When I was little, I had nightmares of being sucked underwater. I can still remember the feeling of the water dragging me down and the way the water pressed into my chest, collapsing my lungs and forcing air out of my mouth. I’d wake up in a panic, shaking and clawing at the mass of blankets and pillows on top of me, tangled in the blankets like some hapless fish stuck in a fishing net, ropes cutting into its gleaming skin. I’d scream and sob, the ocean water choking me and the pressure increasing until I could barely breathe. 

My mother was the one who came to my rescue, soothing me by stroking my hair and meticulously unraveling me from the swaddle of blankets I’d managed to wrap myself in. By the faint, yellow glow of my seashell nightlight, she’d sing to me softly as I lay on top, never underneath, the covers, head slowly sinking back into the pillows. 

I’ve long forgotten the words to the lullabies she would sing, but the sound of her voice and the swaying calmness of the melody still haunts my good dreams. It doesn’t much matter now anyways, because I never knew the words of the lullaby she sang to me. Or at least, I never understood them. It was a relic from her past, something my grandmother must have sung to her back when she lived across the ocean, in a foreign country that I’ll never know as well as she once did. Her lullaby was one of the only memories she had left of her family back in her country, besides the one where her parents sent her on a ship to America, a land far away from everything she’d ever known. 

The lullaby was slow and soft, a delicate piece of silk in my mother’s whispery voice. Even her speaking voice sounded like the wind across a lake, and her singing voice was breeze through wild grass in a field. I couldn’t understand the meaning of the words she would sing, and she’d been away from her home so long that I often wonder if she still remembered their meanings herself. Or if she did, did they still hold the same fondness that they once held when her mother sang it to her? 

One night, when the water crashed down on top of me, I felt myself swirling around in a whirlpool, spinning faster and faster and I could only watch as the night sky got smaller and more far away. I screamed, but the waves swallowed my voice and 4any hope I had left. I usually was able to shake myself out of these nightmares by myself, jerking myself up before my head sank beneath the surface, but no matter how hard I pinched myself, I couldn’t escape. Finally, the water gulped me up, taking me down to its freezing depths.

In the mornings when I thought back on my nightmares, I always wondered what it would look like underwater. I decided it would be a pitch black inferno, like the gaping mouth of the creature that swallowed me whole. But when I couldn’t wake up, I realized that underwater, it was brighter and clearer that I thought. There were no fish of any kind, just sand and long strands of kelp. I heard the waves crashing above my head and could make out the blurry pinpricks of light shining through the water that could have only been stars.

For the first time in all of the nightmares, I felt peaceful. Here I was, underwater, pulled down by treacherous waves, which was the very thing I’d feared and yet I hadn’t drowned. I could still feel the water pressing down on me, threatening to pop my lungs, but I couldn’t be more blissfully unafraid of it. I let myself bob in the water, just like the tiny plastic boats I played with at the pond. 

I floated, just a few feet underwater and a gush of water sent my body spinning into the darkness. My eyes couldn’t, or wouldn’t adjust, no matter how much I blinked or squinted. It was only when I felt a strange movement in the water that I realized this ocean wasn’t completely empty after all. 

A large eye opened, gazing towards me, steady and unblinking. Its milky white pupil was a tiny moon in this vast, dark ocean, obstructed only by its unevenly shaped iris, which was a soft looking black ball with squiggly edges. Irises were my mother’s third favorite flower, just behind chrysanthemums, her second favorite. Her favorite flower was tulips. 

The actual moon sent its light down to the water, illuminating the owner of the eyeball. I could only watch as the form of a giant squid emerged from the dark, making its presence known to me. It was, in a word, humongous. The squid had no expression as far as I could tell, and it seemed to be completely oblivious to the fictional ocean around it. Though its eyes were blank, looking as if there was no life behind them, it was observing me in such an intense way that I suddenly felt very small, very vulnerable, and very much resembling a tasty fish snack. I winced and tried to swim away in a sudden jolt of nervousness and terror, but my legs refused to move. Indeed, it seemed like all the water in this ocean had ceased all movement, its primary goal being the interaction between me and the squid. The ocean was as focused on us as the squid was on me.

