The WordPress one-word prompt for the month of May is the word ‘strong’, and as May is ‘short story month’, and that my fiction archives are desert islands, I’m considering to write and publish more short stories this month.

As for this little story, it came to my mind today while thinking about what to write for the prompt. I just hope that it came out good, for I want to include these stories to a collection.

MSG

The sea covers my naked body. I’m a Lilliputian that watches with boggled eyes a giant glossy ship sailing in the fading light at horizon. The seashells in my mouth suddenly become grains of sands that instantly fill my throat to choke me. I suffocate in pain and tears while trying to grasp for air as I start to sink into the vast cold ocean under the weight of the sand. I think of a big fish, a giant whale precisely, and I become a monster of the sea that swims and breathe at ease in and out of water amidst microscopic colourful creatures, right up until I’m Moby-Dick, in the middle of its nightmare, being chased after by avenging harpooners. I swim as fast as I can seabedward, but a giant harpoon hits me in the flank; I bleed to death while bellowing in great agony, sinking, sinking further in the dark, lifeless, suffering, and this time I can’t seem to be able to imagine a mental escape plan.

“Wish to return back,” I then heard in my head while slowly disappearing in the dark chasm pit of that deep ocean.

No! I’m a mermaid, I’m a mermaid in a tropical warm lagoon that sings beautifully and swims gracefully. But I am a mermaid now trapped in the net of the one-eyed collector of rare things, an evil taxidermist who ornates his bedroom with stuffed rarities.

“Come to daddy my sweet rare thing. Come in my arms dearest mermaid,” he says while gently pushing aside all weeds and algae under which I’m buried; he smirks devilishly as his eyes lit up upon discovering this rare creature that I am.

But I’m a mermaid, and mermaids bewitch sailors with strange songs. I sing in a languorous tone of voice, and he sleeps soundly like an innocent little baby. I plunge in the ocean, but something else from the ship calls for help.

“Help! Please open that cage, please let me out.”

It’s a large seabird with a gold sharp beak that’s calling out. I creep with great difficulty till its bamboo cage under the weight of this atmospheric pressure… out of water it seems that I carry the burden of a gargantuan tail. 

I now break one bamboo shoot with my hand, and it flies till the resting body of the collector to violently thrust its long knife-like beak in his forehead. Tears of blood flows from his closed eyes on his already dead-cold cheeks. It’s such a horrid scene.

Beak covered with blood it comes for me; I scream out of horror and great pain as it pecks out a morsel of flesh from my tail.

“Mmm! You’re so tasty, and so chunky. I’ll have to call my friends to help me finish up with this feast.” It shrieks louder than a horn. I can see a handful of sanguinary hungry flying monsters soaring towards me. I serenely close my eyes.

I’m a pink dolphin playing with you in the lagoon at sunset. And as the sky flares up with pastel colours you kiss me till night comes. I become human. 

“I wish to go back,” I murmur in a plaintive voice.

“Welcome back. You made it through this level of MSG.”

“Can I ask you one last question,” I asked as he carefully took out all of the connected wires and threads from my body and head.

He slowly nodded.

“Why did you send me in a water world?”

“I didn’t send you there. It was your subconscious. You were simply trying to get out from the sea you were drowning in, and which was created by your own tears.”

I then suddenly remembered why I was here. “MSG… mental strengthening game,” I then whispered.