Glass House

Will

Malicious waves of dark grey clouds rolled in as I approached Gilburn's sandy shore. Sharp seashells jabbed into the soft undersides of my feet as I hopped out the bay boat and docked it. Tepid water encircled my shins in rushed, crashing waves through my sluggish wade. Nothing stood to greet me but an empty beach, though it wasn’t surprising. I was always the one doing the chasing in this relationship.

Grains of sand wormed their way into my shoes and squished with every step I took in an annoying tickle as I traversed the mild terrain of the island. A rushing cascade of water spurted down small waterfalls while I scanned the rock formations. The scent was cool, light, refreshing even. It only took me twenty or maybe twenty-five minutes to find the exact crevice I needed. Labored breaths spewed from my nose. Jagged rocks poked and prodded at my calves first as I hoisted myself above the cavern's opening. I had been down this path a handful of times in the last year, but falling through the stony tunnel never got any easier nor did it refrain from leaving long licks of scrapes against my back.

Darkness enveloped the small tunnel that bridged the rock to the cavern I’d found myself allured to. Save for the streams of light that trickled down along with me. Clapping dust from my hands, the calloused skin between my fingers and the top of my palms roughed together in a barely noticeable grate. Warm sand crunched beneath my feet. Refractions from the moon pool littered the cavern's walls in a turquoise frenzy. Mimicking the waves of a pool freshly left unattended by a group of swimmers.

She stood with her back to me, her shoulders squared as if a rod were stuck beside her spine. Boisterous sun bleached hair protruded from her pony tail. “Thought I’d find you here.” My words nominally echoed off of the rock that entranced her to the point of going mute even in my presence. “What’s going on?” I crept closer to her unmoving figure. Her hands were clenched tightly, but I couldn’t be sure if it was to punch me, or if it had anything to do with the sparking of blue bouncing across the surface of the rock in front of her.

“Why’d you have to go off and do that?” she questioned. Her voice finally crooned in my ears.

“Do what?” my shock had been genuine. I didn’t know exactly what she was referring to, yet irritation was strong in her voice. Her hands shook almost unnoticeably as I left silent footfalls in my wake.

“Don’t act like you don’t know. I know what you said to Zach and Isla.” Empty of malice, her words entwined with glimmers of exasperation that only drew me in closer to her. I felt like a magnet, and I couldn’t deny the pull. The spark that silently encompassed our every conversation, but I pushed it all aside and ignored it. Even when she kissed me two weeks ago. I left it all in the past.

“I don’t know. What do you think I said to them?” It was always an eternal night in the moonpool without sunlight to break the ambience. Eternally another world that could be brushed aside, forgotten, or hidden.

“Really?” a short exhale fanned from her lips to that spark pulsating in front of her. It reared upwards, almost as if it had been tickled by her breath. She shook her head narrowly. In the span of a single moment I had time to inspect her clothes, her hair, her skin. Sharp scales had begun to jut out from her outer forearms in a light creme-orange hue.

Rocks filled my stomach, pebbles at first then near first-sized stones. They fell hard and threatened to slice through the organ entirely. “I didn’t say anything. Really. But I am worried about you.” I trained my voice to ripple soft like seashell windchimes in a light Winter’s breeze.

“I’m fine!” she exclaimed, finally spinning around on her heels to face me. Her jaw sharpened as she tipped her head back until our eyes met. Cornflower colored irises bounced back and forth between my eyes, then around my face. I had almost begun to wonder if she was thinking up new insults, but decided against egging her on.

“No you aren’t! Look at yourself. Are you really going to stand there and tell me that you’re fine when you’re growing fish scales out of your arms?” sharp gashes of a scoff bubbled up my throat.

“They’re not fish scales. Stop calling them that!” she demanded, her cries echoed off the rock. The pulsating intensified during our argument, I could see it out of the corner of my eye.

“Whatever they are, it doesn’t matter. It’s not normal.” I hesitated, “You need help.” I scrubbed my hand through my hair, trying not to rip it out. The thought was becoming more lustrous by the second with her.

“I don’t need help. And even if I did, I don’t need it from someone who goes behind my back and tells people my secret after I specifically asked you not to.” She wasn’t wrong. I had promised I wouldn’t tell anyone about the triangular incisions forming along her arms.

