For as long as she can remember, an Afro-Caribbean girl’s mother has told her to stay away from the water that surrounds their island. She says that it will kill her, but the girl hungers for the ocean—and something darker—every night. As a teenager, she feels out of place. She seethes at the beautiful, blonde girls who exclude her at her school, and she beats one of them up. Her mother whips her with a switch when she gets home, and she warns her against using her strength. While suspended from school, the girl begins eating neighborhood sheep with her bare hands. The raw meat satiates her bloodthirsty appetite for a while, but she craves more. When she returns to school, she is drawn to the sanguine smell of the beautiful girls, and she fantasizes about devouring them. Afterward, she bikes to the beach. The girl’s mother sends her to the capital to get her further away from the ocean.

At her new school, her hunger grows. She eats three plates of fish every day in the cafeteria. She faints in class, but the teacher brushes it off as the effects of heatstroke. On the bus, her classmates whisper about her. They call her Lusca, which is a sea monster in Caribbean folklore. When she gets to school, she hides in a bathroom stall as she realizes that scales are forming on her hands and arms. Later, she is called into the headmaster’s office. He shows her a picture of the Lusca and asks her if she knows what it is. She says no. That weekend, she calls her mother, who reiterates that the water is dangerous and will take her humanity. She returns to the ocean that night and transforms into the Lusca. She terrifies fishermen and consumes their large nets of fish in bloody, squelching chomps. The girl finally finds ecstasy in the ocean, gorging herself on sea creatures.