[Issue 2026.76]

“The Trident-Tailed Water Monster”, Rae Zalopany

Art © 2026 Toeken

---

A man rotates from one teenage girl to the next in a half-assed game of chicken. One teenager climbs onto his back, his hands gripping her thighs a little too tightly, and the girl in turn, would beckon the two other girls to climb on top of each other. It never comes into fruition, the game, but his shoulders are never empty for long. Natalie couldn’t figure out who he was to the girls. Uncle, maybe, not dad, but you never know, possibly worst of all, a family friend. She scans the pool deck, wondering where any of their mothers were, as if she were a hundred years old. The girls are having fun, she posits, an emotion that felt unreachable.

The pool is packed at the Salty Springs Resort. For a weekday in April, it felt almost illegal for this many people to congregate. The recreation area had three cement levels: the top, where the jacuzzi was, the middle was the pool, and the third was an abandoned pool that had gone green from algae. Just a half mile away, you could see Little Lake Kerr, arced by the hundred-year-old oak trees. It was a step above a trailer park, full of snowbirds, RV retirees, and towners—an unincorporated town nestled between Salty Springs and Ocala National Forest. During the drive up, Natalie noticed only a Dollar General, a boiled peanuts shed, a diner, and of course, the ever-stretching woods.

“You like it?” the man asks Natalie once the teens take up tanning. Looking up at him, his eyes are hazel, his skin is pink and worn. He could be twenty-five or forty-seven. His disturbance annoys her. She feels her lips purse in response but turns it into an affable smile.

“Not really,” she says, turning the book over as if she were reading the cover for the first time, “it’s for a book club I never go to.” She sits at the edge of the pool with her legs in, her oversized t-shirt still on. He nods at her, continues his assessment—whether at the book or of her, she didn’t know.

“You here fur family or pleasure?” he asks. She’s always astonished and slightly charmed whenever she notices a Floridian’s southern accent. She had one too, but it was so slight and imperceptible that it only came out in certain words like doin’ or bye (b-EYE) or an occasional y’all.

“I’m here for the springs,” Natalie says, immediately regretting it. She gives him a curt smile and goes back to her book to signal the conversation was over. She didn’t like the idea of him knowing anything else. A woman travelling alone, even if it was only two hours from home, wasn’t something she wanted to advertise. Especially him now knowing where she might be. Perhaps he was just making conversation. Her mother would’ve said, you’re always so angry.

He nods, having met plenty of her kind and genially says, “Make sure to check out the Glen in Salty, it’s our best spring. Go in the morning on a weekday, you’ll have the place to yourself.”

Without looking up, she says she plans on it, and he turns around, refocusing on the girls who’ve hopped back in for another go at their game. He looks like a preacher, raising his arms to the gaggle of teens that dance around him like his Bacchae. She hates him without even knowing him.

---

Here is the dream that led her here:

An owl was the size of a petite man perched on the post office roof. He wore Spanish moss like a lei around his brown, freckled neck. A sign in red Sharpie was taped to the banister that said WET PAINT.

Natalie took a step, then another toward him. His blank eyes, the color of the moon, bored down onto her.

“Can you tell me where to find the springs?”

The owl didn’t move for a moment. The only light came from the electric bug lamp that occasionally made a zzt from a moth. He leaned closer from the roof, and she noticed his human legs as he adjusted and squatted and bent his owl torso toward her. His shadow engulfed Natalie, as if she were nothing but the cement, should someone look their way. His breath, hot and coppery blew in her face. It reminded her of a panting dog, or the leg of a hare caught in a trap. His presence was a weight on her chest, which made her buckle. With closed eyes, she intuited his movements. In a book, it said to never look at a god or a man directly. She opened her eyes when she hears a ceramic clinking at her feet. It was a painted vase, black and terracotta, with a painting of a boy weeping over a deer.

“Open your mouth,” the owl said.

---

The RV was unlocked when she arrived. It smelled like the ghost of a smoker. Beige interior, black leather couch, mirrored bedroom wall. She checked closets, under the bed, behind curtains before relaxing. The first day she stayed at the grounds, hit the pool, then wandered the grounds: presidential flags, Don’t Tread on Me signs, sandhill cranes stalking the empty golf cart paths. Her phone flashed SOS.

She came to the resort to think. It was roughly halfway out of the state, which appealed to her. Halfway meant neither here nor there. She could go home. Or not. She had the border papers. The doctor’s note signed and dated that said she wasn’t pregnant.

On her second morning, she put on her swimsuit, cutoffs, and a wife-beater. A switchblade in her back pocket. Bear mace on her keychain.

