Prayer to the Ocean
by Roachqueen ©2015

Summary:
In the near future, crabs are an endangered species and it's the end for Alaskan crab trapping. Three fisherman on their final trip to collect their crab pots make a wish to save their livelihood, while also changing their lives.

Contains:

There are few swears, TG TF, and crab sex. But it's not really a dirty story, that's just biology! And there's a lot of emotion and pathos, as I usually put in my stories.

About:
Crabs are an uncommon TF species, I think, but I like them. I proofread it, but I'm sure there are plenty of typos!

__________________________________________________________________________

Prayer to the Ocean

The Crab Queen and her crew bobbed from side to side in an ocean as listless as they were. It had been years since they had seen any real action at sea, and the prognosis was that they never would again. During the past decade, they had been lucky to get some of the very few crabbing licenses the U.S. would authorize for small boats, but after this season, no crab licenses would be issued or renewed for boats of any size at all, not even in Russia. Legal crabbing was over, and it was probably never going to come back. Neither were the crabs.

Jonah, Jason, Chris, and Apple sat around the little galley table playing with worn classic Pokémon cards, just like they used to when they were crabbing as little boys and teens. The three men were all middle-aged men now, Jonah being 52 and the youngest, Chris, his uncle, being 61 and the eldest, and their friend Jason in-between them at 56. They'd grown up with each other and pooled their resources to have their own boat. It had been their dream, but even dreams that come true can die one day.

To mark the occasion, Jonah had brought with him his 15 year old daughter Apple. He knew that there was no future in fishing for her; even when she was a baby he knew that she'd never know his world, or that of all her grandparents. So he still took her with him when it was safe because he wanted her to have at least a few memories of what their people had been like before their way life disappeared forever. He'd taught her how to play old Pokémon cards too, and even that was more useful than crabbing. Apple knew that, but she adored her father and the ocean. Jonah always seemed so happy on the boat, in a way that he didn't on land. Her mother said sometimes that his soul belonged to the ocean. But it was a joy Apple couldn't know.

When the men were boys, during the Bush II and Obama years, things had been so different. The fishing and trapping was good, and it was a way a life for so many people on the northern coast. There had even been a cable TV show about crab boats, and its reruns were the most vivid record of what the crabbing culture had been like. Its value as a historical record increased as the crabs diminished. They had been in fishing families for generations, but in their lifetimes they watched their livelihood, community, culture, and catches shrink away and vanish. Their boat had been among the last, and now it was all over.

Even then in the mid-2000s, there had been signs that things were going wrong, but no one cared. Some oil rig exploded in the Atlantic Gulf, and everyone hated the BP oil company for about five seconds until they forgot all about it. A Japanese Tsunami breached a nuclear power plant and leaked irradiated water into the world's oceans, but the press didn't pay much attention. Climate change had been a buzzword since the 1990s, but no one felt there was anything to be done about it. Over those 40 years no one could agree on whose fault it was, and no one wanted to take responsibility, but the remaining reality was simply that there were now no more king crabs. Habitat loss, poisoning, garbage islands, and the propagation of a gruesome crustacean parasite species called Rhizocephala all combined to doom the crab populations. Rhizocephala attached itself to females and grew root-like structures on the inside of the host’s body. It made reproduction difficult and made crab meat bitter in the infected.

As before, the rest of the world didn't care; there were other things on their minds, like who was going to win the American Idol Season 56. Not being able to eat king crab anymore was only an inconvenience, and since the meat had been a rare delicacy for the past 20 years, nobody noticed. But for Jonah, Jason, and Chris, the loss of the king crab was so much more than that: it was like their own lives were ending too. Their absence formed a thick grey fog of cultural and economic depression which they inhaled and exhaled each and every day.

Apple had never known anything else. The Alaskan town they all lived in was a depressing, grey, shell of its former self, rife with poverty, decay, and abandon. She had been aware of how fortunate her dad and his friends were to actually have a boat these days, but even that would soon come to an end, and that worried her. They'd saved money, but not enough. In truth they were sailors at heart and too old now to become anything else. For everyone on the Crab Queen that day, it was like a funeral for an old, best friend.

Tonight the men kept their solemnity at bay, telling stories about The Good Old Days. Remember that time you accidentally pushed Chris overboard? Remember that time we caught so many crab that our pots broke open? Remember how Grandpa Davis used to say that wolves would walk around on the ice going after prey where the water used to freeze over? Apple listened closely, somehow knowing, despite her teenaged mind, that they were telling tales that were, to them, more important than anything she'd ever read in history class.

Yet all the talk inevitably returned to the doom of their business and life ways. The men shook their heads at the myriad disasters that had led to the loss of the crab.

Chris wondered aloud, “What would it take to bring the crab back again? A miracle! How are we supposed to get a miracle?”

"Well..." Apple suggested casually, "Why not pray for it?"

The men looked at her with awkward confusion. Her dad shook his head. "No... We’ve been praying for years and years. Everyone has been. It's not what God wants, I guess." He looked defeated, as he often did

"Well..." she said again, "Maybe... pray to someone else? The ocean, then?" She shrugged.

They were all vaguely religious people, but not deeply religious, not the sort who actually read scripture or theology beyond the basics about God and Jesus. There was nothing wrong at all with Apple's suggestion that they try praying to the Sea. Jason nodded, and smiled crookedly. He was actually an agnostic, and figured it wouldn't hurt to try. "All right. Yeah! God hasn't answered our prayers, so let's ask The Ocean! She's probably as pissed off about things are we are-- She's the one who's got all this shit floatin' around in her!" He laughed.

