Fishing.

Short Story

They have found another impossible victim. The blood-drenched bedding mussed, the air musty, the injuries suggesting a culprit that just isn't possible. The victim literally torn apart. No mercy, not to him or the three previous victims. Not much of a link either, seeing as they're hundreds of miles apart, thousands if you count the one in England.

I grimaced and put the paper down, carried on sipping some concoction that was far too sweet for me. This R and R tour was neither resting nor relaxing, not with so many cruel and vicious people on the loose, but hey, it was something that had to be got out of my itchy footed system. 

Then the man I had been waiting for all my life arrived.

And like a sailor to a siren, he came to me. Well, I am beautiful. Some are repelled, even frightened of me, but to many more, I am irresistible. 

He regaled me with tales of his fishing trips, and I listened, fascinated.  When he found out where I was born, he told me about the time he holidayed there and caught a huge great white shark. I knew then that he was the man for me.

The night drew to its inevitable conclusion, and we left the bar together. He asked me if I was scared, what with all the lurid headlines of carnage. I smiled, and told him that I didn't think I was the murderers type. At the foot of his bed, I opened my mouth to him.

They found him the next day, killed like all the others. Five men all told. Five strangers, finally linked by inept police, five thrill seeking men who could have lived if they hadn't got on that boat. If they hadn't gone shark fishing. If they hadn't murdered my mother.

And me? My work done, I decided it was time to go home. I walked to the shore, smiling at the moonlight as I stripped away the uncomfortable clothes, and walked into the water, feeling my body grow and fill out, becoming my true self once more, before I swam far away, into the depths. And I was glad to be home.

I had felt like a fish out of water in that town.