At the dollar store, she bought a snorkel, child-sized goggles, sunscreen, and water.

“You might want a pool noodle,” the cashier said, “fur lookin’.”

Salty Springs Park was empty. Every Florida preserve felt the same: pine-needled trails through prehistoric trees ending in water. The path led downwards until the blue waters breeched through the trees. There were no more park rangers, so the parks had become wild and littered. A half-eaten ant-filled birthday cake sat on one of the picnic tables. Bud Light cans that rattled whenever the breeze kicked up like wind chimes. A Smokey the Bear sign that showed the fire danger for the day had the needle pointing towards HIGH. Natalie had no clue when that was last checked. The man in the pool had asked, visiting for family or pleasure. She supposed pleasure would’ve been the wrong word. She was here for clarity or a repose or for a sign to stay.

---

People were burying books, burying sex toys, dying. She couldn’t breathe right anymore. Couldn’t walk into a store without scanning every face for signs of danger, or decency. She hadn’t always been this way.

She walked her apartment complex the night before she left. Most cars were gone. The bottom-floor units were empty. When the hurricane hit, she pulled up a chair and watched the flooding through the window. Water took everything: cars, trash bins, strollers. Like a toilet rising with shit. That’s what it felt like. The whole world backed up.

She packed a bag with some clothes, old keepsakes, her papers. At night, the front’s doorknob rattled.

If she called for help, no one would come.

If she had a baby, no one would help her raise it.

---

The manatees had left for the season. The spring’s floor was bald from winter grazing. Natalie eased into the frigid water, careful on the algae-slick stairs. If she slipped and snapped her neck, it might be days before anyone found her. Maybe her body would bloat and be mistaken for a manatee left behind.

Tilapia darted past as she submerged, goosebumps rippling up her arms. She fumbled with the too-small goggles, sliding the strap back and forth. Underwater, there was silence without dread. No wrens, no whispering scrub-jays.

Unobserved, she spun like a child, swimming from rock to spring vent. She circled the black opening, imagining an alligator lurking at the edge. But the vent only pushed her back, a steady, invisible force.

After an hour, she spit out the snorkel and floated, ears underwater, face to the sun. There are good things here, she thought. Everywhere is bad and getting worse. She was alone in the world, craving something. She didn’t want to admit the anger. But it lived in her—daily, constantly—and in it, a sharp desire to unleash.

“Are you here for family or pleasure?” someone from behind asks. Her ears still underwater, the voice is muffled and almost sounds like, here/forever. She rights herself, planting both feet on the sandy bottom to scan the steps, benches, and picnic tables. There was no one. The woods had gone quiet, all but her heart that thumped loudly in her throat.

“Are you here for family or pleasure?” the male voice repeats. She turns toward the roped-off riverbank. The NO TRESPASSING sign is tagged: Call Tanya for a good time, digits scratched out. She only see’s the cypress trees—tall, gnarled, their knees yawning into black water. From the oldest-looking tree, something begins to unwind.

One resplendent eye, then another until two hazel slits meets her goggled stare.

“Well?” he asks. His voice is cracked and impertinent.

The switchblade in her shorts is far and likely useless. Her whole life she’s been threatened. Her whole life, she’s felt useless.

“Neither,” she says and continues, “I’m here to say goodbye.”

The water monster made a tsk with its tongue. Perhaps he could smell her lie or was affronted by the idea of abandonment. Natalie could hear him shift in the darkness, the black water ripples from the cypress shadow move toward her like an elbow. His smell wafts on the breeze, old like paper and salt.

“What do you want?” Natalie asks, breaking the silence. If she were to be eaten, she didn’t want to play any games. Waiting to be eaten was making her jittery and annoyed. “I was just about to get out.”

He laughs at her assumed imperviousness. “I’m sick and old. A river divinity once, perhaps, but now I sleep in my tree, sick and panting.” The river monster starts to breathe short, quick breaths as if to illustrate, but breaks into a low laugh. His eyes slit as if he had cheeks that pushed up into an invisible smile.

She bounces on her toes, inching back, trying not to show it. “I thought gods couldn’t die.”

“We both know that isn’t true.”

“What is it that you want?”

---

When she got to The Square Meal Diner, all she could see was yellow. Yellow linoleum, yellow chairs, yellow cups, yellow fluorescent lights. Her steps sounded like peeling tape. Everything was under ten dollars. When the waitress came around, she ordered coffee, water, The Salty Burger, fries, and lava cake. Each warm sip brought her back from the dead.

The diner buzzed with locals waving at every newcomer. She played her usual game: Who Voted Against Her Rights. Still, her mind drifted to the water monster, how could it not?