Smiling, Chris put up his arms. "Alright, alright... let's all join hands, and I'll lead us in prayer." They did so, and Chris shut his eyes and leaned his head back. "O, great Ocean! You've known us three sailors all our lives, and our parents and our parents' parents. We can't stand living on land away from you. Bring back the crabs so we can stay here with you, where we belong."

"Amen!" They all repeated, laughing a bit.

...

Less than an hour later they noticed a strange mist beginning to appear around The Crab Queen, and within the hour it became so thick that it was like staring at a solid wall a few yards away. The moonlight illuminated it dimly like a thick tea paper screen. An even stranger calm came over the ocean as well, making the surface of the water as smooth and glassy as a country pond. Everyone on board knew this was extraordinary; mist and calm water like this never showed this far out at sea. No weather reports had predicted fog either.

They tried to check their location again with their onboard instruments, but then the boat lost electric power, with no clear cause. Nothing would activate, and when they took out their cell phones they were off and wouldn’t even turn on. The boat’s compass even failed to work, rotating lazily. The men looked at each other, asking if this was some kind of joke, but they all denied it. They knew each other and the sea well enough to know that whatever they were seeing was really happening, and that it shouldn't be happening.

Before they could speculate further about what was causing all this, the boat began to rock. The men recognized that it was moving just the way it would when they bought up large catches in the old days. Yet none of them believed it really could be happening again. They went out on deck to investigate. Jonah was apprehensive about all these bizarre events and told Apple to stay inside, just in case. She watched them on the deck from the back window of the boat.

As the men approached the edges to look overboard, they heard a cacophony of metallic tapping noises beneath the boat, similar to hail on a metal roof. In seconds it became louder and they could feel its vibration all around them.

Jason shouted, “What is that? Is it rocks? Did we run into rocks?”

“I have no idea what that is!” Chris answered.

In a moment, a dark mass burst from the water in front of them and rose upwards swiftly. It looked like a tall conical craggy hill, growing higher than the boat, though its base was about a fourth of its size. It kept rising for half a minute, until it was almost double the height of the boat. It bobbed in the water for a moment after it stopped, but not silently.

“Holy shit.” Chris gasped.

Their eyes still had to focus on the mass to see it in the dim moonlit fog, but their ears knew instantly what the rock was: that was the noise of pile of crabs, their hard shells and claws clicking together . It was a sound they hadn’t heard in years. Only then did they notice that the craggy rock was writhing and moving all over, with tiny legs and claws shifting about. It wasn’t a rock at all. Knowing that this was impossible nonsense, fear and wonder grabbed their hearts.

Jonah shook his head. “That’s not possible.” It was unheard of and probably physically impossible for crabs to group together and surface this way. Yet there it was.

A moment later, the towering pile of crabs bent forward and collapsed onto the deck, right on top of them, like a falling tree. The mass broke apart into an enormous pile of crustaceans, heavy enough to make the boat bob down a foot on the main deck end.

Apple screamed and backed away from the window as several of them hit the glass in front of her, but when the ship lurched she lost her balance and fell backwards onto the floor behind her. The crabs all bounced off the glass easily with a loud thunk.

The men too were knocked onto their backsides by the massive weight of the crabs, yet weren’t crushed or harmed by the impact. They grunted and gasped as they blindly struggled with the crabs, which were, for some strange reason, attacking their clothes, ripping and pinching at their jeans and shirts, nicking their skin the process. It wasn’t abnormal for crabs to pinch the people trying to capture them; that was to be expected. Yet these crabs seemed intent on tearing away at their clothes, even slipping their legs and claws into the holes they tore and ripping them even bigger, as if they knew what they were doing.

When Apple got back on her feet, she couldn’t see her father, Uncle Chris, or Jason. It was just a gigantic mass of crabs. The pile was bigger towards the gunwale than the center of the deck where they’d been standing, and she hoped desperately that they hadn’t been injured seriously. It would take far too long for them to reach a hospital on shore. She looked around the room for a shovel or something she could use to push the crabs aside.

With labored, frightened breaths, Jason was the first to get onto his knees and try to stand up. He got on two feet, but could only manage a hunched posture; his muscles ached and he felt stiff all over. It wasn’t the worst pain he’d ever had, but it was the itchiest he’d ever been. The crabs had shredded his clothes, which fell away in tatters and ribbons. He was naked but not indecent, covered all over with crabs, a few even gripping themselves over his hands. He tried to shake the crabs off or push them off his arms, but they held fast to his skin, as if stuck there. “Get off!” He grunted at them.

Chris and Jonah wobbled to their feet as well, in the same state as Jason. They all looked at each other and realized right away that there wasn’t anything normal about this. A moment later a few crabs climbing around Jason’s torso wrapped themselves around his waist, joined claws, and seemed to compress themselves together, like a tightening rope. “Aaa-haaagh!” He cried out. “It’s crushing me!” The crabs seems to flatten and deflate, pressing themselves against and into his skin.

