by J. R. Rain
No one looking at me would suspect anything like human leg bones existed inside my lower half. It moved too fluidly, with too much grace, bending in a gentle curve rather than the crudity of knee joints. Hesitantly, I pressed my fingertips to where my thighs had been, as if expecting it to burn, but the pain had ended. I had a normal sense of touch along the entire length of the tail. Even the numerous fins gave sensory feedback―a most bizarre influx of information.
When I asked Barnaby how to change back, he laughed again, and leapt into the tide pool. In an instant, his legs shifted to a similar tail, though far less vibrantly colored, and he shot off into the ocean like a torpedo.
I sat there for some time, screaming for him like a paraplegic who’d taken a spill out of her wheelchair, but he didn’t return. I couldn’t figure out how to get my legs back, and, truth be told, I was terrified of how much it would hurt even if I could. After rolling over onto my front, I dragged myself with all the grace of a drunken walrus to the edge of the pool, and slipped in.
Once in the water, however, instinct took over. It took me only a few minutes to get the hang of how to swim with this new body. This tail didn’t feel like I’d tied my legs together. Where once I could bend only ankles, hips, and knees, I had an entire range of inhuman motion at my disposal. I can no more describe the freedom of it than one could describe the sensation of walking to a snake. Within an hour, I swam so fast, it felt like flying. My vision, which had been okay, had become stunningly sharper. I could see for a great distance after transforming, which I would later learn came by way of nictitating membranes, a second set of eyelids, clear as glass, that closed over my eyes when underwater.
Webs had formed between my fingers, as well as deadly claws at the tips. Slender fins ran along the outside of my arms from wrist to elbow, and all these extra body parts responded to my will as if I’d been born with them. From that day on, my dependence on Barnaby ended. I could hunt for food. No fish in the ocean could outrun me.
Barnaby preferred the sea, and as far as I know, never set foot on shore. My guess is that he’d done horrible things as a mortal and hid from his past life. During my time ‘married’ to Manfred the vampire, I’d come to learn that some people don’t appreciate the subtleties of the change. My second immortal ‘husband’ had been called upon to destroy one of his own kind, an immature young man who killed without hesitation or any sort of discretion. The new vampire had regarded himself instantly above human society, and it went to his head.
Barnaby had likely been a similar case among mer-kind. Though we at least have the advantage of being able to isolate ourselves from society. No one is at the bottom of the ocean to notice or care, and if the entire crew of an offshore oil-drilling platform disappears, a handy story about UFO abductions or whatever other legend the nuts make up serves to bury the truth. I’d come to realize Barnaby had been a relatively new merman at the time he gave me his ‘gift.’ Years after my rebirth while visiting London, I came across a wanted poster with an artist’s sketch that resembled him, wanted for murdering several women.
These days, my change takes mere seconds. As with most things, the first time’s always a bitch.
Much to my relief, Licinia prefers live (or recently-killed) meals. Aside from the occasional visits to my mother, I spent the next few decades hunting the ocean depths, feasting on various sea life.
Months after the shipwreck, Licinia made herself known to me. She had been in the back of my mind since the change, observing, browsing my thoughts, becoming acclimated.
As the merman had instructed me, so too did Licinia, though her knowledge had been more esoteric. She explained herself as a Dark Master, a soul wandering the void who’d slipped into my body when Barnaby sank his teeth into my neck and desired to make me like him. Prior to the bite, we had evidently kissed, and he breathed something into my lungs, an energy that remains there. Her presence is what altered me, drew my soul inward, and tapped power I had never before imagined.
Weeks after my first fusion, I grew accustomed to it. It no longer hurt, and I could change back and forth in a matter of seconds. I adored the freedom of the transformation, a freedom I’ve enjoyed almost every day for countless years. I’ve even come to feel grateful to Barnaby for giving me a gift I can never repay, although I doubt I will see him again. Back then, I still resented him, and soon upon mastering shifting, I set off into the sea and didn’t look back. I no longer feared the depths, and had nothing more to learn from him.
He had taught me how to influence various creatures. It took me quite a while to get the hang of it at first. All living beings share a connection to the universal energy of creation. I had to practice looking inward at my mind to find the spot that connected me to everything, and by extension, to other organisms. Eventually, I learned how to reach out and touch the bubble of presence that surrounded all sea life. Simpler creatures like fish, I could dominate utterly, steering them about as if by remote control. What surprised me however, was how well I got along with the denizens of the ocean without that influence. Fish would come up to swim alongside me, and even if I made a meal of some, the rest continued to swarm about like they adored me.
Maybe I am too sensitive, but it made me feel a touch guilty. Some species, like sailfish, had been so actively friendly that I decided not to feed on them. Sharks too tend to treat me as their queen, though I don’t eat them for the most part primarily due to how their skin feels. That, and I’ve come to think of them in the way that normal people regard dogs.
Such had been my life for many months, nearly a year, after the wreck. I explored the undersea world: shipwrecks, trenches, reefs, burbling undersea volcanoes. In the vast depths, a sense of pressure remained, though it never bothered me. Sometimes, I followed submarines or monstrous whales and squid, and a few times, I’ve met leviathans the likes of which the surface world wouldn’t believe.
