The Sea Monster
I wore a coat to the office, though it was unseasonably warm for January and there were beads of sweat on my upper lip. I had my tablet tucked in the crook of my arm so I could read emails as I walked, and my stocky heels echoed in the stairwell as I swiped my keycard. I pushed open the door, turned the corner, and ran into a sea monster.
I realized from his blue-and-white checkered shirt that it was Greg Page, the logistics supervisor. He hadn’t been a sea monster when I’d left to spend the holidays in my coastal hometown.
Now, Greg had six tentacles—two sticking out of his slightly damp khakis and four slipping out through his sleeves. He was the color of dead, damp elephant skin, and the fluorescent lights reflected the wetness. One slimy tentacle held a coffee cup that read “Don’t Talk to Me” in block script. Greg raised the cup to a pointed, triangle beak, and the coffee slipped down what should’ve been a chin but was just a grey bulge of skin.
“Aw hell,” Greg said as he tried to dab the coffee with his suckers. He looked up with black eyes that were too far apart on a bulbous, pointed head. His beak opened halfway, revealing two sharp incisors, and he waved with his coffee mug. “Morning, honey.”
I closed my mouth. A buzz came from the other side of the door—a key card being swiped—and Leslie, the office administrator, ran into me. She juggled a folder full of paper because she refused to switch to a digital system. I waited for her to see the sea monster, but all she did was jostle me out of the way with her oversized tote bag.
“Bit early for you, Esther?” She waved at the sea monster. “Morning, Greg. Can you tell your people to stop sending conference room reservations after 4:00? I’m out the door by then, and they complain when they don’t get a response.”
Greg flopped his head to the side. “That must be nice—I’m so busy I have to check my emails after hours—but sure, dear. I’ll tell them.” He turned his back and slithered away on his tentacles, leaving a trail of wetness behind him. I put a hand on Leslie’s shoulder.
“Did you see that?” I asked her.
Leslie looked up. “See what?”
“Greg?”
“Sure, I saw him.”
“But did you see?”
“I’ll see you at the budget meeting.”
She walked around the corner.
I went to my office, which had no windows and four oatmeal-colored walls. The sea monster was down the hall in a corner office. I could hear him yelling at accounting through the closed door. My phone gonged to remind me that the budget meeting was in fifteen minutes.
I followed the grey carpet speckled with pinks and reds to the largest conference room, which Leslie had booked two weeks in advance for accounting, and sat four seats down from our manager, Patrick. It was close enough for visibility on the project but not close enough to have to answer any questions. The sea monster sat across from me.
I took notes in a word processing document. Our figures were up from the last quarter, though not by much, but we could usually depend on the holiday sales to keep us moving into next fall, so I wondered what had changed. I started to ask, but the click-clack of Greg’s beak interrupted me, and they all stared and nodded as his question went on and on and his tentacles moved with his voice like a choreographed dance. When he finished, the tentacles were raised above his sack-like head.
“What I’m trying to say,” the sea monster went on, letting his tentacles drop, “is that it’s really all about balance.”
Nods of agreement circled the conference room and Greg’s suckers released little popping noises as he rapped a tentacle on the desk. I looked at my open document. I hadn’t written a thing he said.
Throughout the day I heard the clacking of Greg’s beak on the phone, and three times I leaned out of my office to check that he was still a monster. During my last meeting, he stood in my doorway with another cup of coffee and kept distracting everyone by shaking his head and asking questions that he would then immediately answer. I decided I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I knocked on Patrick’s door at 4:45, and he called for me to come in. His feet were propped on the desk while he scrolled through spreadsheets on his tablet, and he smiled as I sat down.
“Hi, Esther, how was your vacation?”
Patrick’s office was littered with baseball posters, trophies from his co-ed, over-thirty soccer team, and resin industry awards. He set his tablet back in its docking station, throwing the spreadsheets onto the TV screen behind me.
“Good, Pat. I went home to see my grandmother.”
“Great. Wish my grandmother was still alive. Can I help you with something?”
“Well, yes.” I shifted on the edge of the lumpy cushion and folded my hands. “I don’t know how to say this, but Greg is a sea monster.”
