Jess was alone.
Unsettled, she scrutinized the beach for the third time since she’d arrived, squinting as windblown grains of sand stung her reddened cheeks.
This stretch of the coast was desolate during the winter, particularly late in the day, when darkness climbed the stairs of the sky and the sun began to disappear in the west.
Finally, Jess shrugged, concluding that aside from an occasional seabird flying overhead, she was alone.
She breathed in the moist, salty air and moved closer to the water’s edge, listening to the eternal roar of the sea. She watched the fading sun glisten on the water and a gull soar across the face of a rolling wave.
This was the one place in the whole state of Virginia she felt a modicum of peace. Her father had brought her here a few times in the winters of her youth, when few others braved its icy touch.
During those memorable times, she and her dad walked together for what seemed like forever, the sounds of civilization swallowed by the pounding surf. Unlike most of the world, her dad had understood that her introverted nature wasn’t a behavioral defect, but a misunderstood personality trait.
Jess was neither antisocial nor particularly shy, as many mistakenly defined an introvert. She simply preferred not to be in the spotlight, enjoyed listening more than speaking, sought meaningful conversation over small talk, and did her best work alone.
Jess’s father related to this. “For people like us,” he’d once said, “Solitude isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity to recharge.” He taught her that a deserted beach in the dead of winter was the perfect balm. And whenever they had walked in silence for long stretches of time it was never awkward, but an interval of mutual understanding.
She grinned at the thought. God, how she missed her father’s gentle smile, bushy beard and understanding eyes.
Of course, she cared for her younger sister, Lily, and her mother too, as much as was possible with such a detached person. But the bond with her father had always been the deepest.
Jess gazed out at the cloud-flecked sky, flooded with the sunset’s colors of fire red, lavender, and deep orange, its remarkable spell changing the way the world looked just for a moment.
Someone once said there was nothing so bittersweet as watching a beautiful sunset alone. At that moment, missing her father so deeply, she felt that to be true.
I understand, someone whispered.
Jess spun around to see who had spoken.
She looked in every direction, but there was only the rolling mass of the sea and grains of sand dancing across the surface of the shore.
She’d heard the voice clearly. There was no mistaking it. But the more she considered it, the words had seemed less like a voice and more like a thought.
Then she saw him.
She blinked several times before acknowledging he was truly there.
A man bobbed up and down amidst the waves, less than fifty feet from the shoreline. He stared at her through his scuba mask.
A diver surfacing? Out here?
Jess waved.
The diver didn’t wave back.
She raised her hand to shield her eyes from the sun, and that’s when she realized that it wasn’t a man wearing a scuba mask.
It was something else entirely, and it watched her with bulbous, inhuman eyes.
The following afternoon, while sitting across from her sister Lily at the local Coffee Shot, Jess decided not to mention the strange aquatic being.
After all, she’d only had a glimpse before the figure disappeared into the black depths.
And let’s face it, sister, you were probably seeing things.
That’s what she kept telling herself, anyway.
“How’s Tiger?” Lily asked, one of her perfectly manicured hands wrapped around a 32oz extra scalding, non-fat, decaf, caramel, soy Macchiato with a couple extra packets of Splenda.
Jess stared at Lily’s royal blue crocodile skin handbag on the table. Clearly vintage. The bag’s scaly surface reminded Jess of the sea creature’s skin, which she thought she’d seen glistening for a moment in the fading light of the sun.
“Jess?” her sister said, with a slight edge to her voice. Lily never liked repeating herself. “How’s Tiger doing?”
Jess did her best to ignore the table to their left, where three frat boys were gawking at her drop dead gorgeous sibling. It was something she had dealt with all her life.
“Oh, it’s just a matter of time now,” Jess finally replied.
Lily didn’t even like cats, didn’t seem to like animals in general. It was a perfunctory question to draw Jess back into their dying conversation.
Talks with Lily were generally one-sided, and Jess was used to them. But today it had been particularly hard to stay engaged.
“Maybe you should consider putting him down,” Lily offered after a loud slurp. “You know, euthanize the poor little fella.”
Jess stiffened at that, and her eyes flared.
Lily cleared her throat, her eyes apologetic. “What I mean is, you know, ease his suffering.”
Jess didn’t answer, instead she took a sip of green tea. She had been having suicidal thoughts for some time now, but her concern for Tiger had kept her from taking action. Who would take care of him? Even worse; would he think she’d abandoned him?
Jess couldn’t bear the thought.
