Deep Devotion
Deep Devotion
A sea monster novel by M.C. Norris
Chapter One
Whatever became of their ocean moon would remain a mystery, because none but two survived. They knew things, these frozen travelers, who slept for eons, dreaming together of the crystalline depths that they would never know, where elaborate courtship dances were performed that could last more than a thousand years. They were an exceedingly long-lived species. Blessed with a vast awareness that extended beyond their eggshells, beyond the rock walls of their hurtling prison, they reached out to the seas of the new place they would soon call home. It was a world of light and shadow that spun beneath an infernal sun. It was a world of tyrants and terrible extremes, where flesh-eating abominations roared in the shadow of the cataclysm, as the pair of new immigrants descended. Like seeds of life enveloped in a husk of fire, the tiny destroyers plummeted toward the new world, ushering in the promise for a new and gentler creature endowed with the capacity for love for its family, and devotion to its gods.
###
Sara lowered her chopsticks into the ramekin. With a gentle swirling motion, she muddled a dollop of wasabi in the soy sauce. A perfect balance was key. To this end, she went partly by viscosity, and partly by color, which was kind of hard to describe, but she knew the right hue when it appeared. It was the color of forest moss. Once the solution was blended to her satisfaction, she pinched hold of an albacore cutlet, dipped it twice into the greenish pool, and then raised it to her lips. Just as she was about to enjoy her first bite, her eyes happened to flick up to meet with a revolted stare, from across the table.
“What?” Sara said.
Collin just grunted and shook his head.
“Yours came from the same cutting board, you know. Same ocean.”
Collin looked down at his lobster tail. “Yeah, but mine is cooked, see?”
“That’s more than I can say for your steak.” Sara popped the albacore into her mouth, and then pointed her chopsticks at the pool of watery blood beneath Collin’s sirloin. Such hypocrisy, forever extended from so many eaters of raw beef, toward lovers of sushi. Fish was always going to be the cleaner, healthier, and the more sustainable choice.
“You can’t go wrong with a medium-rare steak,” Collin replied, picking up his knife and fork, and slicing a pinkish sliver from his sirloin, “but sushi? Blech. That’s just wrong to begin with.”
“Mmm.” Sara closed her eyes and smiled while she chewed. “How can anything possibly be wrong, when it tastes so right?”
Ryuu Grill and Galley was a pleasant stimulation of all the senses. Clouds of savory steam billowed up from a dozen teppanyaki tables, where chefs clattered their steel instruments and flipped acrobatic shrimp through the air, right into the open mouths of diners—sometimes. Strange and lurid fish swam an endless promenade through a huge saltwater aquarium that was mounted just beyond the sushi bar, where glistening cutlets rode a conveyer over mounds of shaved and sparkling ice.
Trademarked by a massive dragon pendant cut from brushed steel, Ryuu was the latest addition to downtown Kansas City’s relatively new and booming Power and Light District. For four decades, a person could safely and easily roll a bowling ball down the middle of Main Street at the stroke of midnight, all the way from Liberty Memorial to the banks of the Missouri River, without a chance of striking any living thing, beyond a stray cat. It had remained a woefully dead part of town, but the culture of downtown KC had recently undergone some major revitalization. Thanks to the addition of the downtown arena, a dome of mirrored glass situated at the confluence of two major highways, the nightlife of downtown Kansas City was resurrected from the darkness and desolation of an oversized cow town to a dazzling labyrinth of bars, trendy restaurants and thumping nightclubs. For the first time since the roaring twenties, Kansas City had become cool.
“I guess when you boil me down, strip away the car, and the loft, I’m still just a simple Kansas boy, at heart,” Collin said, “scared of anything that ain’t beef.”
Sara smiled and winked at her boyfriend of six months. “Lobsters ain’t beef, baby.”
“Oversized crawdads, that’s all.” Collin shrugged. “Crawdads and cows? Shoot, they never hurt anybody. But all of that crazy stuff on your plate … well, let’s just say I don’t eat anything that I can’t pronounce.”
