Trapped with a Way Out

by Jeffery Martinez

  Walter scowled at the bloodied, scuffed up face, with those two large, absolutely oblivious red eyes. The appearance of the red irises and the cleaner, whiter left half of the boy's face - set in deep contrast with the bloodier, grime smeared right half of his face - was absolutely unacceptable. "What the hell happened to your face?" Walter hissed at his nephew, reflecting on the revolting hassle he'd have to go through if child services was called on him. If the bruises, swelling, and numerous lacerations were due to the school bullies, this was just getting ridiculous. The kid hadn't even gone to school today.

  Walter rested his hand against the arm of the couch, leaning over Vincent to get a better look at him. He asked in a more neutral tone, "Did you violate your suspension?"

  Vincent shook his head before his hand went to inspect his cheek, and then jerked away when it stung.

  Figuring what had happened, since he knew about the "little bitch's" sixteen-or-so year old boyfriend, and had received numerous warnings from Joel about how "the kids" might react to Vincent's actions, Walter strode past the couch, pushed open the door to the bathroom, and opened the medicine cabinet. He plucked up some hydrogen peroxide, Neosporin, and two packages of Band Aids which came in various sizes. As he picked up supplies and crammed them into his arm, he muttered loud enough for the boy to hear, "Those brats actually beat you up... A twelve year old. This is-" Walter didn't have the energy to finish the sentence, inundated with bogging frustration. Quietly, he returned to the couch, impatiently snapping his fingers for the boy to sit down, before he sat beside him with a tired, mostly aggravated sigh. The boy looked bad. There would be bruising, there was already swelling, it was hell getting street grime out of these sorts of cuts. Walter had little patience for the tediousness of the task set before him.

  Walter worked on Vincent's face with a wet cotton ball, but he eventually instructed his injured 'patient' to go to the sink to wash off the dirt. At this time, the displeased uncle laid out his questions. He wanted to know who had done it, and why; whether Jake had been present; why Jake hadn't interfered; and how badly Vincent had injured the other boys.

  Returning to the couch, Vincent's capacity to care about his pain was suspended by the thrill of having his uncle assume he'd won his fights. And the nearly giddy child was overjoyed to affirm the assumption. He had kicked the girl's boyfriend in the jaw and knocked him out, but the boyfriend had started it all and had punched first (or, at least, he'd tried to). Vincent roughly guessed at what he'd done to the other boys, hesitantly mentioning the bite, which he'd almost forgotten about.

  The cotton ball left Vincent's face, and he saw his uncle frown. "Biting is how you get diseases."

  "I know." Vincent's chin touched his chest glumly, "I'm sorry-" a slight yip escaped him, as his uncle jerked the injured chin up so he could continue cleaning Vincent's face.

  Walter's eyes were narrowed as he worked, "You might break a tooth one of these days… I should take you to a dentist, sometime. With your genes - you'll be bound to have some sort of problem with your teeth."

  Vincent didn't quite comprehend what his uncle was saying, but nonetheless he tried to participate in the conversation. "Well, my mom was German. Are Germans supposed to have bad teeth?"

  Vincent blinked back at his uncle, as Walter stared at him with an off-putting look of confusion. After a pause, Walter asked blankly, "Your mother was German?"

  "...Yeah?"

  Cringing away, as though his uncle had spontaneously combusted into a fireball, Vincent was somewhat terrified when Walter let out a bark of laughter and then proceeded to chuckle, motioning to Vincent like the kid was some sort of stray cat, to tell him that it was okay to come closer. He carried on with his doctoring, a wry grin continuing to make Vincentimir feel uneasy, "No. Vincent couldn't have married a German woman. He had a very special place in his heart for Germans, and for the Soviets."

