Creature Love

More about Creature Love

The Creature from the Black Lagoon followed her all the way from the dim, algae-slick doorway of the movie studio to the warm grate on Lexington Avenue where the city exhaled like some giant sleeping beast. He didn’t mean to be frightening. It was just hard to pad softly on webbed feet designed for centuries of underwater diplomacy.

She stood above the grate in that white dress like a lighthouse for lost monsters, laughing at something only she could hear—maybe the hum of subway ghosts, maybe the memory of a kiss she refused to keep. The skirt rose in a soft, obedient whirl as the warm breath of the city lifted it, and the Creature raised his claws as if conducting the wind in a small orchestral arrangement for one star and one amphibian.

He had come to the surface world for her. Not because of beauty—fish see plenty of beauty in reefs and jellyfish blooms—but because she looked at the camera the way lagoon creatures look at moonlight. As if it might vanish if she didn’t love it enough.

He tried to tell her this, but underwater languages don’t work well on dry pavement. Instead, he just stood there, half-crouched, as if he were about to offer her a seashell full of stories he was too shy to tell.

She laughed again—the kind of laugh that feels like it has a little boat tied to it, drifting somewhere the heart can’t quite track. He realized she wasn’t laughing at him, but in the direction of her own life, a place he could never swim to.

A paper tube rolled to the edge of the sidewalk. The Creature looked at it, hopeful. Maybe it was a message. Maybe it was a map. But when he picked it up, it was empty—just another piece of drifting human tide-pool trash.

Still, he held it like a precious artifact. She noticed and bent toward him just a little, enough to make the wind jealous. For a moment the whole world was a myth whispered between two beings who should never have met, yet somehow did.

Then the city sighed again, deeper this time, and her dress fluttered like a farewell flag. The Creature felt the pull of the lagoon inside him—the old amphibian ache that said monsters don’t get to keep moments like this.

But she touched his arm—lightly, like a question she already knew the answer to—and smiled. Not the smile for cameras. The other one. The one for beings who climb out of swamps because something brighter called to them.

He would return to the water soon. But tonight, in the warm, humming dark, the Creature stood beside her like a misplaced poem, happy to be unreadable, and happier still that she didn’t mind.