by J Turbett
"You mean?"
"It's a risk the folk can't take, that one of them would expose them. So, yes, they will destroy you, one way or another, if you enter the ocean again after declaring yourself to a human."
"Why?"
"The folk are the caretakers of the ocean, the way humans are to be the caretakers of the land. I would say the folk do a much better job of it. Unfortunately, the folk are amphibious; like sea turtles, they need the land to breed, so the folk are as tied to land as they are to the water. And if they go on land..."
"They meet humans."
"And sometimes..."
"Fall in love."
"Their numbers have been diminishing for centuries. As they diminish, you see strange things, like giant clouds of mucus or strange secretions on the surface. Not that humans don’t cause their share of ocean mischief." Alice sat in silence for a while, letting it all sink in, letting her brain try to reboot itself after the previous night.
She shook her head. "This is nuts. A few days ago, I thought mermaids were a fairy tale."
"Yeah, took me a while to get used to it, too. Those gills…" He idly put his hand on top of hers. It was warm and comforting, but she instantly pulled her hand away.
"Don't," she said defensively. Her eyes went wild and crazy once more.
"I'm sorry; I didn't mean anything by it," he said, then glanced away. "I know that you..."
"My father told you that something happened to me, a couple years back."
"He didn't tell me what," he said defensively. Alice stood up furiously, knocking over the glass of juice. It made her stomach lurch a little.
"I hate you. You act all concerned, but you’re getting paid for it. I hate your town and its stupid secrets, and I certainly never asked for this," she said through gritted teeth.
"It’s life, Alice. Yeah, it’s a piece of shit, but you deal with what you’re dealt. I get paid to deal with these mutants, sure, but…"
“Mutants? You’re calling me a mutant now?”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I’m pretty sure you meant exactly what you just said.” Her eyes, her nose, her gills all flared at once. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she hissed. “Pompous little rich boy living high on the hog for a secret he’s paid to keep. You don’t know anything about hardship!”
Adam watched her in silence; he wasn’t the type to get riled up. He watched the flaring intensity disappear from her eyes, watched them cloud over. For a moment, Alice was back there, back where she didn't want to be, in a place she couldn’t escape. She had lost control, again. Quickly, she forced her eyes to narrow on him again, squeezing away the darkness invading her thoughts. He couldn’t really understand why this concerned him at all: she was one of them now, not his problem.
He gritted his teeth: those eyes, that hopelessness. She was one of them, yet all he wanted to do was jump up and gather her in his arms. He knew that pain in her; he had seen it once upon a time in his father. It was that pain that had separated father from son. He wanted to stroke her long hair telling her that everything was okay, everything would turn out all right. Twice he had dealt with tragedy. The look in her eyes reminded him of being eight, looking up into his mother’s eyes. He hadn’t been able to make things better for her, but maybe he could for Alice. He stood up slowly, but Alice jumped back.
She stared at him outraged as he just stood there, staring at her like she was something he had to fix, something he could sew up and heal. Alice knew better than anyone that things wouldn’t always be okay, that things always turned out dark. It would always hurt; she would always see their faces and smell the blood. She backed away from his eyes, from his body, from his concern. Grabbing the belt, she continued facing Adam until she felt the cold metal of the railing behind her. He stared at her with that noxious concern and it made her ill. She spun as fast as she could manage, jumping overboard into the enveloping ocean.
Chapter 8
My Island
She plunged into the water. It wrapped her in a cocoon of safety and warmth as she fastened the belt around her. For a few moments she just let herself float, let the world come into focus around her. The water didn’t burn her eyes, she wasn't afraid of drowning: it was absolute peace. Fish swam around her, ignoring her presence in their world; it wasn’t just their world, it was hers, too. The water held her like a mother would a crying child. She felt her tail spread over her legs, tearing her baggy jeans apart in the process. She unwound herself from the shreds of her pants, watching them drift away from her. She kicked her tail and swam; no direction, no pesky human concerns, just a mermaid, watching the wonders of the ocean unfold around her. This was perfection; it was magical under the ocean. Alice felt at home under the waves, away, where the sun couldn’t touch her.
A pod of dolphins approached excitedly. She smiled at the dolphins and they smiled back at her. They chattered and she understood exactly what they meant. It wasn’t much they were saying, mostly just, “Play with us!” Dolphins didn’t seem to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. Obliging to their pleas, she bent herself, touching the very edge of her tail with her webbed fingers. One of the dolphins swam through the loop she had created. At the last second she grabbed his dorsal fin and he carried her up and up and up toward the surface. They broke the water together, separating from each other and plunging haphazardly back underneath the waves. The dolphins cackled at this new game before noticing a school of fish. They zoomed away to begin their hunt and Alice watched them go.
After awhile, swimming on her own through the open ocean, she grew tired. Not far in front of her loomed a little island. To the ocean it was little more than a freckle on its face. It looked like the little island would almost disappear when the tide rose. Still, the spot of land managed to support two scraggly palms. In the water surrounding it, there was life everywhere. She could see the sharks circling in the shallows, seeking out either their next meal or just a cleaning service.