Patrick had been staring over my head at his spreadsheets, but now his eyes locked with mine. “You have evidence?”
I gestured to the door where the sea monster’s muffled beak clacking could be heard. “Well, yes. I saw him this morning in the hallway and then again in the budget meeting, but his office is just down the hall from mine.”
Patrick clicked his tongue and it sounded like one of Greg’s suckers popping. He stood up and sat on the corner of his desk. “I understand what you’re saying, Esther, but I’ve never witnessed Greg as a sea monster.”
“But I saw him.”
“Your opinions are very important to me, but I can only make judgments based on my experiences. And I’ve never seen what you’re describing.”
His lips were pushed into a pout as if trying to appear sympathetic but not sure exactly what that looked like. He kept nodding his head even though I wasn’t talking.
“So, if you witness Greg as a sea monster, then you’ll believe me?”
“Of course. I can’t deny something that’s right in front of me. But, you know, Esther, Greg’s son is in the navy. How could he be a sea monster?”
* * *
On Friday, three people wished me a good weekend and none of them could see that Greg was a sea monster. Just before lunch, I pulled Leslie into the hall, and we watched Greg pour his afternoon coffee in the breakroom.
“Leslie, look.” I gestured to the open door. Greg wore a yellow shirt peppered with pineapples and red tropical flowers and his tentacles were stuffed into pale blue jeans. “Do you not see it? You’ve worked here for decades. You have to.”
Leslie gestured vaguely to the air. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”
“Greg!” I hissed under my breath. “Greg is a sea monster. Why am I the only one who can see it? We have to go to HR.”
She took me by the wrist and led me to the copy room, closing the door behind us.
“I’ll admit,” Leslie said, wringing pale hands covered in age spots and ink. “That I can see he’s got a bit of a beak and then there are the tentacles. But I’ve seen that throughout my career, Esther, and I don’t like to get involved in this kind of thing. It’s above your pay grade. Leave it alone, or you’ll regret it.”
She left and kept the door open so I could follow, but I only stood among cardboard boxes of paper, whirring machines, and the smell of overheating appliances.
I called my grandmother from the car during lunch, and she laughed.
“A sea monster?” I could hear her eyes rolling. “I’m sure he is. So was your great uncle. And my father, if we’re being honest. We’ve got plenty of those in Charlottesville. Hell, you just saw them at my house!”
I thought of the family I’d just left behind. I had coffee Christmas morning with my uncle Julian, who stalked my aunt Sara when they were separated during the summer I turned eleven. She called him a monster on the Fourth of July, after I’d watched him hold her under the surf with what I swore now was a scaly green tentacle. She took him back a week later. And I took shots on New Year’s Eve with my cousin Michael. When we were sixteen, he pulled my friend Cheryl’s bikini top down at the beach, and she later called him a monster while she cried on my shoulder. I realized now the marks I’d seen on her collarbone were made from suckers.
I moved forward an inch in the fast-food drive-thru, squeezing my phone against my ear with my neck as I dug through my bag for my wallet. “It’s not like Charlottesville here. They’re aren’t as many sea monsters in the city.”
“That’s just what they tell you, dear. Trust me. They’re everywhere.”
“What should I do? What if he starts destroying things?”
“You should see what I did with the sea monsters I caught back in the 50s.” She cackled into her old landline receiver. “They never messed with me twice.”
I accepted a greasy paper bag from the teenager at the window and hung up the phone. I munched on cold fries as I drove back to the office, dipping them in a sauce packet that had already spilled on my vinyl seats.
I finished my lunch in the parking lot and bounded up the stairwell, tripping twice on my heels. Most of the office had gone out to lunch, but I heard the shuddered breath of a sob and paused on the first landing.
“Hello?” I called to the upper floors, my voice echoing off the empty walls. The sob cut off. A nose sniffled. I climbed up, past the door that led to my office, and found the intern on the top landing just before the door to the roof.
“Oh,” I said, and she wiped bloodshot eyes with her sleeve. Mascara smudged her cheeks. Her blazer was rumpled and sliding off one shoulder, and I could see red, puckered imprints left by suckers trailing down her neck into her blouse. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m quitting.”