“Repeat after me.” Sara leaned over the table, narrowing her eyes seductively. “Shiro.”
“Shiro,” Collin said, leaning in to meet Sara, nose to nose, over their food.
“Maguro,” Sara said, airily.
“Maguro.”
“Guess what?”
“What?”
“You just said albacore in Japanese.” With her chopsticks, Sara selected a small but choice cut of the pale meat. She dipped it once in the wasabi-soy sauce, and lifted it near Collin’s mouth. “Will you?”
A mischievous smile spread across Collin’s face. “Only if you will.”
“If I will what, exactly?” Sara wrinkled her nose and cocked her head.
Collin rose from his chair. He reached for the inside pocket of his jacket. His hand reappeared with a black jewelry box, as he dropped to one knee, beside their dinner table. He flipped it open in one smooth motion, to display a sparkling ring. “Sara?”
“Yes?”
“Will you marry me?”
###
Mitch Poole transferred the wriggling minnow from his dip net into a Mason jar filled with water. Then, he threaded on the lid. He turned from the aquarium of feeder minnows to the group of teens, who would be his last tour group for the day. In the manner of a street magician about to perform some amazing trick, he raised the Mason jar to eye level, passing it steadily back and forth before the row of bemused faces. Inside, the minnow darted to and fro. It bumped its snout against the convex walls of its glass prison, gulping, and fanning its little gills.
“Human beings, we like to think of aquatic life as being brainless,” Mitch said, while turning on a heel, “unless of course, it can be trained to jump through a hoop. Then, all of a sudden, it seems more intelligent to us. But, what exactly is intelligence? Can it be measured? Is there more than one kind? These are the questions we have to ask ourselves when we’re suddenly confronted by a creature so unlike us, so alien to our world, and to our limited human experience, that a true comparison of our brand of intelligence against theirs seems difficult, if not impossible.”
Mitch hitched an eyebrow, smiled, and then turned. Minnow jar in hand; he began walking slowly along the ranks of aquariums that lined the back wall of the Henderson Beach State Park visitor’s center. The teens eyed each other uneasily, before shuffling after him. The last kid in line, peering out from the portal in his green hoodie, blew a bubble and snapped it with his tongue.
The rear of the visitor’s center was a living laboratory, with rows of percolating lift tubes and humming fluorescent lights. Weird and wimpling creatures fawned up at Mitch, as the marine biologist strode through their neighborhood of glass houses. Some glowered cantankerously from holes in the coral, while others wriggled excitedly back and forth against the glass like gilled puppies, eager to play. Mitch stopped before a large and foreboding aquarium that emanated the ethereal glow of black lights, mounted beneath a latched hood of solid steel. It appeared to be empty, except for a jungle of dark rocks that were heaped at its center. Champagne bubbles rushed through lift tubes that jutted up through the layer of black gravel. Bits of wavering and translucent waste lay scattered about the aquarium floor.
“Let me introduce you to a very good friend of mine,” Mitch said. His voice was barely audible over the mesmerizing hum of aquarium pumps, and the hiss of billions of bubbles, bursting constantly on so many surfaces. Mitch set the jar containing th
e frantic minnow atop the aquarium hood. He was careful to place the vessel softly, and soundlessly, before withdrawing his hand. But the sacrificial offering did not go undetected. As if stirred from its slumber, a grotesque entity emerged from within the stacked rocks like a living bulge of intestines. It gathered its complicated and writhing mass atop the rock pile. Puffing and pulsating in a show of changing hues, it engaged its crowd of onlookers through slitted goat’s eyes. “Kids, meet Ursula.”
Mitch lowered his bare arm into the water. A few of the teens gasped as the bulbous monster threw a heap of purplish coils around his arm, and dragged itself upon him. The tentacles tightened and released, changing grips, leaving little red circles on his skin, wherever the rows of suckers had seized hold. “Right now, Ursula is just greeting me in her weird octopus way. Each of her eight arms is equipped with its own brain, and each is loaded with tons of sensory receptors that not only can touch, but also can taste and smell. She’s just taking it all in, making sure that it’s really me, her old buddy.”