Barnaby had been a rare one of our kind who wanted continuous company. I suspect many merfolk spend years and years alone and happy in the depths, perhaps deranged in varying degrees. As the months piled up, I sensed my mind slipping, going, quite frankly, toward being more animal than woman, and that scared me.
It had been Licinia who convinced me to consider the surface again, strongly urging me to admit to my mother I remained alive. And so, on a distant shore far removed from prying eyes, I had dragged myself onto land and watched in mild amazement as my legs separated and smoothed out into naked human flesh.
I’d come ashore in South America, and soon met a woman who gawked at me for some time before leading me back to her village along a secluded jungle path. Once we arrived at her home, she offered me clothing, and seemed both fascinated and worried at a white girl appearing naked out of thin air. She probably assumed someone had thrown me overboard after attacking me or who knows what. My lack of alarm made her uneasy, but we became friends after a few awkward weeks of learning to communicate.
I spent a few months with her family, picking up the language, getting re-acclimated to human company, but never strayed far from the ocean, until rumors of a mermaid started circulating. The jungle, as they say, had eyes. With no small amount of tears all around, I bid the family farewell and headed back into the ocean.
Some weeks later, I showed up in San Francisco in the middle of the night. When my mother answered her doorbell, she almost suffered a heart attack.
wake on the bench nestled within my bay window. Oops. Reminisced myself to sleep. Sitting cross-legged, I stretch my arms, yawn, and stare dazedly at the room. It’s around nine, or a little after. Probably Monday. My mother’s portrait, an old black-and-white photograph, peers at me from a decorative frame on a tiny table. It used to be in a silver frame until I learned that I’ve got a rather pronounced allergy to silver.
As in, it can kill me.
Well, touching it only hurts. Killing me kind of requires being stabbed in a sensitive place, like the heart or brain. So, yeah, I had to re-home Mom into a frame that rese
mbles engraved silver but isn’t. The picture is from 1939, when she’d been sixty-one years old. Everyone who sees that photo tries to guess the reason for her mysterious little smile. I still haven’t told anyone what she’s smiling about: when she sat for it, Mom knew I’d hold on to that photo for a long, long time. That’s the proud smile of ‘my daughter’s a mermaid.’
So, I’ve got some similarities with vampires. Yeah, they’re real too. You know that whole Dracula story? I met him. Kinda saved him, actually. More like saved him from a prodigious pain in the ass. He wouldn’t have died, but even for a vampire, walking thousands of miles along the sea floor would’ve been a major irritation. For all his immense power, swimming fast isn’t one of them.
But yeah, anyway. I won’t live forever like them but… I can still have coffee!
After a cup or three and a shower, I drag myself outside to the Rubicon and make my way into downtown Medina. I don’t need to work, but I also can’t stand being bored―and I like helping people. Just call me a superhero with fins. Not that whipping out a ten-ish-foot fish tail in the middle of the city would help much, though I could probably slap a car hard enough to flip it.
The thought of a ‘mermaid superhero’ changing form in the middle of the street and then trying to drag herself after fleeing criminals makes me laugh as I pull up and park by my little office.
It’s my second office. I relocated a few years ago when a laundromat opened next door to my first one. Never again. Nope. Not dealing with that smell. Too much baggage.
An hour and change into my ‘workday,’ I’m sitting at my desk watching television. I’m not even sure what channel I stopped flipping on, but it’s a show about a giant pawnshop with an unending flow of amusing societal rejects. I can’t believe some of the wild crap these people try to sell. And oh, the drama. Watching the rubes break out into fistfights over stuff is amusing in some dark, depressing way. I suppose people tune in to shows like this to feel better about themselves. No matter how shitty their lives are, they can watch this, and think hey, I’m not that bad off.
A promo for the following show where they auction off the contents of unpaid rental storage units pops up. People bid blind on whatever is inside them, and most of the time they waste money. Sometimes they get lucky. The show makes a big deal of both anguished reactions and gleeful discovery. They especially love it when a losing bidder gets pissed at someone who struck it big.
Wow. Sure found the winners network, didn’t I?
I mumble, “Humanity has really fallen.”
Oh, this is banal, says Licinia, her voice floating just inside my ear, but it’s nothing compared to the things I’ve seen. If you think politicians are bad now, be glad you weren’t around for Tiberius’ senate.
“Ugh.”
What you’re watching is tame compared to the Coliseum, or some of the things that the history books omitted in their entirety. Licinia’s chuckle―dark and haughty, but not quite sinister―fills my mind.
“Things you’ve come to regret?”
No, dear. Everything I’ve done, I’d do again. I never got my hands too bloody, and certain things had to come to pass for me to learn what I needed to learn. My viciousness had a rather specific direction. The morality of an act depends greatly on the recipient.
“Perhaps.”
You’ve feasted upon the flesh of man.
I shudder. “I didn’t have a choice. I never should’ve gone to France in 1943. What the hell was I thinking…?”
You protected those people. What’s a few Nazi-noms.
Again, I cringe. “That sounds too cute for what happened.”
Do you regret what you did?