Having two hands free, Chris stepped forward and tried to push the warping crabs off of Jason’s waist, even clawing at them with his fingernails. “I can’t get it off!” he yelled desperately. “It’s like they’re-- they’re--” He couldn’t find a delicate word to describe how they were molding into Jason’s flesh. Glancing at his own arms, Chris saw that the crabs gripping him were doing the same, flattening and melting into his skin like wax. He staggered backwards and waved his arms, screaming and twitching. “They’re doing it to me too! Aaaauughhh!!! Noo! Stop!”

Jonah’s face turned white as he realized it was happening to him as well, but he stood still, petrified with fear and confusion. “What the hell is this?” Then he heard the deck door open and turned to see Apple coming towards them with a snow shovel in one hand and a lit electric lantern in the other. Immediately he barked at her, “Stop! Apple! Don’t come near us!” He didn’t know what was going on, but it didn’t seem good.

She gasped and stopped instantly. Now that she had a good look at them all, she could see that something was desperately wrong, and not only from the bizarre way the crabs were hanging onto them and how their clothes were in ruins on the deck. She’d only seen that look on her father’s face once before, when she went crabbing with him years ago during an unexpected storm. This was a deathly seriously situation. “What’s going on here?” she asked shakily. She put the lantern and the shovel on the floor.

“We don’t know!” Chris groaned. “They’re…” He couldn’t find a word for it. Able to see better with Apple’s lantern nearby, he could see the crab bodies were melding with his own.

“They’re sticking to us!” Jason added. “They’re… melting to us! I-I don’t-- what? Why?” More crabs from the pile were coming towards them all the while, crawling on top of their bodies, flattening out and compressing themselves together, like paper in a pop-up book when it shuts.

For a couple minutes all of them, Apple included, were reduced to frantic yelling and screaming, no one having any idea what to do about this. As the crabs piled on, the men felt heavier and heavier, unable to move away from where they stood. They began to notice that the masses of solid crab forming around their midsections and extremities were crab-like in shape.

“Are they--” Chris asked aloud. “Are they making us into giant crabs?” It was such a strange thing to say, but once he said it everyone could see that it was happening. The crabs were even linking together outwards from them, forming long thick chains which could be new sets of extremities.

Breathing heavily, Jonah agreed. “I think that might be so! But-- but why?” He yelled at the crabs impotently. “Why are you doing this?!”

Everyone was silent for a few moments as a foggy answer materialized in their minds.

The crabs didn’t listen to him anyway. With a groaning, creaking sound, like the surface of thin ice when stepped on, their chitin shells compressed and threaded together, forming continuous smooth surfaces and structures. It didn't take long for them to realize that the crabs were forming exoskeletons around them, pressing them inside new, giant crab bodies. They weren't being covered by the crabs, but were being merged and absorbed into them, their own human flesh and bones melting into crab tomalley innards.

Their arms were forming into what were clearly large crab claws. Jason tried to open and close his, and finding that he could, began to weep. “No, no no no. There aren’t my hands!” He shook his head. “Give me my hands back, please!’ He looked out towards the ocean water, still bizarrely calm. “Stop-- don’t!” he cried out.

Somehow, he and the others could sense that this all had something to do with the ocean itself. The crabs were mindless, but something was driving them. “Look at them,” Chris observed. “They’re all different breeds. I’m getting Blue Kings, Jason’s getting Red Kings, and Jonah’s getting Snow crabs.” They all saw that it was true: the chains of crabs forming their new extra legs and shell were only one type each. “That couldn’t possibly happen naturally-- none of this can! Something’s doing this to us! I-is it the ocean? But why?”

Apple came much closer to them, now feeling confident that the crabs weren’t coming for her. They hadn’t even tried to.

While struggling to keep his balance on two legs under his burgeoning weight and size, Jonah fell backwards onto his smooth, hard, half-completed carapace. For a moment he rocked from side to side helplessly. Sighing, he recognized that he was utterly trapped. The others could clearly see his well-developed cream white abdomen, with its nooks and crannies and hard chitin folds. It wasn’t shaped like a man’s chest at all. It was clear to everyone that his body wasn’t being covered by the crabs, but was melding together with them. There was no longer any doubt.

Apple noticed something else about him. "Dad?" She pointed at his abdomen. "Y-you have a clutch! You're turning into a giant... girl crab!"

Jason nodded, looking a bit weary. “You’re right, Apple.”

For a very brief moment, Jonah was proud that his daughter knew how to gender a crab on her own. But the next moment he blushed with embarrassment.

"Not just him-- We all are!" Chris gasped. Now that she'd brought it up, the three of them looked at each other and saw that yes, their abdomens were definitely those of female crabs. For a moment they were confused, but soon everything came into focus. The idea of becoming female wasn't scary in itself, but its meaning was chillingly eerie: their prayer was being answered.

"Uhhhh-huh." Jason whimpered. "This is what we prayed for, isn't it? More crabs?"

"Oh no." Chris lamented.

Jonah silently wore a distraught expression as he looked at his daughter.

The ocean itself too wished for the return of the crabs to its waters, and it was granting their wish. But miracles cannot be wrought from nothing: The ocean was taking them, their bodies, minds, and souls, and using them to make their wish possible. All three could feel a strange, certainly supernatural presence strong enough that they knew it was not in their imaginations. The crabs that were clinching them were an extension of the sea, a magical many-clawed hand crushing them in its grip, molding them. They'd used the ocean their entire lives, and now it was using them. It only made sense.

Chris rasped, "This isn't what we meant! Nooo-hooo!" He shut his eyes and let out a few tears and a whine he didn't know he could make at his age.

