AN: This wound up being much longer than I intended so I split this story up into two parts. This is part one, and part two will be released Sunday.
CONTENT WARNINGS: mentions of murder, fire, dead bodies, mentions of blood, needles, electrocution, screaming, death, government experimentation, dissociation/depersonalization, drowning, threats, and verbal abuse. Please be careful my friends!
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Since the beginning of life itself, there has been something connecting us all. It's inside us and surrounds us, like the Force from Star Wars, but real. It's something powerfully ancient, and while we need it to survive….. it's deadly too. I'm talking, of course, about water. H2O. Dihydrogen monoxide. It accounts to 65% of the human body and 2/3s of the Earth's surface. Water is almost everywhere and in almost everything.
It rules our planet like a malevolent tyrant, and all things eventually succumb to it. The organisms that call water their home inevitably sink and fade away to dust at the bottom. Earth and the roughest of stones are worn away until there's nothing left of them. People are pulled beneath the waves, their dying screams going unheard as they choke to death and drown, their souls claimed by the water. The water doesn't know how to stop, or when to. It eats and eats and eats and is never satisfied.
It doesn't know how to be.
Or perhaps, maybe it does, but not consciously. You see, the water devours many things-- and among these things are souls. These souls travel down the currents of the rivers and into the ocean, sinking deeper and deeper and down to the bottom. Souls cram together at the bottom of the ocean like sardines in a can. They fade and fade and fade until there's not much left but the bare essentials of a soul, and the souls stay there. Sometimes, after a very long time and enough pressure, there are enough souls down below that a Child of the Water is born.
These children are made from the souls at the bottom of the ocean and whatever other bits of life have sunk that far down into the blackness. No one knows how it happens or why. Perhaps it's the pressure and the radiation, or perhaps it's some sort of magic. No one knows and very few have studied it. But these children of the water, these Changelings, are born irregardless of explanation or rationality. They live how they please-- perhaps under the water, or perhaps on land among men. They live, and they laugh, and they grow, and then they
die, like does.
Unlike most sapient life, however, no Changeling has ever met a natural end. The world of men is unforgiving, and under the waves, few possess a mind on the same level as a Changeling's. But no matter the end however, their soul always returns to the water somehow.
And so the Children live and die-- alone and unknown, a mystery of life that is lost under the waves. The soul sinks back down to the bottom of the ocean, perhaps to be born again someday.
*****
The year was 2016 and the world was slowly falling apart. It started off, unsurprisingly, with American politics. Many other things happened that year, like the ending of an Ebola outbreak in Western Africa. There were also the summer olympics, and the impeachment of two presidents: the Brazillian one and the Soyputh Korean one. Brexit and the tragic Pulse massacre are other such examples of the slowly crumbling world. But our story has little to do with those events, but instead to the issue of climate change and their effect on the weather.
Born in the open ocean in the midst of a terrible storm 14 years ago, the child had been immediately thrust into danger. Gills quickly etched into their neck, and their body quickly adapted its boneless shape to better swim in the water. For years, the child did well, surviving in the deepest depths alone and friendless. So, when the skies broke open one night in March of 2016, they were quickly thrust into a storm they knew how to handle.
The Changeling's body adapted to the change in water pressure and began to swim like they had when they first had formed. They swam expertly and quickly, and the churning currents under the water were more of a thrilling roller coaster than a high speed vehicle on a rainy day
But then came the shipwreck.
Water is not merciful, and the ocean is no exception. The ocean is wild and furious, dashing anything in its way against rocks and swallowing up what remains. It crashes into ships and destroys them. Water claws its way into a sailor's lungs until the unfortunate mariner is just another soul at the bottom of the ocean.
I don't know who was on that ship that night or why, but wherever it was headed, it did not make it. A wave swept over it at the exact moment lighting struck the helm. It began to burn and sink in a blaze of terrible glory. The humans on board did what they could, but there were no survivors. The ship tore apart and the debris danced in the churning waves like dangerous ballerinas. It was a recipe for disaster the newly born Changeling would never forget.