“No, but I only consumed them because I couldn’t get to the damn ocean after getting my ass shot off. There weren’t even any pigs or cows.”
They deserved it.
“Point taken, but… still.”
The clatter of MP-40s in war-torn streets echoes in my distant memory, a group of civilians, a third of them young children, hiding behind me. I’d pretended to be a lost young woman, easy enough to fit in barefoot with a dress stolen from a clothesline on an abandoned house, but when the soldiers found us hiding…
My thoughts derail as the door opens.
I force a smile past the terrible memory of two small boys catching me stuffing a human heart in my mouth in the alley behind that building. I’m not sure what bothers me more: the initial look on their faces, or that they cheered when they realized I’d killed the pair of Nazis who’d planned to machine gun us all for no reason other than they thought it would be funny. With any luck, no one believed the boys’ tale of a heart-eating madwoman.
An older couple shuffles in, probably in their middle sixties, both grey. Worry wafts off them in sheets. I know right away they’ve come to ask for help finding a missing person. Old people walking into a PI’s office generally mean a missing person case, or stolen jewelry (usually by ne’er-do-well grandchildren). I don’t see a lot of cheating spouse issues from the oldster crowd. Especially not when a couple walks in together, though I have heard some wild stories from PIs down in Florida. Teen drama has nothing on sunbaked seventy-year-olds.
The man’s wearing enough Old Spice to make me dizzy. He didn’t overdo it too much, more my sensitive nose. An aroma of baby powder and candy mint clings to his wife.
Tapping human minds is more difficult than influencing sea life, but I’ve had enough practice at it to get glimpses here and there. The stronger the emotional attachment to a particular idea, the clearer I see it, and these two are both worried about the same man: a blond, not-too-bad-looking guy in his early thirties. They resemble him enough that I’m sure he’s a family member, probably son.
“Hello.” I stand and walk around my desk, offering my hand to the man. “Can I help you?”
“Are you Miss Silver?” asks the woman.
The man removes a beige cap as he approaches.
“I am.” I don’t bother correcting her to Ms., and gesture at a table on the left where my coffee machine sits. “Please, have a seat. Can I get you anything from the Keurig? Coffee? Tea? Cocoa?”
“Thank you, but we’re fine.” The man accepts my handshake before taking one of the two chairs facing the desk.
Once the woman sits, I lower myself into the black leather captain’s chair behind my desk. Aside from my bed, it’s about as comfortable as I can get on land. “You’re here to ask for help locating your son?”
They exchange a surprised glance.
“Yes,” says the man. “How did you know that?”
I force myself not to smile, and put on a concerned expression. “A lucky guess. You had a certain mood around you, and I don’t often get couples coming in here together.”
The woman spares a second to a disdainful glare at the state of marriage in the country before the worry returns. “David has been missing since Friday. He’s not answering his phone, his cell, or his email. All three of them, our granddaughter Hannah, and his wife, Christina, have disappeared.”
Licinia stirs, rising out of wherever she goes when I do something boring. They’ve got her attention as well. I look at my computer. Yep. It’s Monday.
“I have a bad feeling,” says the man. “The police are looking, but they haven’t found anything yet. They told us some of the people at his office mentioned he’d planned a weekend trip, but he didn’t tell us anything. We’re worried. It’s not like David at all to just up and vanish.”
I nod. “I understand.”
“Maybe it’s overkill,” adds the man, “But even though the police are searching, we’d like to hire you as well.”
The woman fidgets with her purse, pulling out a 5x9 glossy of the same blond man I caught a glimpse of in their thoughts. He’s on the left of the picture, standing on a patio deck in a white polo and khaki shorts. A woman in a navy tee about his age with light brown hair and a big smile is on the right. The couple’s hands rest on the shoulders of a little girl in a white s
undress between them. The girl’s about seven or eight, with bright blue eyes, long blonde hair, and a smile that melts my heart.
A digital timestamp in the corner reads Jun 10, 2017. Photo’s taken two weeks ago; this will help.
“Mind if I copy this?” I gesture with the photo at my multifunction copier/printer/scanner.
“Please… If it will help you find them, do whatever you need.” The man takes his wife’s hand and squeezes.
I spin my chair around and tuck the picture onto the scanning bed. A few button clicks, and the image appears on my computer screen. After setting up a folder for the case, I collect the basic information. Gerald and Lorraine Strickland, parents of David. I take down their address in Olympic Hills. David and his family have a house in Greenwood.
“When was the last you heard from any of them?”
“Uhh.” Gerald scratches his head. “I spoke to him Thursday. Nothing really stands out. The usual father-son ‘what’s going on’ kinda talk. He sounded happy, which I thought was good news.”
“Good news?” I raise an eyebrow. “You’re surprised he sounded happy?”
Gerald nods. “David had been receiving threatening phone calls.”
“He wouldn’t give us any details,” says Lorraine. “He said it wasn’t anything to worry about. We told him to contact the police. I’m not sure if he did.”
I add notes to the file. “Threatening phone calls, but you’re not sure how many, for how long, and from who?”
“At least two months.” Gerald kneads his hat in his lap. “No, we’ve no idea who it was or why.”