In a moment, all of them started to weep openly and without inhibition. Jonah, Jason, and Chris had never been emotional, sentimental guys, but they weren't made of stone. What was happening to them would be enough to make anyone cry.

Sobbing, Jason said, "I-- I... Lauren, Jackie, Paul, kids, I'm sorry!" He was referring to his wife, their two grown children, and their grand-kids. Each one of the men's hearts ached with sorrow; even though they did love the sea and had thought they couldn't live without it, in truth it was their friends and family whom they really loved. It was so clear now that they knew they'd never see them again. The three of them couldn't go home like this, and not just because they were becoming giant crabs. They were the ocean's property. Every part of them belonged to her now. They continued to cry as the crabs filled out their shells, snapping into place and finishing the joints on their gargantuan spindly legs. They were as thick as lampposts and now getting so long that they were outgrowing the boat.

Having never before seen these men, the strongest close males in her life, crying all at once, Apple felt slightly awkward and confused, not knowing what to do. Their panic had cooled into mourning, but she couldn't sense the ocean's intentions like they could. Still, she quickly figured out that it was the force at work and that it was taking her father away from her. "No. No, stop!" she implored tearfully to the crabs as they continued to compress and merge into the men's bodies, still extending the length of their crabby legs and arms. "Don't take my Dad! Let them go! They didn't ask for this!"

Calmly and sadly, her father corrected her. "No. We did ask for this." He looked over at his friends. "We just didn't know how much it would cost."

"No. No, stop!" In frustration, Apple picked up one of the crabs scuttling its way to Jonah, but it just flailed its limbs trying escape, seemingly ignoring her. "Quit it!" she yelled at it.

"Don't bother them, Apple." Jonah sighed. "They're not doing anything wrong." Still lying prostrate on the deck, he wasn’t struggling anymore and let his body relax, sadness soaking his fears.

She listened, and for a second she felt silly-- the crab was just a crab. Its empty black eyes seemed to say, What're you lookin' at? She did as she was told and put it down on the deck. It went underneath him, towards his neck, and flattened itself into his back and shoulder. She shuddered. “They’re gonna cover you head soon!” Their carapaces were almost complete, except for the front part, their faces.

“Yes, that’s right,” Jonah sighed. He would’ve nodded, but he couldn’t move his neck. He looked up at her, staring into her eyes. “I guess we should… get ready to say goodbye?”

Apple just rasped a little as she looked back at him. She felt awkward and frightened and sad, but understood the situation now. “Do you really think you can do it? Bring the crabs back?” she asked tearfully. They all knew it wasn’t just about the crabs. It wasn't just that they had wanted to have jobs and make money for their families, but they wanted a future for their families and the land where they lived. They had a chance to rebuild that future now, but they’d have to do it with their own claws.

Chris answered her. “If this can happen, I suppose anything can!” He sounded more exasperated than frightened in that moment. “This had better work!”

The crustaceans began to layer themselves on their heads, covering their faces. Jason cried out, "This is it!" His voice lowered and cracked. "They're gonna seal us in!"

Panic rushed through Apple's mind. There were so many unanswered questions. "Wait! W-what do I do now?!"

Calmly her father told her, "You take the Crab Queen home. You know how." Somehow, he was certain that the ocean and the boat would soon return to normal.

"And don't go looking for us!" Chris added, partly commanding her and partly lamenting his lot. "We can't come home. This is where we belong now."

"That's right," Jonah quietly confirmed. "I guess... we have work to do." He couldn’t see Apple as a crab’s legs covered his eyes. “I love you, Apple. Goodbye.”

Jason and Chris added, muffled by their doom, “G’Byeee!”

Their last words lingered their minds, and Apple's too. Goodbye. Deep within the core of their sadness, in a very small way, there was something strangely optimistic about it. They weren't dying. They were just going away forever.

As the men mewled and moaned helplessly, the crabs formed their new crab faces, pressing into merging with their flesh and bones to connect their heads into their already formed carapaces. The chitin snapped and folded, forming their new crab mandibles, while their internal throat structures melted away into crab innards, forever silencing them. Their ears collapsed and they went temporarily blind as their new eye stalks sprouted from their foreheads like flowers.

The snapping and creaking noises slowly diminished and finally stopped. The three of them were now enormous crabs, about half the height of a human, but a dozen times that in length. There was hardly any room left of on the deck, and Apple had to duck under and between their tall bent legs to move about as she inspected them. Jason was a Red King Crab, Chris was a Blue King Crab, and Jonah was a Snow Crab. “So…” she said. “I guess it’s done. You guys really are real giant... girl crabs."

Their surroundings seemed strange to them. They had tiny hairs on their shells that worked as their sense of touch, but they couldn't "feel" like they had as humans, their bodies now covered completely with thick, hard chitin. Everything around they felt cold and distant, even the deck beneath the tips of their legs. The water lapping against the boat around them sounded odd-- they knew that crustaceans didn't even have ears and only sensed sound vibrations through their carapaces. They were essentially deaf. There was some dreadful finality to it, as they each realized that they couldn't see or hear the world as they had as men, and couldn't communicate with it the same way either. The isolation was somber and humbling. They were going to live as crabs. They had no choice.

They wanted to cry. But crabs can't cry.

