Monstrophy, Vol. 1

The Jellyfish Ball

Night swimming is one of my very favorite things in the world. And night swimming in warm tropical waters with soft white sand? Even better. I shucked off my clothes and left them on the rock as I dove into the warm sea. It was nice, this secluded spot I'd found. Quiet. In all the weeks I'd been coming to this hidden beach since my move, I'd yet to run into another person. It was perfect.

I floated on my back a while and just looked at all the stars. Another reason I liked night swimming, especially far away from light pollution, was the stars. I could pretend I was swimming through them, like a space whale. Okay, maybe that sounds ridiculous, but trust me, it's awesome.

After about an hour, I climbed back onto the rock and sat, leaning back on my arms, watching the ocean and the stars. I thought I saw the moon reflected on the water, but wait...no. It wasn't the moon, it was something under the surface of the water. Round and glowing like the moon. Whatever it was surfaced a bit out from where I sat in the dark, and I don't think it saw me. A luminous bubble bobbing in the water, glowing a soft blue, with what appeared to be a person emerging upright from the center.

"Oh my god..." I must've said it a bit loudly, or sounds just carries across the water, because they turned at looked me, and gasped.

I froze in place. I don't have much of a fight-or-flight response, I freeze. Like a damn deer. Natural selection is coming for me.

The person slowly approached the rock.They looked like a girl, a woman, in a kind of wet suit that billowed out into an umbrella shape around her. Some kind of flotation device? Was she a freediver?

"Uh, hi... " I said, and cringed.

"Hello," she said, sounding surprised. "You can talk!"

"Well, yeah. Normally better than this." I joked. She didn't laugh. "I, uh, I haven't seen anyone else out here before."

"Neither have I."

She swam right up to the rock and looked up at me. What I thought was a wetsuit looks up close like it's her skin. Her smooth head is bald, her nose just the slightest bump with slits for nostrils, more slits run the length of her neck like gills. Her torso is featureless; no nipples, no belly button. Just smooth unbroken translucent skin with faint blue lights coursing down her veins.

"What's your name?" I ask

"Pelagia."

"What are you?" I asked, breathless.

"What are you?" she replied.Her eyes raked up and down my body, and I grew self-conscious of my soft stomach and patchy chest hair, and...other things...

"Um, I'm a human..."

"You have hair on your body!" she said. "And what is that?"

She reached out to touch my penis, and I covered myself and turned away. "Hey now! That's rude."

"I'm sorry," she said, "I've just never seen anything like you. Where is your bell?"

"My...my what?"

Pelagia spun in a slow circle, running her hands over the translucent skirt, which I realized with a start was actually part of her body. "Your bell. And your tendrils. Why are yours so thick?"

"My legs?" I turned around, and she laughed.

"You look funny from this angle!"

I felt my face turning red. "That's...not a nice thing to say."

She laughed again. "I'm sorry, it's just the way you move on those things, and that."

Pelagia poked my butt.