As if satisfied with the data she’d sampled, Ursula slithered back down off his arm and studied the faces of each of the kids. It seemed to linger longest on the face of the kid in the green hoodie. “I think she finds you pretty interesting,” Mitch said, glancing over his shoulder, at the boy.
“Why me?” the kid croaked.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to say what might be going through her head, right now. They don’t think the same way that we do. What we do know is that an octopus is a highly intelligent, emotional, and even opinionated animal.”
“How can an animal be opinionated?” the kid in the hoodie asked, popping his gum.
“Well, there used to be a biologist who worked here, named Kelly. And, for whatever reason, Ursula decided that she hated her. Any time Kelly got too close to this tank, Ursula would rush to the top and spurt a jet a water right at her. She’s a pretty good shot. Kelly eventually left Florida for another opportunity, but a couple of summers later, she came back through Destin, and she decided to stop in here, to pay a visit. No sooner had she stepped into this room, Ursula rose to the top of her tank, and soaked her.” Mitch turned to the teens, and grinned. “And get this, Kelly had even colored and straightened her hair.”
Mitch took the jar containing the minnow, and he lowered it down into the tank. He positioned it upright in the black gravel, and then he withdrew his hand. In an instant, Ursula was upon it. Flashing black and red, the seething mass of tentacles explored the jar from every angle, tumbling it over and over, testing surfaces, changing grips. Glimpses of the terrified minnow could occasionally be seen through the monster’s constricting coils.
“What’s perhaps most impressive about Ursula, and all octopi, for that matter, is their ability to solve problems. We’ve tried all sorts of ways to keep her from getting to that fish, but she always manages to crack the code.” The great mollusk then flexed its whole body, turned a weird shade of purple. The jar came open with an audible pop, and a rising bubble of expelled air. From the center of Ursula’s restless mass came a chuff of minnow scales that settled to the gravel like a blizzard of silvery snow. The octopus then released its grip, and writhed back into its dreary tumulus with its eyes directed backwards, as if the creature trusted nobody. It left behind nothing but an empty mason jar, and a litter of minnow scales upon the gravel.
From the front of the room came the jangle of bells, as someone else entered the visitor’s center. A heavyset man wearing the same khaki uniform as Mitch rounded the corner with a flushed and breathless expression. He took a moment to catch his breath, eyes bulging, before addressing Mitch in an urgent tone. “We need you down at the beach, right away.”
“What’s the problem, Skip?”
The panting man just shook his head and put his hands on his hips. “Dude, I’m afraid you’re going to have to see this one to believe it.”
###
Sara’s jaw dropped open. Her chopsticks fell from her hand, clattering on the plate. She gaped down at the man with the dazzling ring. This was Collin, after all. He was impulsive, emotional. Not much of a planner. From the moment he first hit on her, from the opposite side of their gas pump, to his first phone call five minutes later, to their first lunch date, an hour after that … the guy always seemed to be rushing the next play. On one hand, she found it flattering. However, on the other, his doggedness could sometimes make her a little anxious. She wasn’t sure why.
It was as if sometimes it seemed as though he unconsciously knew something that she didn’t. As if, he somehow intuited a shortage of time, and to compensate, everything needed to happen right this minute, right now-now-now. Maybe she was overthinking things, giving him more credit in the intuition department than he was due. But seriously, what guy thought the way Collin did--at least, beyond those first physical milestones in a relationship? And heck, what if it was intuition, and what if his intuition was right? What if this man kneeling before her in the middle of downtown Kansas City’s Ryuu Grill and Galley, bearing her ring, with that heart-melting look of hope in his eyes, actually possessed a deeper sort of awareness?
Or, maybe this was just Collin being Collin.
