Sirens and Scales

by Kellie McAllen

  “Princess Tulip!” Terrance barked.

  “Princess?”

  I wanted to enjoy Mr. Dreamy’s stunned expression, which was surely a match for his tone, but a smart princess didn’t make an opportunity and waste it admiring the fine American scenery. Bolting down the hall, I rounded the first corner, dodged a gurney, and beelined straight for a closing elevator, sliding through the gap in the doors and pressing the up and down buttons so I’d be able to continue my mad dash no matter which way the damned thing went.

  The elevator’s occupants gaped at me.

  “Nothing to see here,” I chirped, flashing my best smile.

  The elevator went up a floor, dinged, and swooshed open. I took off at a jog, following the signs for the nearest stairwell. If my head was going to hurt anyway, I’d give it a reason to pound as I dove down the steps two or three at a time and practiced my rail-sliding skills. Rail sliding made escaping down convenient stairwells so much easier.

  I’d be pissed if the hospital lacked good rails in their staircases.

  I burst through the door, huffed my satisfaction at the lovely inner rail, and took a ride down to the next landing, bounced off the wall, and plunged down the staircase towards freedom.

  A good serial killer with a preference for other serial killers always found a way out of a bad situation. Who needed a floor plan? The instant I found an emergency exit, I’d be a free woman. Of course, Terrance wouldn’t quit until he found me, trussed me up, and carted me off wherever he wanted me to go. It’d be great fun for one of us. If I lasted a week, I’d call myself the victor.

  The last time I’d given him the slip, I’d gotten away with it for a record two days. Usually, he pinned me down within half an hour. Actually, I considered it an accomplishment I’d made it to the stairwell.

  Terrance made a good adversary despite being just like every other merman on the planet, loyal to a fault, vicious only towards their dinner and threats, and uninterested in anything other than his duty to Her Royal Majesty. Once every few decades, the entire species took leave of its senses and headed for shore to mass reproduce, resulting in three years of mermaids and mermen eagerly awaiting the hatching of the next generation.

  Only the insane approached a mer colony waiting for a hatching.

  Maybe once I gave Terrance the slip, I’d sit down with my mother and have a talk with her. Instead of spawning a proper heir with a merman prince, Her Royal Majesty had picked a gorgon, spent ten months on shore to have me, and came to the disturbing discovery I’d be stuck on land for the rest of my life, resulting in her conquering a small island so I’d have somewhere to live within the heart of her kingdom. If love could be rated by one’s willingness to conquer landmasses, my mother adored me. Personally, I thought she just liked conquering small islands, as she’d bequeathed me with three of the damned things, one off the coast of Europe, one near Africa, and one skirting China’s southernmost shores.

  I slid my way to the lowest floor only to discover I wasn’t alone. Instead of bouncing off the wall as I’d done the other eight stories, I smacked face first into a man’s chest. Damn it, I really needed to stop running into men, especially since my latest victim was about as hard as a rock. This time, however, I hit the floor without the benefit of someone breaking my fall.

  My victim had really shiny shoes, one of which was an inch from my face.

  “Nice oxfords,” I mumbled.

  “Thank you.”

  I sighed and got to my hands and knees. “If you could pretend this never happened, that’d be great.”

  “If you’re trying to get out of the hospital, you’ll be disappointed to learn the ways out are guarded to prevent a certain patient from escaping.”

  How nice. I’d collided with someone helpful, telling me things I already knew. “That does make things more entertaining.”

  “They even have alarms when patients run for it, alarms which have already been triggered. That’s going to ruin your plan, I’m sorry to say.”

  Maybe I should have stayed with Mr. Dreamy, assaulting him for a bit longer. I could’ve gone for historically indecent rather than just mildly indecent. Terrance would’ve captured me right away, but at least I would’ve been able to enjoy a few more moments of a hot American’s mouth. Instead, I got Mr. Shiny Shoes, who had a fetish for stating the obvious. “How nice.”

