I Was A Teenage Kappa

Part Five of Five

In the morning, Troy gets out of bed early and prepares to leave. He is going to catch a bus down into San Francisco where he will find the hag that cursed him. He finds his wallet and his debit card, and packs up his duffel bag. He doesn’t know how long he’ll be gone for, but he isn’t too worried; water and cucumbers aren’t that expensive, and if push starts shoving, he could easily sleep under a bridge, or something. He grabs himself some breakfast and bikes down into the city, not stopping until he is in front of Kendall’s house.

Knock, knock. The door opens and a sweet-faced girl is standing there. She smiles knowingly, invitingly. “Hi, Troy. Heard you broke up with that slut Lulu a while back.”

“Hey, Kendra.” Attraction blossoms and hangs heavy in the air. “Is Kendall home?”

“I can go get him if you want,” she says, leaning in close. Troy is forced to turn his head to avoid her lips. He can’t afford to get distracted now. Kendra huffs and disappears inside, leaving Troy standing alone on the porch. Kendall appears moments later.

“Troy! It’s good to see you!” Kendall exclaims.

Troy can’t help but smile, but the smile is bittersweet. “I need a favor.”

“What is it?”

“A ride to the bus station,” Troy explains. “And someone to watch my bike.”

“Why do you need a ride to the bus station?” Kendall asks, eying his friend curiously.

“I—” Troy decides to confide. “I’m going to San Francisco.”

“San Fran? Why?”

“I have to find someone.” Troy says. A silent message passes between the two; Kendall doesn’t push any farther.

“Alright. The car’s in the garage.”

The ride’s shortness is made much, much longer by the awkwardness of the silence that stretches most of it. Kendall and Troy once were known for their gift of gab, but Troy has lost that. He has lost a lot of things in the past few months.

“I know you’re not going to tell me what you’re really doing,” Kendall says, resting his hand on his temple as he cruises onward. “But I want you to know I’m here for you, no matter what. You’re my best friend.”

“You’re my best friend, too,” Troy says with a sigh. “And probably the only friend I have left anymore.”

“What has happened to you, man? Are you on drugs or something?”

“What? No!” Troy gets agitated and snaps, but finds himself feeling physically pained by being rude. “I’m sorry.”

The music on the radio is haunting and sets the mood for an argument.

“That’s what I’m talking about! The Troy I know and love doesn’t apologize over something that trivial. Hell, you didn’t even apologize when you got drunk and fucked my sister.”

“The Troy you know and love has changed, Kendall.” Troy says darkly. “I’m not the man I was.”

“Obviously. You’re all scraggly and hairy.” Kendall takes his hand off the steering wheel and touches the stubble on Troy’s cheek. “You—hairy! You’ve shaved your entire body for as long as I’ve known you!”

“You know I did that for the swim team, and I’m not a part of that anymore.”

“So what? You’re life wasn’t defined by just the fucking swim team. Tell me what’s really going on!”

Kendall deserves the truth. Kendall deserves to know.

The only problem Troy finds in telling him is that he probably won’t believe the truth, even if it swims up behind him and bites him in the ass. Or drags him down into the murky depths of Lake Douglas and drinks all his blood.

“I-I-I,” Troy can’t bring himself to say it.

“Spit it out!”

“I’m turning into a kappa, okay!” Troy shouts. “I’m a fucking water ghoul!”

“And that was ‘Pioneer to the Falls’ by Interpol. We’re taking requests on Cool101-point—” Kendall reaches and turns off the radio. They are driving across Douglas Bridge, and Troy sees himself in the spot he had jumped off only days earlier. Part of him wishes he could jump off now and escape Kendall's eyes.

“What did you say?” Kendall asks, his lips soured.

“I’m a kappa.” Troy explains with a feeling of horror in his stomach. “I grow gills and have webbed fingers and I can only eat cucumbers...” ...and people.

Kendall nods, self-assured. “You’re delusional.”

“I’m not delusional!” Troy snaps, wounded. “I wish I was, but I’m not.”

“You don’t have gills and webbed-fingers. I can see that from here, Troy.”

“I have to be wet for them to show up,” Troy explains, mentally slapping himself for how idiotic he sounds. Desperate for his friend to understand, he reaches into his duffel and unearths a bottle of water. Without delay, he uncaps it and pours the water all over his hands.

“Troy! You’re making a mess of my upholstery!” Kendall shouts, infuriated. When he sees Troy’s hands, he nearly rear-ends the car in front of him at a red-light.

“Is that...” Kendall is unable to put it into words, but Troy understands and nods.

“I’m a kappa, Kendall,” Troy says as the light turns green. The bus station is within sight. “I was cursed by that toothless hag in China Town.”

“Fuck me,” Kendall utters, flabbergasted. “Fuck me rectally.”