Though there was no room left on deck to move, they flexed their legs a bit, examining their weird, massive limbs. Their sense of proprioception was bizarrely automatic, and they understood where their legs were and how to move them. Jonah was still on his back, and struggled to flip himself over, pushing himself with his legs and claws. With the lack of traction between his crab legs and the deck, combined with his mass and size, it was hard for him get enough leverage. Realizing her father was having trouble, Apple bent down to look for a place to grab onto. She noticed that there two leftover male crabs still moving on top of him. They were fiddling at his egg clutch.

"Oh-- Seriously?" she exclaimed, exasperatedly spreading out her hands. "You can't even wait until he's in the water?" She wasn't angry, but it was awkward that these two little guys were trying to mate with her dad. It was so absurd that she almost wanted to laugh, but still couldn't. "Not now, please!" she chided them as she picked them up by their legs and threw them overboard.

She again examined his egg clutch herself, pulling back his abdominal flap to look under it. Jonah felt a little embarrassed that she was looking there, but understood her curiosity. The little crabs were right: these weren't fertilized yet, but they were ready for it. The clutch was full and thick, filled with more crab eggs than she could ever have imagined seeing in all her life combined. It clarified for her again that these were what they had wished for: the hope that one day crabs could dominate the sea once more. They looked so precious, tucked away in his private underside. In fact, now that they were going extinct crab eggs were so rare that they were literally worth their weight in gold. These were his to carry and protect.

Just like he'd done for her. The parallel was a little too weird to think about, and her face turned red. Closing the abdominal flap and pressing it shut, she then looked into Jonah's black crabby eyes. "You need to go get them fertilized... don't you?" He could just barely hear what she was saying, but it was true that the eggs were on his mind. It was like a compulsion. Jason and Chris were also full of eggs, and they knew it, too. They all still possessed human feelings and intellect, but being female crabs, they knew what they had to do. They felt what they had to do. Looking at Jonah's clutch and thinking about it made them anxious.

Apple tried to help Jonah flip over by putting her arms under him and pushing up, but he was too heavy. Next she tried grabbing one of his big claws and pulling him while walking backwards. He gripped her arm with his claw and was able to shift his weight to his timber-like legs to help her, soon able to stand up on his own tips. He felt much relieved to be correctly oriented and wished he could thank her and tell her how strong and thoughtful she was. For a few moments, they just stared at each other.

They both heard a scraping noise and looked over to see Chris carefully putting his long crabby legs over the side of the boat. He was itching for the water, so much that it almost hurt. He figured it was time to get to work on his eggs. There wasn't anything else he could do anyway, and he felt enough indignity from his freakish form that he didn’t want to be within any human’s gaze, not even his great-niece.

"Uncle Chris?" Apple asked. "You're leaving?"

He waved a claw to her, and then grabbed the edge with his huge claws, pulling his carapace over it until his weight was unbalanced enough that he could let go and simply drop over the side. The boat rocked, but Apple was still able to rush to the edge and watched him sink, waving to him silently until they couldn't see each other anymore. Next Jason tapped her on the shoulder with one of his claws. She grabbed it, and he gently closed his claw on her hand, like a sort of handshake. Then he let go and pushed himself off the boat as well.

She heard her father moving behind her. She turned around and froze as she looked over every foot of his gigantic crab body, knowing that she likely wouldn't see him ever again, crab or no. In a rush, she knelt in front of him and rested her head and hands on top of his flat carapace, crying and wailing loudly. "Dad!" She cried. "I love you!" He could understand the phrase through its distinctive rhythm vibrating on his shell. He hugged her gently with his great claws, just hard enough that he could feel her body he as pressed it up against himself. His shell was cold, spiny, and painful, but she ignored that and didn't flinch away.

They sat like that for a couple minutes, before Jonah carefully clinched her arms with his claws and pulled her off of himself, leading her to get back up on her feet. She kept crying, but did as he told her to, still respecting his judgment. It was time for him to leave. She worried that it would be terribly lonely for him living as a crab in the sea, and struggled to regain her composure and give him some reassurance. It surprised her how easy it was to make herself smile, even though she couldn't stop the tears. She stepped back, and kissed his big claws sweetly before sliding her arms out of his claws' grip. "Thank you," she said, slowly and distinctly, so that he'd understand. He did, and it touched him deeply.

She walked behind him, put her arms underneath, and helped him towards the edge of the boat. He put his claws over the edge, and pulled forward, falling into the water face first. Turning in the water as he sank, he looked up through the water and saw Apple waving farewell to him in the dim light of the fog. He raised a claw towards her. Sinking deeper, he was soon only able to see the shadow of the Crab Queen, and soon after that, nothing but the darkness of the nighttime ocean.

Eventually he reached the bottom and started walking, which came to him surprisingly easily considering that he’d never walked underwater with crab legs before. He figured that maybe Jason and Chris were there somewhere, but he didn't feel compelled to look for them. Jonah, Jason, and Chris were already floating their separate ways, feeling drawn to different habitats for their respective crab species. He reminded himself that this part of the sea wasn't the deepest in the ocean, and was in fact relatively shallow, but he was still human, and for a human, it was a crushingly isolated place.

***

The next day, when he could finally see dim sunlight in the water, Jonah couldn't remember where he had been for the past few hours, and figured that he'd fallen asleep. He could tell from the color of the water that he had either walked or drifted to shallower water, closer to shore. He started walking closer.

