“Then what’s the problem?” Ariel questioned, avoiding a Hag dagger that had been lobbed at her.
“Not following,” I called out as I took out a few more with my tail.
“If they’ve already paid, why do we care if they die? There are kajillions of humans.”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that—and kajillions is not a word,” I snapped and shook my head in disgust. “We can’t become the island known for randomly killing humans. First off, it’s wrong… and secondly, it will ruin our business.”
“Well, crap,” Misty complained, hurling a stinky Sea Hag over her head at the others still gunning for her. “Goddess, their breath smells so bad their toothbrushes must pray at night.”
“Or else their teeth try to escape,” Madison said, landing an excellent left hook to the face of a Hag that was trying to drown her. “Oh, wait,” she added with a laugh as she popped up from beneath a wave and sent a sizzling shot of magic right at the Hag. “They don’t have teeth. My bad.”
The normally teal blue sea was awash with blood—theirs and ours. This was the fifth attack in as many days by the heinous Sea Hags. I wasn’t sure how much longer we could take the assaults and come out on top, but my sister Mermaids and I wouldn’t go down without one hell of a fight.
The day had dawned bright and sunny—it had been perfect. Now? Not so much. Normally our island was a peaceful paradise, albeit a bit dated. But this morning the lovely scenery was being polluted by vicious, horrifying Sea Hags who definitely wanted us dead.
This, of course, wasn’t good for business. We had actual paying customers on the island for the first time in months. However, if they were watching the deadly showdown from the beach, I was certain they would be departing immediately.
“Take that!” Ariel growled as she twisted out of the deadly embrace of a Sea Hag and beheaded it with her sharp fin.
“Only a few left. We’ve got this,” I shouted as I dove under a wave to avoid a trio of Hag daggers tossed my way.
The salty air was polluted with the acrid odor of Sea Hag BO and stanky breath that would make one weep. It wasn’t fair. All we wanted to do was live quietly on our island and have some fun. Being attacked by greedy Sea Hags who were trying to take over the Bermuda Triangle wasn’t part of the plan. They’d already taken possession of the two neighboring Mermaid islands and now they were after ours.
Not gonna happen.
I’d welcomed the displaced Mermaids, but it was getting a bit overcrowded on our small parcel of tropical paradise. Whatever. I had no plans to get kicked off of the place we’d called home for the last century. Plugging my nose to avoid the stench, I went for the remaining Sea Hag—of course there were, unfortunately, more where she’d come from but we’d almost dispensed of the twelve that had staged today’s invasion.
Swimming at a speed that almost rendered me invisible, I headbutted the disgusting excuse of a creature and she went flying out of the ocean like a shot from a cannon. Her scream was music to my ears. The force of my attack knocked her arms off. This was excellent. An armless Sea Hag couldn’t throw spells—or Hag daggers. She elevated out of the water about a hundred feet and narrowed her eyes menacingly.
“Bony Velma Dustface demands your surrender,” the toothless Hag hissed as she pointed at me with the toe of her slimy boot. Since her arms were absent, it was all she had. It looked ridiculous.
“You can tell Bony Velma Buttface that she can shove it,” I roared, setting the surface of the sea on fire and watching the Sea Hag scream with fury.
“It’s Dustface, you rude half-fish,” the Sea Hag growled, staying far above the enchanted flames I’d set.
“That’s what I said,” I replied, flipping the idiot the bird.
“You said Buttface.”
“Nope,” I argued. “Clearly you have water in your ears. I said Slutcase.”
“I was pretty sure you said Nutpaste,” Ariel volunteered with a wide irreverent grin.
“Enough. You will be sorry, Tallulah of the Mystical Isle Pod. You will rue the day you were born,” she shrieked.
“At least I wasn’t hatched, Rickety Shelia Clotlegs,” I snarled and silently summoned the sharks.
The sharks despised eating Sea Hags. According to my hammerhead buddies, the Hags tasted like butt. I was completely and happily unaware of what butt tasted like, but I took my friends’ word for it. I would owe them big for getting rid of the dead Hags, but odiferous bodies washing up on the beach wasn’t real appealing to tourists.
