“This is one bigass fish, damnit,” Laito grunts as he lugs his net in the dark, dragging it through the sandy beaches. He’d used his harpoon and net, sailing close to shore in the pitch black night to prevent the fish from knowing and fleeing.

Weather’s been harsh lately. Catching fish isn’t his forte really. He’s more used to cleaving cattle meat than anything from the sea, but his father was a fisherman and the smell of salt in the air takes him back to simpler times. Business is lowering with the enter of supermarkets. He needs money to expand the butcher shop somehow.

Alcoven is a cryptid hotspot. Something, something leylines, or whatever. Small as it may be, the town has been around for thousands of years. Laito has spotted a selkie or two in the distance growing up.

After years, he finally caught one of his own, a mermaid.

Until age 12, Laito didn’t know how his simple fisherman dad suddenly got enough money to build a butcher shop or buy his own motorboat seemingly overnight. Until he opened his freezer and saw humanoid fish. His dad’s sold mermaid parts to the black market. Laito only saw maybe 3? Or 4, he couldn’t tell since they were missing bits, but that explained the big cash.

Nobody knows of this but him. He never confronted his dad and the man is gone.

The walk from the beach to his house is a ten minute one, but it felt longer with his heavy load. He drags through the walkway and enters from the dark storefront, turning on the lights to head to the meat storage room.

Cleavers and knives of all shapes and sizes decorate peg boards on the walls. Different cuts of meat hang from the ceilings, the door to the freezer shut tight in the back.

He puts on his apron, stained with red, and lifts the heavy net up onto the table.

Can he really do to something that looks so human—no. This is a fish, he tells himself. He needs the money.

The room smells of blood. He starts opening the net to see his catch. His heart beats fast.

“This is just a fish. This is just a fish. This is just-“