[Issue 2026.77]

“Salt Water in Their Veins”, Sam Baxter

Art © 2026 Leyelle M.G.


[ Pisces © 2026 Leyelle M.G. ] Sunset is a town on the southernmost coast of New Jersey, and it is sinking into the sea.

It is a town of working two jobs in the summer and unemployment checks in the off season. High school diplomas, maybe. Family businesses, paid cash under the table. Locals and their superstitions about the Deep Ones; old gods and their cultists, the locals joke, something that lurks in the water.

Anna Wright has watched Sunset’s beaches get shorter each year she has lived here, and she has lived in this town a long time. Jetties were constructed during the second World War, the canal dredged to provide ships safe harbor in the intracoastal waterways. Now, the ocean whips sand off the coast, around the peninsula, and out to sea. They dredge sand from offshore and dump it on the beaches to give the illusion the town isn’t sinking, but still, it is. Each year the beach gets shorter, grittier, more pebbly. Eventually, the Deep Ones will want back the town that belongs to them.

There is a beached ship not a hundred yards from shore, mostly submerged, built of concrete. Barnacles, urchins, and seaweed act as chains, pinning the waterlogged ship to the shallow sea floor. Tautog and sea bass swim in its now-dark, underwater cabins. Marine life has reclaimed this artificial reef as home.

When the tide recedes, a sign peeks just above the surface advertising a hardware store that went out of business sixty years ago. “Shop at Rocky’s,” says a mid-century man who looks like he knows the names and uses for a dozen different kinds of wrenches.

The ship is a harbinger of things to come:

A town stuck in the sand.

Sea levels rising.

Drowning.

When the time comes for Anna Wright to return to the sea, she has decided the concrete ship will be her home, too.

Anna is at the beach with her granddaughters, Emily and Casey, the concrete ship sinking in the background. Casey splashes in the water, laughing, pretending to defend the beach from invading hordes of sea monsters that disguise themselves in the ocean’s waves. If they make it to land, they blend in with humans; anyone could be a sea monster. Emily stands in the shallows, pointing out the incoming monsters and yelling to her kid sister to swim back closer when the currents pull her steadily out to sea.

Anna watches from her chair, parked high on the beach where the sand is soft and loose. The sand is blistering hot the further you get from where the waves reach at high tide. The only way not to burn your toes is to hop and dance and quickly get to the boardwalk path that leads to 4th Street. Anna is too old to move like that any longer, but her feet are used to the summer sands. Scaly skin protects her soles as she sits and watches her granddaughters play. She won’t be able to hide her scales forever, but for now, she can pass them off as the leathery, cracked soles of someone who spends every day walking barefoot on sandy beaches.

Anna remembers when Emily was Casey’s age, protecting the same shores from the same imaginary invaders. She’s not sure where her granddaughters picked up the idea: maybe the locals talking, something in the depths of their ancestry, or just a kid’s imagination at play. It’s bittersweet watching Emily grow up, no longer splashing in the waves like her younger sister. Emily knows this fantasy is all too real, but is still young enough to wish it were make-believe. The pretend play is a reminder that her family comes from the sea, and a reminder of what she could choose to become herself one day.

“Em, Case—rinse off in the outdoor shower before heading inside. You don’t want sand in your pajamas tonight.” It’s a hopeless request, Anna thinks to herself, smiling. She knows from decades of living in this seaside town that sand is as much a way of life as kids who don’t listen to adults.

Anna trails smaller sandy footprints through the side door into her kitchen and is welcomed home by a message recording on her answering machine. The corded landline phone is one of many relics Anna still holds onto.

“—can’t pick them up on Tuesday. Call me back. Love you, Mom.” Anna doesn’t quite reach the phone before the machine beeps and the recording ends at her daughter’s goodbye. She has been waiting for this call, hoping it wouldn’t come this time. She picks up the phone and dials, waits as it rings four times before there is an answer.

“Hey sweetheart, we just got in from the beach. What’s going on?”