  It took me three tries to get to my feet, and when I did, I came nose to scale with a dozen or so black mambas. I recognized the damned things for one reason alone: I had a mirror and knew how to use it.

  My good look into their black-lined mouths helped with their identification, too.

  It was one thing to admire my scaly self in my reflection and another to have a bunch of them hissing in my face. I launched halfway into orbit with a shriek, landed on the bottom step, and bailed, scrambling for the first-floor landing. I hit the door at full throttle, plowed over someone in a white doctor’s coat, and ran down the hallway, ducking into the first empty room I found, slamming the door behind me.

  A crammed utility closet made the ultimate location to hide. I didn’t bother stripping. I hit my knees, muttered a few curses, and broke several of my mother’s precious little rules in one fell swoop, embracing my scaly side with a preference for warm, sunny places and enough venom to kill a horse.

  The first time I’d shifted, I’d been alone on my island, thirteen, bored out of my mind, and contemplating swimming for the coast fifty miles away. The desire to go anywhere and be anyone else had triggered it, I supposed, and I’d spent the three days waiting for the vacationing staff to return poking my scaly nose places it didn’t belong.

  A mirror and the terror of being declared a freak had shunted me back to my human form, and a good thing, too. Mers hated snakes. I still wasn’t sure how I’d been born in the first place. The last time a sea serpent had been foolish enough to cross Her Royal Majesty, it’d been torn to teeny tiny bits as an example—with her bare hands.

  Then again, the damned thing had just bitten five-year-old me in the foot, landing me in the hospital for the first time in my memory. If I had come from a normal family, I would’ve used it, along with the conquering of several islands, as evidence my mother actually loved me.

  The shifting process didn’t take very long, giving me plenty of time to slither out of my crappy little hospital gown. I snagged it in my fangs and dragged it beneath one of the metal cabinets, my scales rasping on the tiles. It took me longer than I liked to stuff the damned thing behind a bucket, poking it into place with my nose. With a bit of fussing, I could probably turn it into a rather cozy nest for myself.

  The only problem with my plan was my lack of a plan. A face full of black mambas meant one thing alone: Mr. Shiny Shoes was a gorgon, not that I’d gotten a look at his face around his snakes. What other species had a bunch of snakes attached to their heads and wore shoes? I couldn’t think of one.

  Maybe my mother really had sold me to a gorgon for a dollar. Would a gorgon put in a whole lot of effort to find me if I bailed? Considering I knew absolutely nothing about my father, I—

  Oh shit.

  Most gorgons had harmless serpents for hair. I’d figured that much out when I’d gotten bored and checked on the internet. The more dangerous a gorgon’s snakes, the higher up the totem pole they were, and black mambas were as close to the top as it got. There were more venomous snakes in the world, and a lot of them, but the more venomous ones couldn’t deliver their toxins with the ready ease of a black mamba.

  How many gorgons with black mambas existed in the world? Unfortunately, I had no idea and no way to find out. I did, however, understand one important thing. Under normal circumstances, gorgons didn’t just show up at places like a hospital, not without a reason. There was only one gorgon I could think of who might even consider taking the necessary precautions to go out in public, and he’d purchased me from my mother for one whole dollar.

  I slithered every inch of my fourteen slender feet into t
he corner behind the bucket, coiling so I took up as little space as possible. At least I did being a black mamba well; I probably broke records with my length, dwarfing the natural ones by six feet.

  If I ran with the assumption gorgons with black mambas for hair came few and far between, my father had nice, shiny shoes.

  For once in my life, I did exactly what the Modern Guide to Being a Princess suggested. When shit hit the fan, a wise princess found a place to hide until it was safe to come out.

  It didn’t take long for someone to check the utility closet. The first time, they turned on the light, sighed, turned it back off, and left, closing the door behind them. The second time, they turned the light on, left it on, and the tap of something on the floor betrayed their plan to record any activity in the closet.

  To everyone who thought they knew me, patience wasn’t a virtue I possessed.