“Be gone, you abomination,” I shouted as I waved my hand and created a strong wind sending the flames higher. “Go back to your cave and tell your leader that she can fuck herself.”
“Psst,” Misty said, swimming up to me. “They actually can fuck themselves. Might want to pick another threat.”
“Are you serious?” I whispered. “How did I not know this?”
Misty shrugged. “No clue, dudette. You want me to tell her off?”
“Umm, sure,” I said, still trying to absorb the appalling fact that Sea Hags could do themselves. I supposed it was probably a good thing since no creature in their right mind would want to get within a hundred feet of the hideous beasts.
“Tell old Bony Velma that her farts are so bad she’s been accused of Global Warming. I’d suggest you losers go into hiding before the Stank Patrol arrests your asses,” Misty shouted with a snort of delight, as Rickety Sheila Clotlegs shrieked with fury.
“I will be back and you will be sorry,” she bellowed as she disappeared in a blast of putrid green mist, leaving her fallen comrades floating on the water.
“Did you call the sharks or do we have to clean this shitshow up?” Madison asked, swimming over.
“They’ll be here in five,” I replied.
“Tallulah,” Ariel griped, wiping the blood from her sparkling orange tail as we made our way to shallower waters. “I don’t know how much longer we can hold the Hags off. Our morale is shit, I’ve lost about twenty scales and the humans have all but left the island. Our tourist business is sucking the big one.”
Sighing, I looked at my tiny, battered army of exhausted Mermaids. There were four of us including me. At the moment, it was my sisters and me against a giant army of stinky foes. I was the oldest of my siblings and therefore I got stuck with being the leader. We had others Mermaids in our pod, but we were the only ones strong enough to take on the Hags. The deadly attacks were coming daily and at this point, I wasn’t real sure we would live to see next week.
Ariel was correct about our odds and, sadly, our business. Of course her name wasn’t really Ariel—it was Joan. However, she’d viewed The Little Mermaid so many times she’d adopted the name, much to my horror.
“Actually,” Madison—whose real name was Cindy, but she was obsessed with the movie Splash—chimed in. “Our tourist business has always sucked. Not real sure who thought picking an island smack in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle was a good plan.”
“Quit your bitchin’,” Misty snapped—the only sister that had kept her given name, besides me. “It was reasonably priced, considering we got robbed by that bastard Pirate that Tallulah was boinking a century ago and we had no gold coins left to buy something in a better location.”
“Ya know,” I said, running my hands through my lavender hair and rolling my matching lavender eyes. “It’s not like I’m the only one who boinked an asshole over the centuries—we’re Mermaids—we tend to boink fairly often. Ariel, I believe we just had to take out a restraining order on the Johnny Depp wannabe who trashed the gift shop and peed in the pool when the cruise ship stopped by—ensuring that we are no longer a destination for any of the cruise ship lines.”
Ariel shrugged her slim shoulders and tossed her bright blue hair over her shoulders. “He was hot,” she said in her defense and then giggled. “And a total douche.”
“And Madison,” I pointed out, tired of being blamed for our bad fortune. “You boinked the Dragon Twins who literally fried the e
ntire south end of the island.”
“Fine point. Well made,” Madison agreed with a shudder. “Although it’s too bad that was five years ago. We could certainly use those fire breathers now. It would be fabulous to fry up some Sea Hag and feed it to the sharks.”
“True,” I said with a weary chuckle. “However, I’ve made a call for back up.”
My Sisters of the Sea stared at me in shock.
“What?” I demanded, slapping my tail on the surface of the water and splashing the open mouthed dummies.
“How exactly are we going to pay for backup?” Misty asked. “We’re kinda low in the bank department.”
“I have a plan,” I started only to be met with groans from the ungrateful idiots I presided over.
“Does this plan have anything to do with magicians who incite terror in humans and create massive lawsuits?” Madison inquired with a snicker.
“No,” I snapped. “And Merlin couldn’t help the way he looked. Of course, sawing the human newlyweds in half was a horrifying idea, but other than that he was lovely.”