“Mom, hi. Sorry, I just left a message. I have a big case coming up, I’m not sure I can make it down Tuesday after work to pick up the girls. Do you think you could watch them till the weekend? I’ve just been swamped with work, and I haven’t done their school shopping yet—”

“Grace, you haven’t seen them in nearly a week.”

“I FaceTimed with Casey yesterday. Mom, I’m sorry, work is just really busy right now. The girls will starve if I leave Emily in charge the rest of the week. Please?” Emily is sixteen and more independent than Anna knows how to handle sometimes. Like Emily’s mother had always been. But still, not quite an adult, not expected to be mom to her six-year-old sister when Grace is too busy.

“Of course, dear. They’re having a good time down here. But maybe you can stay for a couple days before bringing them home? Today at the beach we were—”

“Mom, I’m really sorry, I need to run and take care of some things for work. Thanks again for watching them. I gotta go, but we’ll talk again soon. Give the kids a hug for me. Love you, bye!”

The receiver clicks on the other end of the line, then Anna says “Bye, I love you too.” Phone calls with Grace often end like this. Grace lives in Philadelphia now, never takes off work—especially in the summer—and never comes inside after dropping off the girls. Anna has never gotten used to this. Grace left Sunset once, and now declines its invitations.

Today was a good day. The girls had fun. I have plenty of time, it’ll be okay. In the kitchen, Anna closes her eyes and repeats these thoughts like a mantra. She lets out a slow exhale. It’s always a wave of messy emotions like this when she gets off the phone with Grace. Anna is tired. Her feet ache. She tells herself it’s just from the sun, that chasing around her granddaughters would wear anyone out. Her shoulders are knotted from carrying beach chairs, and heavier weights too.

The girls are winding down on the couch, still in their bathing suits beneath oversized t-shirts. Two pairs of sandals—the larger a pair of Birkenstocks, the smaller pair purple with light up heels and swirling cartoon fish—are kicked haphazardly across the floor.

“Sorry, Nana, I tried to rinse her off first, but she shrieked and said the water was too cold,” Emily apologizes sheepishly, her own feet and legs still covered in sand. Anna hadn’t noticed the icy water when she her rinsed her own feet. Her scales insulate from cold as well as the hot sands earlier in the day.

“Em, your mom isn’t going to be here Tuesday. You’re stuck with me till the weekend.”

“Oh.” There is no surprise in Emily’s eyes. One word and a brief frown are her only reactions. Anna remembers when summer at the beach was still about sand castles, sun bathing, ice cream after mini golf. Emily is growing up.

Anna’s granddaughters are staying in Sunset one more week. One day, the Wright girls will have to make a choice: whether to Change, to become Deep Ones, and stay more permanently, or to leave. It’s a choice that comes at a price. The girls’ mother had made her own choice when she wasn’t much older than Emily is now. A bittersweet memory for Anna. But kids grow up, and don’t always make the choices you want for them.

Grace had been drowning in this slowly sinking town before she finally got away. She was pregnant with Emily, by a man whose boat didn’t come back to port. Casey came later, pregnancy planned the second time once Grace had figured out her life away from Sunset, a partner and a career that Sunset could have never offered. But both of her girls have salt water in their veins. They belong here, but are not from here. It’s still unclear whether they’ll decide they want to Change, or not.

As the sun sets, the town is awash in a golden glow, shining for a moment like it once might have. The sun sets over water; there is only water all the way to the horizon. You could fall off the edge of the world in Sunset, if you are not careful. Would you continue falling forever? Or would the sea catch you, drag you under, drown you in its welcome embrace?

“Nana Anna!” Casey is probably going to ask for a story before bed, the same one she always wants to hear. “Tell us a story! Tell us about the Deep Ones!”

Emily sets her phone on the end table, screen-side down. She pulls her feet under her, the blanket up to cover her and her sister, eagerly awaiting her grandmother’s tale. There is still some kid left in there.

Anna is always telling stories about sea creatures (not monsters, never monsters), telling Casey she’ll turn into a seagull and fly away if all she eats is french fries.

“Again? Case—you don’t want to hear about flying fish or dolphins? What about when the moon fell into the sea and the fish kept a piece of it?”

