By BlueJean
The Mal De Mer was a rowdy but friendly pub, until someone looked at someone else the wrong way, or a careless word was uttered after one too many drinks – and then all hell broke loose, as is often the way of harbour-town establishments.
The night before Uncle Derek was to set out on another fishing trip, he and his crew had gathered at the pub to observe the ancient maritime ritual of getting as shit-faced as possible before heading out to sea. Always partial to a few beverages herself, Aunt Rita had joined them, and I was introduced to my first taste of Morcant-On-Sea hospitality.
My uncle bought the first round: A pint of Guinness for himself and another for Aunt Rita, lager for Jack, something brown and murky for Sully, and a large red wine for Odette – apt for a French woman, I suppose, but somehow I had her down for a beer drinker. I had no option but to settle for a Coke when my request for a small white wine had been scuppered.
We sat around a table in the corner of the bustling pub and listened to Jack drone on about his mythical fighting prowess. “He comes up to me, right? He comes up and he’s, like, ‘You wanna piece of me, do ya?’ So I fuckin’ drop-kicked him, and he goes flying ‘cross the road, and he’s got this stunned look on his face. I says to him, ‘Stay down, mate. Stay down’.”
Odette offered the boy a pat on the back. “Oh, you are a tough guy, no? But it is not nice to beat up dwarves.”
Uncle Derek slapped the table in amusement. “HAHAHA!”
Jack went red-faced and gave Odette a scowl. “Very funny. He weren’t a dwarf. He was at least six foot.”
“It might have been a dwarf standing on top of another dwarf,” Aunt Rita chipped in, rousing another roar of laughter from everyone.
“Or a dwarf on stilts!” I chirped.
“Or a really tall dwarf,” Sully said in a deadpan voice, which drew a few odd looks. “With a parrot,” the old man added.
“Er… good one, Sully,” Uncle Derek told his first mate.
“Look, there weren’t any fucking dwarves,” Jack protested. “Not a single one. He was a big stocky bloke with these weird starey eyes and a tongue that kept lolling out.”
We all remained tight-lipped, and tried our best not to laugh at the poor boy, until Uncle Derek put his arm round Jack’s shoulder and broke the silence with, “Down syndrome fella, was he?” causing the rest of us to fall about laughing.
Even Jack couldn’t help but smile. “Bastards.” He got up and headed towards the bar. “S’pose it’s my round. Not that you lot deserve it.”
As the evening wore on and the glasses piled up, jokes were shared and songs were sung. Sitting there sipping my Coke like a fine wine, I felt like I belonged – that this was where I was supposed to be, warm and safe among this group of ragtag folk.
Until a large tattooed man with no neck and a handlebar moustache approached our table, and the congenial atmosphere turned sour in an instant.
“I’m still waitin’ for you to take a look at my motor, Rita,” the ugly-looking brute grunted.
Aunt Rita didn’t even bother looking up. “I ain’t fixing it.”
“Why not?”
“‘Cause you never paid me last time. And you’re an arsehole. But mostly ’cause you didn’t pay me.”
No-Neck rested his gorilla knuckles on the table. “You tellin’ me I need to take it to the mainland to get it fixed?”
“I don’t give a shit where you take it. No one screws me over.”
Uncle Derek laid a hand on No-Neck’s arm and smiled a humourless smile. “Away you go now, Petey. You’ve asked your question and you’ve had your answer.”
No-Neck-Petey glared at my uncle. “You best take your hand off me, Derek.”
Uncle Derek’s hand remained where it was. “We really doing this again, Petey? You sure about this?”
It’s strange how an entire pub full of people can instinctively sense when the shit’s about to hit the fan – a hair raising, adrenaline primed sixth sense of foetal position inducing weirdness that fills the air like a contagious wave, triggering that good old primal fight-or-flight instinct.
Everyone found their feet all at once. Odette hunched her shoulders like a bull ready to charge, while Jack eyed the nearest exit with an air of self-preservation that suited him far better than the bravado he tried to project. Sully pulled me backwards away from the table and shielded me with his arms.
“I’ll tell you one more time, Derek,” No-Neck-Petey rumbled. “Take. Your. Fucking. Hand. Off. My—”
Aunt Rita’s fist flew through the air and landed squarely on the ape-man’s jaw with a crack. “Take that, fucker!” she yelled.