She let the tide carry her up onto the beach, letting her tail stick out into the water, feeling the tiny fish as the tickled past her. She turned on her back to lie in the sand, and stared up at the sky more vast even than her ocean. It was peaceful and she closed her eyes, just for a little bit. The sun was beginning to set and Alice figured she might just as easily fall asleep here, where the rays of the fading sun warmed one cheek while the sand warmed the other. She dozed in and out of consciousness for a while, seeing the dolphins and the fish behind her closed eyes. She didn’t know how long she’d been there when a voice made her jump.
"You're on my island."
She jerked up, her momentary calm gone before the last syllable left his mouth. Looking up, she scowled defensively. She pulled the knife from its belt and brandished it at him. He laughed at her, but it wasn't a serious laugh. He looked her up and down from where he was perched on his arms on the sand. She was now alone in the middle of the ocean facing the last person she wanted to see, and she was a sight. She was wearing the same baggy t-shirt as yesterday, feeling lucky that it was a dark color. She had sloughed off her sweater in the middle of the ocean; it had slowed her down. Sitting awkwardly with her tail still in the water, she continued to hold out the gaudy knife.
“Certainly you don’t think you could fight me with that thing,” he said mockingly.
His words cut her more than his knife ever could, not that he knew or cared. She had fought and lost before. She was frozen with more emotions than she could sort out running through her all at once. Of course, he didn’t notice a darn thing, or if he did he certainly didn’t care what they were.
“Get lost! I was here first,” she finally said.
"You can stay if you're quiet," he replied, flipping onto his back, ignoring her. His tail flopped in the water. She lunged toward him, brandishing her knife, but he easily caught her wrist and twisted it away. She dropped the knife, sudden tears coming to her eyes at the pain. He stared at her with surprise and ann
oyance. “Don’t do that again.”
Alice jerked away when he released her, picking up her pride with the knife. She reluctantly slid it back into the sheath. She didn’t want to leave. It was comfortable out here before he showed up. His inherent smugness made her feel stubborn, and, though there was that part of her that wanted nothing more than to swim from him at top speed, she wasn’t about to give up her little paradise based on a claim that it belonged to him. She refused to give the irritating blonde the satisfaction of scaring her away. He may have everyone else in the town in thrall but he didn’t own her; no man ever would. She was reminded again of her dream and the look on Brassila’s face, a face that was serene, with confidence that she could fight anything that was thrown at her. Alice tried to mimic it, but ended up with something akin to pouting as she crossed her arms over her chest and sidled away from him on the sand.
They watched the sun set, bristling at one another. Why wouldn’t he go away? Alice wondered. If he claimed to hate the company of people so much, her presence should have forced him to leave a long time ago.
Finn was angry she was there at all. All the mer knew this was his island; someone should have stopped her. This was where Finn came to get away from everyone, and everyone knew it. This girl seemed to exist only to plague him, and in a completely different way from the other eligible maids. She could have made a move on him, could have slid close, forcing herself upon him, but he would have kicked her away, with his own knife, if necessary.
This transform business was difficult. She was a mer now, and subject to their rules, yet if she were to get in an accident and lose her life, she would disappear according to the human laws and people would come sniffing around the Caraway mansion in a full investigation of her disappearance. If she was subject to mer laws than she was one of his subjects, which meant that she was required to obey him, or die. That didn’t make any of the other maids obey him, though, and he would not kill again. It made his head pound and his stomach churn. She lay there, smugly, arms crossed over her chest. Finally it was he who broke the silence; they couldn't just continue bristling at one another. He had never disliked a trip to his island, but he had never shared the time there with anyone.
"Why are you sad? When you sang the first time, it was sad. I’ve never heard someone’s first song be sad."
She fumed. "It's none of your goddamn business."
"You're on my island, my territory,"
"Go jump off a cliff, you arrogant, pampered brat." He turned over on his side staring at her noncommittally. The girl did have claws, and he was at fault for turning the transform, however accidentally. She drew her blade again, but she wasn’t looking at his unconcerned face. Her eyes swam with her memories.
There they were again: the horror and the dream. They were choking the twilight air around her, tearing her head apart. She had been running from them, but they had caught her up. She knew they would. She couldn’t escape her head. She remembered the knife, how she took down the man in her dream herself, not Brassila. She could feel the wet blood on her hands. She looked down at the knife.
Finn watched her slipping away; the knife was shaking in her hands. It looked…familiar. His eyes narrowed at her. Suddenly, she looked up, noticing his presence once more.
"What's your problem!?" she demanded.
"Currently, the fact that you’re on my island.” He paused as she stared at him angrily. “But since you asked, my grandmother’s dying, and that only makes all you maids chase me more. Now I can’t even find peace on my own island. What's your problem?" he asked matter-of-factly, with a twinge of bitterness and anger. He sat up further. "After all, you are on my island, and you have the gall to ask me what my problem is?"