“Nanny, fish can’t fly,” Casey says with the confidence of a six-year-old, as if only some of Anna’s stories are true, and others are not.

“Well, in that case… how does it begin again?” Anna knows how the story starts, of course. This is just part of being a grandmother.

“Tell us about the monsters!” Emily chimes in, playing the part of teenager, knowing this too is part of the story.

“The Deep Ones aren’t monsters, Em. They were people once—are people—just like you and me.” Emily smiles and relaxes into the cadence of her grandmother’s voice, happy, in this moment at least, to be here in Sunset listening to Nana Anna’s bedtime stories. Casey listens with a wide-eyed awe that suggests she senses there is some truth to her Nana’s stories. Just enough of a hint of recognition in her slate-gray eyes for a six-year-old imagination to wonder.

Anna remembers her own daughter asking for stories about other places—anywhere but here, anything but the Deep Ones—as she spins a familiar yarn for her granddaughters.

Sunset is a town sunk deep beneath the sea, where the Deep Ones dwell.

The Deep Ones are human, or will be, one day; they are not monsters. They grow up in the sea till the shore calls them home, to walk with their once and future family.

There is a young Deep One girl in Sunset who collects iridescent shell fragments and sand-worn seaglass from the sea floor. She likes the way the trinkets capture what little murky light makes its way to the underwater depths of Sunset. She displays them in her concrete cabin, nestled among the mussels climbing up the walls. In the room is a chair, bolted to the floor behind a bolted down desk, but the girl hovers, floats, swims. The room was once so sure of how it would be used by captains or admirals, but the girl does not notice these fixtures. She has built a nest of sand and stone and debris to snuggle into. Whatever it had once been, it is her room now. Sunset is her home.

When the sun sets beneath the horizon, it filters through the underwater currents and dances through portholes into the girl’s room in luminous greens and deep, shadowed purples. The light catches on those shards of shell and glass, and for a brief moment before the light goes out, the mementos glow as if their light comes from within. Then the sun is swallowed by the sea, and Sunset fades to twilight.

The little girl can’t sleep, dazzled by that fleeting light. She wonders what it is like up there, where the light comes from. She dreams of what she one day may become.

Casey’s breathing is deep and slow, her eyes already drifting shut. Sun-tired, but also tired from a day of swimming and battling sea monsters. Emily listens attentively, though her eyes are growing heavy too.

Emily understands that this story is the beginning of a question she will one day have to answer for herself. Emily is so much like her mother, and so unlike. Anna wonders which choice she will make.

Anna continues to tell her story in the den.

The first sign of the Change is the scales, falling off. Deep Ones become soft and squishy when they go to shore. This is surely a sign that their lives will be easier. They shed their protection and wear their now-human hearts for each other to see. Human bodies bare so much more of their emotions: blushing, contorting, shedding tears. You can tell when a human body is unhappy.

The little girl’s feet are already soft and tender. She thought she had more time to be more sure of her choice. But sometimes you have to make a choice and see where it will take you.

Grace was not yet pregnant with Emily when she left Sunset for the first time; that came later. Still, she always knew she would leave. Anna could see it in her daughter’s eyes. It’s so much easier to read what a human body is feeling.

Grace left Sunset for the first time bound for college in Philadelphia. Move-in day brought Anna to the city for the first time too. She didn’t like the way she felt there, like parts of herself were missing. No salt-carrying breeze making its way between the towering buildings, no quiet white noise of waves waxing and waning. Instead, a garbage truck smell wafting through the window, stifling August heat, a constant loud hum punctuated by car horns and sirens. Anna, in Grace’s dormitory, shoulders slumping, tears leaking. Grace, thrumming with excitement, eager for her independence, a weight lifted. It’s so much easier to read what a human body is feeling. Without scales and dark ocean depths, it’s so much easier to break a mother’s heart.

Emily looks younger now, asleep on the couch with her baby sister. She is too big for Anna to carry her to the bedroom, but Anna can still carry a six-year-old. Anna tucks a light blanket around her older granddaughter and picks up Casey, still whispering a tale of what always was, and what is to come.

