Would you still love me if I lost my humanity?

Tatiana Sherikov pulled off of the highway into the parking lot of The Crabapple Inn. The name was cute, but these days the facade certainly embodied it. It was the kind of indigent, two-story motel you see in movies, where people hide when their lives are not going great. Even as she pulled into the space, Tatiana felt her stomach knot up. Marissa McCoy, her best friend since they were kids, was holed up in room 207, according to her last text message. It was the first time Tatiana had heard from her in months. As far as she knew, it was the first time anyone had heard from her. 

Tatiana found the room and knocked on the door. Almost instantly, she saw the shadow of a figure look through the peep hole, before moving away. Her heart was so tight it almost skipped a beat. The door opened; a hooded figure peered out. Even though she could not see a face, Tatiana could tell it was Marissa. She could feel the presence of her best friend. The hooded figure stepped back and beckoned her inside.

Now in the dim light of the single desk lamp, Tatiana could see that she wore a baggy hoodie and sweat pants. She also had her favorite scarf, green and grey and stylized after House Slytherin, wrapped around her face.  

“Thank you so much for coming,” Marissa said. Thank you for coming? This isn’t a fucking business meeting. Tatiana had a lot she wanted to say. She wanted to scream at her friend, what the fuck? She wanted to demand that Marissa explain why she had abandoned everyone who loved her for these four walls of faded pastel paint and the smell of old dust and industrial cleaning chemicals. And something else: the room had a faint smell of old fish.

Still, Tatiana kept her mouth shut. Marissa needed to find her voice in her own time. “W-would you like some wine?” Marissa pointed to the bottle on the nightstand.

“Sure,” Tatiana said. While Marissa poured the wine into a red plastic cup, Tatiana took the moment to examine her friend. Her posture immediately alerted Tatiana. Marissa had always stood tall and proud. With her long arms and legs, she stood almost a full head taller than Tatiana. Now, her spine curved and her shoulders hunched. With her long limbs she looked gangly.  

When Marissa pivoted to face the table, her pant leg slid up just enough to expose her toes. The nails were thick and black, looking almost like claws. Tatiana wanted to inspect further, but she averted her gaze back up to Marissa’s as soon as she pivoted back to offer her the wine. 

Tatina took a sip of the cup; Marissa took a giant gulp straight from the bottle.  

“What’s happening with you?” Tatiana said. “Everyone is worried. Your mom has called me every day for the past week asking if I’ve heard from you.” Marissa chuckled, but not in amusement. It was sharp and rueful.

“Well, it makes sense she wouldn’t understand. She’s not my real mom, anyways.” Her voice broke as she spoke, as if Marissa were trying to hold back an outburst flood of feelings and tears. But Tatiana was shocked. Marissa was adopted, but she had always been so close to her adopted family. Cathy loved Marissa like her own flesh and blood from the moment she had signed the paperwork.

“Where is this coming from?” Tatiana said. Instantly, she regretted her tone. It was too accusatory. Despite what Marissa had said, she was clearly going through something painful. Marissa took another swig of the wine.

“You know that internet meme, ‘would you love me if I turned into a worm? Well… would you love me if I turned into a fish-monster?” 

“This sounds like a wine conversation,” Tatiana said.

“I love that you can make jokes. It’s not like anything is happening to you.”

“I’m sorry. It’s hard for me to understand what exactly is happening to you. Please, help me understand.” Tatiana took another sip of her wine. She kept her eyes on Marissa while she appeared to collect her thoughts. Was Marissa suffering from some kind of psychosis or body dysmorphia? What did she mean ‘a fish-monster?’

“Please don’t be scared? I’m trying to warn you.” Marissa lowered her hood. Her fair skin had taken on a greyish hue. Her once golden locks were brittle, with large patches having fallen out. Scaly growths had metastasized in the bald spots. Upon closer inspection, the growths were actual scales!  

Marissa’s eyes peeked over the cloth wrapping her face. Her sapphire-colored eyes had become slightly bulbous, as if they were bulging out of her sockets.  

Tatiana’s breath caught in her lungs. Her voice caught in her throat. She could not bring herself to look away, even for the comfort and dignity of her best friend. She could feel that this was only a preview of more horror hidden under the baggy clothes.  

Marissa took the scarf off her face and cast it on the sagging twin bed behind her. Her nose had flattened while both her forehead and chin had receded. Her head seemed narrow, but her cheeks puffed out. Her lips were thick and parted as if they could not fully close. Between the thick bands of lip, Tatian could see two rows of pointed teeth that did not fully come together. Immediately, Tatiana thought of an angular fish.

