The Little Short Story that could(n't quite fit in anywhere)

Another day, another personal rejection on my favorite short story (that I've ever written, anyway. All Summer in a Day and The Lottery are still the GOATs). "You Look Prettier When You Scream" is an oddly personal horror story for me. I wrote it with the memory of the absolute rage I felt when a male neighbor (who I barely knew) looked me straight in the eyes in our townhouse parking complex and told me to "smile." He didn't know it, but he chose the wrong day to police my facial expressions. At the time, my mother was slowly dying from 2nd & 3rd degree burns over 80% of her body. I let him have it with both barrels. He ran, not walked, away from me and never spoke to me again.

As women, we grow up being told to look a certain way, to dress a certain way, to act a certain way.

When we fail, there is always someone there to critique us.

It's exhausting.

I've submitted this story to a huge number of markets and it's just not quite the right fit for anyone. The overwhelming majority of the responses say they want to see something else from me. Several of them also use the word "soon" in their rejection, which is huge.

I'm never going to make a living as an author. That hustle and confidence people need to make it solely on their writing... I don't have that. I am nothing but a bundle of insecurity on my best days. Another thing you need to make it in this business is a larger backlog of work to send out on submission, and I am far from prolific. Much as I try, I don't always have the time or the energy to write.

But the thought of this story never reaching any readers leaves me bereft.

With that thought in mind, I've decided to publish the story below for everyone to read. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

---

You Look Prettier When You Scream

“You look prettier when you smile.” 

And you’d look more handsome if you lost the pornstache and ratty sweatshirt she thought but didn’t say. “Ok. Thanks.” She looked away, hoping he’d take the hint.

He didn’t. Guys like him never did.

“I’ve seen you at the coffee shop. I’m Chris- the triple shot espresso in black coffee guy. It’s great stuff.” Giving what she bet he called his “charming” smile- all teeth with wide eyes that didn’t crinkle at the corners. About as charming as a shark coming up behind her in murky, chum-churned water.

“Ok. Yeah, great. Glad you like the coffee.”

What did he expect her to say? She didn’t own the coffee shop. Outside of remembering her work schedule and cursing the way she always smelled like burnt coffee she didn’t think of the coffee shop at all. From the way he stared at her when he came in, he’d either missed the rainbow pin on her apron or took it as a challenge.

“You know, you look gorgeous when you’re not moping around. How about giving me a smile- a little one?” 

“I don’t want to smile right now.” He opened his mouth, and she cut in before he could say anything else. “My mother died, and I don’t feel like smiling.” Andrea fixed him with a cool, unblinking gaze and waited. 

“Oh, I’m sorry. Um, sorry for your loss.” Embarrassment flashed across his face. Then a beat while he waited for her to say something conciliatory, to thank him for his empty words.

She said nothing.

“I didn’t know.” No longer embarrassed, angry now. As though she’d owed him that information. What was she supposed to do- take out a billboard in the middle of town. My mother died, please don’t ask me to smile? 

Not that it would matter anyway. Guys like him never actually cared.

He was one of those guys who hung around the coffee shop always watching, watching, watching.

Give them a smile when you hand them a latte and suddenly you were their future sex partner/girlfriend/wife/best friend.

They didn’t need to know you to cast you in a supporting role in their lives.

They weren’t much interested in whether you wanted the role they forced you into in the first place.

The silence stretched on, and she gave up waiting for him to get the hint. “Thank you.”

She pursed her lips, biting her tongue until it released a drop of blood. A taste of copper, the nauseating old penny tang she associated with playing nice, with being friendly, with not making men angry so she wouldn’t end up in a body bag.

“You’re welcome. Guess I’ll see you at the shop tomorrow,” he said before finally, mercifully, walking away.

He didn’t need to know her mother died six years ago.

Making latte art wasn’t the only thing she’d learned working in the coffee shop. All the girls behind the counter united under one belief: say whatever you need to say to get the creeps to go away. Doubly true if you were gay- telling guys like Chris they were barking up the wrong tree was like asking to get hate-crimed in the parking lot. Better to say someone died. Guys like him could understand something that simple at least.

Once he disappeared, she sat on a boulder and watched the waves.

The surf was high tonight- waves taller than her SUV rising majestically from the surface, curling into long tunnels before crashing into the water again.

A few surfers bobbed almost out of sight in their wetsuits, waiting for the perfect wave to crest in the frigid, choppy sea.

On a good day, the water in La Jolla was the color of aquamarines and sapphires glinting in the sun, so clear you could see rocks and seals cutting through the waves.

Today everything looked gray and forbidding, water churning too fast to see anything but the white-foamed tops of the waves. The familiar urge to walk into the waves until the water covered her head and then keep walking until her last exhale was overwhelming.