“You told me to play nice with Zach, and I did.” My tone held firm, voice intentionally made deeper, not to assert dominance, but because I was tired of the back and forth on the topic of Zach. “You dated him for how long and he’s known for how long?” She only answered me with silence and broke our streak of eye contact. Her gaze focused along the moon pool. “Isla deserves to know if this ends up happening to her. We don’t even know how this started.” Even after I had entrenched my way closer to her, we still had almost a metre between us. The first step I took towards her I tilted my head in her line of sight to compel her to find my glare once again. The second step I took towards her I lifted my fingers and cupped her jaw, coercing her skull to face me at the very least. I let my thumb slide across her jaw bone in a methodical stroke, nothing special or fancy, just a reminder that I was there. The third step was just to match my previous foot’s placement. She had yielded to me finally, and gave me access to the windows she had always slammed. “You can trust me.” My gaze swam across her face, searching for anything and everything to work with.

“Why should I believe you?” she paused, “Honestly, give me one good reason why I should trust you.” Her jaw was tense in my hand, as if she made her entire body go rigid with pure hate or revulsion.

“I never threatened to tell anyone about your mermaidness when we’ve argued unlike someone.” I quipped through gritted teeth. My lips curled into a salient, wide mouthed smile. Hurt flashed across Harper's face at the jab made indirectly to her, though it was entirely directed at Zach. For everything I had to sit by and watch her go through just to treat me as if I was the same as him.

“Zach," she supplemented. "That’s low.” She folded her lips inward, forming a tight lipped line. Hesitation set in my bones, I wasn’t sure if I should have pulled away or given up in that moment. She reached up to where my wrist jutted out from underneath her chin and pried each of my fingers away from her jaw. A soft and warm thumb pad pressed into the pulse of my wrist. Captured between her thumb and index finger, she brought our hands down between our stomachs, not fully releasing me.

“Let me help you, Harper.” I briefly paused my begging once the gurgles of surface tension being broken in the moon pool echoed a low hum. I knew it was either Isla or Charlotte just outside of my peripheral vision, but I couldn’t bring myself to tear my gaze away from her. Jagged uneven peaks slashed through my fingertips as I caressed the valley of scales littering her forearm. Dull pain radiated from my fingers. Trickles of blood barely formed along her skin in chili colored smatterings.

Languid fingers slip out from mine leaving a trail of absent warmth in their wake. Oxidizing blood dried in a sheer glaze along the emerging edges in a glimmering wall walking further away from my grasp. I called out her name, twisting around hoping she’d reconsider. I would have been happy if she hurled another accusation at me in the very least. Her figure plunged into the shimmering moon pool where Isla and Charlotte laid with arms resting along the wet stones. Bubbles frothed in her place in the blink of an eye, replicating the whirring jets of a jacuzzi.

“That certainly went well.” Charlotte goaded as we fell silent. “So when were you going to tell us she’s turning full fish, hmm?” her query was full of taunt. Squeezing my eyes shut, I could feel the pulsating migraine creeping up through my left eye.

“She didn’t-” my words drowned underneath the echo of anguish.

“Want us to know?” Charlotte interrupted. “Like how you were the only one to know about her controlling the magnetic field here?” Her brows ruffled together and her eyes grew a shade darker.

“I already apologized and made up for that.” I sputtered back, growing knackered from repeating the same situation and conversation every few weeks.

“It doesn’t change the fact you’re constantly keeping things from us.” Glitter shimmered off of Charlotte's tanned skin in the light illuminating from the moon pool her tail laid floating in.

“Charlotte.” Isla warned. Head tilted, eyes squinted in disbelief at her newfound confrontational side.

“It’s true,” she turned her gaze from me to Isla and back to me with confusion and offense etched onto her face. “He’s lied about things that affect not just Harper but us, Isla. How can you trust him? He doesn’t care.”

“We need to focus on why she’s growing scales unless you want to be next.” Isla warned while opting to not answer Charlotte's question of trust. “Do you have any ideas?” her question was pointed toward me.

Harper

Blades of grass sliced into my feet like shards of glass while I walked along the morning dew. The salty scent of the water off the dock filled my nose and gave me something to preoccupy my mind with before I finally collapsed on the wooden boards in front of Will’s bay boat. The boards were hard underneath my ribs, sending shooting pain scattering along the left side of my rib cage. Sweat beaded along my brow, a single droplet dipped below through my lashes and into my eye.

I could hear the hesitation of some small whirring from inside his boatshed after collapsing. Heavy footsteps followed as it grew further away from the window and towards the door. If I rolled onto my back I’d fall into the water, but it didn’t matter–I’d remain the same.

Three days had passed by without growing a tail when I got into the shower, washed my hands, and went into the ocean. Three days had passed by and the scales spread from my arms to my stomach, coating my midriff. Six frilly lace like ribbons spurted out from my neck when the scales had begun spreading. The pinkish purple hue on the ends felt ethereal when I touched them only to find out it was like a death sentence. Immense stinging would singe up my entire body starting at my calves and spiking up to the depths of my stomach if I touched them. Blistering heat like the sands after a thirty degree celsius afternoon filled my entire body every time I tried to will myself to stave off the pain to investigate.

