Concern

My name is Toklo, I don't have a last name. Even my first name is something I am not entirely sure is mine.

But that doesn't matter, I became a hunter because of my fascination with anything that does not look human.

One could say that I am not human myself as I am a Qalupalik. A creature of the sea that loves feasting on humans, especially the curious ones.

Even in my younger years, I would dissect anything that caught my eye. Just because their outsides looked pretty, it doesn't mean their insides did.

I used to reside in the deep waters but it got boring so I decided to come on land, that was when I knew about all the other creatures that existed in this world.

Immediately I was introduced to some creatures that were beyond my understanding. The first woman I met, her name was Lind.

She was something of a fire dragon, every inch of her was covered in fire, from her wings to her body.

I was absolutely mesmerized by her, wondering how her body didn't burn away because of the fire and she seemed to take an interest in me as well.

A boy that does not know anything about the city life, looking like he just came out of the waters, with not a shirt on. She took me in and taught me everything I know now.

Well, not everything but most things.

She even taught me how to read and write, but the thing was … she could live off of common human food. And when daybreak comes, while I turned into a cold gust of wind, she only lost her wings and flames.

So she lived normally as a human too and I couldn't do anything as I would lose consciousness, drifting away during the daytime.

By nightfall, I would wake up in a place I didn't know, only to be met with Lind again. She would track me down every night and bring me back home.

You could say that I started to admire this woman. Selfless and kind. I never had anyone before and that was a new experience I could not fathom.

I started to notice everything she did and all the people she talked to, growing jealous anytime she talked to someone just slightly friendlier than she would to me.

It was a funny little thing. Maybe that was what it meant to be a child, just to be jealous of everyone around you.

I would punish her in my own ways. She could not stand water, she was better during the daytime, but at night, water would burn her body.

So I would ask her to sit in the bathroom with me. I was still a water creature, I still needed to be in the water and she knew that.

Sometimes I would 'accidentally' splash water on her when I was too jealous or mad. She would scold me but … she forgave me in the end. No matter what, she forgave me.

Even when my jealousy reached its limits when I saw her sleeping with a woman who was also bursting in flames. Both their flames danced and intertwined with each other as I watched.

I didn't understand the feeling welling up in me. I have always been cold. My hands, my body, my heart.

But that day, I burned. I don't know how, I felt so hot that I thought I was going to turn to ashes at any second.

And, I hated her.

I hated her so much I wanted to grab her neck in my hands and squeeze the life out of her. I wanted to watch the fire around her die because of me.

She made me experience heat for the first time in my life and wasn't even there to help me through the agonizing pain.

I had to lay on the cold floor, now turning hot because of my rising temperature, and try to tell myself that I had to live.

I am not sure what happened, just that I kept fading in and out of consciousness, trying to call out to her, but she never came.

The only thought I had at that time was that I knew I was going to die.

I had accepted my fate and closed my eyes but something stopped me. Something still didn't want me to die.

I was reminded of how I lived back in the icy cold waters. How I dissected everything pretty in front of me, they all looked the same in the end.

At that moment, an idea came into my head and I clung to it. Desperately.

I would not die until I could see how Lind looks undressed. A sight of her no one else had seen before.

I will be the first and only person to see how she looks under her skin.

And, let me tell you, she was absolutely beautiful.

_______________________

Toklo stared at the woman floating in front of him. Bits of her pink hair scattered everywhere as the cut on her neck spurted blood everywhere.

"I knew you weren't her." He said, looking at the twitching woman in front of him. "My Lind looks even more beautiful than you do."

"H-how?" The woman gasped, still alive, somehow. "I saw ... your ... memory. You ... you didn't ... kill her."

"Of course I didn't," Toklo said, grinning at the woman. "Lind is waiting at home for me. That is the memory you saw, right?"

He stared at the creature blankly. "Well, you see, I have this awful problem of being unable to differentiate reality from my own imagination.

"Sometimes, even I forget that Lind is always with me instead of waiting at him. Should I have told you that before? My bad."

"Y-you. You are- ack."

"Turn back to how you really look like," Toklo said, nonchalantly. "I can't bear to see Lind's face when I know for a fact that it isn't her.

"I'm dying!" The creature shouted, trembling like a leaf in the wind.

"It just makes me want to cut you up into little pieces just so that I don't have to look at you again."

"I'm turning, I'm turning." The creature shouted, morphing back into a woman with hair made of seaweed and skin full of barnacles. "You are one crazy son of a bitch, you know that?"

"You weren't dying at all," Toklo said, looking at her with disgust as he raised his extremely sharp and long nail in the air to cut her again.

"Wait!" The woman shouted, holding her hand up in the air as the man sliced them clean off.

She took a few seconds to stare at the floating fingers and hands, followed by blood spilling out of the open wounds before she started to scream in pain.

"Calm down, it's just a cut," Toklo said, staring at her, annoyance written all over his face. "Who told you to put your hands in front of you like that?"

"You were about to cut me to pieces!!!" The woman screeched, waving her hands and spreading blood everywhere.

"Well, you were taking so long to die." He said, playing with the bells in his hair. "I was annoyed and bored."

"You were bored!!??" The woman shouted, screeching her heart out enough to tear her voice box.

"So noisy."

Annoyed, Toklo threw a dagger into her shoulder, making her scream in pain even more though she turned quiet a little faster.

"If you don't shut up, I am going to cut your tongue off and then actually cut you to pieces." Toklo threatened, glaring at the woman.

"You are such a little bitch." She said, glaring back at the man. "I preferred your friend to you."

"Friend?" Toklo thought, looking up to the surface just to notice Alby's legs already in the water as he seemed to be struggling to keep his head on the surface. "Alby!"

Before he could swim to the top, the woman appeared in front of him, blocking his way with hundreds of thousands of skeletal hands.

"Move," Toklo growled, a cloud of cold smoke escaping his lips. "Before I actually kill you."

"HA! The woman laughed. Like I actually care!" She grinned maniacally at Toklo. "You ... I was thinking of giving you a quick and easy death but I decided against it."

"What are you talking about?"

"I am already dying, so I thought, why not take something you consider important." She grinned, looking up as some skeletal hands grabbed onto Alby's legs, trying to drag the struggling man down.

Toklo attacked the woman but nothing happened, making her laugh. "Do you know how powerful a person's dying desire is? Even more than you can ever be. Let me give you a tip, don't try to kill someone in their domain. It won't end well."

"You-"

"Oh, you're still here?" She asked, turning to him as her face started to crack like a clay pot dropped to the ground. "You aren't needed. Bye-bye."

Before Toklo could do anything, he was covered in a flurry of bubbles with the flailing Alby fading from his vision.

"Alby!"