I woke at three a.m. to the sound of waves.
That sound had no place here. I live far inland—two hundred and thirty-eight kilometers from the sea. I made sure of it before I moved. Studied the maps. Even hung an old coastal survey in the living room, like a talisman.
And yet, the tide was there. Real.
Rolling slow and deliberate, lapping against something soft and wet beyond the window. Something that yielded.
I didn't get up.
The curtains were open. Night clung to the glass like oil. I could feel it watching—not with eyes, but through my own skin.
There was a damp itching in my spine, like mucous had seeped between the bones and begun to nest.
This wasn't a hallucination. I know, because I heard a sound answering the tide—from inside me.
A voice.
As if another mouth had begun to grow beneath my tongue.
Ever since the village, I've been wrong.
They called me "the sole survivor." But I know that whatever came back wasn't really me.
That night, the sea rose and swallowed the village.
I remember the water coming in from all directions—fast, endless.
But I didn't drown.
At the final moment, a voice said to me:
"Leave the mind. Keep the meat."
I woke up on the rocks. Alone. My fist clenched around something warm. Pulsing.
A piece of flesh.
I didn't throw it away. I don't know why. I salted it, wrapped it in old newspaper, and shoved it into the freezer's bottom drawer.
It never froze.
It just... twitches, now and then.
Like some deep-sea organ, waiting to regrow.
—
My memory is unraveling.
The village name. My father's face. Even my own. All slipping away.
But the sea—
The sea I remember.
The taste of brine on my tongue.
The shimmer between stone cracks far below the surface.
And I remember the voice in the flesh.
It speaks to me each night.
With the part of my mind that isn't mine anymore.
I think it's replacing me.
Feeding on my thoughts, my words, my feelings.
Growing stronger in the dark.
It's becoming me.
And all I can do now is write.
To remind myself—
I haven't been swallowed whole.
Not yet.