Andrea slipped her shoes off. The sand cool and soft beneath her feet, conforming to her every step as she waded into the water. Her toes seized in pain.

The Pacific Ocean was cold in the summer but in December it was close to freezing. 

She waded out as far as her calves before stopping her forward march. She’d never managed to make it past her knees.

A fin splashed in the water, and she frowned- something about the color was off. Green instead of the blue grays she usually saw. Whatever animal it belonged to was probably sick. Or I’m just seeing things.

Feet numb, Andrea felt nothing more than pressure as she stepped along the rocks hidden below a thin layer of sand and made her way back to shore. 

She didn’t feel the cut on the pad of her foot until she was halfway back to her car. 

“Shit.” Everything washed up on the shore- glass bottles, old soda cans, hypodermic needles- she should’ve worn shoes. 

Back at the SUV she sat on the driver’s seat and leaned over to inspect the wound. A sharp line about an inch long, a sand-dusted scab already forming.

She pulled the first aid kit from her glove compartment- always better to be safe than sorry- and grabbed the plastic vial of alcohol.

This is going to hurt like a bitch. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and poured the liquid over the cut. 

She’d expected it to hurt.

She hadn’t expected her foot to smoke. 

“What the hell?” She hissed and dropped the alcohol bottle, which splashed the front seat before dumping the rest of its contents all over the floor mat. There was no pain from the sole of her foot. As the smoke cleared Andrea could only stare at the skin.

The smooth, unblemished skin. 

“Not possible,” she murmured, rubbing her thumb over the spot where the cut had been.

There had been a cut, hadn’t there? The skin wasn’t even red. Had she hallucinated? Was she going crazy? 

A drop of burgundy caught her eye- a drying drop of blood on her calf. She touched the space where the wound had been and shuddered. 

The wound disappeared. Impossible. She told herself. I must’ve stepped in something and didn’t notice. Fish guts from one of the deep-sea fishers who didn’t pick up the mess after they gutted and cleaned their catch.

Whatever she’d stepped in had a chemical reaction to alcohol- it made sense. Aren’t most of the fish in the ocean full of mercury now?

Andrea stared at the mark on her leg and wondered. Maybe the mercury had reacted with the rubbing alcohol and caused the smoke when she’d tried to clean her foot.

Andrea ignored the part of her mind that screamed that there had been a wound- what about the pain, what about the sand in the cut? Wounds don’t up and disappear. Something is wrong.

Andrea was good at ignoring things she couldn’t understand. She pulled out of the lot and headed home.

By the time she reached her apartment complex she no longer remembered the wound on her foot or the strange smoke.

She hardly remembered going to the beach in the first place. 

#

Some days were hell from the start. The next day was one of those.

First her SUV wouldn’t start, making her 30 minutes late to work. Then her apron snagged the edge of the espresso machine, and she came within an inch of knocking it off the counter. 

“You ok?” Another barista asked her an hour into her shift. “You look really gross.” 

“I’m fine.” Andrea kept her eyes fixed on the chrome arm of the espresso machine. Fingerprints smudged the handle. Night shift never cleaned anything properly.

“Fine?” Andrea caught the quick shake of the girl’s honeyed ponytail out of the corner of her eye. “You look half dead.” 

“I don’t feel great.” Andrea replied. “Not sick, having a bad day.”

“Whatever you say, but if you throw-up I’m making you clean it before you go home.” 

Do I really look that bad? Andrea glanced at the spotted chrome surface of the espresso machine and gasped at her reflection.

She looked halfway to the morgue in a movie about the Spanish Flu. 

“Sam- I think I need to go home,” she called to the shift manager. He looked up, face set stern to argue with her.

One glance at her face had him pointing to the door. “Yikes. Leave before you infect the rest of us.”

By the time she’d shucked her apron and grabbed her keys he’d sprayed enough disinfectant in the air for it to settle like fog around her ankles. 

“I just need sleep,” she muttered as she started her SUV and headed home.

She was asleep the moment her head hit the pillow, her dreams feverish and forgettable. 

#

Andrea found herself at the beach again that night.

Found herself because she didn’t remember deciding to drive to the beach.

She also didn’t remember getting out of her car and walking across the sand to the water’s edge. She was barefoot as she walked, her jeans rolled up to her knees. On top she wore only a thin camisole to protect her from the constant ocean breeze. The air on the ocean was always chilly in the winter but she didn’t feel its sting.

Every person she passed wore layers and shivered as the wind whipped up the waves.

The air was a scorching summer breeze to her- too warm, too dry. Fire burned in her throat with every breath. Andrea swallowed hard while wishing for an unknown something to put out the flames.

People walking by gazed at her sideways and gave her a wide berth. No one wanted to talk to the crazy woman at the beach.

Waves washed over her feet and she froze in place.

The waves felt bathwater warm. 