Next will come the legs. The little girl plans to swim to the shallows while she still has a tail. Her new body won’t be made for the sea, and she is worried she won’t make it all the way to land. She imagines she may just sit in the ebbing tide for a bit, after the Change. The time will come for her to walk on land eventually. She wants to grow up, but she doesn’t want to leave her home.

Sitting with her decision, waiting for it to complete, the girl is learning about anxiety and doubt; one day she will learn the difference between nostalgia and regret. What happens to the Deep Ones who choose to stay? She hasn’t heard any of those stories, and she wants to find out. She was expected to make a certain choice here, but then, it’s not really a choice if she’s being expected to make it. The girl was so sure she was ignoring expectations when she chose what she would become. That doesn’t make her any less uncertain about the choice she made, though.

“Mom, I don’t know if I can do this without you. I’m trying here. Really trying. But what if Em and Case don’t understand?”

“Gracie, you will be great. It’s always hard, but I see how much you love them. I’m just worried that they don’t see it.” I don’t want your relationship with them to end up like mine with you, Anna thinks, but does not say. “Maybe you could take off work for a few days and stay with them this week, be there to answer their questions. It’s good to have your daughters near.”

“Mom, that’s not what this is about right now. They should spend time with you, too. They don’t know how this works. They’re going to miss you. They’re going to want to be with you when it happens.” Replace some of those theys with I, and it captures more of what Grace means, but can’t bring herself to say. “You can explain it to them better than me. I know how important it is to you that they understand where they come from.”

“Yes, they are important to me.” You are important to me. “Grace, I know this is going to be difficult, but it’s time. It’s something I have to do.”

The conversation reaches an impasse.

“Remember when I used to ask what you would do when I move away?” Grace had always worried for her mother, left alone in that dried-up, sinking town.

“Oh, I’ll stand in the waves facing the horizon, and start walking.” Anna smiles as she recounts her old refrain. Anna used to always say things like this to Grace. Now she says it to her granddaughters. All of her girls once giggled at their mother, their grandmother, being silly. There is a wistful longing in Anna’s voice now that Grace hadn’t noticed when she was younger.

“Is that still what you plan to do? I know I left Sunset,” left you, “I could come back,” for you. “God, you must have felt like I do now, back then…”

Anna’s longing smile doesn’t falter. “Gracie, that’s the way it’s done, like in the stories. We all make our own choice. But it will all be okay.”

Grace coughs out a laugh at that. “It always scared me, and you’re so calm about it. Like you’ve been waiting for this for a long time. I used to stay up all night thinking about what would happen to you when I left. Now I feel like a hypocrite, asking you not to leave yet.”

“You’ve changed,” Anna reassures her daughter, but hurries to explain when Grace’s eyes grow big, the same slate gray as Casey’s. “Not like that! No, not like that. With the girls, with me. I know you didn’t want this for yourself, and that’s okay. I used to worry that you left because I did something wrong. It’s hard being a mother, wanting something for your daughters, having to let them make their own choices. But your girls have you, and I’m sure you can do this. Whatever they choose, they’ll always have you.” You will always have me.

Grace swallows, more of a gulp, the lump in her throat too big to be able to say what she wants to.

“People who don’t change are clams that don’t open,” Anna reassures her daughter once more. This was a common saying during Anna’s childhood among the Deep Ones; Grace grew up hearing these words on land. There was a time when Grace was only bitter toward the expectation that she Change, but change takes on different meanings at different times in life. Change is a good thing, it is only natural.

Last to go are the gills. The little girl is scared and thrashing. She thought she was ready, now thinks not; the land has more confidence in her, reeling her in closer with each crashing wave. Standing—walking—is a new feeling for the girl. She stands in the breakers and gets thrown under as another wave roils and drags her, one stroke backward, two steps forward. She tumbles, gasping, then swallowing, breathing and choking air and water and not sure which is which. It’s a rite of passage, the girl thinks, surviving this transformation. One she must endure. It’s the choice she made.