When he revealed himself, he was the color of an opal. Shaped as a snake but much longer. His head like a needlefish mask. His coiled tail tipped with a trident. His face: horrible. But his eyes were cheery and bright.

“My tree weeps gold. Would you like to taste it?”

“I know what cypress sap is,” she’d replied, still backing away in small increments.

He made another tsk. “Would you like to know what I want? You did ask.”

He’d told her he wanted her to bring someone for him to eat. Anyone she wanted, but she had to bring the sacrifice, and he’d do the rest.

“Why not just eat me if you’re so hungry?” She didn’t know why she should ask a question like that, but it all seemed strange.

But he laughed and impatiently said, “It’s not about hunger, it’s about the oblation.”

Natalie looks around the busy diner as she eats and wonders if everyone knew about the water monster. Was it a local lore kept secret amongst the patrons? What secrets were passed along in this forgotten town.

“I see you found the spring,” the man from the pool says. He’s smiling down at her, and for a moment, Natalie meets his gaze in fear. It takes her a moment to regroup, so that anything as normal as a man coming up to her could happen now. How could she consider bringing someone to be sacrificed, and worse, why had the river monster asked it of her? The river monster had promised her his sap, “The gift of transformation. If you lick my sap, you will be granted one state of being of your choosing. Luck, happiness, solitude—whatever that should be.”

Natalie looks up at the man who looks at her with the same candor as before. She feels her body, painfully aware of it, constantly. Adjusts, shrinks, and bends less.

Perhaps there were never really any mermaids that ate the sailors. They were just women grasping at a share of power.

She smiles at him back and hesitates before asking, “Would you like to join me?

“I could be wrong,” he says, sliding into the booth across from her, “but I thought you hated my guts.”

Natalie looks at him. Her hair is still damp from the spring, curls sticking to the sides of her face. Her shirt clings to her back. “I’m just shy,” she says, which was true. “Most people assume it’s personal.”

He smiles at that, large and toothy. The diner’s light casts everything in a jaundice glaze—cups, linoleum, his face. It smells like scorched oil and something sweet gone off.

He orders a grilled cheese and coffee, says thank you like he means it.

“You in town for long?”

She shrugs. “Not sure yet.”

He nods, like that makes sense. His hands rest flat on the table, fingers tapping out some rhythm only he hears.

“My mom loved the spring,” he says. “She used to go out there early, bring her coffee, just sit and watch the birds. Said it was the only place around here that felt honest.”

Natalie doesn’t say anything. The waitress sets down the lava cake, and steam lifts from the cracked plate. She picks up her spoon but doesn’t eat.

His name was Brandon. He’d inherited his mother’s RV at the resort four years ago. Started a lawn service that tanked after the park contracts dried up. Liked boating. Talked too much, assumed too much, glazed over when Natalie spoke. She couldn’t tell if he was good or bad—just that he was typical. No kids. No local family. The teenage girls from before were never mentioned.

She wondered if this was how a serial killer feels: detached, assessing. The thought scared her. She was considering the water monster’s terms. Was she always this person, or had she become someone capable of violence? “We should go together,” he suggests to her surprise. “I still go sometimes. Mornings are best, cooler and quieter.”

She looks down at the cake, splits it open. The chocolate spills out in a slow, thick line. It was so easy, she thought. She didn’t have to do anything.

“Alright.”

He takes out his phone and slides it across the table. She enters her number, hands it back. He saves her as Natalie, nothing else.

When he stands, he touches the edge of the table with two fingers. Then he’s gone.

A minute later, her phone buzzes.

Brandon. Spring in the a.m.

She doesn’t open it. Just flips the phone facedown and takes a bite of the cake. It’s already going cold.

She didn’t want to know about his mother, or the coffee, or the mornings that meant something to him. But now she does. And it lodges somewhere—low, unpleasant.

Not guilt. Not yet. But close.

---

It was the library that broke her. Not the laws, not the noise online, not even the flood. The library. It felt stupid, almost—getting wrecked over a building. But that was how it happened. First came fear, then dread, then something hotter. She walked in on a Tuesday. The usual kids were at the computers. Someone had left an Uncrustable on the radiator.

A sign on the front desk said: All Checkouts Suspended.

The librarian, Ms. Carroll, who always wore two cardigans, didn’t look up.

“We’re closing,” she said.

“For how long?”

“Forever, I guess.”

Natalie looked at the shelves. Some were already empty. The poetry was gone. So was the law section.

She’d always lived on the edge of erasure. Her rights debated before she could read. Something bad is going to happen to you, they seemed to say. And she felt it, ticking inside her like a pool cleaner under deep water. As she grew, met girls, heard stories, it became a pattern. Your time will come. And it did. Then again. Then again. Some wounds were small. Others weren’t. Life moved on.