Through these new features Tatiana could still see, physically, the remnant of her best friend. Her original face still formed the foundation on which these deformities had stemmed from. She tried not to think of them as deformities, but Marissa had certainly morphed into something that would stand out to people on the street as not properly human. 

But her bulging eyes glistened, and a tear escaped. And in those eyes, Tatiana saw the glimmer of humanity. This was still her best friend and, above all else, she needed her compassion. 

“What-” Tatiana’s breath caught in her windpipe. “what happened to you?” she forced the words out. Marissa whipped her eyes with her sleeve.

“It sounds strange to say this, but I grew up, Tati. This is the thing I was always meant to become. It’s in my DNA. Drink your wine! This is going to be a doozy.” 

Tatiana took a sip.

“There’s more,” Marissa said. “It’s happening to my whole body.”

“You don’t have to show me, if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t want to. I want to wake up and have this all be a bad dream. But you need to see this to understand. You won’t believe me if you don’t see it for yourself. No sane person would.”  

Marissa pointed towards her feet as she pulled up her pant leg. She flexed her toes to show Tatina a fleshy webbing that had grown between her toes, connecting the blackened claws. 

Next, Marissa pulled off her hoodie. She was naked underneath. The skin on her arms and torso was the same gray, waxy look with scales growing in patches. Her skin glistened in the light of the table lamp. Marissa was coated in a thin layer of slimy ichor.  

Within seconds the unrestrained amine-like stench hit Tatiana. Her nostrils burned slightly. She wrinkled her nose. Marissa only bowed her head, shamefully acknowledging the inhuman reek coming from her. And that hurt Tatiana. She felt like a bad friend.

“I’m so sorry-“

“Don’t worry about it.” Marissa said. She mumbled the words. Tatiana thought it was best to move on.

Fighting the fetor, Tatiana leaned in to examine one of the growths. They were indeed scales, shaped like over-lapping rows of diamonds growing down her arm. She reached out and put her hand on the scales; Marissa allowed it. She slid her fingertips down towards Marissa’s hands; the scales felt smooth and glossy. On the way up, they felt rough, almost pointy, like a pinecone.  

Then she pulled back her hand.

“Don’t worry. I’m not contagious. Like I said, this is in my DNA. And look at this!” Marissa pulled her hair back to expose her neck. Tatiana saw a mound of flesh on each side, looking almost like the rings of an open wound. Marissa turned her head, exposing one of the gashes. Inside, Tatiana could see rows of flesh-colored, feathery flaps, each with pink tips, overlapping each other.

“I think I’m growing gills, Tati,” Marissa said.

“Jesus Christ, Marissa.” The cup shook in her hand as Tatiana took another gulp of wine, almost spilling it all over her face and shirt.

“I rehearsed this a thousand times in my head and it didn’t make it any easier. I was terrified to reach out to you. I was terrified that if you saw what I am becoming you would hate me.”

“I could never!” Tatiana said. “But, what are you becoming?” Her thoughts bounced around through the blur and buzz in her head. It was dawning on Tatiana that the woman who stood before her truly was no longer human.  

“When my body started changing, I started digging.” Marissa said as she put her hoodie back on. “Of course, nothing like this exists in any medical journals. I couldn’t find anything online. So when that became a dead end, I started looking into historical accounts and even the mythology of indigenous people. Still, nothing.”

“Then, one day, I just happened to stumble onto a lead. It was in an old conspiracy theory blog from the late ‘90s. The author is long dead, but the blog was preserved on a digital archive site. Anyways, he said his grandfather was a delivery driver who made stops at Danvers State Hospital.”

“The old insane asylum?”

“Bingo! So, in 1928, they got an influx of strange patients, all from the same place. Tati, have you ever heard of a town called Innsmouth?”

“Nope. Where’s that?

“It was here in Massachusetts, up by Newburyport. About one-hundred years ago. And the people there were…well, weird. Everyone in the county avoided them and many people were outraged when they were moved to Danvers.

“So what happened to the town?”

“It was burned down by the government in 1928. By the FBI specifically. Officially, it was because the town was a major producer of illegal alcohol, since prohibition was still in effect back then. Officially.”  

“Over the next few decades, bits and pieces of the municipality were incorporated into the neighboring cities, like Newburyport, Rowley, and Ipswich. Those towns grew and slowly swallowed up Innsmouth bit by bit.”

“I’ve spent these last few weeks going to libraries and archives, trying to find anything I could about this place. Almost all records of the town have disappeared. Articles literally cut out of newspapers and pages of records torn out of censuses. Like the town was erased from history. But bits and pieces were missed here and there.” 

“Okay, but how does a boot-legging town end with you turning into a fish-person?”

“I managed to find some old articles from a newspaper called the Innsmouth Courier preserved on microfilm reels. A few articles referenced the Esoteric Order of Dagon, which sounds like it was some sort of cult. And there were a few old pictures of people from the town. Guess what they looked like.” Marissa pointed to her face.