“Oh my god,” she whispered.

She hadn’t felt water this warm since they’d lived in Florida. The Atlantic Ocean was warm most of the year. The Pacific was always cold. 

“Global warming” she told herself, ignoring the screaming in her brain reminding her it was freezing yesterday. How could global warming work that fast? 

A glance at her feet brought acidic bile up her throat. “No. Can’t be real,” she whimpered.

Under the water her feet had changed- green scales dotted the skin and webs formed between her toes. “No. No.” 

Andrea backed away from the water and watched as her feet returned to their normal shape and size once the water no longer touched her. The scales dissolved into her skin leaving faint pink spots behind which faded before her eyes. “What in the hell is wrong with me?” Andrea wondered, knowing she was losing her mind but unsure how to fix it. 

#

Water splashed against the shower wall and tiny drops splattered the floor. Andrea stared at the spray flowing from the showerhead. She forced herself to take a deep breath to stave off the panic attack waiting in every heartbeat. What if it happened again? 

“It’s not going to happen again,” she said to the empty room. “It never happened in the first place. You’re going crazy.”

Hands shaking, she stripped off her clothes and stepped under the spray.

Held her breath.

Looked down. 

Nothing.

Her skin looked the same as always. 

“Thank god,” she said, laughing at herself as she grabbed the loofah and lathered up. “I may be cracking up but at least I’m not part fish.” 

#

She dreamed of walking into briny waves, the intoxicating aroma of unseen prey swimming by- their tiny little hearts beating in triple time as they sensed her presence.

Dreamed of her fingers growing long with nails as sharp and strong as medieval daggers. Legs merging, covered in emerald scales that reflected rainbows in the sunlight.

Dreamed of a burning fire in her throat she couldn’t quench. The faint whisper of a voice- a man’s voice- too soft to hear over the song of the waves crashing against her body. She could sense him getting closer, felt herself smile, raise her hands and—

She woke bathed in sweat and stumbled to the toilet where she retched until she couldn’t breathe. Andrea lay huddled on the bathroom floor the rest of the night but dared not sleep.

At sunrise she called out sick for the first time in three years then hung up the phone without waiting for a response.

She chugged water that did nothing to stifle the fire in her throat and let herself drift off to sleep again. 

#

Come sing with us, a ghostly voice whispered over the sound of the waves. Her dreamscape was the ocean again, somewhere closer to seal beach this time. She could hear the seals barking in discordant harmony on the shore. 

The water slipped over her skin like a silk dress, the waves lapping her skin were a loving promise of newfound home. 

Sing with us. A beautiful creature curled its finger and beckoned to her. It smiled wide with a mouth full of row after row of razor-sharp teeth. Long flowing hair, spectral green skin, and a powerful tail twitching with every movement. 

Sing with us felt less like a request than a command. The creature moved toward her and—

Andrea woke with the now familiar fire blazing in her throat. A glance in the bathroom mirror showed purpling circles under her eyes. Her hair lay plastered against her head, both stringy and greasy.

Under the harsh vanity light her skin took on a green cast and the dreams flooded back in. A beautiful monster calling out to her from the depths of the ocean. “It wasn’t real,” Andrea said aloud as she checked her legs for scales.

She felt empty and disappointed when she didn’t find any. 

#

The grocery store parking lot was more crowded than the beach on Labor Day. Andrea sighed and wished she could crawl back into bed. But she was out of food in the apartment and takeout would eat up too much of her emergency credit card limit.

Grabbing a cart from the entryway she sidestepped sunburned tourists and made her way into the blissful air conditioning. You could always tell tourists- they were the only ones walking around in December in shorts and tank tops. 

Sweat rolled down her face and she wiped it away with her sleeve. Had a heat wave rolled into town? It wasn’t unheard of even in December.

A glance at her fellow shoppers sent her stomach into knots. All the familiar faces she knew from the neighborhood were walking around bundled up in their winter sweaters. 

She pulled her mask tighter against her face and blamed the fever. Andrea sanitized her hands before touching the cart handles. Hopefully, whatever she had wasn’t contagious. 

She’d made it through most of the aisles unnoticed and was silently thanking her lucky stars for coupons and sales prices when she ran into a regular with her cart. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” she babbled. “I didn’t see you.”

He bounced back from the cart's impact and brushed imaginary dirt from his shirt. “You should really watch where you’re going. You’re lucky you didn’t hurt me.” 

Andrea clenched her fists until her fingers went chalk white. One, two, three, breath she thought- a technique Jaquolyn taught her for dealing with customers who thought small inconveniences were a direct attack. 

“Again, I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking and didn’t see you.” 

