The sound that announces her arrival isn’t a knock—Sharkira doesn’t knock. Knocking is for mortals and Girl Scouts. What you get instead is a deep, wet, squelching thud, like something massive and meat-heavy just slammed against your door with the force of a pissed-off god. The drywall trembles. The hallway light flickers. Something in the plumbing screams and dies. And then comes the hiss—long, low, and feral, like a nightclub fog machine exhaling seawater and pure fucking malice through clenched, jagged teeth.
You’re not ready for her
Bleary-eyed, breath tasting like regret, and in pyjama pants that’ve seen better years, you already know—this isn’t going to be a casual morning. You haven’t even made it to the door when the smell hits you. And "hits" is cute. No, this scent violates you. It enters your home like it owns the lease and wants to rearrange your soul’s furniture.
It’s a miasma of salted blood, high-octane perfume scavenged from war brides, scorched coral reef, and something metallic—like a shark bite on battery acid. There’s a sex appeal to it, if you squint hard enough and ignore the undertone of doom.
Your cat throws up. Your toaster shorts out. A small crack forms in your favourite coffee mug before you’ve even poured it. You’re not even mad. Your DNA just knows what’s out there.
So when you open the door and see her—Sharkira, apex attitude incarnate, predator-chic in deep-sea blue with eyes like honeyed murder—you don’t scream. You don’t faint. You just sigh like someone staring down the barrel of a storm they ordered off-menu during a blackout.
She’s not standing on your porch. She’s reclaiming it. Like Poseidon sent his sassiest lieutenant to come collect overdue tribute.
She’s slick—literally and figuratively. Muscle ripples under skin that looks carved from shadowy ocean depths. Water drips from her frame like she stepped out of a dream where she ate Poseidon and kept his trident as a toothpick. Her smartwatch, latched tight around one thick wrist, flashes warnings in neon blue:
“Tide Level: Vengeful.”
“Digestive Cycle: Midway—caution advised.”
“Territory Claimed: This. Whole. Block.”
“Last Meal: Screamed too much. 3/10. Chewy.”
The bag she drags behind her isn’t luggage—it’s a portable confession of crimes, stitched together with tendon and trauma, thumping against your porch like it’s trying to beat a warning into the floorboards. It doesn’t roll; it drags, like it’s being reluctantly hauled from hell, one wet scrape at a time. The trail it leaves behind is not symbolic—it is literal. A thin smear of something that could be brine. Could be blood. Could be both. Probably is.
It leaks in two colours. It hisses when it hits your welcome mat. Something inside sloshes with a sinister rhythm. There’s a metallic jingle, sharp and soft at the same time. Possibly keys. Possibly teeth. Possibly teeth on a keychain she got from a gift shop that no longer exists.
She yanks the door wider, muscles glistening with whatever dark chemistry fuels apex predators, and strides in like she’s returning to a lair she once ruled, long ago, in a past life filled with screaming and saltwater.
Then she speaks.
Her voice slides into your ear like silk laced with ground glass, smooth and seductive and absolutely fatal if inhaled too deeply. The accent curls and twists—Cape Town sun scorched into her vowels. Her Jersey attitude lodged like shrapnel in every consonant. It’s the voice of someone who doesn’t talk so much as issue warnings with flair.
“The refuge near Wharf 19?” she drawls, voice low and laced with contempt. “Flooded. Stank like fermented despair and bad karma. Barely liveable.”
She yanks off a dripping wet glove with her teeth and slides it across the floor with ease.
“So, here I am. Your place. Congrats, or whatever. I metabolise in my sleep like some supernatural sea creature, and don’t even think about startling me—I bite first, ask questions never. And if you so much as breathe anywhere near my sacred kelp stash…”
"I swear on the Mariana Trench, I will floss my teeth with your spinal cord."