Jeffery Kooistra: A Monster's Tale

“What?”

“It’s our sea serpent now.”

The weather stayed beautiful the entire time Fred was away, but Kelly found few reasons to leave the Flying Witch . Once she ventured out for groceries, and on the way back from the store spotted a voodoo shop, offering fortune telling, genuine souvenirs, and something else that really caught her eye—aphrodisiacs. She was tempted to go in and see what was being offered, actually took one step, then caught herself and decided not to.

She returned to the boat. She wasn’t interested in sex with Fred. She wanted to concentrate on lovemaking.

Finally the time came to get him from the airport. She threw her arms around him in the terminal with a vigor even she hadn’t expected.

“Hey, I missed you, too,” he said. “But I can’t hug you with my hands full.” He was carrying one small trunk in addition to his suitcase. Kelly could hear something sloshing inside.

“What’s in there?” she asked.

“Perfume by the gallon.”

“For me? You shouldn’t have. Really .”

“Sorry, Kelly. It’s for another woman. I ll tell you all about it on the boat.”

“That night we spent together, after you fell asleep, I got to thinking,” Fred said. “Maybe our sea monster has a mate. Follow this for a minute. We know there can’t be too many sea monsters in the oceans, or they’d be a well-known species by now. Also, the oceans are huge. If our sea monsters want to procreate, they’re going to need some way to link up with each other. They may even mate for life, but it might not be necessary.”

“Did you use to explain things to your students this way?” Kelly said from the galley stove. “Start by telling me what’s in the bottle.”

“You have no sense of drama,” Fred complained. “OK, it’s sea monster cologne. Concentrated synthetic sea monster scent. I figured out that our beasties must either find each other by scent or by electrical effects, which would explain why they’re attracted to our engines. Of course, it could be sound, too, but I can’t do anything about that. Then again—”

“Fred?”

“What?”

“You’re just playing another hunch. Admit it.”

“You’re right,” he said. Kelly came to him and sat on his lap. “I wanted an excuse to stay with you a while longer.”

“You could have just asked, you know.”

“I don’t think the Dean of Sciences would have granted me a leave of absence just to go boating with you.” She gave him a deep kiss. Upon surfacing, he said, “Although it certainly would be in my best interest.”

They set out early the next morning, and followed the same route they had before. After lunch, a couple of days later, Fred hauled out his jug of scent. “I had them whip this up for me in the biochem lab. They made it from scrapings off that chunk of flesh from the Lady’s drive tube.”

“How are we supposed to use it?” Kelly asked. She’d been admiring Fred all morning. She tried to conjure the image she’d had of him when he’d first come on board, but she couldn’t do it while looking at him now. Though he was only slightly more tan, and perhaps a pound or two lighter, she saw him through different eyes now.

“I guess I’ll try swabbing some on the sides of the boat. We’re in uncharted territory here ”

They brought the boat to a halt. Fred wanted to jump in the water and have Kelly hand down a sponge full of scent, but she nixed the idea.

“No way. You’re more likely to attract sharks with that odor than you are hypothetical sea serpents.” He settled for dabbing the sides with a sponge attached to a pole.

The rest of the afternoon they enjoyed the sunshine as they scanned the horizon with binoculars. The ocean was remarkably calm, and it was like a casual day of power boating on a lake.

“It’s about time we turned in,” Kelly said after the tropical Sun had finished making its descent. They were throttled down to two knots. “And no argument this time. You’re sleeping in the bow with me. I bought your little ‘I’m real tired from traveling’ speech these last few nights, but I’m lonely.” Kelly pressed up against him. “I want your companionship.”

“Is that all?” Fred asked.

“No.”

He laughed, then hugged her, kissed her. “You’re way too good to me. You go ahead and get ready. I’m going to put more scent on the sides and take a shower.”

As promised, he joined her in her bunk a short time later. It was even better than the first time.

Later, lying there in the quiet, Kelly started to talk.

“There’s only one thing in my life I’m really ashamed of,” she said.

“What’s that?” Fred asked. “But before you say anything, you don’t owe me any confessions.”

“You’re the first man to ever make me realize how much I wanted to.”

“OK.”

“It’s about how I got this boat. You asked, remember?” She saw his outline nod in the dark. “I never got along with my mom. She and dad divorced when I was twelve. He was a cop. I left home at eighteen to be out on my own. I made a mess of it, did drugs, woke up in an alley some mornings. But I had too much pride to go home. Eventually I wound up as a stripper in Miami. From there a man… oh, hell, might as well call him what he was—a drug lord—spotted me and took me away to live with him.

“I hated it. I was a kept woman. It was worse than living with mom. I wanted out. But he wouldn’t let me.”

“How did you escape?” Fred asked gently.

“He’d been hit hard by the narco cops. He needed money and had a huge load of white stuff ready to hit Puerto Rico. He had a fast, quiet MHD boat, called the Santa Maria then, ready to take it in. But no driver—he’d lost them in a raid. And, and….”

“And so you did it.”

“Yes. I told him I’d take it in for my freedom and the boat. I’d learned a lot about boats while I was with him. He knew I had a good chance of making it. I did. I called him afterward, he told me where he’d left the Santa Maria’s ownership papers for me, and with them he left me an additional ten thousand dollars—” Kelly stopped as her voice caught.

Fred held her tighter. “A week later I got a card from mom telling me my dad was dead. A shoot-out during a drug raid.”

“Over the shipment you brought in?”

“I don’t know It doesn’t matter. But it made me realize that other people had to pay the price for my freedom. That’s why the Witch is so important to me. She’s what makes me free. I hold her in trust for everyone who lost blood because of me.”

WHOOMP! WHOOSH! KER-SPLOONK! SPLASH!

“What the hell was that?!” Fred exclaimed as the tossing of the boat threw him out of the bunk.

Another wild jolt and Kelly joined him on the floor. “I don’t know,” she said. “A storm? But I don’t hear any wind, and the weather was supposed to be clear all night.”

The Flying Witch was rocking too much for them to regain their feet, and they had to crawl to the hatch and up the stairs to the deck.

“Oh my God!” Fred exclaimed.

The head of the sea monster was something of a cross between a horse and a snake, Fred decided, though much larger than the biggest version of either. The mouth was open and four rows of sharp teeth gleamed in the moonlight. The head, easily four feet across, towered high above the deck. But what was more important to Fred was that he was staring at it from only twenty feet away.

“Kelly! Quick! Hit the engines. We gotta make a run for it!”

Though Fred had pulled on his pants before heading up to the deck, Kelly had followed in the nude. This was one of the few times she really felt naked. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you, Fred,” she said in awe as she watched the huge head dive back below the waves. Three huge loops of sea monster appeared above the surface, then submerged with the reappearance of the head, a football field away, but turning once again toward them.