No-Neck, realising he couldn’t hit a woman back – not in a busy public house, at least – thumped Uncle Derek instead, knocking him back towards the bar and into a weaselly looking man, who promptly spun around and smashed his beer glass over my uncle’s head. Odette lurched towards her captain and hoisted up his scrawny assailant, throwing him across the bar like a sack of spuds.
And then, of course, everyone else either ran for the door or simply joined in, leaving me to duck under the table as a chair flew over my head.
As chaos erupted all around me, I stuck my hand up and groped about until I found a glass, pulling it back under the table and gulping the contents down before anybody could notice. Red wine – full bodied; fruity with floral notes.
Sully headbutted a smart looking gentleman in a three-piece suit as I crawled on all fours over to the next table.
Half a glass of gin and tonic – lipstick round the rim; garnished with a slice of lemon. Dry but refreshing.
Jack came sliding towards me on his belly, having been swung round and hurled across the floor by a fat man with a comb-over. He regarded the empty gin glass in my hand, then flashed me a knowing grin – as if he didn’t have more pressing matters to attend to.
“Don’t tell, okay?” I appealed to him, a finger to my lips.
But then the handsome young fool was gone, dragged out from beneath the table and tossed in some new direction.
A quarter of a glass of Mojito – rum, sugar, lime juice, club soda. Finished with freshly picked mint leaves, slices of lime and two rapidly melting ice cubes.
And there went Aunt Rita, riding on the back of No-Neck-Petey with her teeth clamped round one of his ears, while the great brute of a man thrashed about and howled his outrage.
Time to move. I scarpered through a storm of flying fists and glasses to the safety of the next table.
Half a pint of dry cider – a faint aftertaste of stale tobacco.
Uncle Derek seemed to have pissed off two young women who had caught him in a pincer movement, slapping him repeatedly while he roared with laughter.
One third of a glass of Pernod & Black – Pastis liqueur; blackcurrant cordial. Strong aniseed base with fruit undertones. Soggy pork scratching optional.
Quite unexpectedly, a loud shot rang out, deafening within the confines of the public house.
Everyone cowered at the sudden blast and followed it to its source: Sheila the landlady, standing on the bar, shotgun in hand – loaded with blanks, I later found out. “Everyone! Out of my pub!” the irate custodian wailed.
Those who hadn’t already vacated The Mal De Mer when the first fists were thrown did so now, until only myself, Aunt Rita, Uncle Derek and his crew remained.
“Rita! Derek! You’re both barred! Again!” came Sheila’s decree.
Aunt Rita furrowed her brow as she surveyed the battleground. “Uh… I appear to have lost my niece.”
The table I was hiding under levitated off the floor, and Uncle Derek loomed over me with that big grin of his. “She’s over ‘ere.”
“Peek-a-boo!” I squeaked.
Aunt Rita took the glass from my hand and sniffed its contents. “Oh, dear…”
You’ll forgive me if my recollection of the rest of the evening is a little hazy. I remember dancing outside the pub with Aunt Rita. Oh, and singing – there was lots of singing. I’m pretty sure I fell over a couple of times. Uncle Derek piggybacked me up the steep cobbled streets, and I seem to recall throwing up down the back of his shirt.
Somehow we made it back to the cottage and my uncle carried me upstairs, laying me down on my bed before disappearing to tend to his wounds. Aunt Rita undressed me and tucked me in, then made me drink a big glass of water.
“Can I live with you forever?” I asked her as she swept my hair from my eyes.
“Why would you want to stay here forever?”
“‘Cause it’s nice. And my mum doesn’t love me.”
Aunt Rita gave me a sad smile. “Love is a cage. You walk into it and the door locks behind you,” were her final words, before a drunken slumber claimed me.
***
I awoke the next morning feeling like death incarnate. My head thumped; nausea enveloped me. I made the solemn vow that every inexperienced drinker makes the first time they wake up with an apocalyptic hangover: Never again. Ever. Until the next time.
Stumbling out of bed, I slithered down the spiral staircase towards the bathroom to relieve myself. I considered throwing up as well, but somehow managed to keep it down. My reflection stared back at me in the cabinet mirror, so I poked my tongue out at it for its insolence. “Naaaaah!”
I heard a voice coming from somewhere in the house, and thought it was Aunt Rita on the phone until I drew closer to her room. Her door was half open, leaving me free to peer inside. I gasped in shock.
She lay sprawled on the bed, naked but for her socks, legs spread, knees apart, a large veiny silicone cock buried in her vagina.
I pushed open the door without thinking and stood there in just my knickers. “Hi…” I said and gave her a silly wave.