“I will,” Sara replied, falling into Collin’s arms, just as a teppanyaki chef summoned a great plume of fire, prompting a perfectly timed cheer throughout the restaurant. He kissed her, and he told her that her breath smelled like sushi, but that he loved her anyway. And he did. Sara knew that much to be true. He showed it every day in both big and little ways. No one had ever loved Sara as well as Collin did. Plus, he was the first guy she’d ever dated who she knew she could trust completely. Collin hid nothing from anybody, because he never had anything to hide. He was an open book, and it was a good book. “I love you too. So, so much.”
They’d not even finished their tableside embrace before a host with the keenest eye and the most impeccable sense of timing swept up to their table with a chilled bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses. He singlehandedly popped the cork right into the palm of his hand, as though he’d practiced this maneuver a thousand times. Before the bottle had a chance to foam, he’d filled both their flutes overflowing with froth, and then he turned to make an announcement of their engagement. His toast to their love, and to their future together, brought about an uproarious applause that made the both of them blush. Laughing, they obliged their onlookers with a delicate clink of their flutes, and a sip of the cloying fizz. Their host congratulated them again, before slipping respectfully away.
Collin removed the engagement ring from the velvet box and slipped it onto Sara’s finger. “Is it the right hand?” he asked, hesitating, with the ring halfway down her finger.
“No, that’s my left hand,” Sara replied, with a smile, “and the left one is the correct one.”
“It’s supposed to be a little big,” Collin said, allowing a nervous chuckle, “because you have to take it back into the store and they, you know, resize it exactly to fit your finger. I guess they cut a chunk out of the band, or something, and then weld it back together.”
Sara tried her best not to laugh at his endearing innocence. “You’re doing fine, babe.”
“Thanks.” Collin sighed, and leaned back in his seat, smiling. He picked up his napkin and blotted his forehead. “I’ve never done this before, you know.”
“Are you scared yet?”
“Scared? No way.” Collin leaned forward, kissed her again, and then smiled. His face was flushed. “This is exactly right. I’ve never been happier, never more excited.”
Sara beamed across the table at her fiancé. Not her boyfriend. Her fiancé! This was the man with whom she was going to spend the rest of her life, raise a family, and grow old. The guy from the other side of the gas pump. The whole thing just seemed so surreal. So fast. It was almost—dare she say, flippant? No. If it hadn’t felt right, she wouldn’t have accepted his proposal. There was no such thing as flippant, when a match is just right. “So, who should we call first?” r />
“What do you mean?”
Sara furrowed her brow at him. “What do you mean, what do I mean, silly? Who are we going to call first to announce our engagement? My mom or yours?”
Collin picked up his napkin again. He smeared his face in the white linen folds. When he reappeared, seconds later, it looked to Sara as though he had aged five years. “I don’t know,” he replied. He reached for the champagne flute, then apparently changed his mind, and went instead for the glass of ice water. He took a few drinks and leaned back in his chair, staring intently down into the cluster of ice cubes. The color of his face waned from the flush of excitement to a rather sickly pallor.
“Are you okay?” Sara asked.
“I’m just, not really feeling so good all of a sudden.” Collin’s glassy gaze swept around the restaurant. His knee began to jiggle.
“Aw, babe …” Sara placed her hand lovingly atop his, but he abruptly pulled his hand away from her. “You probably just got yourself all worked up over everything.”
“Maybe.” Desperation clouded Collin’s face.
Sara glanced down at Collin’s half-eaten steak and lobster tail. “You don’t have a shellfish allergy, do you?”
“No, I’ve eaten lobster plenty of times.”
“Well, I’ve heard that it can just come on, all of a sudden, even if you’ve eaten it before. My cousin had eaten oysters lots of times, but when she and her husband went down to the French Quarter, they ordered this huge platter of raw—”
“Would you please?”
“Sorry … maybe it’s the prospect of a lifetime with me that isn’t settling so well.”
Collin squirmed, pulling at his collar. “I think I just need to get to a restroom.”
“You want to go home?”
“I don’t think I can wait that long.”
Sara rose in her seat and looked around the room. “It looks like they’re over there, beside the bar.”