I frowned and sat down on the step beside her. “Don’t you need this job for college credit?”
She nodded and a sob made her whole body shake. She swallowed it down. “I’ll just get another internship and graduate late.”
“That’s not fair.” I couldn’t stop staring at the marks on her neck. She pulled her blazer closer, trying to hide them. “Can I help? You shouldn’t have to leave.”
She shook her head. “I’m scared. I can’t be here with a sea monster.”
Hearing her call him what he was made the anxiety in my stomach bubble into anger. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
She pressed her face into her hands. Her voice was muffled through her fingers. “What am I supposed to do? Mr. Field would never listen to me.”
I left her there crying, unsure of how to comfort her when I was shaking with anger. I threw the door from the stairwell open, letting it slam against the opposite wall, and collided with the wet mass that was Greg. He dropped his mug and the coffee splattered across the grey carpet.
“Whoa there, sweetie.” The sea monster patted me on the shoulder. “Watch where you’re going.”
I opened my mouth twice, each time sucking in dry office air, before I was able to swallow the tightness in my throat. “I know what you are, Greg!” I pointed a trembling finger at him. “You’re a sea monster!”
Greg’s beak opened in what I assumed was a gasp. One tentacle flew to his chest. “Me?” he cried. “That hurts, Esther. Of course I’m not a sea monster. How could you even say that?”
“Look at you!” I shouted. “I was just talking to the intern! And in the budget meeting you kept waving your tentacles around and snapping your beak!”
“Those are hardly reasons to make accusations! You could ruin someone’s career saying things like that! Or someone’s life!”
“What about the intern’s life?”
“You must be mistaken.” Greg shook his sack-like head, his black eyes downcast in disappointment. “We’ve known each other for years, Esther. How could you even say something like that?”
He slithered toward me and wrapped a cold tentacle around my shoulders. His suckers settled against my skin, pulling it in tight pinches so I couldn’t shake him off. “Esther, I don’t even live near the beach. How could I be a sea monster? My father was a sailor, and now my son has gone into the navy too. I’m sorry, but I can’t let you go around saying things like this. It’s not right.”
His tentacle dropped, and he turned away. I went back to my office and stared at the oatmeal walls. I needed to call HR. I also needed to make sure the intern was okay. The door to Greg’s office slammed shut and made me jump, and then his voice on the phone, muffled but loud, made me get up and close my door. I opened the digital directory on my tablet and began to search for a human resources contact when my desk phone rang.
Our CEO’s office number scrolled across the little screen. I sighed and picked up the receiver.
“This is Esther.”
“This is Mr. Field’s office,” said a woman I’d never met. “Can you please come up at 3:00 today?”
“Sure. What is this in reference to?”
“Just a small discussion.”
She hung up before I could ask anything else. I sat for two hours in my office, glancing every fifteen minutes at the door, waiting for Greg to show up to devour me. I thought he might do it to shut me up, and though I heard him on the phone, he never came. At 2:45 I took the elevator to the seventh floor and knocked on the glass door to Mr. Field’s office. The woman I’d never met saw me through the glass but still took five minutes to stand up and let me in.
“Wait here,” she said, gesturing to a couch. I sat and fought not to slide off the stiff cushion, but the woman came back and led me through the double doors.
Mr. Field had a U-shaped desk so he was blocked in on either side and backed by a wall-length window that looked out at the parking lot. He smiled beneath a bushy beard that was mostly black but flecked with grey and had me sit in one of the two armchairs that faced his desk.
“Good afternoon—Esther is it?”
I nodded.
“Don’t worry, you’re not in any trouble.”
I hadn’t thought I was in trouble. “Can I help you with something, Mr. Field?”
“Yes, I think so. You know, I want to create a nurturing office environment where everyone feels comfortable, so I take your accusation of Mr. Page very seriously. Let me just close the doors so we have some privacy to discuss this.”
He stood up, circled his desk, and went to shut the heavy double doors. I turned to watch him. Slipping out of the seam of his finely pressed charcoal trousers and beneath his hand-stitched jacket was a pale green tentacle that snaked across the hardwood floor.