“Did I wake you?” an unfazed Aunt Rita asked me as she idly fucked herself.
I shook my head.
“How do you feel?”
“Not good,” I admitted.
My aunt chuckled. “Serves you right.” Withdrawing the large toy from her cunt, she brought its head to her clit, using it to tease and stimulate the sensitive nub. “Your uncle sailed out this morning. It’s just you and me again.”
I stepped into the room and closed the door behind me, then leant back against it.
“Would you like to help me?” my aunt asked.
“How?”
She beckoned me over with the crook of a finger. I padded across the room and climbed onto her bed. To say I could smell her arousal would be an understatement. Her scent was strong – almost unnaturally so, and I wondered if that awful hangover had amplified my senses, as often they do. Regardless, I was giddy with the aroma, my own pussy awakening with a throbbing need.
Rita took my hands and placed them on the silicone cock sticking out of her. “Fuck me with it.”
I knelt between her legs and grasped the toy, slowly feeding it into her.
“Deeper,” she demanded, so I burrowed further still, her hungry cunt devouring the greater portion of the dildo’s veiny length. I drew it back out and watched in fascination as her inner labia clung to it, as if reluctant to let go.
“That’s it,” my aunt groaned. “In and out. In and out. A little faster.”
I found a steady rhythm, pistoning back and forth as my aunt sat propped up against the pillows kneading her full breasts, legs spread wide to allow my labours to continue unobstructed.
“You smell so nice,” I murmured, intoxicated by her thick musk.
“You like smelling Aunty’s pussy?” Rita growled.
“Yeah.”
“Dirty little girl.”
I liked hearing her call me that. “Say more naughty things to me.”
“Shove that cock into Aunty’s cunt, little girl,” she hissed. “Fuck me good and hard.”
I gave my aunt an innocent look, fluttering my lashes at her. “Shall I take my panties off for you, Aunty?”
“Ooh, yeah. I wanna see your bare pussy while you fuck me.”
I left the dildo half buried in my aunt’s cunt while I stood on the bed and slowly peeled my knickers off. Kicking them away, I spread myself open for her. “D’ya like that?”
Aunt Rita murmured her approval.
I hunkered down and took the toy into my hands again, liquid sounds accompanying each sordid thrust as I continued to drive it back and forth.
Aunt Rita reached a hand beneath herself and pushed a finger into her bum. “If I play with my arsehole while you fuck me with that cock, I’ll go off like a firework.”
“That’s so rude.”
“But y’know what would be even better?”
“What?”
She unsheathed her engorged clitoris and gave me a hungry look. “If you suck on my clit while you fuck me.”
Face poised between my aunt’s legs, the humid, animal heat of her arousal enveloped me. I took her tender node between my lips to nurse upon it like a nipple.
Aunt Rita thrust her hips out, a finger attacking her arsehole while I ate her clit and fucked her with the dildo. “Fuck… Gonna come so hard…!”
And she did. Rippling contractions ejected the toy from her spasming cunt, vaginal juices spraying my face and chest. She gave an ear-piercing scream, her body frozen in ecstatic contortion.
“Holy shit…” I whispered, my aunt’s musky fluids dripping from my chin. I hadn’t expected a deluge like that.
With laboured breath, Aunt Rita opened her arms in invitation. As I fell into her naked embrace, her hands moved with a strange attentiveness across my face and through my hair. Then her fingers were inside my mouth, swirling around my cheeks and across my tongue while she whispered words that I couldn’t quite make out. Before I could ask what she was doing, her lips found mine, and I was returning the kiss with all the passion I could muster.
When we broke apart, my aunt settled back against her pillows with a look of pure satisfaction. “Thank you, Hailey.”
“Ah… you’re welcome, I guess.”
“Was it okay that we did that?”
I nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, definitely. I really like doing sex stuff.”
“I need to taste you,” my aunt crooned as she gently pushed me back onto the bed. Prising my knees apart, she craned her neck to get at my pussy, breathing in my scent first, then working the tip of a finger through my outer labia. When her tongue finally made contact with my aching cunt, I shivered with delight, surrendering to her touch.
I could feel the inevitable seismic shift of my orgasm rumbling beneath the surface, but Aunt Rita would not allow its release just yet. With a sly smile, she rolled me onto my side and forced my arse cheeks apart, giving me some clue where her tongue was headed next. Sure enough, I felt her probe the taut opening of my bum, the sensation strange and new but certainly not unwelcome.