“After that, I found an article from 1951 in another paper called the Arkham Gazette. It was a plea from a couple whose son went missing in Innsmouth. He wasn’t from there but he worked for a grocery store in town. The parents said he didn’t like working there. They said he mentioned the Esoteric Order of Dagon, and even saw these weird fish-people.  

“Anyways, he disappeared a few days before the town was burned down. His parents spent the rest of their lives trying to get some answers and every so often they would put out a plea to the local newspapers. But, the author sounded dismissive of this one. Like he was not so subtly trying to imply that the son was crazy. He even suggested that maybe the kid got involved with the local bootleggers and that led to his death. The thing is, he was never actually found. His body wasn’t identified after the town was exterminated.”  

“And that is really all I could find. It’s not a lot to go off of, but it’s enough to convince me that somehow I’m connected to this place. I think my family -my birth family-is from there.”

Tatiana took a moment to process it all. She took a giant gulp of her wine. The whole story seemed so fantastical. It was impossible. But then again, her best friend was standing before her, clearly transforming into something. Tatiana had seen the proof. She had even touched the proof; she had felt it with her fingertips.  

“Do you have any of these articles? I’ve never heard of these papers before.”

“They have both been long since discontinued. By ‘51, the Gazette was basically a dying tabloid. It went out of business the next year. And the Innsmouth Courier, well, that basically went up in smoke with the town. Oddly enough, I tried to ask for copies of the articles, but none of the library clerks would make them, or allow me to make them. A lot of the staff even got very rude when I asked.”

“So, what’s the next step?” Tatiana said. She was finally getting used to this fish-person having her best friend’s voice. Marissa took another gulp of wine from the bottle. This one was a large swig that nearly choked her. She signed.  

“That’s the thing, Tati. I don’t think there is one. The town is long gone. Everyone who has ever been there must be long dead. It’s like I’m late to the big fish-person party. I can’t even think of where to begin.” The last sentence hung in the room. Tatiana was putting it together. After months of searching, Marissa had run into a dead end. She had certainly missed the party by almost a century.  

“Tati, I…I need your help with something,” Marissa said. 

“Anything you need.”

“‘Anything’ is a big word. Do you really mean anything?”

“Absolutly. You’re my best friend, Marissa. I’ll help you through this anyway I can.”

“I need you to help me kill myself.” The words crashed onto the floor like a heavy weight. Tatiana nearly dropped her cup.  

“Ugh-ugh,” was all that Tatiana could manage to spit out.

“I know this is a huge ask but it’s the right thing to do.”

“It is absolutely the wrong thing to do!” Tatiana trembled.  

“I can’t live like this,” Marissa said. “As far as I know, this transformation will not stop. Why would it? I’m already an ugly fish-person. I’m already embarrassed to show my face in public. Soon, I won’t be able to even walk around in public at all!”  

“And then what will I do? I’ll have no community. I’ll have no family. I’ll have to spend the rest of my life alone, hiding in a sewer or something like that.”  

“And it’s not like any doctor can help me. If the government finds out about me, they’ll probably just arrest me and dissect me like a frog. I don’t want that. So, please…please. Help me put an end to this because I know I’m too much of a coward to do it myself. Please… Please…”

Tatiana wrapped her arms around her friend as she started to sob. She let Marissa drop her head on her shoulder. She let Marissa drop her whole weight onto her and she held Marissa up with every muscle in her body..

“Let’s go to Innsmouth,” Tatiana said. Marissa pulled back.

“How? We can’t! The town is long gone.” Marissa began sobbing. “There’s nowhere to go. This is why I need you to help me…to help me…. All the answers have been erased with time! No way back! No cure! We’ve hit a wall that we can’t break through!”

“But something has to remain. There has to be something that can help us.” She grabbed Marissa by the shoulders and locked eyes with her. She forced herself to stare into the bulbous sapphire eyes that wanted to give up.

  “Please just go with me! Just give me one chance; just a few days. We can go to where this Innsmouth used to be and look for some clue as to what is happening to you. And maybe we can reverse it. Please!”

“Okay, okay.” Marissa tried to smile through her tears. Her monstrous lips pulled back to reveal the rows of pointed teeth. Tatiana fought the instinct to look away. “We can try to go to Innsmouth.”  

Tatiana hugged her again. She held her friend close and tight, even as she could smell the amine-like malodor rising from her scales. She held her friend close and tight, even as the fetid ichor coating Marissa’s skin began to soak through the hoodie.

“You’re my best friend. So, yes! I’ll still love you, even if you do turn into a fish-monster,” Tatiana said.