  "Well," Vincent pursed his lips, and, thinking back on his dad, and his own personal experience, was quite aware of the fact that all his father's heart had ever contained was hatred (his mother had been the one and only exception). "My mom was adopted, and her adoptive parents were German… and she grew up in Germany. But my dad said, that since we don't know where her parents came from, she wasn't technically German. She could be Romanian, or… something." Vincent trailed off, transfixed on his uncle's face as Walter snickered to himself, chuckling into the back of his hand for a moment as he tried to grapple with this absurd reality.

  "Vincent would say that. ...A German. ...He gave me hell when I was engaged to marry a Russian girl. A real Soviet Russian, at that," Walter snorted. "Do you speak German?"

  The boy nodded.

  Walter snorted again, his amusement leveling and thinning, "I might have a job for you then. Sometime… perhaps."

  The room was quiet for a time. Vincent curled and uncurled his toes and fingers, from both pain and nervous restlessness.

  Finally Vincent opened his mouth again, "Well, my dad never seemed to have gotten over World War II."

  "Your grandfather lost his father in a labor camp, and his older brother in a concentration camp. Vincent took that to heart."

  It was silent after this. Eventually Walter smoothed out the last of the Band-Aids – a medium sized one, to cover the fact that the bridge of Vincent's nose had been scraped raw. At least the damage could be masked, a little. Didn't kids cover themselves with Band Aids for fun these days? "Do your homework if you want." Walter got up to leave, "But you don't need to tonight."

  He then left Vincent on the couch, and went out, a bit late, to meet with Joel.

  Vincent took care of his mashed up fingers by himself. Or, at least, he tried to.

  Far out in the ocean, where the water is blue as the loveliest cornflower and clear as the purest glass, the sea folk live. From the deepest spot in the ocean rises the palace of the Sea King. Its walls are made of coral and its high pointed windows of the clearest amber, but the roof is made of mussel shells that open and close with the tide. This is a wonderful sight to see, for every shell holds glistening pearls, any one of which would be the pride of a queen's crown.

  Now, the Sea King had been a widower for years, so his old mother kept house for him. She was a clever woman, but exceedingly proud of her noble birth, so she flaunted twelve oysters on her tail while the other ladies of the court were only allowed to wear six. She was an admirable woman though, particularly because she was extremely fond of her granddaughters. They were six lovely girls, but the youngest was the most beautiful of them all. Her skin was as soft and tender as a rose petal, and her eyes were as blue as the deep sea, and like all the others her body ended in a glimmering fish tail.

  Every day they would play all day in the palace, down in the great halls where live shells and sea flowers grew on the walls. Whenever the high amber windows were opened the fish would swim in, just as swallows dart in our rooms when we open the windows. However, these fish would swim right up to the little princesses to eat out of their hands and be petted.

  Outside the palace was a huge garden, with deep green kelp trees. Their fruits swelled like succulent peaches, and their blossoms flamed like emerald fire on their constantly waving stalks. A strange blue veil lay over everything down in the sea floor. You would have thought yourself aloft in the air with only the blue sky above and beneath you, rather than down at the bottom of the sea. When there was a dead calm, you could just see the sun far up in the distance, like a golden flower with light streaming from its calyx.

  William Hanna often felt ill at ease floating along the endless blue that seemed to go on forever, with nothing but the dark blue to make her fear the creatures of the deep that might be hidden below, and endless light blue above. Whenever she went out, she would inevitably hover near the ocean floor or the palace walls, but not before looking up at the golden sun far above. At such times, she would wish to reach out to it like a beacon in the dark, or a sort of anchor to steady herself in the endless abyss.

>   "Mein Gott, William Hanna," Schrödinger would say, "You would think the wide ocean was trying to suck you out, the way you cling to the rocks!"

  "Sh-shut up!" she would retort, but still cling to the rocks or duck into the palace just the same.

  As for the surface, nothing gave the princesses as much pleasure as hearing about the world of humans above. The old grandmother would tell them all she knew about ships and cities, people and animals. What seemed nicest to her were the flowers a fragrant and the "fish" floating among their trees singing loudly and sweetly. The old grandmother had to call the little birds "fish," for the princesses would not have known what she was talking about, for they had never seen a bird.