She attacked my pussy and arsehole with a relentless ferocity, her tongue lashing against me with such force and celerity that it seemed to be everywhere all at once. My body was slave to the sudden brief rigor mortis of climax before erupting into uncontrollable spasms, my headache blooming with a raw intensity. A long-drawn-out groan escaped my lips, both of pleasure and of pain.
Aunt Rita hissed her delight. “Yes! Come for me, you dirty little girl!”
Waves of ecstasy rolled over me, each one less intense than the last, until finally I could function to some degree of normality.
My aunt peppered my inner thighs with kisses. “How was that?”
“Sick,” I replied earnestly.
“Eh?”
“It means ‘awesome’,” I explained. “Actually, I do feel a bit sick. Can I have a couple of painkillers, please?”
Aunt Rita fetched a glass of Alka Seltzer, and I gulped down the unpleasant tasting liquid as rapidly as I could.
We spent the rest of the morning lounging naked in bed, me nestled between my aunt’s legs while she wove iridescent pearls into strands of my unruly hair. A cool breeze stirred the net curtain over the bedroom window, blowing across my skin and drawing a wistful smile from me.
“When I daydream,” my aunt murmured, as she took a soft brush to my hair, “sometimes I imagine doing this with The One Who Got Away.”
“The One Who Got Away… I keep hearing you and Uncle Derek say that. What’s it mean?”
Placing the hairbrush down on the bedspread with a thoughtful reverence, Aunt Rita looked off into the distance. “She was our baby girl,” she told me softly.
I sat up and turned to face her. “You had a baby? I – I didn’t know that.”
“She didn’t stay with us for long. We didn’t even have time to name her.”
“What happened?”
“She… she wasn’t made for this world – her little webbed hands and feet; skin so thin it was almost translucent.” A flash of anger flittered across my aunt’s face. “The doctor said she was deformed. He actually said that to my face. I smacked him in the mouth for it. But she wasn’t deformed, Hailey. She was beautiful. She was our daughter.”
“Oh my God, Aunt Rita. I’m so sorry.”
“So the doctors and midwives left us alone, and we held her and murmured words to her and kissed her. And then she died in my arms. She… got away.”
Tears streamed down my aunt’s face. I wrapped my arms around her as she quietly wept.
“It broke your uncle. He found ways to blame himself, as men always do. I tried to guide him through his grief as I was dealing with mine. And I knew I couldn’t leave him.”
“Leave him? Why would you leave Uncle Derek?”
My aunt wiped her tears away and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.” She climbed off the bed and slipped her knickers on. “Get dressed. We can head to the beach for the afternoon, if you like.”
***
We strolled down to the beach café for cappuccinos and a shared bacon sandwich, then made our way across to the pale white sand at the water’s edge, sea birds flying to and from their cliffside nests and the soft sound of waves lapping against the shore.
We spoke of many things, my aunt and I. Love and loss, soaring happiness and broken hearts, of running away and of staying put, of swimming with the tide and swimming against it. And hand in hand, I realised we had reached a new understanding, not just as aunt and niece, but as friends.
Aunt Rita led me round the peninsula to a secluded stretch of beach where, to my amazement, we found ourselves confronted by a ring of fossilised tree stumps.
“Whoa! What’s this?”
“This,” Aunt Rita told me, “is a seahenge.”
“Like… like Stonehenge?”
“Yeah. Except this one is made from wood. It’s only visible for a couple of hours each day when the tide is out.”
I wandered around the circumference of the circle and counted forty-five smaller trunks, with a gigantic upturned tree stump settled squarely between them. “Who put it here?” I asked my aunt.
“The ancient Celts. With a little guidance…”
“It’s amazing.”
“It is. And it’s where our little girl rests.”
It took me a brief moment to fathom the meaning of her words. “The One Who Got Away?”
Aunt Rita gave a nod. “The sea protects her now. The sea… and those little rascals.” She gestured to the water’s edge and I gasped in amazement.
The seals lumbered ashore and found their way up onto the large flat trunk in the centre of the circle – seven of them altogether, various sizes and mottled hues: greys and blacks, whites and browns. I found myself entertaining the notion that Madeline might be there amongst them, looking back at me from the dark eyes of her seal form.
“Aunt Rita?” I called as my aunt began heading back towards the town.
“Hmm?”
“I… I don’t think Madeline is human.”
My aunt gave a brief snort of laughter. “Well, that’s a bit mean! Come on, let’s go home.”