Not long after, he saw that he was being followed by several dozen crabs, which were having trouble keeping up with the long strides of his massive legs. A little shock went through his body and he instantly knew what they wanted from him. He began moving faster, thinking to himself, Wait, wait, I'm not even used to being a crab yet! I’m going to get fucked on my first day? It was almost funny.

Inside his mind, it made him laugh. It was just so absurd. He felt embarrassed, and a little humiliated, even though no one could ever be around to see. They were going to fill him with their sperm, and nothing else. It was like he was the ocean’s whore, his body now her possession. Knowing that he couldn't stall the inevitable, he stopped and let the male crabs try to mount him. It was deeply unpleasant, less because of the sensation and more because of his helplessness.

As the years would later go by, he’d still feel this way whenever he was stuck with a cast of crabs all over him, despite his eventual acceptance of his lot. He resented that they thought they owned him like this. Yet it was half-true: the ocean did own him. He had to remind himself that he'd traded his body and soul for a miracle. Was the ocean making him suffer for it? Despite his hardships, he didn't think so. Everything bad about the job was just a part of what it meant to be a female crab. It was just natural suffering. The ocean didn't hate him, and he didn't hate her.

Although it was his first time experiencing it firsthand, Jonah knew all about the Snow crab mating process, having grown up in the business: the male crabs ejaculate into the female, and the female stores the sperm inside of herself to later release onto her eggs. So it wasn't like human sex, since conception didn't happen right away, and not without his control. Or at least, that was his rationalization. But he was a huge lady crab, so it was going to take lots of them to fill him and fertilize all his eggs. That meant that he'd be having some kind of crab sex with many, many crabs. Since he was so enormous, the males wouldn’t need to compete and fight one another as they normally would and he could get samples from many different guy-crabs, making the gene pool more diverse.

Thus he never attacked the crabs, even though he could kill and eat them easily if he wanted to. He knew that crabs could and would cannibalize each other at times, but he couldn't bring himself to harm them. He didn't hate them and understood that they were just trying to do what they thought they were supposed to. They could still really annoy him at times, though.

Unlike a regular female, which were much smaller than the males, he could outrun or swat away any unwanted mates if provoked and never felt endangered by them. Yet his sperm reserves would fill up eventually and the mates would still try to mount him. It was uncomfortable and sometimes painful when they did that, and he'd have to push them off with his claws and try to get away. Then they'd all follow him for a while and catch up with him when he stopped. Normal females could hide under rocks if they didn't want to mate, but he was too big to hide. He couldn't control when he secreted pheromones which attracted the males; it was automatic when his eggs were ready for fertilization.

Despite his new role and equipment, Jonah constitutionally thought of himself as a man. After all, having a crab's body was alien enough already. The mating process in particular was the only visible reminder that he was in a feminine body, and it made him feel sheepish, having been quite masculine and rugged his entire life. Being a 21st century man, Jonah thought he'd had some understanding of the problems of women, but he didn't really get it until now.

When he wasn't mating, Jonah spent his time searching for food. Crabs were ordinarily omnivorous scavengers, eating plants, sponges, algae, dead fish, and anything else that was edible, but his extraordinary size and strength made it possible for him to hunt. He could capture fish if he was careful enough to stand still, and even grabbed some small Salmon Sharks and young harbor seals around the Alaskan coasts. He never attacked anything bigger than his claws, though, fearing that something that big could snap them. Possessing human intelligence also meant that he could use tools and plan. He could take sea junk, like lost fishing nets and cages, and use them to entrap fish. He'd been a hunter as a man, and understood the basics of how to stalk and kill, but now he was doing it to survive.

Eventually he'd fertilize his eggs and his body would stop issuing pheromones, relieving him of the constant pursuit until his next cycle-- which wasn't a long time. Normal females carried eggs approximately one year, but Jonah was producing egg clutches and larvae at quadruple that rate, probably due to his supernatural status and mission. The eggs would soon grow into larva and hatch. The first time he released his clutch he was surprised by their beauty. Maybe it was his pride, but he felt as if they would be greater than all other crabs: stronger, smarter, or perhaps better-looking. Either way, the act of releasing the clutch was his favorite part (if such was even possible) of being a giant crab. Watching them swim away gave him a profound sense of accomplishment and peace, at least for a little while. The larvae were the culmination of all his hard work, the ends to all the means. A weird sense of pride came over him when he remembered that he was some sort of super female crab. The baby crabs were the living hope that he could make things right again, that he could save the crab population, his way of life, his town... and his family.

***

Elsewhere, Chris and Jason were having similar experiences, handling their condition with a working man's resolve. Each of the men would eventually come to terms with their crab-ness in the following years, but a dreadful sense of solitude and entanglement would remain with them always. They never stopped longing for their human families and they could understand that this pain and their humanity was left within them for a reason. It was precious pain, constantly reminding them of who they were and why their work was so important.

It was all they did. Eat, make egg clutches, carry them, collect enough sperm to fertilize them, release them... over and over again. There was no anger and no regret, just sadness. Paradoxically, they did not become bored and were impervious to human ennui, because they knew without a doubt that their lives had meaning. But the loneliness was always there.

They could not bring themselves to surface or attempt to communicate, despite their undiluted intelligence. If they tried, they'd suddenly become nervous and hesitate. It wasn't that they couldn't control their own bodies; that was never an issue and they could scuttle about the ocean floor anywhere they liked and eat whatever they could. They were compelled to act like crabs, the way an alcoholic man, desperate for a drink, reaches for his whiskey even though he knows that he's a slave to it. Simply, they were giant female crabs with men helplessly trapped inside.