“He was a twelve hundred year old jackhole,” Ariel pointed out.
“Fine. He was a mistake,” I admitted. “I just thought we needed some entertainment for the humans. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. I fired him and I was able to repair the couple he dismembered.”
“What’s your plan?” Madison asked as she plucked a shrimp from the sea and popped it into her mouth. “Needs cocktail sauce,” she muttered, spitting it back out.
Ignoring her appalling manners, I continued trying to drum up some excitement. “The Hags have an enormous stash of diamonds in their cave. As you can plainly see, the damage they’ve caused to our island makes it only right that we should be compensated for their destruction. And if what I hear is true there will be plenty left over to pay for whomever is being sent to us.”
“Hang on a second,” Misty said, narrowing her emerald green eyes that were identical in color to her long curly locks. “You called for backup and you have no clue who you called?”
“I called the Otherworld Defense Agency. The human owner—Renee—was lovely and promised to send a crew that was good on the sea and deadly.”
Misty’s point hit home in an enormous way. It was insanely irresponsible of me to have agreed to just anyone. However, the Renee woman wasn’t sure who she could find to help us. Desperate times called for shitty measures. Any help would do at this point.
“Better not be fucking Pirates,” Madison grumbled as she waved her hand over her tail and conjured her human legs.
“Pirates hate Mermaids and Mermaids hate Pirates—or at least we do,” Misty stated as she too took on her land body. “Hopefully, they’ll send Selkies. I’m horny and those bastards are hot.”
“As long as it’s not Sponge Bob Square Pants, we’ll be fine,” I said with a laugh as I reluctantly called to my land legs. Being in the water was where I longed to be, but I had a pod to lead and we needed to prepare a few rooms at the crumbling lodge for our mystery hired guns. It hadn’t even occurred to me that Renee could send Pirates. My distress call was a last ditch effort to save my people, our home and our pathetic business.
Besides, it wouldn’t be the one Pirate that I despised more than any other. He would be an idiot to show his face here after what he’d done. Not only did the dumbass abscond with our treasure, the son of a bitch took my heart with him as well.
I’d tear his sorry ass to shreds if he so much as stepped on my island.
3
Pirate Doug
I stared at my three-man crew and sighed dramatically. They stood in a row, all looking extremely guilty—because they were. I’d been sailing the seven seas with the arseholes for two hundred years. I expected better of my mates.
Thornycraft ‘Gunner’ Rowley stared at his fingers. He was missing three of them and his thumb so at least that made some sense to me. However, Bonar ‘Savage’ Thunder and Upton ‘Iron Chest’ Driscol had no such excuse. They were sporting all of their fucking digits.
“Who thought calling my inebriated father was an outstanding idea?” I demanded as I paced the small cabin below the main deck of the ship.
“He did,” they all yelled, pointing at each other.
“Did not, ya greasy haired sea rat,” Upton bellowed at his comrades.
“Wasn’t me,” Bonar swore and narrowed his eyes at the others.
“Yarr are peg-legged bow bunglers,” Thornycraft shouted, pointing at the idiots—or at least he tried. Being partially fingerless had some distinct disadvantages.
I paused for a long moment and rolled my eyes. “What the hell does peg-legged bow bunglers even mean?”
All three stared at each other in confusion as they searched for the answer. Some things were simply better left to the imagination. Deciding it was counterproductive to flummox them even more—not to mention I was also a bit bewildered at this point—I got back to the matter at hand.
“So if none of you arses called my father. Who did?” I demanded.
As if on cue, the bane of my fucking existence—or at least one of them—swooped into the cabin and landed on my shoulder.
“Holly, how many times do I have to tell you that you are not allowed in the house?” I growled, attempting to remain stoic as the scraggly feathered flying shitbag dug her sharp claws into my shoulder and sent an electrical shock through my body.
“Ahoy, Dipshit,” the parrot chirped and dug her claws in deeper.
“Ahh, Captain?” Upton said raising his hand politely.
“Yes, Upton?” I asked, trying not to wince as the vicious avian pecked at my ear.