Its reddish, slightly pale, sickly looking tentacle raised effortlessly through the water and moved towards me, the tip pointing directly at my face. I tried to scream for help, for my mother, but it seemed all of the water had been successful in compressing my lungs, and therefore, my vocal cords. I was stuck in place, helpless at the mercy of a giant squid. The little suction cups on its tentacle seemed to quiver in anticipation. I tried to ignore a persistent thought in my head- that the squid would wrap its slimy tentacle around my weak body and bite my head off with its sharp beak, killing me in the dream and in real life. 

Oddly enough, the squid didn’t try to eat me. Instead, it stroked my cold cheek with its tentacle, leaving a trail of slime on my cheek. I shivered as the fishy rope of an arm met my face, but the squid didn’t seem to sense my fear. It portrayed no emotion, and yet I felt a soothing effect as the squid petted my cheek. 

When its tentacle wrapped around my ankle, I no longer feared that it would wrap around my whole body and crush me. I was focused on its giant, hypnotizing eyes. A smile and a laugh escaped my lips, since its eye looked so much like a hardboiled egg with a wrong colored yolk. Bubbles fled my mouth and towards the squid, as it pushed me up suddenly and released its grip on my ankle. I shot up to the surface, and as my head broke through to the air, I woke up.

Part Two

SABRINA

When Sabrina watched the lavender envelope disappear into the mailbox, she felt a sense of relief. She’d been dreading sending the card, but she knew it had to be done. Hopefully, Leah would have a couple days of peace, maybe even a week before she got the card. Sabrina wanted to watch her as she opened it. Maybe she could even pay a visit to her. But she shook her head, and took a few deep breaths of the evening air. 

Sabrina fiddled with her phone, which felt heavy in her pocket. Maybe she could call Leah, see how she was holding up. After all, she’d probably be a mess considering she’d received a phone call less than a week ago that her brother had been found with a gunshot to the head. 

Sabrina usually felt little emotion when she pulled the trigger and watch the body fall, but when she killed Sawyer, she’d felt something strange. A different emotion. Guilt? She did feel guilty. It wasn’t easy to masquerade as Fiona Fitzgerald for the past few years and pretend she was Leah’s friend, but she needed an excuse to figure out Sawyer. He’d, of course, suspected nothing, and why would he? Why on earth would he believe that his old friend had hired a hitman to kill him?

Hitman. Sabrina hated that world. It made it sound like people paid her to knock off other people. Which was partially true, by the way, but it didn’t cover it. She moonlighted as a barista most of the time down at Beano’s. Barista’s didn’t get paid much, but hitmen did. And Sawyer’s death had been compensated for handsomely. Enough for her agree to discreetly move the body to an alleyway and take his wallet, watch, his phone and his car keys. Made it look like a mugging. Which happened a lot in the city. 

Sabrina took the bus back to the apartment. Not her apartment, exactly. It was a fake apartment she’d been using for Fiona. She unlocked the door and flopped onto the couch. Then, she pulled out her fake phone and called Leah. She couldn’t help it.

“Fiona. I’m glad you called,” Leah answered. Her voice was shaky. “Hey, Leah. I heard the news. I’m so sorry,” Sabrina said, raising the pitch of her voice slightly. She’d imagined Fiona had a higher voice. “Ah, well, what can you do? It’s good to hear your voice,” Leah said. She sounded like she was on the verge of tears. “So is there any news? I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to…” Sabrina said, her voice fading. 

“No, no, it’s alright. The police checked it out and they think it was a robbery. Someone shot him and took off with his stuff,” Leah explained. She sniffled. “I just can’t believe it. My brother… he’s just… gone.” She broke down in sobs.

Sabrina bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. “I know, hon. You’ll be alright.  I know someone you can talk to, okay?” she tried, but Leah cried into the phone. “Alright, I’ll call you later, Leah. Just… you’ll be alright. Trust me,” Sabrina murmured, gently. She could still hear Leah whimpering as she clicked the phone off.  

Sabrina shoved her phone back into her pocket with a heavy exhale. She’d killed a lot of people in her years as a hitman, enough to lose count. She’d always known what she was getting herself into when she got into this line of work, but she never expected how hard it would be. No, not the killing. The killing was the easy part. The hard part was hearing the pain in the voices and staring into the eyes of the loved ones of the people she killed. The hard part was getting close to someone, only to kill their best friend, their spouse, or in this case, their brother, a few months later. The hard part was creating connections to people and leaving it all behind.