Their lives weren’t completely without happiness, however. There was some strange wonder in being able to see the ocean as one of its own creatures, able to witness sights no man ever could. It was a privilege they could occasionally appreciate. Thinking about their egg clutches and the enormity of their burden helped them feel satisfied and accomplished, too.

Still, being such a gregarious person, Jason was the most distraught of the three, desperately missing human contact. He'd always been with others. Without them, he not only felt lonely, but was having an identity crisis. He'd been a friend, a father, a husband, and a man, but now he wasn't any of those things. It hurt him beyond words, and it would be several years before he could fully accept that he'd never be that person again. No one knew if normal crabs could dream, but the three of them could. Jason would occasionally dream about being human, back on land with his wife and family, but would wake up disappointed to find himself again underwater, his cold hard claws floating in front of him.

It wasn't until the boats started coming back that he started to feel any hope.

***

Apple never stopped thinking about them. She told everyone that they fell overboard in an accident, and there was no reason for anyone to doubt her. Her family and everyone who knew them were devastated by the news. The tragedy stung like a quart of salt poured into the town’s already festering wound from the loss of its primary business.

With the crabbing industry pronounced dead for good, people were selling their boats, crab pots, and more for rock-bottom prices, practically giving them away. Without telling her mother, Apple withdrew a significant amount of the money her parents had saved for her education to buy a few of these boats, one so big that it was actually a ship, extra equipment, and storage for them at the local marina. When the sellers asked her why (and they always did), she told them that she had a hunch that the crabs might come back. Naturally, they thought she was a stupid girl and she knew they thought so too. She bargained aggressively and got the lowest prices she could.

The state of affairs began to change over the years, however. Within five years, biologists were detecting increases in the populations of Blue, Red, and Snow crabs, finding them resistant to Rhizocephala parasites and other diseases. Soon after that, the government began to issue licenses again. Only a few were allowed at first, and Apple’s was one of the few fishing companies to receive them, since it was already prepared. She hired a few friends who had graduated from high school with her, all youngish fisherman’s' sons and daughters who wanted a chance to live the lives their fathers had.

As the years went by, the head start and relatively small cost of her initial investment caused her business to grow and profit explosively, making her family and employees very well-off. Her mother was proud and happy to see her carrying on her father’s work, although she’d never know that it was he who had made it all possible. The rest of the town improved as well, and each day Apple was grateful to him, Jason, and Chris for their sacrifice and achievement.

Apple was as shrewd and strong as any captain, although, different from other fishermen, she insisted that all hands on her decks should never ever abuse or disrespect crabs. No one ever questioned this stipulation, no matter how strange or ironic it was; after all, losing the crab populations has been so shattering for the town that they had every reason to be superstitious upon their return. Yet she still had no problem boiling and eating them, so long as their heads were crushed with pliers swiftly first. It was the least she could do for animals which could be her distant crab-cousins.

Eventually Apple married another local fisherman her age, and had three children with him, although she never stopped working; her and her husband would take turns with the crabbing duties. She told all her kids and grandkids the story about what really happened to her father, Chris, and Jason and the real reason why the crabs returned, but she always left it up to them whether or not they wanted to believe it was true.

She kept The Crab Queen in seafaring condition, making it the oldest boat still in regular operation. It was refurbished and repaired many times in its life, at great expense. It was her favorite of the boats they had, and everyone in the company and the town knew that it was probably because it was the boat on which her father, great-uncle, and a family friend had died. This was partially true: she was keeping it because she wanted them to be able to recognize the boat on the slim chance that she might sail over one of them.

***

One day, The Ocean felt satisfied.

Each of the men felt compelled to walk towards a single direction, not knowing why. Yet it felt like some sort of supernatural intuition drawing them there.

...

One night, Apple and The Crab Queen went to collect some crab pots, as they did on so many other nights, so many times before. Now 62 years old, she had her son and two of her grandchildren working on the boat with her. However, the night became unexpectedly foggy and navigation became difficult. The moon was full and it illuminated the thick mist. Apple wistfully believed it looked familiar, but thought nothing more of it.

They relied on tracking to find the pots, but just as they caught sight of their buoys in the water, The Crab Queen had a blackout. None of their instruments worked. Middle-aged Jonah Jr. took out his iPhone 37 wristband and tapped at it with his finger. "Siri? Siri?... Hey, it won't come on!"

When Apple saw that her ship’s compass was spinning around slowly, her stomach dropped and her skin tightened with goose bumps in a mixture of fear and anticipation. She walked out to the deck, and commanded the others to come with her, but not too close to the edges. They asked her to explain what she was thinking, but she told them to trust her.

The sea calmed, and became bizarrely glassy.

...

Jonah, Jason, and Chris caught sight of one another in the dim moonlight below. They could not communicate with one another, but they could recognize each other and knew that they were there for a special purpose. They knew also that the shape in the water above them was The Crab Queen. Something was about to happen, although they didn’t know what it was. After over forty years of constantly living as crabs with little autonomy, they knew very well how to keep faith in the ocean. The joined claws and somehow began to float upwards towards the surface.

...

After waiting patiently for a while, Apple finally heard something break the surface of the water, followed by a loud banging and scraping along the side of the ship. The rest of her crew grew excited, but she told them to stay put. After a few minutes, a giant crustacean claw grabbed the edge of the boat, quickly followed by another.

