The sea witch — a short story about an ephemeral lover.

In the corner of a dark room, only slightly lit by the stray rays of moonlight creeping through the window, stood an old piano. The paint chipping off its preciously shiny surface, and the delicate shapes from the thin lace curtains draping the window frame dancing on the dark wood, off tune, made the instrument look like a vestige from another era. And maybe it was.

Even though dark and cold, the room carried a certain warmth, and if walls could speak, they would have told a million stories. In this silence full of history, only one soul persisted, driven by a muse he knew he couldn’t lose.

The young man stood on his tippy toes as he tried to reach for a box, on one of the top shelves of the oak cabinet. He had never been very tall, or so he was told, but he never really cared either. As he finally reached the box, and retrieved the tool he had been looking for. A slight tremor shook his hands; the exciting yet frightening realization that his work would be over soon was one of the moments he dreaded the most. At those times he would usually allow himself a break, would go out and walk under the moon, along the river and past the park. The night calmed him; the moon inspired him to keep going.

But not this time.

He couldn’t stop, because she was different.

She was, by far, his most challenging piece of work yet; the structure so delicate and twisted that it threatened to fall apart any minute. He could not allow himself to walk away from her for more than a few moments at a time, and had to constantly add on to her to prevent her from cracking and crumbling into dust. However the fragile structure was not what drove him to complete her promptly; it was her essence, the way he saw her gradually become more and more real with each stroke of his hands, each incision of his knife, each sprinkle of water on her grayish skin.

As he modeled her eyes, he fell in love with her gaze. As he sculpted her hands, he offered her a ring to celebrate their tenderness. As he made her lips, he wished they were real flesh and not just hardening clay.

His gaze lingered upon her, distracting him from the moist mush of gray drying unpleasantly on his palms. Maybe he suffered from kalopsia. Maybe what his eyes saw was not what was actually real. Maybe she wasn’t real at all, a product of his euphemistic imagination. Or maybe he really was a genius, wielding magic in his hands and creating such beauty that the human mind cannot wrap itself around it.

Either way, she fascinated him.

By the time he was done perfecting every crease on her neck and every bump of her feet, he was out of breath. Not from too much excitement, but from having worked on her for more than twenty-three hours without a break. He let himself fall on the chair next to the cabinet and admired his creation that had yet to dry. The wet clay glistened under the moonlight as he scrutinized her features again, like he was discovering her for the very first time. He knew that only half the work was done, as he had yet to paint her, and made a mental note to restock on airbrush paint first thing in the morning.

He watched over her for the remaining of the night, barely blinking, the fear that she might disappear if he averted his gaze or lowered his guard keeping him wide awake.

She was unique, meticulously balanced in a rather contorted pose.

From afar, it would appear as though she was making an attempt at a more intricate version of the bridge position. Up close however, she looked…mystical.

Her torso was bent in a way that would not seem humanly possible, head thrown back, eyes glossy. Her right arm trying to keep her body up while her left hand desperately clutched on a rod too tick for her thin fingers to fully grasp; piercing mercilessly through her core.

Her right leg was bent under her, muscles stiff and foot anchored into the ground in yet another attempt at preventing her frail body to slide down the rod she was impaled on. Her left leg was much more relaxed, in equilibrium above her, as if defying the laws of gravity. If he looked at it for long enough, he could almost see it trembling from fatigue.

Her head dangled upside down from between her shoulders, eyes hooded and glistening with a mixture of despair and perseverance, lips pursed into a straight line as if to keep herself from crying out for help. Her wet hair fell onto the ground, long locks scattered messily on the floor and tangled between the fingers of her hand.

He had imagined a story for her, about how she lived and why she died.

He sat there under the blue moon, and watched the sea witch struggle, frozen on the edge of a perpetual precipice to the world of the dead.