  Those same people had no idea about my side job and the lengths I’d go to ensure the brutal death of a serial killer. Most of the time, I did it on the house, finding pleasure in the hunt while ensuring the safety of those my prey would’ve victimized. Every now and then, I picked up a legitimate bounty, gave myself a new call name, and demanded payment in the form of disposable credit cards. A few hours and several Swiss bank accounts later, the money disappeared, which I did just to fuck with Interpol, the FBI, and other crime fighting organizations who wanted a piece of me. There were a few, which never failed to amuse me.

  I had no problem with coiling up and waiting for someone to come fetch their recording device, eager to savor their disappointment. My moment came much later, after a satisfying nap. Terrance didn’t curse often, and I enjoyed every one he muttered. Footsteps entered the room, and from my hiding spot, I caught a glimpse of someone bending down to retrieve the device on the floor.

  Patience was a virtue, but assumptions led me straight into trouble. It took a lot of effort to slither without my scales rasping, involving the slowest movements I’d ever made in my life. I wanted to hiss my agitation, but I remained silent, peeking under the cabinet.

  Terrance had left me a new present, a camera most called a fish eye for its round shape and ability to record in all directions. Judging from its golf ball size, it was a fairly basic model, likely lacking motion detection. I glared at it.

  It stayed still on the floor, as cameras tended to do when left unattended. In the staring contest department, it won without question, and I resented that enough I contemplated slithering out of my shadowy spot and eating the damned thing to teach it a lesson.

  Since choking to death wasn’t on my list of things to do, I waited, kept still, and watched the camera. Unlike watching paint dry, which did have visual changes over time, the camera did exactly nothing. Who was, if anyone, watching the recording? Did I care? If I didn’t eat it, could I cover it up the hospital gown and drag it into the corner with me?

  I liked the idea, so I retreated, gathered the discarded gown, and used it to hide my beautiful, sleek gray body from the camera. It took time to bunch the thin material in front of me, but once set, within a minute, I nosed the fabric across the floor, covered the device, and looked for a way out of the room.

  Even closets had ventilation ducts, and I spotted a rather nice one with slits in the ceiling, plenty spacious for a slender beauty such as a myself to slip through. Coiling my tail around the gown and the camera, I dragged my prize along while I began the climb up the shelving unit.

  I truly loved being a snake sometimes. With fourteen feet of muscle to work with, it didn’t take long for me to jam my head into the vent. Luckily for me, the filter rested on a frame, making it easy to nose it aside so I could access the ducts. Slithering inside, I dragged the camera and gown behind me. With the camera trapped in the gown, it wouldn’t fit through the gap. Displeased at the inconvenience, I pulled and jerked until the gown tore.

  The fish eye camera crashed to the floor and shattered. The shredded ruins of the gown came with me, and I tugged it inside until none of it stuck out of the vent. Pleased with my work, I explored the hospital. Curiously, the ducts opened to second and third floors, pumping cool air into a wide assortment of places, even operating rooms. The rooms on the first floor had vents near the wall too narrow for me to slither through without having to dislodge the entire cover. The ones in the ceiling offered the easiest ways to escape, as only a filter and the vent slit blocked my way to freedom.

  I just needed to pick the perfect room to stage my escape.

  I picked the kitchen, as it had food, it was warm, and it had several ways out. Why the kitchen was on the second floor was beyond me, but rather than questioning the architects, I watched and waited, flicking my tongue out to taste the air.

  Someone below cooked meat, and I wanted to dine on it. I’d take it raw, seared, or even charred, but I wanted the meat. I poked my nose through the vent and observed the cooks below. After a few minutes, I determined half the kitchen cooked some form of beef stew while the other half made something with chicken and a lot of vegetables.

  In a corner, isolated from the rest of the staff, was a pair of poor sobs making salad. I felt sorry for the people expected to eat the stuff. While I’d eat salad now and then, I had standards. Wilting lettuce, tomatoes that had been ripe a week ago, and almost respectable carrots classified as cruel and unusual punishment. Add in the white, plain dressing masquerading as ranch, and I pitied the patients.