Everyone on deck jumped back, except for Apple.

A giant Blue King Crab lifted itself onto the deck, rocking the boat. It looked at Apple for a moment, and then waved a claw over the side of the boat and stepped aside. Another pair of claws gripped the edge.

She turned and looked back at her son and grandchildren. “Do you remember the story I told you about my dad, great Uncle Chris, and their friend Jason? Would you now believe me if I told you it was true?”

“Whoa…” said one of the grandkids, both of whom were teenagers.

“Good god!” Jonah Jr. exclaimed. He then noticed also that there were tears in his mother’s eyes.

She turned back towards the next crab, a giant Red King, followed by a giant Snow crab. "Dad," she whispered to herself. The three of them weighed down the boat, making it sink towards their end a few feet. There was hardly enough room for them, and they stayed still to keep the boat from shaking.

Not knowing what to do next, the humans and the crabs just studied each other for a couple minutes. The crabs knew who Apple was, but didn’t know the others. They also realized how much time had passed since they left the human world. Jonah felt a stab of emotion within his body. Apple, addressed them. “Is that you? It’s me, Apple.”

The three of them leaned forward slowly, and then stopped. They felt themselves become very cold, and then suddenly they felt light, as if they were levitating, although they were not. Their carapaces seemed to grow hairline fractures and break apart, the fissures becoming thicker until pieces came free and fell off. But the pieces immediately scuttled away. Their shells were shedding off reverse of how they had formed, with crabs of all sizes winching themselves out of the giant crabs’ bodies, like jigsaw pieces popping out of a puzzle. Each little crab seemed to puff up as it fell off, taking up less space on the giant crab than when it was finished. They just kept coming. There was a great cacophony of tapping crabs’ legs as they all fell off, expanded, and walked off the side of the boat. It happened swiftly, like a slow avalanche of crabs.

The crew were aghast, not only with the bizarre sight they were seeing, but with the realization that their matriarch's weird story had been true all along. It was amazing, absurd, and terrifying all at once.

The crabs kept marching until only three average-sized male crabs remained at the center of the deck, a blue, a red, and a snow. They did not move, and stared at the humans in front of them for what seemed like a long time. The three of them were somewhat confused with what had happened, not used to being so small, but they weren’t displeased, either. Their work was done. They were [/i]back[/i]. They were crabs, but they were back.

Apple walked forward and knelt down in front of them. “Dad? Uncle Chris? Jason?” She was now weeping openly, not having expected to see them ever again, and certainly not having expected to see them undergo a change again.

They scuttled towards her, and she picked them up in her arms. They hugged her back, gently holding onto her with her their claws. Jonah was overjoyed to be in his daughter's arms, though he had no way of expressing that.

Apple began crying loudly, wailing and gasping for air. “I’m so… I’m so happy!” she cried out, tears streaming down her face. "You did it! You guys really did it!"
The crab men warmed with pride and relief, now knowing for sure that their mission had been worth their sufferings.

A few minutes later Apple remembered that she needed to explain this to the rest of her crew.

***

Neither Apple nor the crabs were disappointed that they had come back as crabs and not men. In human years, each of them was now over 100 years old. If they had become human, would they have just dropped over dead? No one could know for sure how any of this worked. As soon as possible she built a large and elaborate crab habitat in her home, with deluxe faux rock, multiple water filters, stone gravel, sand, sun lamps, and more high-end pet shop amenities. The men enjoyed it, but it was being at a human home that they loved the most.

The three crabs scuttled about in their habitat and lived a mostly crablike existence, as they had learned to do during their incarceration within the sea. Still, they did manage to draw comfort and some happiness from being near Apple and others, showing their feelings as best they could. Most of Apple’s guests could see that they didn't act like any other crabs they'd ever seen, loving to be touched, held, and spoken to (even though they couldn't hear speech easily). Their pleasure seemed evident in how they gently held people’s fingers in their claws without pinching them, or seemed to make stroking motions on humans’ hands or arms, as if trying to caress them. Some people thought Apple’s story about them having being lost fisherman was a peculiar, entertaining tale, while others teetered on the edge of true belief. The family members who had witnessed their return didn't doubt it at all.

The three men lived their slightly melancholy but content lives about 14-20 years more. Chris was the first to go, seeming to fall ill, becoming weak over a few days’ time, eventually falling into a motionless sleep, followed by death. He did not despair. It was a natural dying. In a small impromptu burial service attended by a few family members who believed, Apple interred the crab where his gravestone was, finally bringing it a body to mark. Jonah and Jason were relieved to know that they could die, that they wouldn’t spend an eternity locked within their shells. Yet they weren’t miserable enough to wish for death.

A couple years later, Jonah too became sick and slowed down. Realizing what was happening, Apple carried him with her everywhere in a large clear plastic case for a few days before his life finally faded away. Both father and daughter were grateful that he had been allowed to die at home with loved ones instead of the cold briny deep. She laid him to rest beside her mother.

It was actually Jason who died last, outliving the others by four whole years. He was lonely without his friends, but felt comfortable with himself, spending most days in a meditative state. One morning she found on his back in his habitat, motionless. She soon buried his carapace, and along with it the last physical proof of the crab men and what they had accomplished. Over the years their story would become a legend among fisherman, but few would ever know how true it was and how much they owed to those men.
Yet the Ocean rolled on. She never forgets the prayers of those who love her.

fin