Mom had moved to Paris to live a fabulous life with her new investment banker boyfriend, Pete, and Jess felt lucky to get a postcard. Lily, on the other hand, could barely take care of herself, much less a dying cat. Her sister had always been oblivious to most things that didn’t relate directly to her, and that included Jess’s deteriorating mental health.
Unlike Lily, Jess had been devastated when their father had died from heart failure six months ago.
Their parents had divorced eight years ago. It was the same year Lily graduated high school and Jess from college. Soon after, their dad’s health took a rapid decline.
Lily left for college and disappeared, while Jess dropped her career goals to become their dad’s caregiver. For the next seven years she became her dad’s full-time medical advocate, navigating the labyrinthine medical system, overseeing endless paperwork, doctor’s appointments and weekly treatments.
She dealt with all of his meals, laundry, bills, and served as his counselor and sole emotional support. Yet Jess never regretted the decision. While the experience was an enormous stress at times, being of service had its intangible rewards. She and her father had only grown closer.
Not surprisingly, Lily hadn’t offered to help once in those seven years. Jess didn’t bother asking because that’s not how things worked with Lily. She asked you for things. Everyone knew that.
Jess didn’t resent her sister’s self-centeredness; that would be as fruitless as resenting the sky for being blue. And yet, how she felt about Lily had changed due to a flippant but deeply painful comment made during a recent lunch.
It had been a typical coffee date and Lily had needed a shoulder to cry on. This time due to a breakup with yet another boyfriend from her seemingly limitless reservoir. In between wiping her mascara-smudged eyes, Lily said, “I know it sounds terrible, but it’s a blessing you didn’t get the looks of the family. Believe me, you’re lucky men don’t ask you out— they all lie and manipulate to get one thing.”
Jess’s heart had sunk like a wounded bird.
Her entire life had been one long reminder that her sister had won the genetic lottery and she had lost it. In every conceivable situation, Lily found herself in the spotlight, while Jess stood in a corner, completely invisible.
But what had always both surprised and impressed Jess about her younger sister, was that she’d never rubbed her beauty in Jess‘s face. Even when they were angry with each other growing up, Lily had never taken the low road.
That consideration had not been lost on Jess, and she had clung to it like a life raft during those times when she’d been drowning from her sister’s self-absorption. They were both well aware of the chasm of attractiveness between them. But Lily had never acknowledged it so callously; she had never crossed the line so blatantly.
And that was why the comment had cut Jess deeply. Lily was many things, but she had never been mean-spirited.
It’s a blessing you didn’t get the looks of the family. You’re lucky men don’t ask you out.
The words had been sharper than knives, and they had hurt far worse than any teasing she’d endured through childhood.
And yet with mom in Paris, her father gone, and her beloved Tiger’s inoperable cancer, Lily was just about all she had left. Sure, she would forgive her and move on eventually. But as she remembered once reading, you could throw a plate, watch it break, and say sorry. And while the act could be forgiven, the plate would still be broken.
“I appreciate what you’re saying,” Jess said after a long and uncomfortable silence. “But I’m torn between wanting to end Tiger’s suffering...and not wanting to betray his trust by euthanizing him.”
Lily dismissed the thought with a wave of her hand. “A cat wouldn’t know th—”
“I would know,” Jess said, cutting her off.
On her drive home, Jess couldn’t shake the memory of the bizarre aquatic being she jokingly referred to as ‘Bob’ in her mind.
It bobs in the water, get it folks? Ba dum bum. I got a million of ’em.
What had struck her the most were its eyes. They were multicolored, like the rainbow on the surface of an oily patch of water. But there was something else in those eyes.
What was it?
Empathy.
It made no sense whatsoever.
But Goddamn if she didn’t want to go back to the beach right then to see if she could find the creature.
Instead, she pulled onto her street and prepared herself for what was to come.
Jess’s chest tightened at the thought of what faced her as she walked up the front steps to her apartment complex.
Tiger, her 14-year-old cat, would hear her come home and struggle like mad to greet her. There was a time when she looked forward to it every night.
But now his joints were a mess and every step an agonized effort. These days, it broke her heart to see him struggle and limp as he tried to meet her at the door.
She passed through the front gate to her complex and thought about the day she had found him while walking through the neighborhood. A tiny sound, almost imperceptible, had caught her attention.
If it hadn’t been for the near total silence of the street at that moment, she never would have heard it. It took her a few moments to identify the direction of the mewling noise.
Then she glanced down and saw it, a tiny figure buried amidst the mud, trash and leaves of a rain gutter.