  "When you turn fifteen," the grandmother often said to the little princesses, "you will be allowed to rise up out of the ocean and sit on the rocks in the moonlight, and watch the great ships sailing by. You will see forests and towns beyond the shore as well."

  William Hanna would lean against the royal pillars and listen in rapture to the old grandmother's tales about the surface world. A poor orphan that worked as a chamber maid for the Sea King's royal daughters since her own parents had died in her early childhood, William felt she had little to live for beyond the hope that one day she could visit the beautiful surface world that her own mother used to tell her about.

  Young William could still remember a time when she and her mother and father lived in a great colorful reef near the surface, where the water was bright blue and the surface water sparkled gold during the day and silver at night. She remembered how her beautiful, smiling mother would go on and on about how wonderful the world above. William remembered how her mother used to sit her down on a rock and comb her hair with a piece of coral and try to put live shells and starfish in it as she told her about the surface; but William always used to shake them off and dart around like a squid. She used to love how the water felt running through her wild hair, and how her father used to catch her and spin her around as they played together. She remembered how her mother would smile wryly but hold William' hands and rub her nose just the same, and how they would all lay among the colorful reef plants (as we surface folk would lay among the grass in our fields) and watch fish, turtles, and dolphins swim overhead. William would often grow giddy with excitement and swim around her parents as they laughed and smiled, and told her of the surface animals above.

  That was until the day that the bottomless fathoms came to claim her parents. William remembered how they always went in as the waters grew dark since fearsome sea monsters came out to hunt from the deep. But one day the large toothy creatures came out early and invaded their reef sanctuary, and how they had devoured her parents in water red with blood. William shuddered to remember how she had tried to defend her parents by stabbing the creatures in the eye with a sharp rock, and how she had been bitten through the stomach by jagged rows of sharp monstrous teeth. As she floated there stunned, she had then been knocked aside by a giant fin, and heard nothing but a monstrous roar as her world went black. She had fought to stay awake, but passed out as the waters around her looked and tasted red with her parents' blood, and how the last thing she saw was her mother being devoured by sea monsters.

  She had woken alone and afraid, with all traces of her parents gone. She searched desperately, but saw only the dark and empty ocean at night, with nothing but reef plants that swayed with the tide. This brought the little mermaid more despair than anyone could know. After she had cried herself to sleep the first night she had drifted aimlessly along, not knowing what to do or how to get on without them. The whimpering child had been calmed by the hiss of little eels, and she had followed them as they migrated along a warm ocean current until they drifted into waters enchanted into beauty by the living god known as the Sea King. His sea palace truly was a wonder, yet its beauty was lost on young William. She cared for nothing but her own colorful reef and her smiling parents, who were now gone. Yet, a servant had taken pity on the poor orphan and arranged for her to get a job working as a chamber maid for the Sea King's youngest daughter, and there she remained.

  William felt like the world was dark and bleak when she thought of the abyss below, and bright and happy when she thought of the waters above. One of her mother's greatest wishes was to be there when William came of age so they could sit together on the rocks above the surface, and feel the waves licking at their fins. She wished to comb her daughter's hair above water as they pointed to the clouds in the sky, and watched the gulls as they flew by. William held an image in her mind of her and her mother and father sitting together on a rock above the surface, watching the sun and the clouds and the gulls, with her mother's arms around her waist and her father's strong arms strung protectively around them both.

  For years, William held this image in her heart the way you or I would hold the picture of a loved one in a locket.

  Despite this, William remained dour and unpleasant. She rarely smiled or talked with anyone, and turned away from the royal princesses when they tried to coax her to play. It was not long before they stopped asking her altogether, for she looked just as dark and demonic as the creatures of the deep, with her eyes glowing with hate. However, she did not seek out to hurt anyone, and only tried to be by herself when she was not engaged in some task or another. To that end, she often lashed out at others.

