061519c

King Me

Patricia scowled, slamming the black checker down on top of its twin as hard as she could without jumping any of the others out of place. The room heaved, and her face paled. She took another sip of warm cola. Her brother bared his teeth, hand hovering over a front-line piece. She was thinking not that one not that one not that one, but for the life of him he couldn't see the move she was afraid of. He moved his hand and pretended to reach for another piece that seemed promising. No reaction. Who needed telepathy with these tells? It had to be the first piece, but for the life of him he couldn't figure out which move she was worried about. In the end he just guessed.

The walls were cheap paneling, the floor wood planks. Outside the small window, storm clouds and rain. On the floor around three sides of the room were nonperishable foods, clothing and blankets, and a miscellany of salvage. The fourth wall held the stove and sink, both heaped with junk and clearly not in use.

The room jerked and tilted; a tree branch shattered the window and tore out half of the wooden frame. Then it was gone. The room filled with a rushing sound and a spray of water. Water bubbled up between the floorboards behind Benny, wetting the seat of his pants.

"God dammit!" The boy leaped to his feet, slapping his butt. His sister was upchucking into a bucket. He staggered to the door and ripped it open. Patricia screamed. Outside, choppy water stretched as far as the eye could see. Waves broke against a ragged platform, all that remained of the floor of their house, and fountained out of the rectangular cutout that had once been the top of the basement stairs. A gull laughed from a sky in flood.

Night was dark, the moon and stars hidden by clouds, and they were out of fuel. Patricia spooned room-temperature beef stew from a can by feel and licked drops from her chin. She had spent the whole day inside. Couldn't stand to go outside, couldn't stand to look at the water. She'd lost count of the bodies on Sunday, shark bit, bloated, face up, face down. Face up was the worst.

Patricia was dreaming, she knew she was. Even when she was small, she had always known.

Benny was shaking her. "Wake up! Something's out there!"

It was a giant squid. Floating, it had bumped against, tangled with, the raft. One arm must have been 100 feet long. She knew these creatures lived only deep in the ocean. The leaf-shaped pad on the arm's tip was nearly the size of her body. The suckers looked like the bottoms of paper cups. The eye was a milky saucer. The eye... blinked. Arms unfurled, rose above her head.

The squid spoke to her. "Worship me. Give yourself to me, be my queen." Its huge eye was blue, as blue as a scallop's. "The ocean will be your domain, all that swims your servants." Colors ran in its gleaming wet skin, a semaphore, an incantation she thought she couldn't read. Her head felt hot, her whole body, hot. So it was like this.

There was a quiet splash.

"Benny?"

A long arm curled around her back and belly. She felt the suckers, as large as hands, cold and wet, pulled tight against her skin. The squid lifted her into the sky. Rain and wind forced her to shut her eyes, turn her head. Beneath her, the great beak opened, clacked shut. The arm held her up high. She felt like the torch of the Statue of Liberty. It would be good to be Queen.