All too quickly, everything changed. The Changeling made noises of terror inaudible to the human ear, desperately trying to keep from being hit by debris. They flailed and kicked out, trying to keep away from the sinking body of a dead man. They didn't see the large piece of the ship's rudder hurtling towards them at breakneck speed. They collided, hard.
The last thing the Child of the Water knew before the darkness overtook them was a paralysing fear and the sight of the ocean breaking open a ship right before their eyes, flames and dead men and all.
*****
The Changeling washed up off the coast of Maine.
It wasn't a particularly pretty sight, mostly because they were injured, but also because they weren't quite…. Human enough. Not yet, at least.
Under the waves, the Changeling's skin had been a very pale blue-white. Their eyes were purple with black sclera and a special film to help them see underwater. They had a mouth full of razor sharp teeth, tiny slits for ears designed to pick up only on the most high pitched of sounds, and no nose to speak of. Instead, gills were etched deep into the sides of their neck. The Changeling's body was mostly human shaped however, with arms, legs, hands, and feet. The fingers and toes were freakishly large and pointy in addition to being webbed, however, and the arms and legs had fins jutting out of them to help with speed and steering. For hair, they had eight tentacles, a bit like an octopus, and the similarities continued underneath their skin.
They were scary enough spectacle underwater, but on land? They looked like something that had crawled out of Hell, which wouldn't have been the most surprising thing given the year the planet had been having. That look, however, wouldn't last for long.
The gills etched into the sides of the Changeling's neck slowly began to fade as their body realised land had no use for them. Their lungs morphed to better adapt to the changes in air intake, and their face grew a small nose. Webbed bits of skin between fingers and toes and the now useless fins melted back into their body, stored away elsewhere for other uses later. They looked a little more human, but still not enough to save them.
*****
Not too many people go to the beach in the middle of March. Especially not in Maine. The weather is frightfully cold, the skies are grey, and what with how the weather had been behaving lately, most were inclined to believe it was going to hail later that day. It would be foolish to go to the beach in that weather unless one had a death wish.
Gillian O'Brian didn't have a death wish, but he did have a summer home located in the beaches of Maine. He'd never particularly liked it there-- too many bears-- but his children had. They'd insisted on spending a month every summer there for years, much to Gillian's confusion. Thankfully, he'd never had to accompany them there during the summers before, as work took up much of his time. Unfortunately, there was no escaping one last visit to the summer home before the O'BrIan’s moved to Europe, where Gillian was being transferred.
Gillian scowled at the sea as he drove his Mercedes-Benz up the long driveway to the house, wondering why the children's mother couldn't have been the one to make the trip. She'd been there before and she clearly cared about the beachy nick nacks and what-have-yous kept at the House as much as the kids did. She was also much better at getting them to be quiet, too. Not as good as the nanny, but still better than him. But no, Gillian's wife had insisted he take the children. "For bonding", or some such claptrap.
"You can't get out this, Gilly," she'd said sternly, ignoring his complaints of a headache and sore throat, "You need to spend time with your children, and this will be good for that. Besides, it's only a few hours. You'll survive that long, won't you?"
Gillian's wife was turning out to be very, very wrong.
"If you children don't be quiet, rIGHT NOW, I will strangle you all and leave your bodies to rot in the house," he yelled into the backseat, where three of his four children were screaming angrily at each other.
When interrogated by his wife later, he'd say he didn't mean it, he was just frustrated. But in the moment, Gillian O'Brian was one shriek away from committing filicide and not regretting it in the slightest. Perhaps his children knew that, or perhaps they were just excited to be back at the summer house, but either way, they went quiet.
Gillian breathed a sigh of relief as he parked the car in the garage. He turned off the car and got out, stretching and grumbling about good for nothing kids under his breath. After he unlocked the front door of the house, he turned to his kids, who were watching him the way a deer watched a hunter. That irritated him but he said nothing of that. "Alright, you guys have ten minutes to get what you don't want left behind and then I'm leaving," he said gruffly, "With or without you. Now scram."
