High heels are not made for walking on sand. As you teeter along the line of the tide, a half-empty bottle of bubbly wine dangling from your hand, you broadcast a signal of vulnerability, strong enough to project over the whole length of the beach. Poor lamb.

On your left, higher up on the shore, expensive, sea-view houses are black outlines wrapped in the lights of festive garlands. In the distance, a lone car speeds over the bridge, hoping to reach its destination before the clocks strike midnight. On your right, the sea is a churning, rolling, winter-gray expanse.

He appears by your side out of nowhere as if he has been lying in wait for someone just like you to wander away from a New Year’s Eve party. Perhaps you’ve had enough of your family or couldn’t stand to be in the same room with your ex for one minute longer. Whatever it was, it brought you right into his hands. One blink and he’s right in front of you, his bulk blocking your way.

“Hey,” he says, “what’s a girl like you doing all alone on a night like this?”

You try to step around him, but he doesn’t let you. He’s so much bigger than you, faster than you, and so sure of himself.

“I’m just waiting for my sister,” you slur, making sure to hiccup in the end.

He makes a point of looking around. “I think she might be running late,” he says and reaches for you, a sly leer stretching his face.

You take a step backwards and wobble on these absurdly high heels like a poster girl for feminine vulnerability, no more no less.

At this point, he is so focused on you, eyes glued to the unbuttoned top of your shirt, he doesn’t notice a tentacle, black and sleek, rise from the waves behind him. It slithers up the sand, until it reaches the backs of his boots. He doesn’t even have the good sense to scream when it yanks him off the shore. You catch a glimpse of his shocked Pikachu face just before the monstrous appendage pulls him under, and then he’s gone.

“Bottoms up, sister,” you holler, shove the bottle of champagne neck down into the sand, and run, shedding the constraints of clothes and skin, into the great, gray, rolling wave, full of teeth, tentacles, and sweet, sweet blood. It’s going to be a good year.

​

Laila Amado is a nomadic writer of short fiction. She writes in her second language, has recently exchanged her fourth country of residence for the fifth, and can now be found staring at the North Sea, instead of the Mediterranean. The sea, occasionally, stares back. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, Tales to Terrify, Three Lobed Burning Eye, Translunar Travelers Lodge, as well as in various anthologies.