bacon under his arm, while the dog whined and wiggled, trying to free himself.
Grotty was not sure at all what he was seeing. He had not even imagined something so great and fearsome in his mind. And so he watched the stinking sea water pool at his shins, and the black tentacle creatures slinking and moving around him, not knowing exactly where to go next.
Bacon, flung himself hard against Grotty, trying to get away and Grotty dropped his phone in the water.
"Stupid, mutt!" he yelled at Bacon, and clocked him on the top of his head hard.
Bacon squealed.
Then, not sure of what else to do, he ran as fast as he could through the thick swells of water, dog
under his arm, and dove behind one of the check out counters in the front of the shop. He did a whopping belly flop, and Bacon yelped, and water splashed up onto the front windows and the cash register, like a great tidal wave.
And that's when the eels heard him and Bacon, and turned toward the sound and echo of the water. Food, they thought in their primitive, simple brains.
Get the food.
✽✽✽
Rasha and Emerald could not get the lid off the tank.
What they found when they got back to the lobster tank in the little alcove in the very back of the shop, was two small kids terrified and very aware that there was a stream of water filling the tank, and when that water got to the top, and there was no more space for them to open their mouths and breathe air, when it covered them completely, they would have seconds until they died.
Rasha thought the bottom of her world was going to fall out when she got to the tank and saw Musa, his eyes, wide and on fire, banging his hands against the lid of the tank, the water, skimming his chest.
When he saw her he stopped and pushed his face and hands to the glass.
"Ra- Ra," he said it softly, it was his name for her.
"You came." There was relief in his voice, as if he was certain now he and Trinket would be set free.
"Of course, ma-ma," she said, as if she had just found him in the backyard of their house.
"We'll get you out. No sweat," she said, as if it were just that easy.
"Where's Bacon?"
Rasha looked around. She wasn't sure, but he was never far away. Teta said he was like Velcro. She wasn't worried. He would turn up.
"He's playing guard dog!" she said.
"You know he thinks he's a Doberman."
He smiled a little. This gave him some comfort.
"We're here, baby," Emerald said to Trinket, tapping lightly on the window to get her attention.
Trinket was in bad shape. She was balled up into the corner. She was smaller, so the water, pooled around her neck. Her face was scarlet, almost blue, and puffy. And she was unable to speak or shout out. She crunched down in the corner, her lips were two blue quivering caterpillars.
That's when they heard the shower of glass, metal scraping against metal, the rush of water, the hiss of eels.
"We don't have time to waste. Let's do this!" Emerald screamed.
Rasha jumped up on the top of the tank in one jump. She was so athletic and agile, Emerald thought for a second she might be a super-hero or something. Emerald threw Rasha a screwdriver and a hammer and she jammed the metal end into the corner of the tank, and tried to pry a hole there.
"It's not coming!" Rasha screamed.
"Why isn't it coming?"
"Because he wants these kids!" Emerald said, wedging her crowbar between the lid of the tank and the glass. She pushed down on the crow bar. It caught and the bar went flying off over her shoulder.
"He's not getting these kids!" Rasha screamed back.
Emerald watched her crowbar slam to the ground and slide out toward the cookie aisle.
"Damn!"
She ran out to retrieve it. She could see that the market was filling up, just like the tank. It sloshed at her knees. She bent down to find the crowbar, feeling along the floor with her hands. Nothing Nothing. It disappeared.
“Damn it!”
She needed the crowbar if they had any chance of wedging off the lid.
Then she felt it, something, grabbed it.
And then, from around the corner, meeting her face-to-face, its jaws wide and slamming, an eel. She dropped the crowbar again, and fell over, shrieking. The eel was in her face, rasping, its teeth bared and hissing, it's tongue pulsing.
She felt the crowbar with her foot.
"Keep it together, Emerald" she coached herself, as the eel made it’s way around her, and would itself up close to her, its slimy coldness touching her, its tongue dancing on her cheek, the stench of rotting fish blowing onto her face.
She swore she heard the eel say, "Tasssssty", as it opened its huge mouth and came down on her neck with blunt force.
She felt the slam on her body, teeth puncturing skin. Her whole body crumpled up on her.
"Stay calm...stay calm,” she told herself.
She pushed her foot to the end of the bar and stepped on it, hard, so that it flipped up through the water and into the air. She caught it with one hand, and brought it down across the eels head, so that it screamed and wailed and fell off her body, taking with it small chunks of her flesh, and leaving her bleeding and scraped.
Emerald raised the crowbar over her head and drove the whole long spike into the soft flesh of the monster, right between its eyes, and right through the head into the wooden floor, so that it writhed and wailed and contorted in the water, its head nailed into the wood.