- - -

After saying goodbye to Kendall, Troy boards a bus headed straight to San Francisco. He opts for a window seat towards the back and catches some shut-eye, his earbuds and Iron and Wine blocking out all the background noise. When he finally reaches China Town, it is pushing three-thirty. He retraces his steps, recalling the obnoxious Japanese lady who had practically rammed him with her cart; he nearly jumps out of skin when she does it again.

“Young man!” the toothless wonder exclaims. “You buy my erixir, yes?”

“You!” Troy exclaims, seizing the elder by the collar of her shirt. “What did you do to me?”

“Past customer?” the woman asks. Troy nods. “Forrow me!”

Tory releases the hag; the hag gets behind her little elixir shop on wheels and pushes it down the street, shouting “Sumimasen!” and “Duìbùqǐ!” all the way. Troy hesitantly follows, and she leads him down a tiny back alley. The woman abruptly stops in front of metal garage door and reaches into her pocket; she unearths a key chain, whereupon it she finds a button. One click and the door rises, revealing an eccentric, little living quarters.

Paper lanterns and origami cranes hang down from the ceiling. The floors are covered in rush tatami mats. A futon sits on one side, a small kitchen and TV on the other. She wheels her cart into the middle of the room and closes the door (via keychain) behind her.

“What brings you here?” she asks suddenly, turning on him with fierce, unwelcoming eyes.

“You turned me into a kappa.”

“A kappa?” her eyebrows furrowed. “That is a serious affriction.”

“I don’t care what it takes,” Troy says, stepping forward. “Just take it back.”

“No, you keep,” the woman says, pushing Troy’s hands like she had just handed him something. “It’s a gift.”

“This isn’t a gift!” Troy shouts. “It’s a curse! I-I killed a man in my sleep, god dammit!”

“There are ways of coping...animal brood doesn’t taste as good, but it’rr keep you from kirring in your sreep!” she laughs, as if she was discussing something funny.

“Look, I don’t want to cope with it, lady!” Troy takes another step forward. “I want to break it!”

The hag seizes the hems of her shirt and curtseys, bowing low before him. Troy has no other choice but to return the bow, spilling water from the invisible basin kappas are rumored to have atop their heads. Much like the time he bowed before Tallulah, he is overcome with an intense fever and is sent running to the closest sink, desperately re-wetting his head.

The hag’s laugh is raspy and mocking. “Wourd you wrike some tea?”

The hag puts a pot to boil and ushers Troy to sit down. The kitchen table is scarcely larger than the one used for coffee, artsy books, and old magazines in his den at home. Troy sits on his knees and bunches his ill-fitting jeans between his fingers nervously. As the hag rummages through her cabinetry, he feels awkward for sitting around and doing nothing—it was rude of him to let a quite-possibly ninety year-old witch wait on him. An empty pill bottle tumbles from the top shelf and falls soundlessly to the floor; Troy is on his feet in seconds, bending down to get it for her. The tea kettle whistles approvingly, appraising his lean, swimmer’s behind, and he and the hag sit down for tea.

“Why are you here?” she asks, pouring tea into the cup before him, the cup before her, and in an unexplained third glass Troy didn’t have the balls to question.

“Take away the curse you put on me,” he demands, and winces at his own tone. “Please.”

She pauses, and sips her tea thoughtfully, narrowed eyes narrowing still. “You must sray that beast.”

“What beast? Like a kracken? Or Godzilla?”

“Be serious!” She slams her cup down against the table, spilling the tea all over herself and the mahogany wood, startling Troy. Some droplets splash and burn him. “I tark of Nessie!”

Troy stares at her blankly in disbelief. “You want me to kill the Loch Ness Monster?”

With an air of importance, she hobbles over to a closet and throws it open. She makes a show out of making a mess, tossing things here and there until she pulls out two peculiar objects: a giant tortoise shell and a silver spear topped with a crescent-moon blade.

“What’s all this?” Troy inquires as she drops them on the table.

“You must be properry armed,” she explains. “Sandy’s spear and a kappa shell.”

Kappa! Troy thinks. This might be going somewhere productive after all...

“Sray her,” the hag urges. “Sray the monster.”

With that, Troy left and took a bus to a gas station, where he bought a map. From there, he plots and takes a train route to Texas, where he would swim from the Gulf of Mexico to Loch Ness, Scotland. He’s arguably swam tougher treks while on the swim team.

Before he departes, he sends a letter to Kendall:

Kendall—

I’m swimming to Scotland. Don’t tell my parents.

—Troy

He hides his duffel under a nearby bridge and straps on his turtle-shell shield and his staff. He takes one last breath of oxygen and dives into the gulf, beginning the longest swim he (or any man) had ever undertaken. It is a frightening journey that Troy somehow manages to navigate. When he feels like sleeping, he sleeps suspended in the water. Troy retells the trek as being scattered with bouts between him and kappa-hungry sharks; it’s debatable whether this happens or not. Swimming day-in and day-out and eating not even cucumbers strips away the last traces of baby fat in his face and body, making him chiseled and pebble-hard when he emerges two weeks later on the shores of Scotland.