“The bird’s name is Polly—not Holly.”
“Interesting,” I replied, trying to recall if Upton was correct.
For the life of me, I could never remember the moniker of the pest. It had barnacled itself to me fifty years ago. No matter how many times I’d tried to kill it or leave it in a random port, the soaring shitter always found her way back.
“Are you sure?” I asked, wondering if I could pawn the little bastard off on my father.
“Aye, Captain,” Upton replied, keeping his distance.
Polly or Holly—I still wasn’t convinced—was known to go for the eyes and occasionally, the nuts. A smart man kept a healthy distance from the maniac.
“So Solly,” I growled at the bird.
“Polly,” Bonar corrected me.
“Right. Polly,” I amended. “Are you the scurvy wench that invited my father aboard my ship?”
“Eat me, arsehole,” she chirped and crapped on my shoulder.
The crew stayed warily silent as did I. Thankfully, there had been a pause before the arsehole part of that comment, but I was unsure if she was calling me an arsehole or wanted me to eat hers. The thought was appalling and it was all I could do not to remove my own arm and beat her with it.
“Umm,” I said, carefully gauging my next move. “I’ve already had breakfast so I’ll have to pass. Answer the question or I’ll feed you to the sharks.”
Not that my shark friends wanted anything to do with Polly-Holly-Solly either. They were as terrified of her as we were. The damned bird made the bloodthirsty Gnomes seem like innocent children.
“You’re a dumbarse,” Polly cawed and flapped her wings in my face.
“Your point?” I inquired with an eye roll. I already knew this. I wanted to know if the feathered fiend had called my father. The bird was an idiot.
“Polly want a cracker, douchebucket.”
“What the hell is a cracker douchebucket?” I asked my wide-eyed, cowardly crew who were slowly making their way to the door of the cabin.
“Well…” Thornycraft said, scratching his head. “Me guess would be it’s a vinegar hamper used to hold salted biscuits.”
“Do we have one of those?” I asked, certain Thornycraft was correct.
He was excellent with random bits of bizarre knowledge.
“I do,” Upton announced.
“Go get it, man,” I shouted. “Wally is trying to gouge my shoulder off. I’m dying here.”
“Tis impossible, Captain,” Bonar said. “The parrot would have to behead ye to actually end yer life.”
“It was a finger of speech,” I snapped. “Certainly you’ve heard of that.”
“A finger?” Thornycraft asked, squinting his eyes and pointing to the invisible digits on his hand. “I thought it was a figure of speech.”
“Don’t think. It’s overrated. Get the damned vinegar cookie basket. NOW.”
My crew sprinted from the cabin like the Devil himself was on their heels. Damn it. I was alone with the bird. I thought the surprise visit from my father was hideous, but no, this was much worse.
“So Folly, nice weather we’re having,” I said, keeping the conversation neutral.
“Yep, Doug,” the feathered jackhole replied.
“It’s Pirate Doug. If you’re going to terrorize my ship you will call me by the correct name, Yolly,” I told her. No one called me Doug and lived to tell.
Lolly’s eye roll was outstanding. “Pot. Kettle. Black,” she squawked and flipped me off.
“Whatever,” I muttered, conceding the point. She’d called me Doug to be disrespectful. I called her Dolly because I couldn’t for the life of me remember her name. There was a distinct difference here. Anyhoo, I had a much bigger problem at the moment and I was fairly sure Nolly was at the root of it.
“Umm… I understand my father is on deck. Do you know why he’s here?”
“Yep.”
“Would you like to share?” I asked carefully as I coaxed the bird to my hand.
“Nope,” the parrot answered, settling herself on my arm and piercing an artery.
“Do you hate me?” I asked through gritted teeth, wondering if I snapped her neck if she would survive it.
“Yar Dipshit, gotta feed the fish. Yarr are a mutiny minded platoon splinter. Yar will dance the hempen jig and walk the plank if yar cutlass flappin’ fish stink don’t avast ye,” she squawked.
“My arse is in danger?” I asked, trying to decipher her babbling. The vicious bird was more fluent in Pirate speak than I was.
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