  "Has the chamber maid been causing some problems again?" the Sea King asked one day.

  "Yes, Your Majesty," one of the servants answered, "It appears one of the fish that come in from the windows tried to take a toy she was playing with, and she thrashed it with a rock."

  "What was she doing playing, when she should be working?" the Dowager Queen demanded.

  "T'was her meal time," a servant answered, "I suppose she wanted to pass time before the royal princesses returned from their outing."

  "Yes!" said another, "and now all the other fish are afraid to come into the princesses' chambers since she is here!"

  The Sea King sighed. "None of the other servants have taken to her either," he agreed. "Had she anywhere else to go, I would push her out in an instant. However, if the little maid continues to cause problems, she will no longer be welcome in our Sea Palace."

  For many years, William had held onto her job by a mere thread. Despite her dour attitude, she was a diligent little maid that tended to the youngest princess's royal bedchamber better than even most adults. She was not distracted by play or chatter the way other servants were. She preferred instead to do her work until it was done, and then retire to a shaded place where she could play alone.

  Her only friend in the world was a little sea devil by the name of Schrödinger, who showed up in her life quite suddenly and refused to leave. She did not fully know how they became friends, or even why he liked to be around her, but he seemed quite taken with her from the moment they first met, and never quite decided he wanted to go away.

  It was by chance that William had been in the room when he broke into the Sea Palace just to show he could. He had turned up quite suddenly in the throne room while all the nobles were gathered to have a serious discussion about governing, and he had laughed at their cries of consternation.

  "A Sea Devil? Here?" the Dowager Queen barked.

  "How did he get in?" the Sea King cried.

  "My deepest apologies, majesties!" the captain of the guard had cried, "There did not seem to be any breech in security!"

  "You are wasting your time," the little boy had gloated, "for no guards can catch me! I am everywhere und nowhere!"

  As the Sea King and Dowager Queen simultaneously balked and sneered down on him with contempt, the royal guards scrambled into the throne room and pointed their tridents at him, William had been swimming through the room. She was off to the side, under the pillars that held up the mussel ceiling, with her arms full with the princesses' royal toys. She did not fully understand what was going on, and so looked at him with blank curiosity.

  'He's only a child,' William thought, clutchi
ng the toys to her chest, 'just like me.'

  He looked to be a few years younger than her, and looked remarkably like her except that he was also much more animalistic in appearance. While you and I would think of merpeople as looking completely human except for the fish tail instead of legs and small slivers of gills under their jaws, this boy was almost completely fishlike all over his body. His scales began under his arms instead of his hips, his fingers were webbed and clawed, and his teeth were long and sharp. He also had some sort of fins for ears sticking out of his short blond hair, and he had long barbels (or whiskers for fish) sticking out of his hair and cheeks.

  'What is he?' William thought, 'What is he after?'

  At that moment, the little fin ears and barbels twitched, and he looked right at her. He then stared at her very intently for a very long time, without moving or blinking. William balked at first, but then glared right back. She was very competitive even at her mellowest moments, and did not like to lose staring contests. His eyes were large and silver-green, and glowed in the dark, which seemed to brighten the longer he stared at her. It creeped William out.

  "Stop it!" she finally growled.

  Without breaking eye contact, he bowed his head slightly and said, "Guten tag."

  William gasped. She didn't know how to respond. What did he say? Was he being polite? Rude? Should she be polite back or tell him to bugger off?

  After a bit of an internal debate, William finally sighed and bowed her head. "Guten tag…" she murmured back.

  The boy closed his eyes and chuckled. He then looked at her with that same strange, unreadable expression, and then turned away.

  Being a child at the time, William blew a raspberry and swam away.

  This did not matter though, because he later turned up in the royal gardens after William had put away the little princesses' toys and the guards had chased him out of the royal palace. William gasped when she saw him floating overhead.