The kids pushed past him into the house, dashing off to their rooms and all the secret hiding places to collect their memories. Gillian walked out onto the back porch, which overlooked the beach.
It was quiet outside, almost peaceful. For a second Gillian could almost understand why the children liked it so much. The sound of the waves crashing against the sand and the soft swaying of the trees in the wind was like a outdoor lullaby reminiscent of his holidays in Jamaica. The only things that ruined it were the cold and the lack of, well, tropicality.
Gillian lit a cigarette and stared off down the beach. He could make out the bloodied body of…. Something… washed up on shore fifteen feet away. He couldn't make out too much of what it was, but he knew enough to know it wasn't human. Nor was it anything he wanted to mess with.
Gillian took a long drag of his cigarette, wondering what he should do. The thing looked dead, and while he wouldn't ever be back at the house again after this, he still didn't like the idea of just… leaving the thing there. It could stay where it was, just so long as it wasn't on his property. Gillian took out his cell phone and called the coast guard. They weren't happy about it, but they still promised to come.
He hung up and scowled again. "Kids! It's time to go, get your butts back out to the car," he shouted.
Gillian didn't think of the creature on the beach again for several months. He was in Spain then, and things hadn't been going well. He'd just finished another screaming match with his wife, and he was strangling her in a desperate attempt to get her to just shut up. The creature reminded him of the way his wife might look if he dumped her lifeless body out at sea and it washed ashore days later.
*****
When the Coast Guard found the Child of the Water, they didn't know what they were seeing. They poked and prodded and examined it a little on the beach, getting a few reactions but ultimately not enough to tell them more than that the Changeling was alive. Not knowing what else to do, they passed the Changeling off to the US Government, believing they would know what to do.
After that, stories passed through the coast guard of the mysterious creature that had been found on the beach near the beginning of 2016. The stories were often exaggerated or blatant falsehoods, but that's how stories spread by word of mouth are often told, even among respected men.
As for the creature on the beach, well, the Child of the Water's story was far from over. And while I wish I could say some of it was exaggeration and blatant falsehood, I cannot.
*****
The Changeling was kept in government custody for around four years. Even though the heads of the government were all in turmoil, the military still had a budget and for the most part a stable leadership. So, as soon as they got their hands on a mysterious oceanic creature, well… There was quite a bit of a debate to see which government research facility would take the Changeling. After a week of deliberation, the poor Changeling wound up in the custody of Area 6, a lesser known facility very similar in function to Area 51. Area 6, however, had more security, less subjects, and more of a focus on military uses for their subjects than just general knowledge.
The first thing the scientists did after their usual drawing of blood and x-rays was a 'test for intelligence', which we all know is code for 'will this creature obey our commands.' The tests, of course, didn't work as well as the scientists hoped. Water is an intelligent, fickle thing. Mischievous, but patient. Reckless, but strong. Water is good at mimicking, but better still at deceiving. Children of the Water are no different.
The Changeling did what they were told under supervision, but they did it while observing their human captors the whole time. They watched the humans and noticed that the scientists communicated on a frequency of sound that they could not hear. They noticed the letters and numbers and written words humans used to communicate. They watched, they noticed, they learned, and most unfortunately, they adapted.
In a few days time, the scientists would be turning to look at each other, asking each other in hushed murmurs about the pair of pointed ears that the Changeling had seemingly grown overnight. "I thought it was deaf or something," one scientist said to her colleague, "It never responded to sound before, we've always had to give it visual cues."
"That's not normal. That's not normal, right?" A particularly young intern had a panic attack in the bathroom, the weight of this strange new world quickly becoming too much to handle.
"We knew it was an aquatic creature and probably had a different hearing range, but I never imagined it could do this!" A head scientist had his face pressed up against the glass enclosure they kept the Changeling in. "I can't wait to do more tests on this fascinating creature. Imagine the uses for it if we can improve its obedience skills….."