The library was her escape. A place outside her body, where she could vanish if she needed to. There were ghosts there too. Men watching porn in the lab, eyes that followed her by the doors. She ignored them. She always had. The books were what mattered. Then came the bills quiet, deliberate. Funds cut then power shifted to the states. Public spaces gutted. First a few libraries closed, then whole cities. Florida libraries went dark. Then the entire South. She decided she’d leave. Go where the libraries still stood. Where the light was holding, for now.

---

She dreams the algae green pool was black.

She pants like a dog above the moon’s reflection. The paver bricks dig into her knees as her bent body lowers towards the pool. Then the face surfaced—slow as a hand rising from sleep—its eyes slitted, gleaming, inhuman. A mask clung to it, stitched from wet skin, puckered at the seams.

“My payment?” she says, opening her mouth wide. Her tongue peeks over her lower lip, dry and pale like an enoki mushroom. Nothing comes though, no moisture or stickiness meets her lips.

“Protection,” she whispers.

Below, in the water he’s gone.

“God,” she calls out, “Where did you go?”

“I’m here,” he says back from beneath her. No, she thinks, from inside her. Behind her teeth, in her blood, her gut. In the humming ache of her hips.

The bikini bottoms clung to her like wet petals. When she pulled it down, something new unfurled—small, slick, and tender as a root just breaching soil. Not hers, and yet undeniably part of her. It twitched once, as if testing air. The tip split delicately into three fleshy prongs, pink and glistening, like the tongue of some deep-sea thing. She didn’t scream or touch it. Simply watched, and breathed, and listened to the water lap ahead of her. Her body felt lit from the inside, bright and trembling, as if something ancient had taken root in her marrow. The night pulsed around her. Far off, the frogs had gone silent.

She rose slowly to her feet.

Something was afraid of her now.

---

In the morning, she sits in bed, writing and deleting the same cancellation text. Could she really stand by while a man was eaten? Probably not. But a wish—real magic—didn’t come around every day. Still, how reliable was a promise from something that lived in shadows? She’d read enough to know the monkey’s paw always curls.

If she went through with it, her word had to be airtight. Her state of being, unshakable.

On her tenth draft of hey I think I’m just going to stay home, Brandon texts: just headin out now want me 2 get you a sub?

She replies: I think I might stay home today sorry :/

He shoots back immediately: it’s your last day you gotta go!!! im not taking no for an answer

He didn’t seem like someone who needed to be erased. Maybe she had judged him too quickly, been too guarded.

If she were a man, given a wish, would he hesitate?

Outside, horseflies bob into the acacia bushes. The switchblade stays in her water shoe this time, bulging slightly—but she doubts he’ll notice.

Brandon waits in the empty parking lot, holding a plastic bag of subs. “I got your favorite,” he says, grinning, though she never told him what that was. They amble down the boardwalk, his steps too close. An elbow brushes hers and lingers. When she doesn’t laugh at his jokes, he laughs anyway, loud and pleased with himself.

Hands trembling, she bites the inside of her cheek to keep her teeth from chattering. Maybe he thinks this is a date. The thought makes her feel guilty. There’s still time, she tells herself. She could back out. Ask him to leave.

Weather, fish, monkeys with herpes—he fills the silence with easy talk. Points toward the trees and says, “Place looks better with you,” like it’s a line from a bad movie. Her stomach flips. She forces a smile, hating how fake it sounds in her throat.

They sit at a filthy picnic table, eating gas station subs. Out of habit, she offers to pay him back. The offer feels grotesque, considering what might happen. He waves her off. “Nah. This is my treat.” A quiet moment passes. He watches her, expression unreadable. Then, voice light: “Can I kiss you?”

For the first time that day, she feels vulnerable. Alone in the woods with a stranger. A man. The complexity of it hits her all at once, how easily she’s been led into this. How easily she’s expected to trust. If he were to die today, would it be kind to give him one last kiss? A reversal of a fairy tale awakening.

He doesn’t wait for an answer, takes her far-off gaze as permission, or indifference.

It starts slow. Her eyes stay open at first, startled by the press of his mouth. Then, emboldened by what he reads as compliance, his tongue presses deeper, harder. His hands—greasy from the sub—crawl up her thigh.

She pulls back, disgust rising sharp in her throat. It’s like kissing Aaron, and Marc, and Eli. Like all the other men who took and took and took.

Something clicks into place.

Let him believe this is still a date. Let him think she’s just a girl too polite to say no. It’ll be the last thing he gets to believe.

She keeps her face blank. “Should we go for a swim?”