The emaciated kitten was barely alive but she spent the next two months nursing it back to health. He’d grown up to be the most affectionate cat imaginable. She gave him the obvious name of ‘Tiger’ due to his Bengal Tiger-like stripes, and he had become her one constant companion ever since.
Maybe Lily is right, Jess thought as she gingerly opened the front door. I’m only prolonging the inevitable. Maybe the most loving thing to do is put an end to his suffering.
As she glanced around her modestly decorated living room, she noticed that Tiger wasn’t in his usual spot by the couch.
It didn’t take long to find him.
He lay on his side on the tile kitchen floor, as emaciated as when she’d found him all those years ago.
His glassy eyes were propped open by death.
Jess held it together until she touched his unmoving chest, felt the stiffness of his body and the coldness left behind.
And then the tears came.
Gloom crept through Jess’s home like a poisonous mist the following day. When it became too much to bear, she drove to the beach to clear her head.
It was now three in the afternoon, and the fact that she hadn’t slept the previous night had taken its toll. She dropped to the sand like a marionette cut loose from its strings.
Jess couldn’t shake a mental loop of Tiger’s eyes, as cold as the tile floor on which he’d died, and the image of his corpse being stuffed in a container by the disinterested pickup man from the Pet Crematorium.
Tomorrow she would go for a final viewing, before his body was subjected to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit and vaporized into dust and dried bones.
Jess had decided she would scatter those ashes into the ocean.
Maybe I’ll follow you there, she thought.
She pulled up the collar of her double-breasted pea coat and stared out at the great expanse of the sea. Huge ice-floes of clouds sailed by in an ashen sky. Heavy. Bleak. Dispiriting. Just like her mood.
Could be worse, she thought. I could be at work.
Earlier, she’d texted her boss that she was taking a personal day, due to the death of a loved one.
Jess worked in the accounts payable department of a telecommunications company, and it was almost unheard of for her to take time off.
Maria, her supervisor, said it was fine, but didn’t bother to offer any condolences. Briefly, Jess wondered if anyone would notice that she wasn’t in the office.
Most likely not. She was as invisible there as she was everywhere else.
A whisper. Not invisible. To me.
Jess sat up and looked out toward the sea. It was that voice again. And like before, it wasn’t a voice as much as a thought.
Had the strange aquatic being returned? God, she hoped so.
I hear you. Jess said in her mind. Show yourself.
She stood and moved closer to the ocean’s edge, where the water’s touch gnawed at the sand, writing sculpted secrets there.
Please, Jess thought.
Moments later, a reply: I am. Here.
Jess strained her eyes, scanning the waves for anything unusual or out of place.
A familiar head bobbed up and down in the water.
Bob, she thought.
Jess decided that Bob had the most expressive eyes she had ever seen.
In addition, this remarkable ocean being had the ability to communicate between minds. Telepathy.
Upon communing, Jess soon learned that it had no name, no family, and no understanding of its own history. She did, however, ascertain that it was male.
Though slightly embarrassed to ask, Jess was delighted when it agreed to be called Bob.
Apparently abandoned, Bob had been left to fend for himself since as far back as he could remember. He believed he was the last of his kind, and he had swam in the depths of loneliness throughout his existence.
Jess knew what it was like to be a ghost gliding through the world, with no body and no shadow. Leaving no footprints. She knew how it felt to have the vice of loneliness on your heart, how it increased in pressure a little more each day. How it inexorably dimmed the light inside and replaced it with a darkness that overshadowed each moment.
Oh yes, Jess understood why this lonely creature had spent years using his unique abilities to read the minds of people like Jess. He’d wanted to learn how to communicate in human languages.
This was about connection. Any connection.
At first, Bob’s ability to reach into Jess’s mind was unsettling. But she quickly acclimated to it, and soon realized that it was far more advanced than typical verbal exchanges.
When she communicated with Bob, the feelings behind the words were also transferred between them.
It was...intimate, she thought.
Understandably, though a highly intelligent being, he had rudimentary English skills. But what he lacked in the nuances of spoken language, he more than made up for with his expressive eyes and psychic ability to convey feeling.
But perhaps the most notable thing about Bob was that he listened.
Intently.
For the first time in her life, Jess felt truly seen and heard.
And when she finally broke down and wept, her salt tears mixing with the briny sea, the creature wept with her.
Jess quit her job over the phone and spent the better part of the next four days at the beach, only leaving when the sun gave way to the evening’s darkness and Bob would return to the ocean depths.
She spoke for hours and Bob listened. He was fascinated by everything about her. She told him everything she could about the surface world, as he seemed intent on understanding what it meant to be human.
