For Cain Andrew Clark.  Halloween 2022

Cain the Shark went trick-or-treating with his parents MegaloJohn & Great Blonde Mom.  Sharks don’t wear costumes because they are already terrifying, but they LOVE shark candy as well as swimming, so Halloween is everyone’s favorite holiday.

All the sharks in the Atlantic Ocean knew the BEST shark candy came from Tiger Sharks Aunt Andie & Uncle Dink. Whale Shark Baby Gian ate an entire school of clown fish and everyone rolled in the waves laughing!  

Cain the shark got distracted on the swim home by hauntingly floating bioluminescence, sweeping through the deep, dark, ocean, getting deeper & darker as he separated further from anyone.

Sharks are sharp so Cain used his senses & his deep body muscles to follow forward on the murky mission to find his family.  In the darkest shadow, he found a cave in coral, teeming with sea snakes and eels, winding their slimy bodies through the coral cave’s stony skeleton.  Cain the shark swam slowly into the cave, snakes and eels sliming everywhere, as pure sunlight started to glow brighter than his underwater world had ever seen, revealing a piece of shark candy, enchanted with a golden glow, irresistibly delicious yummy delight, the most beautiful special treat.  As the light faded, the eels and snakes wrapped more tightly around the coral cave, closing in the space around the enchanted shark candy, Cain the shark couldn’t resist and he snapped the forbidden shark candy up in his powerful jaws and it was the most delicious flavors of his favorite foods like slurping seal guts, then gobs of penguin fat and feet, then … a shock rattling through his unshakable system from tail to dorsal:  first, all his shark teeth fell out, pectoral fins turned to arms, gills – beautiful blond hair, then Cain’s cold black shark eyes looked at a new sky and turned bright blue.  All the salt water drained out of the world, a geological rift and reality ruptured – the entire population of sharks transformed into humans as their lungs changed for oxygen and their closets even filled with clothes!  An alternate level of existence was created when Cain ate the forbidden shark candy, and he was transformed into a boy, trick-or-treating in Runnemede, dressed as a shark, his bag of candy heavy with brightly wrapped sugar treats.

Cain the kid found his way home and dove into his bag of candy, tearing through the wrappers & chomping on chocolate, buzzing on pretzels and peanut butter.  He ate the entire bag of candy in one night, feeling like he could eat candy forever, looking for the perfect bite, but for some reason, the candy was just not right. 

Cain and his parents went on a trip to OCNJ boardwalk on a salty summer day.  Cain ate everything from Kors Brothers to Fralinger’s to Shriver’s to Manco & Manco, patrolling the boards alongside the ocean eating without stopping, his blue eyes searching the horizon for answers.  

A familiar whisper on the wind and then he remembered sea foam was his friend, he ran down to the waves and dove in, feeling truly at home.  The tides told him the information he had been seeking: a voice in the boy’s heart spoke clearly through his extrasensory echolocation:  You are a shark!  The secret is in the teeth!

Cain trusted his instinct, but he didn’t know what it meant:  the secret is in the teeth?!  He started flossing every night, worried about cavities from sweets he ate searching.  He swam with his mouth open so the water would re-activate his gills & went on hundreds of beach adventures – anything to help him get back to being a shark!

Cain and everyone decided to take a road trip down the east coast to visit Aunt Dena and Uncle Adam at the aquamarine ocean of Wrightsville Beach, whose waters and sand glittered brilliantly in the broad North Carolina sky.  Full of nautical fun and vacation adventure, they rented a boat and sailed around the choppy coastal peninsula and up the briny Cape Fear River, studded with tall grasses and mysterious creatures, to the dark waters of Shark Tooth Island.  

Cain waded to the sandy shore, along the path of seashells heavy in high tide, and poked around with his tanned toes, when a triangular, serrated, SHARK TOOTH caught his attention.He swiftly scooped it up in his hand and held it against the bright sunshine, a huge fossil, dangerous black and grey tooth, triangular and intense.  

The deep black pupil of Cain’s bright blue eyes expanded, covering his entire eye, then the deep color continued into his face as his nose stretched into a snout and limbs stuck and finned.  The shoreline rushed in covering the beach, then the boat, then the whole world was water again and Cain the shark swam to catch up with his family to enjoy Cape Fear and far beyond.