She can see something shifting in his expression. A flicker of thought, maybe. Is he thinking of going further, or asking to take her back to his place? Would he ask next time?

“We could stay here a little longer if you like,” he says, his fingers brushing the side of her neck. She forces a flirtatious smile, gets to her feet, and beckons toward the spring. “Come on. It’ll be nice.”

He nods, pulls off his shirt, and walks toward the steps. There’s a pause before he moves, a slight irritation behind his eyes. He isn’t looking at her—he’s watching the water.

How does this work, she wonders. Does she have to say something? Bleed? What if the monster doesn’t come at all? What if it never intended to?

Natalie follows behind, her switchblade heavy in the water, thudding dully against her ankle with each kick. She wishes she’d brought goggles. Brandon bobs further ahead, calling back to her.

“Did you know Elvis swam here?”

When she was little, she’d sit on the coquina rock and pretend to be a mermaid, arching her back like Ariel whenever the tide pushed in. She moved without thinking, caught in the game of basking, yearning, waiting. Her imaginary tail was pink and blue, color-changing like Dreamtopia Barbie’s. But the memory isn’t about the tail. It’s about an old man who watched her. The one who grinned and asked if she needed to pee.

“If you need to go potty, I can take you to the bathrooms—they’re just over there.”

Instinct had pulled her away then, back to her sunning mother and snoring father. That same instinct hums through her now. Not bravery. Not clarity. Just the old, wordless signal that something is wrong. She drifts toward Brandon, every nerve lit.

At first, when he grabs her, she thinks he’s trying to make out again or maybe something worse. His hands settle on her hips with an artificial kind of care, like how you’d lift a snake you’re afraid might bite. She tries to shrug him off, but he moves quickly, twisting her around. Water slaps her ribs. Her spine presses to his stomach. His arms clamp down, not violently, but with a firmness that leaves no room to move.

“Mesis,” Brandon calls out, “Mesis.”

“Let go,” Natalie says, thrashing to get out of his grip. It took her a moment to realize what was happening, who he was calling.

In the cypress dark, Natalie glimpses ripples sliding toward them. She thrashes, but her arms are bound, useless. Spring water floods her nose and mouth. She kicks upward, gropes for the switchblade with her toes. Her fingers brush the handle. Then too late. The water monster is there, summoned like a trick of light. His face, pale and warped, leans close.

“For fear or pleasure?” the water monster asks.

“Prosperity,” Brandon says, hitting the T like a cymbal. His grip slackens, certain now that her fear has rooted her.

Natalie blinks, unsure if the question was meant for her.

Her lungs burn. Her limbs ache.

What did he mean—why?

She thought of the library. The cold quiet. The feeling of knowing something no one else did.

It was protection. It was power.

She hadn’t lost yet.

“Safety,” she murmurs, not knowing if he heard. She was so tired. So scared.

The water monster looks at them both in deliberation. “Open your mouths,” he says.

She closes her eyes, wishing that the last thing she felt was just the spring and the Florida sun and not Brandon’s hands touching her body. What a beautiful place to die in. What a terrible way to die. To her, this all didn’t have to happen. This choice, her predicament, was urged by her proclamation of violence. That, she decided, wasn’t her. She supposes you don’t truly know yourself until you make a wrong decision.

Brandon’s eyes are closed, mouth opened wide. She hears the insertion, feels his body jitter, and slump. The trident sounded smooth, like a bare neck being shaved with a razor. His blood warmed her in the cold water. She didn’t dare to open her eyes and look. Just stood, mouth open like a preening pelican. She doesn’t think he even realized they were competing against one another.

The sap drips onto her tongue tastes bitter, like medicine she would’ve spit out had she been a child. And then in an instant the sun goes away, everything really. She drifts for a moment in the darkness before she tilts her head and glimpses the sky far above, small as a coin, trembling on the surface. Below it, something moves long, pale, and coiling. The water monster, slipping back to his cypress. She is in the spring vent, a space where only the eel grass lives.

---

She asked for safety, and over the years, she watches through the pinprick of light as swimmers come and go, floating and splashing above. It’s only then she begins to understand the futility of her chosen state. Swimmers are always curious of her hole, looking down into the darkness. Water is always dispersing, pushing out from the hole and propelling curious swimmers away.

So, she watches people grope and rape and kiss and love. Sees the fat red gusts of blood bloom when the river monsters feed—something that, to her surprise, only happens once every two years. Not as desperate as he made it seem.

The world, she knows, will end. And she will watch it all from the refuge of her cavern, safe and alone, at the bottom of nothing.

© 2026 Rae Zalopany

[Issue 2026.76]

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