Farewell to the Abyssal Plains

A good beach is pungent, she thought. Books had told her that a beach must be a potion of crisp, brackish winds unmarred by the plague of human interaction. The water is always spellbinding enough to hypnotize one into a paroxysm of pleasure. The sand is never too hot, coiling welcomingly beneath the bare foot.
The true palette of a good beach were none of these. In Ilyana's mind, a beach was the result of a complexly fermented ecosystem building layers of the grotesque and the aberrant upon itself. Stranded carrion dried beneath the sun, to be feasted on by scavengers who in turn will shit their quarry back into the ocean. That was a beach.
Once when she was sixteen, she and her class took a field trip to Albert Cove. Ilyana had perched herself on the nest of rock pools away from the rest of the students, immured by social anxiety.
A girl Ilyana loved found her there. She had something flaccid dangling in her gloved hand. It was black, with a white head shaped like a long almond fingernail—except it opened and closed with a mouth like a rounded beak. Opposite the head, the flesh was jagged as if it had been torn, a fleshy pink substance occasionally puked from the opening. Despite this, it still squirmed with life, wriggling beneath the girl's fingers.
"Hi Ilyana," she said.
She nodded back, unable to conjure words in her mouth.
"Look what I found," the girl pushed the sluggish creature to her nose. Up close, Ilyana saw that its black skin was actually more brown, sort of mottled with yellowish-green rings that gave the illusion of opening and closing with each dying throb it took. There was a briny reek to it, the smell hooked its tendrils deep into Ilyana's nose, so much so she gasped.
The girl giggled.
"Will you touch it?"
Ilyana looked up, mouth agape. She shook her head.
"Come on, please?"
The girl’s lips pursed together, folding layers of pink that bunched up together like chewed bubblegum. A shivering weight pressed against Ilyana's chest. Like a bell being struck it resonated within her from spine to skull. Immobilized, she found herself stuttering as she grasped for a thought to hold onto.
The girl smiled. Reaching for Ilyana's bare hand, she guided her fingers to the creature. It was cold to the touch. A veneer of mucus clung to its skin, so when the girl moved Ilyana's fingers around, it pooled around the tips in great swirling dunes of snot. The creature coiled and uncoiled itself beneath her touch as more pink matter spat from its wound.
"See, that's not so bad, right?" The girl said.
Ilyana ran her fingers down the creature once more, letting them glide up its bulbous white head.
"Will you put it in your mouth?"
She looked back up to the girl's face. It was aglow with pleasure, like a scientist on the verge of a great breakthrough. Ilyana looked back at the creature and again to the girl. A resting tide swelled inside her chest, quieting the tremors from before.
Ilyana nodded.
The girl placed her hand across Ilyana's jaw, sliding her thumb just over her bottom lip. Perhaps she was fearful she wouldn't do it and wanted to keep her mouth propped open just in case. The cheap leather of her glove was bitter, causing Ilyana’s tongue to recoil backwards.
Sensing hesitance in Ilyana’s muscles, the girl shoved the creature headfirst into Ilyana's mouth.
The way its body expanded inside her mouth shocked her like a viscous balloon. The creature's head and body pushed against the sides of her cheeks. Something about Ilyana's mouth had shuddered life into its muscles, and she felt it move in a way that was different to when it was sitting in the girl's hand.
Her tongue involuntarily pushed its body against the roof of her mouth, allowing the creature's taste to fill her senses. It had the texture of congealing fat with a slight mealiness to it.
Ilyana savored its fishy complexion, careful not to bite down as it wrestled with her mouth. It seemed to exacerbate its own disembowelment as pink guts continued to retch from its backside onto her chest. The sensation seemed eternal, though in reality was only a few seconds. It ended when the creature shook with one final death rattle and squirted a sandy fluid from its mouth directly into Ilyana's. The juice coated her tongue. It was salinated and pickled. There was something else, something layered beneath the the taste that was actually quite sweet.
She felt the creature slide from her mouth. The girl had pulled it away, a disdainful look carved into her features. She flung it against a nearby rock pool. It smacked the stone with a wet slap before limply falling into the water. The girl stalked off.
Ilyana stood there for some time, the creature's residual ichor pooling in her open mouth where it mixed with her saliva. She held it for sometime, stewing in the phantom memory of its taste. Ilyana didn’t realize that the creature had planted something deep inside her, a voracious and unquenchable hunger that seeded itself in the folds of her intestines, where it would never leave.

Jackie Aleksandrovich is a writer based out of the Treasure Valley, wrestling to integrate stories about high fantasy into realistic dramas in a way where HBO will pay them big money.