Cold water was washing over her. She realized someone was holding onto her ankles.

Her head became submerged. Water clogged her mouth, cutting off her scream. Flooded with sheer panic, she thrashed her arms and legs and broke back through the surface only long enough to expel the water she was choking on and to wheeze back the smallest amount of air.

Then she was dragged under once again, the hands pulling her deeper and deeper.

The mermaid’s hands, she thought, suddenly remembering exactly where she was and what had happened to her. It stabbed me in the stomach, and now it’s trying to drown me.

Terror coursing through her like an electrical current, Jacky continued to thrash to free herself, but the mermaid’s grip was unrelenting. Soon she no longer knew which direction the surface was, her bulging eyes seeing only perfect blackness. Spasmodic breaths drew more and more water into her mouth and down her windpipe, causing it to lock up and divert the water into her stomach. Her oxygen-starved lungs felt as though they were filled with fire and ready to explode.

Despite all of this, Jacky was aware that the hands were no longer holding her ankles; they were tearing her clothes from her body, which was floating with her torso arched forward, her limbs flowing backward. She couldn’t fathom what was happening, why the mermaid was stripping her, and she found she no longer cared. The pain had ceased and the struggle had left her. Half-conscious and enfeebled by oxygen depletion, she felt tranquil. Nothing mattered except—

Except it wants to eat me. It’s stripping me to eat my flesh.

This understanding was so repellent it jumpstarted her brain, kicking her from the pleasant stupor that had washed over her. Yet she discovered she couldn’t move, couldn’t fight back; she could only think again and again with abhorrent clarity that she was going to be eaten alive.

Please don’t do this, she begged. Please let me go…

And then fresh pain, sharp, hot, in her belly, yet somehow distant, fading quickly, leaving behind only a ticklish sensation, and she was glad she couldn’t see in the blackness, because she knew that ticklish sensation was her organs floating free of her body into the bloodied water.

This is the worst way to die. My God, I’m being eaten. I’m being EATEN.

As her energy continued to fade, she was no longer begging to be let go.

She was begging to die quickly.

Chapter 40

Chapter 40

MARTY

"Mocking you?" Marty said, surprised.

“Their laughter…I would swear it was…contemptuous.” She shook her head. “I suppose I’m being foolish, aren’t I? It’s this cave, being trapped here. It’s driving me loopy.”