“You’re worried about making friends?”
My therapist smiles, and I know she is trying to ignore my awkward toe tapping and fidgeting with my tendrils. I hold myself still and look into her eyes. “Why is that?” she asks. “You seem like a nice enough guy.”
“I’m clumsy,” I say, and my voice cries in high-pitched shrieks of the dead and undying. I cover my mouth, but my therapist pretends not to notice my cracking voice. “And I think they’re afraid of me. That I might hurt them.”
My therapist taps her iron engraving spike on her stone tablet, but writes nothing down. “I don’t think anyone would judge you for being clumsy,” she says. “Is it possible you’re making it bigger in your mind than it actually is? Maybe nobody even notices. Maybe it’s endearing.”
My scaled skin sweats, and I close my eyes. I have so much to say and the words threaten to tumble out of me, tripping over themselves to be heard.
“I hurt them,” I say. “I don’t mean to, but I hurt them.”
“How so?” she asks.
My anger rises, but I tamp it down, control it as best I can. The shrieks of the undying emerge from my throat, past the tendrils of my mouth. I speak the words before they can eat me alive.
“Ships sink as I emerge from the sea,” I say. “But I can’t control the tidal waves which announce my presence. How can anyone expect me to? I’m a big guy, but I still care about the smaller people.”
The therapist says nothing, allowing me to continue.
“When their ships sink, they thrash in the sea on bits of flotsam. I try to retrieve them. I hold them in the safety of my maw, but they are so afraid of me. They scream. They fall from my teeth, or down my throat. They are crushed by tendrils as I try to make room for them so I can carry them to safety. I try to explain, but all they hear is the eldritch cracking of my voice.”
“They don’t listen to you,” my therapist says. “You feel like you’re not being heard.”
“I feel it in my soul!” I shout. Outside the waves rise with my anger and I control myself. I breathe the way she taught me. It helps.
“Then their friends come. Their real friends. They come with other vessels with harpoons and flaming arrows. They prick at my skin and lodge in my scales. They humiliate me. It doesn’t hurt, but… It does, you know? It hurts in here.” I pound my chest and my multiple hearts.
“Last time I tripped on their harpoon ropes. Fell right on my face in the water. I hoped nobody saw, but of course they did. They saw how clumsy I was. The water hid my tears, but I’m sure they knew. I pulled their ships into the deep as I ran away, unable to face them any longer.”
I burn with embarrassment as I retell my last attempt at making friends. My scales tighten and my skin below flushes and prickles.
My therapist gives me a moment to breathe, and I am thankful for it. In a soft voice I speak my concern. “What if I never have friends?”
She sets her tablet down, and her engraving spike. Her tendrils sway slightly as she gives me a sideways smile. “I don’t think you’re broken,” she says. “You’re doing great for yourself. You have a stable job in the soul marshes. You have a lovely home and an endless corridor of bones that would entice anyone to get to know you. You think you can’t attain the smallest friendship, but I think you’re actually aiming too small.”
I sigh. I worried this would come up. How could I make friends with other eldritch beings if I couldn’t even command the respect of the tiny humans?
“You’re a nice guy. If we met under other circumstances, I would have been happy to be friends with you.”
I look up, bewildered. “But I’m clumsy. My voice cracks, I can’t string two words together without fumbling.”
“It’s hard being an elder abomination,” she says. “I think that’s something you could connect with others over. Others like yourself. You deserve to be friends with equals.”
She smiles and retrieves a pamphlet from her purse. I look it over. Eldritch scrawl covers the page, with sketches of screaming humans and endless labyrinths.
“It’s a local games convention. That way you can play with humans while still getting to know your own kind. I think it could be good for you.”
I cling to the pamphlet. On page three I see a ship-sinking competition. I stare at the drawing of fiery arrows and harpoons. Maybe it would work.
Maybe I could still make a friend.
Addison Smith (he/him) is an amorphous being constructed of suspended cold brew and kombucha. His mind is a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast formed around a brainstem of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus. He’s doing his best, though. His fiction has appeared in dozens of publications including Fantasy Magazine, Fireside Magazine, and Daily Science Fiction. Addison is a member of the Codex Writers Group and you can find him on Bluesky @addisoncs.bsky.social.
If you enjoyed this story, you might also like these other stories by Addison Smith.
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