The Haar

by David Sodergren

“I’d never hurt you,...

“Do it, then,” she said. “Take me with you.” He kissed her then, a kiss unlike any she had ever experienced. She closed her eyes as a warmth spread from her mouth through her body, travelling quickly through her bloodstream.

Patrick Grant reached the edge of the water.

“Goodbye, Jack,” he shouted. “And remember your promise. I love you.”

The ocean was more wonderful than she had dared imagine.

Up there she was obsolete, a tragic memory. There was no place for her in that world, not anymore. But she didn’t care.

Because she and Billy were together again, and would be forever, even after she had forgotten all about her old life, and who she was once, the names Muriel and Billy McAuley slowly fading into oblivion as time swam inexorably on.

Goodbye, she thought, as Muriel Margaret McAuley, eighty-four years young, let go of the past and calmly succumbed to the darkness of the ocean.

I know it would make her immensely proud to think that people from all across the world had read her words, and so I present to you, dear reader, the life of Constance Sclater Jamieson. I’m just sorry it had to appear alongside a story in which a boy’s penis is dissolved by a sea monster.