Eyes and needles poked and prodded the Child of the Water for the next month, much to their discomfort. But they said nothing. They'd been through this before when they'd first arrived, and it was easier to just keep going and pretend it wasn't happening. The humans would give up eventually, and the needles and fervent observations would stop for a while. And then there would be peace, and the Changeling could hide away in their kelp-filled corner of their glass enclosure.
About a week after their ears developed, the Changeling could understand English and a little bit of Spanish. They picked up on the basics of reading a month after. It was great fun, knowing what things said and meant now, turning the words over in their mind like little rubber balls. There were still many words they didn't know, and every day new ones were added to their arsenal. But after a week, the English language was as natural to them as the songs of the sea.
It became an agony, pretending to be none the wiser as to what was going on. But the Child of the Water was smart enough to know that if they showed that they could understand and read so quickly after growing their ears, the needles and poking wouldn't stop. More would be expected, and the electric shocks and tests wouldn't ever stop or slow down.
Worst of all though, escape would never be able to happen. And they desperately wanted to escape, to be free again and maybe go back to the water that was calling out to them so loudly. Or maybe to explore Land and the world of humans. Change a little more and blend in. Learn about the humans that fascinated them so much. They weren't sure yet, but that didn't matter.
They had until they escaped to make up their mind.
*****
After the needles finally died down to maybe once a day, the Changeling's life got way way harder. More things were expected of them, more things than they were previously able to handle. Before their ears, they had usually forgotten all of the small details from the tasks they were supposed to complete, or every once in a while, an entire task or two. After a while of being denied meals, they learned a very slap dash, rickety method of remembering things. That way the punishments wouldn't happen. But now…
It was so much harder to remember. The memories jumbled up in their brain or just plain didn't stick. The anxiety that had ruled them since the Storm and the guilt of the horrible things they’d had to do under scientist command just made it all worse. They made more mistakes in their efforts to be perfect, or they did nothing at all until the last second for fear of making a mistake. The shocks with the cattle prod grew more and more frequent, and now that they could both hear and understand the angry yelling that assaulted them after a failure and the screams of the people they were made to kill or hurt, the emotional impact was far worse. By the end of the day, the Changeling always wanted to curl into a ball and cry. Or scream and lash out at the Scientists.
But either option would just lead to more punishment. So the Changeling just let it happen, barely fighting and doing whatever was ordered of them. Just waiting and watching for their escape, no matter how much pain they were in. They mentally timed each guard rotation and how long the nights were, sacrificing their precious little time to sleep and recover from the day's experiments to figure out the best times to escape. It took years and apocalyptic 2020 chaos get it, but when the time was right and every step was planned to immaculate detail, they slipped from the glass enclosure and into the night. It was morning before the scientists realized the Changeling was gone, and by then, at least two Area 6 soldiers were dead. *****
The Changeling wandered through the remains of a town, shaking and shivering in the late night desert cold. They weren't wearing much, just the tight fitting uniform they'd been given at the lab and an army jacket they'd stolen from a soldier in their escape. While the jacket was warm, it also smelled of the lab, something they never could get out of their head. As much as they wanted to rip the jacket off and never wear it again, they knew it would be foolish to do so. It was cold in this town, and even though it would soon warm to be unbearable, the jacket would help hide their deviant and inhuman features.
The Changeling looked around the town for a place to stay the night and hide out in. The military would likely come looking for them in the morning, but they were tired out from their escape. They wanted to curl up and sleep for a few hours before leaving again.
There!
Twenty feet away was a Barnes and Nobles, crumbling a little, but still in reasonable condition. It would have books and armchairs for the Child of the Water to rest their head, not that they knew that at the time. It was also large enough that it would take the people after them a good while to track them down.
The Child of the Water settled into the Barnes and Nobles for the night, curling up in an armchair and clutching a book in their arms. They told themself it was just going to be a weapon, but I'm sure they were planning on reading as well.
