At the age of twelve I became terrified of my father’s phallus. When we lived in Aberdeen we used to spend weekends visiting my granny, but we didn’t know anyone when we arrived in Orkney, so we went swimming instead.

One time, in the shower afterward, he whipped off his trunks and began to dry himself fiercely with a towel, knocking his penis back and forth with it.

Eyes wide, I quickly ran to a changing room and slowly began to dab at mine, pitifully small by comparison. If my older brother noticed, he didn’t say anything.

I assumed it was for this reason that the people in the street hated my father. When we left the swimming pool and began the walk home, I couldn’t help but notice how everyone turned their heads away from him, or stared at him with outright hostility. It was a small community, and word must have spread fast that my father’s penis was terrifying.

* * *

On other occasions, we would go to the beach. It was on one such day that I first saw the Kelpie. She was tall, but not so tall as my father. Her long, wet hair clung to her neck and shoulders like seaweed, and she seemed almost impossibly thin against the tide. The part of the beach which we sat on was cold, and almost deserted. Further along the shore I could see groups of children playing, but they seemed to keep a cautious distance from us.

If my father noticed he didn’t say anything, he just sat looking out at the surf, the fur on his chest keeping him warm, the tight shorts giving me cause to sit further back than I normally would.

The kelpie turned to me, her eyes dark and round. She smiled and walked into the sea.

* * * 

I followed her under the waves, spiralling round her and brushing against her chest every time she crossed over me. It was cold, and dark, as it always was in Orkney, but she seemed to know the way, and the heat from her skin was enough to warm me up. She led me past the sunken U-Boats they talk about in school, around the great turret guns that still point up at the dull, shimmering ocean sun, and into a small cave that went on for miles.