When she brought Tiger’s remains to the ocean’s edge and poured his ashes across the surface of the water, Bob floated nearby, watching her silently with palpable compassion.
But on the fifth day, things took a dark turn. For Jess realized that whatever it was that she had with Bob would never go farther than these captured moments.
One day she would return to the beach and he would be gone.
The recognition of this was followed by familiar feelings of loneliness and despair; they never seemed farther than a single step in the wrong direction. And they always led to the same place, the same final destination.
As she expressed this, Bob swam closer. His rainbow-streaked eyes narrowed. And he listened.
Jess wondered how in the world she could explain these concepts to a being like Bob. How could she possibly make him understand why someone would choose not to live?
Tell more, Bob inquired.
Jess stared at her aquatic companion for several moments. Where she would normally expect judgment, she saw only compassion. He truly wanted to understand. She could sense that. And so she tried.
No one ever really wants to die, she said in her mind. They simply want to end the pain.
Jess had been through all of this ad nauseum with her former therapist, Dr. Karen Burroughs. She had stopped therapy with her two weeks ago, because she had grown weary of a highly successful, beautiful, and happily married woman trying to convince her that she could possibly understand.
She imagined Karen’s reaction if she returned for another session and tried to explain her relationship with Bob.
Well, Jess...I’m sure we can both agree that Bob is simply a figment of your imagination. The timing of his appearance is no accident. He came to you in your deepest despair, yes? He is merely symbolic of that.
No doubt delivered in her special brand of compassion and condescension.
No, Karen, Jess thought. Bob is real. So real that I could swim out and touch him even now. And, in fact, she wanted to.
As if in answer, Bob swam closer than ever before. She could see his throat expanding and contracting like a small balloon, his mosaic of scales glistening in the sun as sea water ran down his sinewy shoulders and chest.
Bob’s eyes grew wide. Tell more.
So she did.
This dark place...it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s more complex than a single decision. It comes after a long internal battle, you see. It’s the total collapse of your emotional reserves.
Bob blinked as if he understood.
When you’ve lost your soul to a sea of emptiness and darkness, you feel like a terrible burden to the world. Beyond ending your own pain, you know it’s unfair to make others—especially your loved ones—suffer along with you year after year. They don’t deserve to be dragged down into your emotional abyss.
For a moment, Jess struggled to go on; the intense feelings hit her like a physical blow.
Bob remained silent. Still. Attentive.
She composed herself before continuing. Some say that ending your life is selfish. Because of the collateral damage you leave behind. But that’s bullshit. What’s selfish is to expect anyone to suffer an intolerable reality… something that can only be understood by that person...simply to spare someone else from their own soul-searching.
When Jess dared to meet Bob’s eyes again, she saw more than empathy there.
She saw heartbreak.
Jess took an involuntary step back and examined the remarkable creature before her. In that horrifying moment, she realized that she’d dragged him into the very emotional abyss she’d just described.
Disgusted with herself, and not wanting him to see her this way, she turned and walked away.
I have to go, she said.
She had only taken five steps when she felt the gentle caress of something unseen.
She paused a moment, and then glanced back toward the sea.
Bob’s arms were outstretched.
Welcoming.
Jess found herself moving towards the water, as if she were somehow observing this from outside herself, present but unable to control the outcome.
At first, she hardly noticed the ocean’s icy grip as she waded past the first waves. All of her attention was focused on the eyes of the beautiful creature before her.
She freed herself from her waterlogged jacket, but her socks and shoes felt like lead weights, pulling at her with every wave that passed. She struggled to navigate through the slippery rocks as kelp churned in the surf.
Bob waited. Unblinking.
Salty water splashed over Jess, stinging her eyes. The frigid water began to numb her hands and feet, causing her breath to come in short, hard gasps.
When she finally waded close enough, Bob reached out and wrapped his cold, powerful arms around her.
She embraced him.
Soon she was underwater. Numbed.
She surrendered to it.
No more pain.
She glanced up at the last vestiges of sunlight reflected in the water.
There was a flash of monstrous teeth. The silhouette of a shark-like fin on Bob’s back.
In that terrifying moment, Jess realized she’d made a grave mistake. There was a sharp clarity now that she couldn’t see before. For the first time since she could remember, she wanted to live.
Oh God...please...let me live!
Her screams were absorbed into an indifferent sea as shreds of her flesh and entrails floated past her.
She struggled wildly to escape, desperate to reach the surface. Frantic for a second chance.
But it was too late
It was too late to do anything at all.
END