The door hinges creaked as it was shoved open, those footfalls from earlier were sparse, yet demanded my attention. I didn’t want to come to Will after our argument at Gilburn, but I knew I couldn’t trust Zach. Not after him and Isla got together behind my back. Not after he made it clear that this whole side of me was too much for him. “Will!” I screamed until my throat ripped itself apart. Vowels scratched against the raw esophagus lining left smoldering in white heat.

Scampered stomps vibrated the boards beneath me as he rounded the corner. I tried to rock onto my stomach without sending the scales deeper into my skin, but no matter how much weight I put onto my skin, the scales pushed back as if they were clinging to me. Warm wood kissed the soft skin of my inner forearm as I tried to wrench my body up in short bursts. Splinters of ice stemmed from the middle of my chest and spidered across my muscles towards my collar bone in a shattering wave of crystals.

His voice echoed in my brain. Panic wrapped around his tongue like a venomous snake and reached my ears in a sharp burst. I gave up halfway through the second tug I managed and collapsed back down to the boards with a deep crunch to my bones from the embedded scales. Terror filled eyes stared back at me as I raised my head.

Finding the momentum to push myself up on my arms was too much to focus on, rendering me speechless. Bile rose up my throat, acid stinging the freshly torn internal ribbing, that was when I heard the second pair of footsteps approaching behind Will.

Will

My eyes leaped furiously from hers, the sweat sheening on her skin, the scales taking up almost every inch of skin from her upper and outer forearms and climbing up the column on her throat. Frilled edges tinged with a light purple hue stuck out like short, thin ruffles from the sides of her neck in two sets of three. Her scream sent a chill down my spine and furrowed deep into my bones. I went to take a step towards her to do something, anything, but a rough hand clasped onto my left shoulder, gripping the muscle in a thick fingered pinch.

“Don’t. It could be dangerous.” His voice was cold and distant, his eyes matched his tone with such precision that he felt like a different person than the man Harper had dated only a handful of months ago.

“Dangerous? Look at her, she’s turning into something.” I reached out again, attempting to take a step, just to be met with another forceful yank from Zach’s grasp. I refused to stay still, turning to look at him while I snatched my shoulder back from him, breaking the grip he sought to maintain. I needed to know what was happening to Harper . It was bad enough I could see the scales overtaking her body from the last time we spoke, but watching her pant and struggle to breathe felt like a dull knife ripping through my sternum.

I scurried to her side and bent a knee on the wood, immediately finding discomfort as I rolled my kneecap over a nail. Damp hair clung to her face and neck. I started brushing my fingers through her hairline to get the heat off her neck, finding soft, fleshy wounds. She hissed and squirmed away from me. Her face was growing red as tears slid along her cheekbones.

Thumbing the edge of the protruding ripple from Harper's neck, I tenderly attempted to lift each fold. Discoloring light pink and dark red long slices resided underneath each fold that broke itself open every few seconds as if looking for something to eat, or maybe something to drink. I checked under the next fold and found another searching wound, and the same under the next. It was the same on the other side of her neck. Softly hushing her through each hiss of pain she wept out, I endured her gripping my wrist. She dug her darkened fingernails as deep as she needed, breaking through the skin and drawing light streaks of blood swimming down my wrist and towards my elbow in a warm lick of affection. My eyes instinctively squinted as I tried to make sense of what I was looking at, until I had begun to rethink what could have started all of this. Even if it had nothing to do with the coral she scraped her palms against, what would cover her in scales?

Open…fleshy…searching…

Her breathing hadn’t slowed down and her face screwed in all sorts of uncomfortable ways.

Needing…scales…breathing…

These wounds weren’t hungry or thirsty, but they were searching. Searching for something. “Hold on, alright?” I instructed her. A quiet ‘huh’ escaped her lips before she had time to realize I pressed a thumb across one slit, covering it entirely. Her chest trembled and her mouth sputtered in a guttural groan.

Gills.

“What are you doing? Are you crazy?” her words were swallowed her shallow gasps. Her other hand clasped around my offending hand, trying to tear it away from her neck.

“Do you trust me?” my eyes locked with hers in an all encompassing death stare. So loaded with everything we’ve argued about, but there wouldn’t be much time left if the scales fully covered her body.

“Will-” I didn’t let her continue. I pushed her into the water and watched as her body flailed in a thrashing fit. A pool of bubbles heated and rose to the surface as she stayed in the water with each passing moment. A clearing finally made a passage for itself, where I could see the gills sprouting out from her neck sucking in and expelling the water around her. I wished I had kissed her before pushing her in.