Mermaids (short fiction)

  I sit on this boat and look over the edge, losing count of the hours, each day, The water is a savage constant. Smooth and rippling, endlessly deep. I search for differences on the surface. Once I found these shoes I’m wearing. Pale, blue converse high tops. The laces were knotted together and they were wrapped around the doorknob of an old door that was floating along. It was easy enough to free them and fish them out. I have a broom handle with a hook on the end. This is my job now. I’m a finder. Everyone has a job. Some days go by and I find nothing at all. I watch and wait, staring at the water as it parts silently to let the boat through. I feel my heartbeat quicken at the sight of every jumping fish, hoping to find something useful.

  4 years ago The Rising came and flooded most of the land. It’s all beneath us now and we sail over it always. The wetness all around me, so big, I might as well be in outer space. All day I see water, sky and sun. At night it shines, shape changing and alive. The  moon and stars color the water silver to metallic black depending on the phase of the moon. I prefer the night but you can’t find anything at night except peace and escape from the sun. I sit here watching the ocean, lulled into a trance, hiding under an old umbrella, cowering from sunlight. When I sleep, I dream of seeing Mermaids. I know they live beneath me somewhere.

 When I was 16 I became an escort. The sex trade isn’t something one enters into in good spirits. You’re either desperate or you’re forced. There’s no other way. I willingly worked for this creep Vinny. I answered the phone he gave me, when he called, whenever he called. He’d give me an address and a brief description: bachelor party, sex show, married couple, foot fetish… whatever. I did the job and gave Vinny half. The money was good, and as a homeless teenager, money was my main concern. I didn’t have a boyfriend. Sex work was enough to scare away suitors.

   I did have Ryan. He was my best friend. Ok, maybe I was actually in love with him. There was a delicate current of energy that moved between us, fine as spiderwebs. Ryan waited in his car whenever I worked. I guess he was my handler. He knew about my job and was concerned. It was his self imposed duty to make sure I got out of each job safe. I met Ryan at a party one summer night. The news was going on and on about how the water rising was rapidly accelerating daily. I was lost in that state of untouchable teenage-ness. I couldn't be bothered to care about the water or life on earth. Some girls were crying and the dudes were talking about the impending water-apocalypse. I ignored everyone and set my sights on Ryan. He was the hottest guy at the party and I stared at him for hours. Watching how he laughed, the way he moved, the ease with which he interacted with people.  I was hypnotized. Several drinks later, I was drunk and unable to stand up. Ryan carried me to his car, drove me to his small apartment, carefully removed my shoes, before tucking me into his twin bed delicately. Ryan slept on the floor and didn’t touch me that night. The only contact we’ve ever had were a few hugs. If I cried after work, Ryan silently wrapped his arms around me and held tight, his long black hair falling onto my face. The peaceful calm I felt when close to him, it was better than anything. It was what I imagined love was like.

 The last time I worked for Vinny was the night of The Rising. I was escorted into a monstrously huge house that had a giant fish tank in the foyer. I stopped and had to catch my breath. Two flawless women danced through the water, submerged in the tank, these women, their long, pale hair intertwining and illuminated by multicolored lights. The light show went through a cycle of blue, purple, pink, orange, yellow, green, a slow rainbow of colors bouncing off their bare breasts, torsos and fish like tails.. I was sure they were nude supermodels swimming, costumed as mermaids in the wall tank of a lavish room. The room was a weird dude’s fantasy chamber, complete with suits of armor and a display of antique swords, axes and assorted weapons. I chalked it all up as another example of how freaky the tastes of the super rich can be. The giant house was on a hillside right overlooking the ocean which was less than 10 feet below, only months before the water had surely been at least a hundred feet away. I was taken through the foyer, without a word, by the timid man who had let me in. As we passed the tank, a collection of images were thrust into my mind. These women were swimming deep in the ocean and caught like fish, bound up, drugged, hurt, sold in a seedy marketplace, placed in this tank. I ignored the images and attributed my weird imaginings to the lack of sleep and the cocaine I’d consumed over the last few days. The man led me to a room so I could prepare for the party. My boss had called me late last night.

   “Blue, be there by 8. Bachelor Party.” He practically barked.

 “Yeah Vinny, got it.”

 “Don’t disappoint me. This guy is pretty much royalty.”

 “I understand.”

 That evening passed in a haze of champagne. Drunk jerks (many of them former frat-brothers, now captains of industry) jeering and fumbling all over themselves to get close to us. A bachelor party meant: another girl or two and me, dancing and drinking with a roomful of men. We had to “party” with them for no more than 2 hours. If we stayed for longer than that things got out of control. The night hadn’t been too terrible, but, as always, I was elated to leave. Passing by the mermaid tank on the way out, one of the women was simply floating on her back at the top of the tank, she seemed asleep. The other woman was swimming along the glass next to me, I felt compelled to stop and look closely at her. Her fine features were so unusual and stark. She had blue eyes, nearly transparent, slender bones and slim cheeks, full bow lips, and her skin was milk white with almost a pearly sheen to it, like the belly of a fish. I placed my hands upon the glass of the tank and felt alive with electricity as a series of pictures flooded through my mind: the images showed Ryan and I coming into the house and pulling them out of the tank, carrying them one by one to the edge of the deck and dropping them over into the sea water, they slid in silently without making a splash. We would set them free. The thoughts began like a movie but quickly penetrated me and became a sort of mind control. I knew that these women were not models in intricate costumes, they were actual Mermaids. I was moving as if in a dream, unable to stop myself and not thinking on any sort of conscious level. I was doing what the Mermaid needed me to do. I would carry out her plan as it was conveyed to me via telepathy. She put her face to the glass, her eyes staring into mine, she opened her mouth into a smile and I saw razor sharp teeth.