The man snorted. She knew his order- a large latte with one shot of espresso, soy milk, and a dash of cinnamon. Lord help you if you forgot to make a cutesy design with the foam before you served him- even if the store had a line out to the sidewalk. He’d caught Jaquolyn rubbing her back once and complained to Sam that it was no wonder the girls couldn’t get his order right if they were too busy making eyes at each other.

“Which is it, you weren’t looking, or you didn’t see me?” He finished inspecting his shirt and glanced up at her. 

“What?” She shrugged. “I’m a little under the weather. I’m sorry, I’ll be more careful.”

He slammed a hand down on the cart as she tried to move away.

“You’re that girl from the coffee shop, aren’t you? The one that always gives me a dirty look when I come in. Yeah, that’s you. If you think I won’t tell your boss about this, you’re dead wrong.”

“Are you serious right now?” Andrea hissed. “You think I ran into you on purpose? Are you delusional? Or are you stupid?”

“Excuse me, who do you think you are?” He poked a finger at her chest.

Without thinking, she grabbed the finger and twisted hard. She watched in glee as he dropped to his knees whimpering from the pain and twisted the finger again. They were alone in the aisle and for that she was grateful. No witnesses. 

“What do I think? Well, I think you should think next time before you open your stupid mouth. Think something like ‘is there any reason this barista would want to interact with me for more than the two minutes it takes to make my ridiculously complicated latte art? The art I destroy in twenty seconds because I drink like a baboon?’ And then I want you to realize the answer is ‘no’ and for you to walk away. Do you think you can do that?” 

She waited for him to nod before she released his finger. “The next time you come into the coffee shop and we don’t have time to make your stupid latte art, you better say thank you and throw some money into the tip jar anyway.”

Tears filled his eyes, and he nodded again before looking away. Andrea took that as her cue to rush through the checkout and escape before the man called security. 

#

Three hours passed before she felt relaxed enough to unclench her fists. From the moment she’d arrived home she’d been waiting for the cops to knock on the door and arrest her for assault. She’d paid for her groceries by credit card, and she was sure there was video at the store- they had everything they needed to put her away. “He must not want them to know he was beat up by a girl.”

The words rang through her apartment and she laughed. She felt feverish but strangely powerful. Her mind replayed the moment she’d grabbed the bully’s finger and twisted it with pornographic delight.

She wanted to live in that moment forever.

Andrea hummed to herself as she heated up the ramen, never noticing it was the same musical notes the woman used in her dream. When the ramen finished she took a bite and her mouth filled with bile. 

“What the hell?” She checked the date on the package- it wasn’t rancid. Nothing looked off but the noodles tasted and smelled exactly like wet cardboard. 

Desperate, she grabbed a can of chicken and pulled the tab, grabbing chunks of it out with her fingers- the gnawing in her stomach too powerful to resist. 

The first bite was fine and then her body revolted. Andrea made it to the sink in time to throw up there rather than all over the floor. 

“What’s wrong with me?” She asked the empty kitchen. Her reflection in the window showed a hollow face with sunken eyes. And when she moved at the right angle, a green cast covered her skin. 

#

She went to bed hungry and terrified but was somehow unsurprised to wake at the beach.

She’d dreamed of the woman again, had heard her haunting voice inviting her to sing. The ocean felt more like home than the land did now.

Andrea shucked her shoes and left her clothes in a pile on the shore. She sighed when she walked into the waves as the warm water caressed her. 

“Hey there little lady. Didn’t think I’d see you again.” 

She stilled and glanced back at the shore. The man again- stupid mustache, same ripped shirt. Same stupid leer on his face. He glanced at her clothes and the grin stretched even wider. “My wild child. I like it.”

Human instinct prompted her to say I’m not yours or leave me alone or I’ll scream. A new instinct took over as she raised her hand and crooked a finger. “Come on in.” 

He wasted no time ripping his clothes off and jumping in after her. The detached, still human part of her wanted to warn him. That part grew smaller with every second she spent in the water. Already her body was changing- fingernails longer and sharper than ever before. Under the waves she could see her legs forming together, scales running up her calves and thighs. 

She watched as he jumped into the waves, yelping as the shock of the freezing water hit his skin. He swam toward her, shaking from the cold by the time he reached her side.

If he noticed that she wasn’t shaking he gave no sign.

He laughed as she gave him a dazzling smile. “See, you do look prettier when you smile.”

She opened her mouth wide, wider, showing off rows of razor-sharp teeth. 

“Oh my god,” he whimpered. He jerked backward and filled his mouth with ocean water. Flailed, panicked, managed to swim a few feet but not fast enough to get away.

Andrea’s tail wrapped around his legs and squeezed. She smiled as he shrieked. 

A snap heard faintly over the roar of the waves as she squeezed tighter and shattered his thigh bones.

Andrea dug her long fingernails into his chest and tugged, turning the tender flesh into ribbons. “And you look prettier when you scream.”