Water always excited me.
Smooth wet skin, the sound of splashing and smell of wet hair plastered down the skull and neck and shoulders filled me with a deep excitement that reached back to my childhood. I can still remember how surreptitious glances at my mother in the bathtub caused deep unmentionable feelings in me. Visits to the swimming pool and beach triggered such an orgy of pleasurable fantasies in me that it was almost unbearable. It wasn’t about silly swimsuits and bikinis for me, but the actual splash of body in water, water in skin, the slowed-down movements in the water, that was what I wanted to feel and be with always.
And then I met Laura.
She indulged me like no other girlfriend I had ever had before. In fact, she was everything I had ever wanted in a girlfriend: a skinny redhead with narrow shoulders, perfect white skin, a pretty face and an almost puppy-like desire to please me in and out of the bedroom. She was so sweet and loving. Oh Laura. My heart twists when I think of you, and how I lost you. Maybe I should have gone with you, I have never met anyone else like you, and I know I never will.
We visited local swimming pools together at hours where we were most likely to have privacy, giggling when the lifeguards told us off and to ‘keep it PG guys’, and we spent hours in my large ornate bathtub- my one expensive indulgence in my otherwise spartan home. I don’t like the water too hot, the temperature has to be just right, and I don’t like all that bubbles and bath bomb crap that has become trendy these days. I was worried at first that Laura would insist on filling my water with that stinky crap and I was relieved and delighted when I realized like me, she enjoyed the pure untainted water, perhaps with a handful of plain salt.
Best of all were the fleeting summer months when the sea was warm enough in our chilly northern harbour city and we spent almost every spare minute in and around the water, outside.
We were sitting in my beautiful large bathtub at home when she told me she had had planned something special for my birthday. I laughed excitedly, splashed some water gently on her small breasts, loving the delicate lacy pattern her hair made on her skin. “What is it babe?”
She laughed and splashed me back “Obviously it’s a surprise”. The tingle and sound of the water made me want to fuck her immediately.
My birthday rolled round in May, which was far too cold for swimming in sea by our city, and I was surprised when she asked the go to the beach for my birthday surprise. I hated sex on the sand, it gets fucking everywhere, and driving down to the windy, grey, deserted strip of beach which was our favourite spot in summer, I felt confused and slightly irritated. I also noticed that she hadn’t brought any picnic hamper or bag for or tote bag and when I asked her if she wanted to grab snacks, she just laughed and shook her head. ‘We won’t need snacks babe, we’ll be having too much fun, I promise!’
She noticed the growing look of confusion and doubt on my face, but it made her giggle.
“Come on, babe, don’t worry! It’s what you’ve always wanted!!” We parked, and got out, she took my hand, and began running down straight to the water. She stopped by a big crop of rocks just where the land met the sea, against which we had had sex countless times during summer.
“Laura- honey, what is the surprise though?”
I could feel the cold seawater seep through my shoes. The grey sea heaved behind us , and the wind whipped her hair into a furious red cloud around her head. Her eyes shone green. “This is what you always wanted, right?” She was tugging off her sweater, she dropped her clothes on the sand where they were immediately soaked by the waves hungrily reaching the shore.
“Laura- I’m freezing , what are you doing?”
She was fully naked now, wet almost up to her knees. She climbed up the rock and sat with her bare wet legs curled under her, and then she turned to me and reached out her hand for me to join her on the rock.
The sea behind her seemed to turn black and waves reaching even higher, and they didn’t seem quite shaped like waves anymore but like long fingers, reaching high into the pale grey sky. Voices- snatches of high singing or music filled the air, rising over the sound of the breaking waves.
I looked up at her face, silvery pale and streaked with red hair. Her eyes had changed colour and expression, they had become unnaturally large and round and filled with a blank urgent desire. She opened her mouth and joined in the wavy singing. Something twitched on the rock, I looked down and suddenly saw -no legs but a huge silver-green fish tail curled under her, the scales gleaming and pulsating.
“Come Eric” she reached her long arms to me, trying to draw me up to her.
She was right. I had been waiting for this moment all my life. But instead of the joy I always thought such a moment would bring me, I felt nothing but a surge of pure fear- I needed to get away from the sea and Laura and the rising blackness in the water behind her.
Laura saw the fear and rejection in my face, she frowned and her singing turned into a howl of fury. I saw a mass of black tentacles rising from the black sea towards me as I turned and ran, running as fast as I could away from the sea and back up towards the car. I heard a terrible smashing sound- I couldn’t help glimpsing back and saw the tentacles smashing down on the wet sand barely inches away from me, narrowly missing me, a spray of seawater drenching me. Behind the tentacles, I saw Laura arching her body, and then diving in to join her friends below. I reached my car and stopped, I turned and watched the tentacles slither back into the sea, leaving the beach once more deserted and empty.
I don’t like the water much anymore, and I only shower when I need to.