IT IS NIGHT AGAIN. 

There was no one in the shop during the day. A pair of people arrived to check out the antiques at the shop but left without buying anything. 

It left me in the dusty room, along with a broom and a cotton cloth to clean the floor and wipe the antiques. I rearranged the positions of the antiques again. The wooden antiques crafted by the craftsmen from the town went first and in the front, while Cameron’s ones were placed at the back, away from the reach of prying eyes. 

I take the mat from the doorstep and step outside the shop. I head to a corner and start hitting the back of the mat with the broom. The dust collected in the mat falls like falling stars, sparkling and messy, scattering over all places as if they have no place to belong to. 

I sigh and look up at the sky. The sky is almost clear if you could omit the approaching ashy clouds. 

I was never afraid of storms. It was always Cameron, the scaredy cat, as Bastian likes to put it. Emotional mess, Victor would say on the other hand. But nowadays, it seems like I am turning too emotional, too sentimental and scared. 

“What is happening to me? What happened to you, Cameron?” 

“What’s going to happen to us?”

Questions unanswered clouds around me like a storm brewing, and I throw the carpet behind me along with the broom. I slowly make my way to the shore like before and sit on the sand. I hum along a tune and pause, feeling as if something is crawling up my spine. I ignore it and hum again. In the back of my mind, I wonder if the strange creature that I think I saw yesterday would appear again, and I laugh, finding it ridiculous. 

I slowly rise from the sand after a few minutes and head towards the sea to feel the tides, wondering if it will be thrilling as Cameron puts it. The tide slowly arrives, dragging itself through the shore and claiming my feet. It sinks into the sand, and I falter, laughing to myself. 

But then I hear it again. 

The strange melody. An ethereal voice is humming it. 

“Uh oh…looks like I wasn’t making things up this time,” I whisper to myself. 

I try to drag myself behind, but my feet strangely seem to be rooted into the spot. The sand had me in its claw. My heartbeat spikes up. It runs and runs and runs until my lungs cry for air. “Move!” I say, and shiver when I see the faint glow again, growing darker and wider with a passing second. And worst of all, it was nearing me.

No. 

I was nearing it. 

Tears cloud my eyes just as a figure rises from the sea. “Please.”

 Suddenly, I am losing my balance and am falling into the water. As if being pulled by a chain, I am being dragged forward to some source.I expect to see some kind of eerie figure waiting for me by the end of the thread, but no. 

Eyes as gentle as the ocean currents on a warm summer day, with skin glowing like the tide on a blue moon night. Pale blonde hair surrounds its face like a halo. Scales cover its entire arms, and its lips curve into different shapes as the melody recurs. Its teeth are as sharp as blades, peeking out of its mouth.

It is close. No, it is getting closer. And closer.

And closer.

Until no space was left between it and me. It cradles my face with its gentle hands, brittle with shining blue scales as the melody continues. I feel the water around me getting cold. I whimper, only to regret it a second later.

With bleary eyes and suffocated mind and lungs, I realise the creature is a man. No. The man is the creature.

And that the creature’s mouth is on mine.