It died there, looking up at her.
"Well, so much for that crowbar,” Emerald muttered and looked out into the market to see if she could see Josie.
He wasn't there.
“Not a good sign.”
She ran back to the tank. It was on her and Rasha now to free the kids.
✽✽✽
When Emerald got back to the tank, she secretly hoped she would see Rasha pulling the kids out, but that wasn't what she found.
The water had risen in the tank. Trinket had her face pushed up into a tiny bubble of air in the corner, and it was coming to Musa's chin.
He was crying now, and Rasha stood on top of the tank, beating the sides with a small sledgehammer she had foraged from Emerald’s backpack. Rasha was strong, both inside and out, Emerald could see that, but it didn't seem to matter. Rasha took long hard swings at the tank, but each time the glass held.
Emerald tried to see where the water was coming from. There was no hose, no outside source. The sea water was streaming in from the top of the glass, as if it were an infinity pool. The water started nowhere, and ended nowhere.
They weren't getting the kids out.
Rasha stopped swinging for a second and let the sledge hammer fall to the floor. She was sweating and nearly out of breath. She had given everything she had to this, to saving Musa and Trinket.
"What can we do?" she asked Emerald, her voice limp and frail, her eyes filling with tears.
She jumped down off the tank now, and pressed her fingers against the glass. Musa moved over to her and did the same, his fingers right against hers, only the glass between them.
"It's okay," he said, before she could say anything.
Her tears were big now.
"I don't know how to save you," she said to him.
"It's okay," he said, the water now sloshing his nose.
"It's okay. You save me everyday."
He had minutes, maybe seconds to live, and he was the brave one, the one comforting her. It was almost too much for her to bear.
"Love you, Ra-Ra."
"Love you, too, ma-ma."
Rasha laid her cheek against the glass, and Musa held his breath went underwater, and kissed her there. She could even feel him through the glass. Then he was up on the surface again, breathing, looking at her. His eyes so clear. He was not afraid to die.
And then, without any warning, Rasha had had enough of goodbyes and bad things happening to her family, and she spun around and splashed through the water that was now pouring into the alcove, and coming up to her hips. She swam out into the market, climbed up onto a display of light bulbs and raised her arms in the air.
"C'mon you stupid, Monster!...I'm over here."
"Right here....you want to take him. You can take me too!"
Emerald considered that Rasha, in her deep grief, was doing one of those impetuous anger-fueled stupid things again. It seemed asinine to bring the monster to them. But then what if somehow they could make that work for them? Her mind went through a list of possibilities.
What if they could use the monster to free the kids?
Not that they had any choice. The eels had seen Rasha, couldn't mi
ss her, and they moved like submarines through the water, streaming down the aisles toward them, squealing with hunger and joy.
Emerald ran back to the tank.
"Hold on!" she said to Musa and Trinket, who were now nearly covered in water.
Musa had swum to the other end of the tank and pulled Trinket to him. She had passed out or she was dead, Emerald couldn't tell, but Musa was holding her face up into the last spaces of air in the tank. Emerald grabbed a small metal cart that was used to stock the shelves and pushed it in front of the tank. Then, as hard as she could, until it slid off its base, she pushed the tank, pushed and pushed until it fell off onto the cart.
The kids tumbled, but Musa found the last air pocket and pulled Trinket and himself into it. Emerald pushed the cart through the water, past the fish department into an aisle that had several eel tentacles teeming toward them. She positioned the lobster tank right there in front of them, the middle of the aisle.
She noticed the tank was full now, sea water had covered Musa and Trinkets heads. Musa was holding his breath, but this wasn't going to last long. He was blowing bubbles out of his mouth.
"C'mon, you suckers, here we are!” she said as she jumped up onto a nearby shelf.
"Come and get us!"
And as she said the words, two eels, black as truck tires, came streaming up out of the water and slamming into the tank. A blue current of electricity flashed and the tank popped like a toy, and glass went flying everywhere. Emerald went flying back, slamming into the cheese counter, the kids fell straight into the water, the electricity still thrumming through their bodies. And the eels, like a swarm of bees, came beating down on the children, their teeth gnashing, their bodies, electric and pulsing blue light, and their mouths poised to scoop them up.
And just as they were about to eat them, feast on their delicate bones and delectable young bodies, there was a great stir from the freezer cases, an angry sea of water storming in, white waves, slapping against the shelves and the counters, the air pitted with the smell of deadness, and more eel tentacles streaming in, and after them, the great heaving, pulsing jelly-like body of the squid.