He spends three days scouring the bottom of the fabled loch—and he finds every inch empty of any traces of a mythical water beast. While standing, overlooking the beauty of the Loch Ness, Troy remembers something he had forgotten.

Troy stands over the waterlogged, drained body of Woodrow Wright. The old man's lungs are full of water, and he barely has enough blood left in his body to keep his heart beating.

“Why did you do this, boy?” The man’s lips barely move, but Troy hears every word he speaks.

“I couldn’t live without it any longer.”

Both men know what Troy is talking about: blood.

“You’re a kappa, aren’t you?” he asks. "My mother told me stories of them, from Japan, when I was young."

“A kappa?” Troy repeats. “Is that what I am?”

“I’ll call you Kawataro, I think. It means ‘river-child’ in my native tongue.”

“I’m sorry you have to die.”

“Don’t be,” the man manages to wheeze a laugh on his deathbed. “I have lived a good life. I have seven beautiful grandchildren who all will remember me with fondness. I can join my wife who left me for the other side ten years ago, and I’ll have an interesting story to tell her now, about how I died...”

“Thank you.”

“No, thank you,” the man’s eyes open for one last moment of clarity before his heart stops. “Kawataro...”

He stands on the shore and looks at the sunrise breaking on the cool, murky waters, dropping his spear and shield.

“There is no such fucking thing as the Loch Ness Monster.”

“Didn’t you know, lad?” a Scottish fisherman says, attracting our bedraggled hero’s gaze. “They proved her a hoax years n’ years ago, that they did! She’s just a tourist attraction now.”

“Is that so?” Troy’s curse of courtesy keeps him from taking his rage out on the innocent fisherman. Troy sighs deeply, and with that carbon dioxide excrement goes his anger.

“You look mighty troubled, lad,” the fishermen observes. “Mighty angry too.”

“I came a long way to see it.”

“Well, at least you got to see the Loch,” The fisherman laughs. He apparently is an optimist. “What is it you Americans say? ‘When life gives you lemons...’”

“You make lemonade,” Troy answers automatically. His mother, Mrs. Starbuck, said that often. When the basement flooded one spring, she used it as an opportunity to redecorate; when a waitress spilled coffee on her husband before Troy came along, she turned the resulting settlement check into a down payment on the family home; when she forgot to take her birth control, she turned that resulting “accident” into Troy, and loved him like he’d been planned. In that moment, Troy realizes one of life’s important truths.

Life is just a series of accidents—it can be half-full or half-empty depending on what you do with it.

“Revenge,” Troy utters.

“What’s that?”

“What about revenge?” Troy asks the fishy philosopher at his side. “What if someone gives you lemons, you make lemonade, and then they tip over your lemonade stand and take your lemonade?”

“Well, if someone steals your lemonade, you kick their ass and take it back.”

Troy turns and stares at the bushy Scotsman and raises his eyebrow.

The Scotsman shrugs and says, “That’s what I’d do.”

“Y’know, Scottie, I like the way you think.”

“My name isn’t Scottie...”

“What’s your point?”

Troy swims back, reclaims his duffel, hitchhikes back to San-Fran and finds a certain back-alley in China Town. Inside the garage, the hag is boiling water and slicing cucumbers. Troy watches her silently, his focus torn between both she and the Food Network broadcasted on the tiny television. The phone rings, but the hag ignores it. An answering machine picks up.

“Hey, Grandma, it’s me, Nessie. Just checkin’ in. Be sure to pick up your pills from Dr. Merryweather—you know you can’t go without them. If you don’t, you’ll have to go back to the ward. Anyway, call me back and chat sometime. Ciao~”

“Baka woman!” the hag shouts bitterly, shaking her fisted butcher knife violently at the phone. "Monster!"

Troy assess the situation and slaps himself in the forehead. The empty pill bottle, her erratic behavior, serving tea to someone who wasn’t there—only one conclusion was clear: the hag was bat-shit crazy.

“Oh, fuck me,” Troy utters aloud. “I was turned into a kappa by a schizophrenic nutcase.”

She spins around, oblivious to the seething quality of Troy’s voice. “Oh, it’s you!”

“Yes, it’s me.” he says. “Have you seen my lemonade?”

“Remonade?” she responds distractedly, slicing cucumbers for her stew. “It’s in the fridge.”

Troy smiles wickedly as the hag slices her finger, eying the crimson beading on her fingertip as she asks, “Are you staying for stew?”

Troy seizes her hand and raises her finger to his lips. “Yeah, I think I will.”

- - -

Troy, over time, learns to cope with his unnatural abilities and, as the Scotsman advised, makes lemonade out of the lemons he had been dealt. When he switches games, he turns his seemingly useless cards he had been dealt into a winning hand. He goes to med school and becomes a doctor specializing in bone setting, and saves many lives to make up for the ones he had taken in his teenage years. He takes blood from the hospital from time to time, as a special payment worked out with the board, keeping him from killing anyone else.

When life gives you cucumbers... it's up to you to decide what you'll do with them.