*****
The next morning, they set off with the book tucked under their arm. They raided the local mall for clothes, selecting a black and white striped long sleeved shirt, a blue t-shirt, green cargo pants, blue converses, and a large hoodie to hide both their face and tentacle hair. They also grabbed a backpack to stuff their book and some snacks into.
During their three months at the Lab, they'd learned that they could eat just about anything up on the surface given enough time. The first time would always make them feel sick, but after a few hours of their stomach rolling around and feeling absolutely terrible, it would eventually learn to digest the food. The Child hated that feeling, especially since the scientists usually never gave them anything to help with the pain. So, their snacks were mostly things they already knew they could digest. Anything with an unfamiliar ingredient was left behind.
The Child of the Water travelled to the next town, which was inhabited. They kept their hood up and their eyes down, knowing it was best not to draw attention to themself. Not if they wanted to stay safe.
Still, they could feel the townspeople’s eyes on them as they walked through the streets. It reminded them of the scientists and the lab and the needles. The Changeling’s chest tightened in fear and for a minute it felt almost like they were back there again. The world spun a little and dimmed. They felt themself fall further into their mind a little as the world got louder and their hands started to shake. They kept walking, unsure of how to stop or where they were going. It was like they’d become a robot, or trapped inside one.
Either way, it didn’t stop the emotions.
Fear, shame, guilt, self-hatred, and a myriad of other, unnameable bad feelings soaked and drenched them as though they’d been caught in the emotional equivalent of a torrential downpour. The Changeling just wanted to curl into a ball in a corner and cry, but they couldn’t keep their body from continuing to walk.
They thought they were going to stay like that forever when out of nowhere, a hand touched their shoulder. The Changeling jumped a little and turned to face the person, staring at their shoes. “Hey young man,” the person, a woman, said gently, “Where are your parents?”
The Changeling frowned. Parents. They knew those were something humans had, but they weren’t sure exactly what those were. “Parents?” They asked softly.
“Yes, your parents,” the woman said, “Your mommy and daddy? Where are they?”
The Child of the Water was more lost now. “I don’t— what are those?”
The woman faltered a little, clearly unsure of how to handle this. “Um, well, they’re the people who, um, gave birth to you. And, well, raised you too. Teaching you and taking care of you, yeah? Do you have parents, sweeetie?”
The Changeling mulled it over. They didn’t remember a person giving birth to them, just the way the ocean calmed when they’d finally formed. And no one had really raised them— they’d raised themself. And the scientists might have provided food and shelter for several months, but they hadn’t done what the lady had described, so they didn’t count. “No, I don’t have parents,” they said softly, “Sorry.”
They weren’t sure why they’d apologized, but it felt right to. The woman made a noise the Changeling didn’t know how to process, but they guessed it was likely one of pity. They covered their ears a little to block out the sound. "Oh my God, you poor thing! Why don't you come with me, and I'll take care of you? Until we can find someone to take you in."
The woman started dragging the Changeling along with her. They flailed in alarm, their arms nearly hitting the woman's four kids. They could feel the children's eyes on them and knew they didn't think the Changeling normal. The woman kept chartering as she dragged the Child of the Water along. They tried to tune it out, squinting and trying to make out a good time to escape.
That lack of attention suddenly disappeared when the Changeling felt their hood being pulled off their head. "No!" They yelled, but it was too late.
The woman screamed and fainted. Several other people in the street started running and screaming something about a monster. The Changeling shrank in on themselves, the bad feelings coming back at them again. But they couldn't stay here. Not when everyone was afraid and screaming 'monster!'
They ran, and didn't look back.
Eventually, they settled down for the night in an abandoned house at the very edge of the town, curling up in a dark corner of the attic with a flashlight they'd found and some pillows. They pulled the book from their backpack and read the title. Matilda.
The Changeling laughed a little at the funny sounding word. It was the first time they'd laughed since the Storm, and it was a strange feeling to them. Strange, but pleasant. They liked it.
They opened to the first page and began to read.
To Be Continued
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