His grandmother. For a moment, all she saw was her own grandmother’s face. She had loved her grandmother. She saw her grandmother’s face the way it had been the last time she had seen it: gray, blank, and staring at her with dead eyes. She blinked, clearing the images from her head.
"My grandmother died," she said. It was nowhere near what she wanted to say. She had half a mind to just leave, but somehow she couldn’t. She curled up her tail, bringing knees that weren’t there to her chest.
"She didn't just die." Finn replied intuitively. Alice glared at him fiercely, but she saw something different. He was watching at her, but he wasn’t threatening her. He just seemed curious. Listening to her, for real, not like all the people who had only listened for her parent’s money.
"No.” Alice answered tenderly.
Finn watched her, the way her gaunt face, hiding in her hair, told so much more than she would admit to. He knew that look, the lost look in her eyes. Maybe he had more in common with the transform than he thought. She certainly seemed to have more depth than Ashley. Alice looked off across the blackening ocean.
“She was murdered,” Alice said finally.
“You were there.”
“Yes.” The silence stretched between them. He looked off at the ocean, his chest rising and falling with the waves. Finn knew the girl had a story, but he wasn’t about to push her. He wasn’t really sure he wanted to know, anyway, and of course she wasn’t going to give him a choice.
“Four hours,” slowly Alice began to pour the story at the night. She wasn’t even talking to him and she didn’t care that he was there. She spoke to the moon just beginning to rise. “For four hours I was raped by my best friend’s brother. When it was apparent I was pregnant, my parents sent me to live with my grandmother, thinking my brother wouldn’t be able to handle it, wouldn’t be able to understand.” She sighed. “Everything was fine for a while, and things even got better. I wasn’t scared of everything, and I was even starting to look forward to meet the baby growing inside me. I had forgotten how much Grandma and I got along until that one night. In the dark parking garage, there was no one there. It was so late when we walked back…then there was a man, and he was mugging us at knife-point. My grandmother started having a heart attack and I wanted to help her. He went toward me to stop me, and his knife was in my gut, so close to my baby. Everything was a blur from there. He beat me down as I tried to fight him. He took everything and ran. I watched my grandmother die from the heart attack, unable to move. I was losing blood myself, and losing the baby. I had just felt the baby kick for the first time, but now it was still. It felt like forever, me and her corpse, but they told me it was only four hours.”
Alice’s voice faded as she remembered her head lolling to the side of the stretcher, the lights of the ambulance shining on the black body bag. In one day, she had lost her grandmother and her daughter.
There were tears pouring from the girl’s eyes. Finn knew she wasn’t talking to him; he felt no need to respond.
Alice had lost consciousness after, then woke to the sounds of them asking her name, where she was from. Suddenly there were so many people: cops, nurses, doctors, psychiatrists and finally, her parents. She didn’t want to talk to a single one of them. If she never heard ‘Are you okay?’ again for the rest of her life, it would be too soon. Slowly she had shut down: stopped doing anything, stopped saying anything, stopped living. But now the words that had been held inside were starting to come out.
"I'm sick and fucking tired of people asking me if I'm okay! I hate people. I hate this world and all a sudden, thanks to you, I'm a fucking mermaid. Which, of course, is just wonderful, because now I have to deal with a whole new set of assholes."
Finn absorbed what she said but he made no reply, as if he weren't really listening at all. She felt as if she had broken open. It was his fault; everything she had held inside for two years was pouring out into the sand. She stared at him but he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring off into the distance just as she had.
"You know what the really fucked up thing is? You're the first one I told. Parents sent me to shrink after shrink, but no, you annoyed me so much that I finally broke. Congratulations on being the biggest dick in the world." He watched as her chest rose and fell as s
he tried to suppress her sobs. She was angry with herself for everything: for telling, for realizing just how many new problems she had added to her old ones, for remembering.
Finn didn't make a move toward her; instead, he rolled away from her, ignoring her, ignoring her pain. She'd probably leave now, anyway, he hoped. He listened to suppressed sobs until she left, leaving him alone, the way he liked it, the way it should be. He couldn’t deny the fact that he was just as dangerous as the horrors that haunted her nightmares. He knew exactly what those nightmares were, only in his nightmares, he was the monster.
Alice made the long swim back to shore. She wasn’t thinking of anything. Her head was completely blank, for once, and she was completely numb. The lack of pants became an issue when she hit shore, but she found an old towel on the beach and tied it around her waist. She didn’t want anyone to notice her on her way home, dark though it was. She finally landed in her bed at 5:00 am. This time David was in bed already, so she didn’t have to worry about spying brothers.
That night, Alice slept. For the first time in two years there were no dreams, no new horrors, just smooth, blissful sleep.
Chapter 9
Changes
“Are you sure we aren’t just seeing things that aren’t there?” Sarah asked, sitting up in bed, the dark around them. The plans had been made to send Alice away at the beginning of the month, yet they had been duly cancelled. Ron saw in his daughter that he hadn’t seen in a long time. Just a way she looked at him, maybe, but it was enough to give the two hope.
Ron rolled over to face his wife. “Something’s different,” he said assuredly.