  After what felt like an eternity, the staff ferried out the prepared meals, bustling out of the kitchen. In a disgraceful show of waste, they left uncooked meat on the counters, ranging from chunks of stewing beef to raw chicken. I expected someone would come and dispose of it, but I thought they’d at least try to use everything.

  A second and third check confirmed the kitchen abandoned, and I slid out of the vent, angling in the direction of the counter and its pile of delicious red, raw meat. I couldn’t quite reach, so I thumped to the floor, slithered my way to my dinner, and rose up, snatching chunks and swallowing them as fast as I could. I cleaned the cutting board, and still hungry, I crossed the kitchen and stole the chicken, too.

  My bulging stomach would make navigating small places difficult, and I cursed myself for my weakness.

  On the job, I took a lot of care with what I ate. However amusing, a toxic or noisy fart could sink me, and nothing was worse than having to take a piss during a stake out or while committing a good murder. In about an hour, I’d want to sleep off my dinner, which meant finding a new place to hide or getting out of the building as soon as possible.

  Exploring the kitchen, I discovered a supply cart pushed off to the side, filled with plastic tubs meant to be reused. A quick inspection of the wheels and undercarriage revealed plenty of metal braces supporting the frame with gaps large enough for me to squeeze through. As long as no one looked beneath it and spotted my bulging tummy, I’d be free in no time at all.

  3

  The hospital needed to monitor their kitchen staff better. My patience only went so far, and by the time someone returned to the kitchen to begin the cleanup work, I wanted to bite people for their tardiness and lack of care.

  No one noticed my theft of the leftover meat. Five people worked to restore the kitchen to rights, and I watched them from my place beneath the cart, the tip of my tail twitching. While tempted to bite over their general incompetence, killing lazy kitchen staff wasn’t part of my general operations.

  I only killed people who deserved it, after I vetted their guilt and methodically researched their methods. Then I came up with a plan to make them suffer as their victims had suffered. My way worked; twice, the police had marked the wrong people as the killers, and I’d found the truth poking my serpentine nose where it didn’t belong.

  Those jobs had been the hardest, as I championed the innocent while proving without shadow of a doubt the guilt of my victims.

  Headlines of the slayings haunted me for months after each of those hits, making the national American news. There
’d been an entire episode of a crime show dedicated to one of my murders, one I watched with glee. The show writers had almost gotten it right—almost. They had painted me as a man.

  Me, a man? By default, I broke the rule about being a model-pretty princess, although I could pass muster with my mother when I pulled out all the stops. I wasn’t ugly, but I wasn’t pretty in the traditional sense, either. My mother liked telling me I was a queen without a kingdom, the cold beauty of a sword unsheathed for battle and destined for conquest.

  Her Royal Majesty really needed to stop thinking about conquering things all the time, using me as an excuse to do it. I sure as hell couldn’t inherit her kingdom. I could barely swim. I supposed she conquered islands across her territory to give me a place to rule from, should she die or make a run for the hills. Fortunately for me, mermaids lived a long time. My grandparents and their grandparents still lived, happy to have abdicate their crowns to the next in line. After a few hundred years of putting up with the bullshit involved with ruling a kingdom as vast as theirs, I didn’t blame them for ditching the job.

  I counted my blessings they hadn’t visited me in years. I’d been five the last time I’d seen them, and as I was no longer interesting to them, they went about their business and left me to mine. Of course, Her Royal Majesty had trusted them to watch me for a whole week and they had left after the first day. Maybe that had something to do with them no longer visiting me. My mother hadn’t been happy about that for some reason.

  I thought my grandparents had had the right idea. They had bored me, I had bored them, so it made sense they had gone to find something better to do with their time.

  I spent the rest of my wait considering therapy, coming to the conclusion I probably needed a psychiatrist far more than my mother. I did have a rather gruesome hobby of killing people. All she did was conquer small islands so I could live on them. Most of the islands didn’t even have inhabitants. Well, the one did, but the tourists had found the whole hostile takeover amusing, especially when the ladies discovered mermen were infertile except during spawning season.