Sleep in Peace (story and preview)
By Karlissa J
Davy Jones started awake. A chilly, palpable darkness surrounded the merchild, his belly resting against soft mud.
He wasn’t afraid of the dark or the cold. He breathed through it. He lived in it. And yet something had unsettled him. “Uncle Jor’mun Gand?” Davy Jones whispered.
Silence.
“Uncle?”
“I heard you,” His uncle’s smooth voice floated from the darkness. “I told you not to wake me. What do you want?”
“Can… can I um… can I come sleep beside you?”
A pause. “Fine.”
Davy Jones swam up and over. He felt the rock that his uncle slept upon, then nosed his way to his uncle’s chest, curling beneath the larger merman’s arms. The child stretched out his own eel-like body. “Uncle?”
“Yes?”
“Um… I saw a glowing fish in the house.”
“A small one?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Then don’t worry about it,” Jor’Mun Gand said absently. “All the food is stored away. And glowing fish are rarely scavengers anyways.”
The room fell back into quiet. Davy Jones could feel his uncle’s pulse. The merchild curled into a ball. “Uncle, I… I had a nightmare. I didn’t see anything, but I smelled something scary following me.”
His uncle shifted. “Tell me: what do you smell right now?”
Davy Jones’ little nose searched the water. His voice lifted cheerily, “I smell you.”
The two spent a moment tasting and smelling the chemical mixture of the water: the salt of the sea, the particles stirred by the current outside. Jor’mun Gand held his hand over Davy Jones’ heart, feeling the child’s rushing pulse.
He pulled his nephew closer. “Focus on the comforting smells. On me. On what’s really here. There are no monsters, no scary smells. Just us.”
Davy Jones took another couple sniffs to confirm his uncle’s words. Then, he set his head against the rock. The spiny dorsal fin trailing from his head to his back folded down.
No monsters, Davy Jones thought contentedly, curling his long claws into the rock beneath his hands and uncoiling his slimy, serpentine body. He yawned, exposing rows of mini daggers for teeth. No monsters – just us.
This short story is also the first chapter in Davy Jones’ Aquarium! Click here to find the book on Kobo or take a look at Karlissa J’s novels!
