The CatchA Short Story
The Catch
A Short Story
Brian Rella
Copyright © 2018 by Brian Rella
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Photo by XogN on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA
Contents
The Catch
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Also by Brian Rella
About the Author
The Catch
"You're breaking up with me?" Gregory almost dropped his glass. He couldn't believe it. Wouldn't. There's no way she would ever—
"I'm with Brad now," she said and the look on her face...if there weren't people around he'd…he'd have done something unbecoming. Regretful even. She was lucky they were at his friend Thomas' parent's house in the Hamptons. He kept the rage under wraps for now. But he would not allow this to happen. The nerve of this second-class troll, he thought. She wasn't even in his league. She looked the part, but behind those almond-shaped eyes and perfect ass, she was still just a small-town girl from a small blue-collar town in Massachusetts trying to screw her way into the lifestyle of the rich and famous. And he was a Worthington. And no one made a Worthington look bad. Especially not the likes of her.
"No one breaks up with me, Sloan. Do you hear me? No one. You know me. You know my family. All of this," he motioned to the posh house party going on around them, "This is my world, my people and I—"
"Oh yeah, Gregory. You're a real catch," she rolled her eyes at him and looked away.
"Hey!" Gregory said grabbing her arm.
She looked at him with pity. He jerked her arm.
"Now you listen to me, Sloan. You are not breaking up with me," he said, and he felt the muscles in his face curling into a sneer. His hand squeezed around her bicep, and the smug look on her face turned.
"Gregory! You're hurting me! Stop!"
Her pouty lips curled under, and he could see the fear in her big brown eyes. She tried to pull away, and he grabbed her other arm.
From the corner of his eye, he noticed people stopping to look over at them. Then he looked over at them. Gregory turned as a man ran toward them.
"Get your damn hands off her!" Brad shouted mid-stride.
Gregory heard the waves crashing behind Brad as the party fell suddenly silent. Brad, he thought incredulously. Is she leaving me for Brad?
There was a planter to the right of Sloan shaped like a Grecian urn with some palmy, ferny-looking plant sticking out of it. Gregory grabbed it and flung it at Brad. Sloan slipped away from him as Brad leaped over the flying planter landing gracefully a few feet away from Gregory. The planter shattered across the stone floor surrounding the pool.
Gregory's face grew hot. The scotch bubbled from his stomach into his throat. I'm gonna kill him, he thought.
He lunged at Brad.
Brad's foot connected with his jaw, and he went sprawling into the bar behind him. Bottles and glasses shattered. Something cut into his forearm as he landed on his back.
"You fairy prick!" Gregory shouted.
People gasped. Gregory felt their eyes on him. Donna Loghran had her hand over her mouth like a drama queen from a b-list movie. She's an actress, isn't she? Gregory thought randomly.
He stood shaking with fury. He wanted to fight Brad then and there, but they were all looking at him. All his friends. They were all staring and murmuring.
He grabbed a bottle of Johnny Black from the ground, hopped the short wall onto the beach, and landed on the warm sand. He walked barefoot with the bottle at his side taking long pulls as he strode across the beach toward the water.
He didn't know how far he'd walked, but the bottle was almost empty, and the beachfront houses were far behind him when he saw the silhouette of a woman emerge from the surf.
She came out of the water like Daryl Hannah in that movie with Tom Hanks he'd seen when he was a kid. Splash.
The pale moonlight hid her features, but he could see she had the body of a model. The dim light highlighted her curves and contours. As she approached him, silvery hair illuminated her face. Gregory was captivated by her beauty. And he was hammered.
They stood to face each other for a moment. "Hey," he said in his calm, aloof voice. His tongue was too full in his mouth. Drunk, he thought.
She didn't speak, but she smiled. It was then that he noticed she was naked. Her erect nipples poked at him and he became aroused.
He moved a few steps toward her, and she danced back toward the water playfully, giggling.
"Oh, you want me to chase you, huh?" Ok. I'll play along, he thought, lascivious images sloshing around his intoxicated mind. He took another step and fell to the warm sand. The whiskey burned in the back of his throat, but he swallowed it back down. He stood up slowly, wobbling, and she wavered in his drunken vision, the edges of her naked body blending with the backdrop of crashing waves and sea foam.
He moved to her again, reaching with his arm, and missed.
This game was getting old fast. "Come here," he half-growled at her. "I want to see if you're really real." His eyes felt heavy in their sockets.
She shook her head and danced backward like a ballerina. The water behind her calmed and speckled with moonlight. It was mesmerizing. Was she a mirage? As if she heard his questions, she waved for him to follow and he obeyed her call.
She was almost to the water. He lunged at her again and this time caught her hand. Or maybe she caught his? She giggled and pulled him back to her. Water splashed between them, and the bottom of his shorts got wet. She grasped his hand tightly and pulled him further into the surf. He stumbled as a wave broke over his chest and gripped her tighter wrapping his arm around her. She was his now, and he pulled her closer.
Something didn't feel right.
Her arm—it felt slick. It felt slimy.
Her hands gripped him fiercely, and she yanked him into the water. He went under, gulped sea water, and puked. The whiskey and stomach acid burned his throat, and he felt fear for the first time since the encounter. He gasped and reached for her to steady himself. Her arms were scaly, like a—.
She took him under again, pushing him down into the ocean depths. Water rushed over his skin and his ears popped. He pushed against her but she was strong and he slipped down further into the dark water. He strained and her arms slipped through his fingers. Suddenly, he was free from her and alone in the deep sea. He kicked and paddled toward the surface, his lings burning for air.
His head burst through the water gasping for air. He spun around searching for the shore and realized he could no longer see the lights from the homes that dotted the beach.
Something of considerable length and scale slithered across his ribcage. He screamed into the open air above the ocean.
A tail fin rose out of the water and crashed upon down on his head sending him under again.
In the murky depths of the salty sea, he saw a faint glow gliding through the water at him. He screamed bubbles. He felt the thing in front of him and strained to see through the salt water. Strands of silvery hair crossed his face. A soft glow surrounded her, and he saw…he saw her… her full lips transforming into gaping jaws with teeth the size of shot glasses.
The pain was exquisite and nearly overwhelmed him when she sank her teeth into his side and pulled him down to the ocean floor. His back raked across the rocky bottom, and she took him a chunk at a time, her teeth sinking into his flesh and tugging powerfully back until he was ripped open.
As the last of his senses left him, a random
memory from earlier that night bubbled into his thoughts.
"You're a real catch."
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About the Author
Brian lives in New York with his wife, who is far too good for him, and his two vivacious young boys who challenge his light-saber skills daily. Most of his writing is done on the train to the cube farm where he works so he can buy stuff and support his family while he pursues writing fiction as a career. He published his first book in 2015 and hopes to write from his beachfront property overlooking the Mare Tranquillitatis one day.
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www.brianrella.com
writer@brianrella.com
Brian Rella, The CatchA Short Story
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