She lies on the sand as soft waves lap at her feet, and she takes shaky breaths, unfamiliar with the pattern of inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Breathing air comes instinctually, but feels foreign. She thinks to herself, “I want to go back,” and is surprised to hear her words spoken aloud, another natural but foreign experience.

She cannot go back, not yet. That comes later.

When the Deep Ones come to land, they live their lives as humans. They can’t take back their choice that brought them ashore, but they can make new ones.

Anna has spent over seventy happy years on land, but she has been waiting, too. It’s a sad thing, longing for a home that no longer exists, at least not in a way that it can be the same home it once was. But there is comfort in the sea. It has kept Anna near, all these years, promising to welcome her back one day with open arms. When she is ready. That’s the tricky part. The Deep Ones can Change, when they choose to, but that does not mean they are ready to make that choice again.

When the sun sets in Sunset, the town returns to the sea. Where it belongs. The water seeps up from beneath like it has lain in wait for the horizon to swallow the daylight—and the town with it—once more.

Storm drains fail to contain the rising seas. Pools swirl and eddy as the tide swallows buildings beneath the water’s surface. Where there was once a town is now a gently undulating blanket of white-capped purples, pinks, and oranges, reflecting the dusk sky. The town is still there, but deeper. Changed.

The girls are back home with Grace by now, and Anna sits on the porch telling herself the same story of the Deep Ones, while the water splashes against her toes.

The Deep Ones live quite a long time; they’re nearly immortal by human standards. When you live that long, stories don’t have endings. They churn and change as you continue to make new choices. Choices, that’s all stories are. You might not think so when you are still six years old in a human body. When you are eighteen and pregnant, you might think the choice is made for you. But when you are ready, if your story calls for it, you can Change again.

The water reaches Anna’s waist. The chill of nighttime sea-breeze makes the summer waters feel more Pacific than she’s accustomed to in this mid-Atlantic, late-summer heatwave. She had meant to do this earlier in the season, but she had family to take care of first.

Then her neck. She tilts her head back, gray-streaked hair splaying adrift behind her, and she thinks of her grandchildren puffing their cheeks full of air and diving into waves to push back the tides of sea monsters, before she goes under.

After all this, Anna does not do what she had always told Grace she would: she does not look into the horizon and she does not step into the sea. Instead, she hovers, floats in the night, and when the tide recedes come morning, the sea takes Anna with her.

It is twelve years later, and Emily is the only human in Sunset.

Six years ago, the funding ran out for the beach replenishment project, and the eastern part of Sunset washed out to sea. Then the town evacuated, and now it waits for the Deep Ones to reclaim it. All of the streets are flooded, and buildings have begun to topple where salt water has eroded their foundations. Emily marvels at how quickly water reshapes things back to the way they were always meant to be. The waves gently wash over what was, until recently, a small park.

There is a bench in the park, mostly submerged, surrounded by swirling water. Emily sits on the bench, a school of mullet swimming between her legs. She holds two polished-clear quartz stones, worn round by years in the churning ocean and glinting like diamonds in the sunlight, and a broken fragment of green bottle glass. The glass is embossed with the suggestion of a logo that is no longer legible.

It’s not a long walk from the commons back to her beach house—the standing remains of Nana Anna’s beach house, no one else wanted shorefront property in a drowning town—carrying her treasures gently. They are a gift for someone. She sets the trinkets in an upside-down clam shell as she enters through the side door into the kitchen.

Through a bay window in the den, Emily can see the last remaining corner of a ship’s stern peeking above the surface. The barrier dunes that once protected the land from storm floods are gone now, so there is nothing to hide the sun setting over a purple-orange sky.

A full moon hangs high over the ocean by the time Emily goes for one last walk. She can only walk a short way before she hits water, the waves greeting land. She is on the remnants of a dune, only a slight hill now. The waves lap gently around the hill in every direction. Emily turns and faces a town that once was, and sees a new town born from the sea, the moonlit horizon peeking between buildings where streets once ran. She starts walking into the waves.


© 2026 Sam Baxter

[Issue 2026.77]

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