HER CHERRY AFTERTASTE - DANIELLE ROBERSON
February 14, 2025
Her Cherry Aftertaste
I am made of the ocean, but it is not made of me. I know this because it refuses to mix with my body, its many micro-organisms keeping me firmly on the surface. It’s best not to mix ill-matched things like us, like men and power or sour milk and eager tongues. It’s best not to infect the ocean, so full of nature and balance, with my manufactured sadness and hunger for absolution.
I won’t stay human for long, at least, that’s what they say. That’s why I’m here, because I don’t want to exist like this anymore. Everyone would be too sad if I chose to die, so I’m choosing this. I wonder what form I’ll take; they say it doesn’t always make much sense. You just float for a few hours, then the ocean sucks you under, transforming you into something alien along the way.
One woman turned into an octopus, she was a waitress. Another into a moray eel, she was a sex worker. The last I heard of turned into a sand flea; she was a banker.
I don’t think I ever knew these women personally, but the world acted like it did after they disappeared. This is not new, but that doesn’t make it less disappointing. There are many names for women like us. Survivors. Victims. Selfish. Overly-ambitious. Monsters. Deserving of our fate.
I wonder what will come of me, of this body I didn’t consent to inhabit. I wonder what I will become as my back hardens, turning to a dense helicoidal staircase of chitin. I don’t know how I know what that means, but I wish I had an exoskeleton like this when I lived on land. Maybe I wouldn’t be here now. Or maybe this is how it was always supposed to be. It’s better than what I had before, not because it’s stronger, but because it’s not me.
I dip my head under the sea surface, only my nose and lips touching the air now. I want my mind to go next, for the water to smooth the cracks in my brain, valuable surface area for the anxiety tunneling itself so deep it burns. I want to feel nothing but nothing.
I need to flip; the air isn’t enough anymore. I gasp, my mouth gaping, cells begging for oxygen. I’m trying, I tell them.
I push myself underwater and breathe in. I never expected it to taste like this. I expected brine, for the water to needle my throat. But the sweetness is incredible, intoxicating. I used to give sweetness like this, used to rip my heart out just to dip it in gold. Just to raise it high to watch the passersby marvel. I used to –
I need more water. All my arms current more toward my new gills.
All my arms? Legs? I wriggle them one by one. I think they’re all here. Eight pairs. I have eight pairs of legs. Arms? I wish I’d had this when I was younger. Or maybe I don’t. The more I can reach for, the more I can lose. And I’ve already lost so much.
My hair once fine but coiling out of me in endless follicles, is gone. I used to hate this gift, one of the few my father left me. I had his tight curls, hair brown and lightweight. So I burned it. Painted it copper. Made sure it fell straight against my shoulders and never so much as waved ever again.
But then I loved my curls. I don’t remember why, but I do know that once I did, the world heard, and hysteria answered. That’s when a man threatened to set my hair on fire. Took out a lighter and flicked it in the middle of the metro car. I didn’t flinch because I knew I could learn to hate what he singed off. I could twist something like that into an act worthy of gratitude. But then he took his pants off, threw them at me. Took out his penis and stepped forward so it sat in my face. No man had ever done that before, and no man since. Not because the world got better but because I learned to keep my head down.
My eyes, they’re above water now, sticking out of my head. And I can see heat. Life. It’s swarming around me. But not in me. I’m a dead zone. I don’t know if I’ve ever been alive at all.
There’s something sprouting from my joints. Large smashers pushed into my body, although I can feel them fighting to spring out. I let them loose, watch the water turn to steam around me as it bubbles to the surface. The surface? I look around, my eyes shifting independently in different directions. When did I sink? When did I lose the sun?
The ocean floor is rough but oh-so-beautiful. This is exactly why I burrow beneath it, digging a small hole where I can listen to the world sing above me. I’ll come out only to eat, I decide. But something is moving out there. Something larger than me. I come out of my burrow, ready to defend my new home, something I never would have done before. Not because I didn’t care about where I lived but because I’ve only ever lived in an organized collection of rooms.
Lingering outside is an octopus with a human leg kicking independently of the tentacles. A moray eel swimming clumsily behind with human eyes. Its sclera bloodshot, probably from all the salt scratching the surface. And then, hardly visible, a sand flea. I only see it well because of the heat pushing from its body. It doesn’t have any humanity left, though I suspect that happened long before it came to the sea floor.
I should know these people. They are familiar, but I cannot remember where I’ve seen them before. I cannot remember what makes their leg and eyes human. Is it the tiny hairs covering the leg, flowing in the water, slowing this creature? It’s not too bad now, but what will happen when it needs to escape? And these eyes, inferior to my own, make me pity the moray eel. I want it to be able to see like me. To see everything around it all the time. To be ready for anything, all the time.
And the sand flea. It approaches my burrow, too eager to enter. I wouldn’t know this small thing used to be human if it wasn’t for the rage it ignites inside me. Memories of being human pass by in vignettes, playing like a TV across the room only in the corner of my right eye. I see a woman’s face. She’s telling me I’m smart for someone with such dark skin. Asking if my wife still thinks I’m pretty with a bean-shaped lump under my eye. She’s snapping at me because she can’t stand that I am braver than she will ever be. Another vignette: the same woman is in front of me, apologizing in a glass room. Asking for forgiveness. Forgiveness for what? She’s done something to me, it was just in my mind. I’ve lost it now.
But the body does not forget, human or not.
The sand flea comes closer, the eel and octopus watching us from afar. My new back shifts to accommodate me as I rise and then stare down. As I let the flea know that I am the predator now. And it is my prey. The smashers move so fast when they release from my body. The flea doesn’t even realize what’s happening until it’s too late. And then it’s stunned, abdomen cracked in half on a small rock I didn’t notice until now.
The eel and octopus swim away, scared they’re next. The sand flea twitches, body cooling slowly. I take a bite, and again, I’m surprised by the cherry aftertaste of my new world. Or perhaps it is the sweetness of revenge. It is of no difference to me. Because I am nothing but a small thing burrowed beneath the sea.
I am not human anymore. I’m not sure what I am, but that’s not for me to know. The ocean knows me, and I suspect I’ll come to know it. It’s made of me, her, them. It’s where the women go when we get tired. Where we come to control our fate. And eventually, it comes for all of us.
Danielle Roberson is a writer living in Texas. You can find her short stories in The Word's Faire and Magpie Zine. She is a 2025 Writer's League of Texas Fellow.