* * *
That Monday, I sat in traffic because it was raining. I stared at the bumper of a black sedan and waited for it to inch forward. It was my first day back after my accusation on Friday, and as I watched the rain bounce off the cars in front of me, I could only see the intern’s teary eyes staring back. I got off at the next exit and called my grandmother.
“You want what?” she asked, and I could hear her take a long drag on her cigarette.
“The fishing hook Michael used to have for the boat. Is it in the shed out back?”
“Should be. Why?”
“I’ll be there in about two hours.”
My phone rang and Patrick’s number blinked across the screen. I ended the call before the second ring. Shortly after, there was the ping of an email on my work cell. I ignored that too.
The citizens of Charlottesville glanced up as I drove through downtown. It was late morning now, and many were returning from an early start fishing. The rain hadn’t lightened, and they squinted at me through the hazy, wet air. I pulled into my grandmother’s driveway and ran inside, kicking off my heels and leaving my wet blazer thrown over her couch. I slipped into the red rubber boots by the door and met her in the yard. The air smelled of salt and seaweed. She passed me a bright yellow rain jacket.
“What are you up to, Esther?” I could see the thin lines around her eyes in the red glow of her cigarette, which she pinched between two withered and spotted fingers.
I flung the door to the shed open. The old boat sat on blocks, covered in tarps and surrounded by buoys, nets, and other scraps. I clambered over them, flinging away broken lobster cages and oars, until I saw an iron hook on the end of a long, wooden pole. I freed it from a pile of snapped rods and examined it out in the yard. The pole was splintering and the hook was covered in rust, but it would do the trick.
“I’m slaying a sea monster.” I weighed it in my hands. I swung at the shed, and the hook’s sharp point sank easily into the wood.
My grandmother pulled her cigarette away, and her red lipstick left a stain on the white paper. “Make sure you hit it in the throat.” She gestured to her neck. “Shut it up for good.”
* * *
The sea monster worked late on Mondays. I waited in the parking lot, the hook in my backseat because it was too long for the trunk. The stragglers in the office were all gone by 5:45. I pulled my yellow hood up because the rain still pounded the dark asphalt, and I slid the fishing hook out through the window.
I used my keycard to swipe in and crept down the hall. The motion sensor lights flicked on as I walked, but the sea monster’s door was ajar, and he didn’t notice. I waited until the clicking of his keyboard paused, then I threw the door open and swung the hook down.
I struck the center of the sea monster’s desk, crushing his keyboard. He flew backwards out of his chair as the plastic keys rained down around him. As he struggled to get his tentacles beneath him, I pulled the fishing hook free and leapt onto his desk, kicking his laptop into the cabinet just over his shoulder and snapping it in half.
“Esther!” he screamed, his tentacles trembling as they tried to shield his face. “What are you doing?”
I held the fishing hook high. “You are a sea monster,” I told him evenly. “Whatever you or anyone else says, that is what you are. This is what we do to sea monsters where I’m from.”
His black eyes, once wide with shock, now narrowed. He picked himself up one tentacle at a time and clicked his beak. “I knew you would be a problem, Esther,” he said, and launched himself at me.
I swung the hook in a neat arch, catching him in his bulbous chin. He went down on the desk gurgling, his eyes bulging, and his tentacles flailing. I tore the hook away, ripping his grey flesh with it, and struck him again. Black liquid that tasted of salt spurted where I hacked, but I didn’t stop until he finished writhing. I knelt over him, examining the torn flesh and half-open beak to be sure he was slain properly.
Then I heard a knock on the door.
I looked over at Mr. Field leaning in the doorway. He sighed and his green tentacle flicked.
“Looks like we have a problem, Esther.” He shook his head.
I ripped the hook out of the sea monster. “We do.” I brandished it at him. “I’d like to file a formal complaint.”
Amelia Dee Mueller is a communications coordinator by day, fantasy writer by night, and her previous work has appeared in various publications of the speculative genre. A proud resident of Dallas, Texas, she likes to fill her time between writing about dragons and sorcery with fencing, traveling, and hanging out with her cats. You can follow her on Instagram at @Millie_Dee_la.
Copyright © 2025 Amelia Dee Mueller.