I ran after her, and together we strolled along the sand towards the harbour. My aunt turned and walked backwards, then hollered to the basking seals, “Look after her, okay?!”
I wasn’t sure if she meant Madeline or her lost baby.
***
My life in Morcant-On-Sea settled into a familiar rhythm. Uncle Derek would come and go, leaving Aunt Rita and me to enjoy each other’s company, both socially and sexually. I didn’t see much of Madeline, other than the occasional visit to the cottage or chance meeting around town. My infatuation with her had somehow diminished since my aunt and I had become intimate. I wondered if I’d come to be a substitute friend for Aunt Rita too, given the dwindling amount of time she spent with the doctor.
When I wasn’t exploring the beaches, swimming in the warm waters of the shallow bays, or delighting in the seals as they basked upon the great fossilised tree trunk, I would sometimes help Aunt Rita as she tinkered with her cars, and often we would end the day gleefully covered in oil and grime.
The nights were our ‘special time.’ Some evenings she would come to my room, other nights I’d go to hers, and together we would explore our burgeoning desire in ever more inventive ways.
On occasion, I’d catch the faint voice on the wind and sneak out to follow it down to the harbour, but I never found Madeline on the beach again, if indeed I hadn’t dreamt her there to begin with.
One late evening though, when I should have been tucked up in bed, I found Sully sitting on the harbour wall with a bottle of bourbon in his hand. The old man was quietly sobbing, and at first I considered turning round and sneaking back home, but empathy and curiosity drove me towards him.
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Sully?”
The old sailor gave a start and turned to me, wiping his rheumy eyes with the back of a hand. “Hailey? What’re you doing up at this hour?”
I didn’t see the point of lying. “I sneak out sometimes. I like it down by the harbour when it’s quiet. And I hear singing.”
“Singing?”
“Yeah. I think it’s Madeline.”
Sully gave me an odd look. “Right… If you say so.”
I sat down next to him. “Why’re you crying?”
The old man shook his head sadly. “Oh, Hailey. We’ve done something terrible, me and your uncle.”
“What did you do?”
It spilled out of him – a confession of sorts, as if he needed to tell someone, even if that someone was an eleven-year-old girl. “Me and Derek, we was out to sea – those were the days before Odette and Jack joined up. It was a rough trip – seas were choppy; haul too small to make a profit. So, on the last day we was bringing up the nets as usual, but… there was something in there. We thought it was a dead body at first, ’till I sees the seal flipper down where her legs should’ve been.”
“A Selkie…” I whispered.
Sully gave a single nod of the head. “Aye. I knew what it was. I begged Derek to throw it overboard, but once that stubborn fool gets an inklin’ into his head, he takes hold like a barnacle.”
If it wasn’t for the distraught look on his face, I would just as easily have assumed that Sully was playing one of his pranks on me. “Jesus Christ on a two-stroke moped! I bloody knew it!”
“Derek turned the boat round and headed back to Morcant. Then he… he peeled the sealskin away from her body. He gave it to me, told me to hide it, so’s no one could ever find it.”
“What did you do with it, Sully? Where did you hide it?”
He hung his head in shame. “I can’t say, girl. Your uncle made me swear an oath.”
I gripped the old man’s arm. “What you and Uncle Derek did was wrong, okay? She needs to go back to the ocean, and she can’t do it without her skin! You have to tell me where it is so I can give it back to her!”
“I ain’t had a decent night’s sleep since we found her, Hailey. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t feel the shame of it.”
“Where’s her sealskin, Sully?! Tell me!”
Finally, the old man relented. He blew out a big breath and turned to me. “You’re right. It’s time I made amends.” Pulling himself to his feet, he regarded the bottle with disgust, then went to hurl it into the harbour.
“Put it in the bin!” I told him, and he gave me an abashed look.
“Meet me at the old seahenge, three o’clock tomorrow afternoon, all right?”
“And you’ll show me where you hid her skin?”
“Aye. But say nothing to your uncle. Breaking a seaman’s oath is no small thing.” The old man stumbled away muttering to himself and disappeared up the steep cobbled street.
I sat on the harbour wall, trying to take in what I’d just been told. Madeline was a Selkie. It was all true. Did that mean little Isla was a Selkie too? Half Selkie? Would she be able to follow her mum into the ocean, or would she be abandoned forever?
Those questions would have to wait. All that mattered now was returning Madeline’s sealskin and righting a wrong.
“Hold on, Madeline,” I whispered to myself. “I’m gonna help you get home.”
On to Chapter Five!