  I slipped out the front door and found Ryan waiting just outside the front door, anxiously puffing on a camel, one tattooed hand combing back his hair. He looked up at me with relief.

 “Damn Blue, what took so long? I was worried.”

 “You won’t believe this but… there are Mermaids in there.”

 “What the fuck? How much coke did you do?” He took my arm and pulled me gently towards the car.

 “No really, They need our help, come see, I swear.” I spun around and pulled him back into the house.

 We were standing in front of the tank and Ryan stood motionless, jaw agape. I nudged him forward, urging him to touch the glass. In a daze, he placed his hands upon the glass. I watched as a shudder went through him. A moment later Ryan turned to face me.

 “God… We have to get them back to the ocean. They’re dying in there.”

 Clumsily, the two of us climbed a narrow spiral staircase and made our way to the top of the tank. We managed to pull the sleeping Mermaid from the water, although I fell in. I pulled myself out and grabbed hold of the Mermaid’s arms, my hands were slick and gliding off her body, trying to clench onto her shimmering skin. Ryan got drenched but managed to keep hold of the tail section. There were a few men standing at the bottom of the staircase but other than a few glares and shouts, they didn’t attempt to interfere with us. The Mermaid was heavy, my arms felt rubbery, they were vibrating from the weight and her skin was slipping beneath my hands. Ryan’s wet, black jeans and t-shirt clung to him. My bleached hair was plastered to my face, my heavy, eye makeup was running in dark streaks down my face, my fishnets had torn and mini skirt hiked up so that my ass was visible. Nearly every other step we took, one of us slipped on the wet tile floor, but we finally made it through the open sliding doors onto the deck and up to the railing pausing at the edge, we were about to throw the Mermaid over but paused. The Mermaid looked up at me, her crystal blue eyes open wide. I felt waves of love and gratitude surging from her mind into mine. I knew, in that moment, that I was good, inherently kind to my core. This strange creature had shown me that I could care.

  Earlier in the evening the ocean had been about 10 feet away from the deck and now it was only 5 or 6 feet in distance. The Mermaid projected herself forward, swiftly out of our hands and dove into the water, smooth as a stone. There was no sound, the Mermaid disappeared into the gloom, a tiny hole closing, where she had entered the ocean.

  I held tight to Ryan’s hand as we stood facing the ocean. My body was tired from the effort. Getting the other Mermaid free seemed an impossible task.

 “Ryan, we have to get the other one.”

 “Autumn, the ocean is rising.” He had fear in his eyes.

  It was as if a giant bathtub was filling, we could see the water level getting higher during the minute we stood there. We looked at one another, terrified and ran back to the tank, this time, the men were waiting and one had a gun pointed at us.

 “Stop right there and get down on the floor!” he shouted

 Ryan immediately complied and began crumbling to his knees. The man with the gun seemed most concerned with Ryan and was watching him as he went down. Without thinking, I grabbed a heavy metal ax on the display to my right and slammed it into the tank. The gun was now aimed at me, I struck the tank again, pain tore through my arm and I hit the tank a third time. The man grabbed the ax from me and knocked me to the floor, his shoe on my cheek, the gun aimed at me.

 I saw thin cracks spreading throughout the tank and then heard a whining noise followed by what sounds like a giant block of ice cracking as the tank split to pieces, shattering. Water filled the room, it was chaos and the man with the gun had been pinned, face down under a huge slab of glass. Ryan and I tried to stand up, only to slip onto one another. The Mermaid swam up to me in the 2 feet of water that covered the foyer and I began to guide her towards the nearby ocean. The ocean’s waters had risen to be nearly in line with the deck of the house. Ryan was bloodied and on the other side of the Mermaid. We were at the edge of the deck and then there was a powerful surge, an instant rising of many feet of water that pulled us apart. Ryan and the Mermaid were pulled by currents out into the ocean and I was drawn, as if by a vacuum, back to the house. I saw my dearest friend, my love, disappearing beneath a wave. Long strips of the Mermaid’s white-blonde hair tangled over his face, her arm wrapped protectively around him as they were covered by the sea.

  Now I watch and wait. The days are marked by the heat of the sun, how many fish are caught, 

If any things are found and what signs of life cross my path. The constancy of the water is so great it’s nearly suffocating. A deep blueness that tricks the eyes and causes me to imagine I see the faces of those I’ve lost beneath each ripple or wave. I lay on the boat, I swim, I collect, I trade. I survive. Nothing is lost anymore because there’s nothing left to lose, everything is already long gone.