AN: I really like mermaids! I think fishpeople as a rule are pretty cool + spooky. This story isn't actually about mermaids though. Anyway, here are two short online comics about mermaids that you should read immediately: how to be a mermaid by Maya Kern and The Prince and the Sea by Emily Carroll. (Blood + death warning for both of them.)
Warning for slurs, blood and cannibalism.
Quinn was peacefully picking her toenails on the upper deck when she heard Santana start cursing very loudly. Which, in itself, wasn't any more noteworthy than the sun rising at dawn; but this time, the reason for it was definitely rather unusual.
"Fuck! Fuck fuck fucking fuck! It's a siren!" Santana shouted, stomping her boots for probably no other reason than dramatic effect. "I knew we should have brought Kurt along. Britt, my love; Quinn, you ugly dyke, get over here! We've got a siren!"
"Great," Quinn groused, making her way over to her captain as slowly as she could. "First we run out of bacon, now this."
Santana was already gripping the sailing line, one foot planted on a conveniently placed crate. "Britt, you should take the wheel," she said. "Your bisexuality is our only chance."
Quinn rolled her eyes. "This is ridiculous. We're all gonna die."
"Quinn, these may well be my last moments on this shitty planet. Stop being such a wet blanket and watch me make out with my hot girlfriend."
Brittany hummed in agreement and tugged Santana to her, dipping her low and kissing her thoroughly. Santana whimpered and pressed herself closer to Brittany, sliding her hand under her shirt. Quinn rolled her eyes again.
Finally pulling Santana back up and letting go of her lips, Brittany tucked away a strand of hair and said, "Oh, right, I've got earplugs."
Quinn took the two crumpled earplugs Brittany handed her and scowled.
"Okay, we're almost within hearing range," Santana said. "Britt, go try to steer us to safety. Quinn, let's hope these earplugs are enough to counteract the overwhelming potency of your sexual frustration, huh?"
Quinn scowled harder. "Shouldn't we at least tie ourselves to the mast or something?"
"No time! Q, put in your earplugs! Or be a surly asshole and die, whichever."
They put their earplugs in just in time for an inhuman melody to start reaching their ears.
"It's working!" Santana shouted excitedly. "I feel absolutely no urge to stuff my face full of weird fishperson tongue! Yes! Another victory for lesbian pirates!" She started performing a victory dance, but Quinn was no longer looking at her.
Quinn felt like she was in a dream. A sweet, enthralling, achingly beautiful dream, filled with promises and possibility and a certainty so strong it was strangely comforting. The faint sounds that filtered their way to her ear were pulsing in her veins, making her heart dance and her nerve endings tingle.
Her earplugs were in the way. It was inconceivable to her now that she'd ever want to dampen the powerful, raw beauty of this song. This voice should never be shut out! It should be embraced, openly, in all its horror and its majesty. She plucked out the earplugs and stepped boldly towards the ship's edge.
"Quinn? What are you doing?" Santana yelled and lunged for her, but Quinn was quick and already too far away. "No!"
Quinn stripped off her shirt and threw it carelessly aside. She kicked off her boots. She turned her head to give Santana one last smile, to show her it was all right, she was making the right choice, the only choice that made sense.
And then she jumped.
"Quinn!" she heard Santana scream after her.
She hit the water with a deafening splash, but she was too full with the siren's song to feel the pain. After a brief moment to regain her bearings, she started swimming in the direction of that magnificent voice. The sea was agitated and the waves tireless, but Quinn was a goddamned pirate, so the swim, while utterly exhausting, was not completely impossible.
Finally, panting and shaking and dripping like a drowned puppy, she reached the group of jagged rocks from which the song was emanating. And on the tallest, mossiest, pointiest rock, wearing nothing but seaweed and salt and beads, reclined the siren, a pile of seashells at her feet. She was sitting with her knees far apart and her head tilted back, eyes half closed, playing with a necklace that seemed to be made of pale, sharp fragments of bone. She sang ceaselessly, hauntingly, like sighing, like breathing, like water flowing and blood spilling and flesh rotting into nothing.
She was lovely and fascinating and horrifying in a way that pounded away underneath Quinn's skin, burrowing into her and reeling her in.
Quinn started climbing the rock, slipping on the moss and cutting herself on the edges, the blood making the climb ever more slippery. Eventually, with one last herculean effort, she managed to haul herself onto the top of the rock.
As she kneeled there, huffing and spluttering and spitting salt water, the siren suddenly stopped singing, and slowly, slowly, turned her head to face Quinn. Her dark, dangerous eyes took in Quinn's soaked and shivering form. Her gaze seemed to linger a moment on Quinn's naked breasts, but perhaps it was just Quinn's imagination.
"Oh," said the siren, in a voice as expressionless as it was intoxicating. "You're a woman."
"Yes, I am!" Quinn agreed eagerly. "And I have never in my life loved another woman as deeply and truly as I love you!"
The siren frowned. "Don't worry," she said in her complex and somber voice. "It should wear off in a few minutes, now that you've interrupted my song."
"My love for you is everlasting, my lady," Quinn hurried to reassure her. "It will never fade."
"I have lived for millennia," said the siren. "I've seen loves deeper and truer than you will ever be capable of. They all fade, in the end. And I'd say you have no more than five more minutes before you start screaming, human."
Quinn shook her head fervently. "That's not true! Why would I scream? I am next to my one true love. I couldn't be happier."
"You are under the spell of my song," the siren told her. "But it's only a spell. Nothing true about it."
"The spell of your song?" Quinn repeated. Something was niggling in the back of her mind, but she couldn't reach it through the wonderful fog that filled it.
The siren looked away, her gaze fixed somewhere along the vastness of the sea. "Men always come for my song," she said. "Human men, ugly and graceless and smelling like misery and pork. My song isn't for them, but they always come. So I devour them and wear their bones to remain fashionable. It's a far nobler cause than they deserve."
"Are you going to devour me?" Quinn asked her, excited.
"No," said the siren. "But I won't help you, either. You've arrived at this predicament by your own foolishness. You can find your own way out of it."
"If you don't sing for the men, why do you sing?" Quinn asked.
"I sing for Persephone, my eternal love," the siren replied, a pronounced wistfulness in her voice.
Oh, Quinn thought. Oh.
"Then… why did you stop singing?" she asked her.
The siren looked at her sharply. "Because I want you to leave."
"Leave?" Quinn repeated. "But I… I want to stay… forever…"
Without warning, the fog inside Quinn's head abruptly lifted. The overwhelming desire and awe were gone, and the reality of her situation finally sank in: she was sitting in front of a siren. A frothing, ravenous, flesh-eating siren.
A frothing, ravenous, flesh-eating siren that was looking right into her face, with an expression that managed to be inscrutable and contemptuous all at once. "Here we go," she said.
"Fuck!" Quinn shouted. "I can't fucking believe this. Shit! Why the fuck am I topless?"
"My guess would be you discarded your shirt in your furious frenzy to reach me," the siren informed her mildly.
"Fucking fuck!" Quinn pulled at a group of her hair. "I hate myself."
The siren eyed her with a look that seemed to say, With good reason.
"You said you weren't going to eat me, right?"
"Yes."
"Yes? You're not gonna eat me? Okay, that's good. That's very good. That's – wait. Why not?"
"Why not," the siren repeated, voice dripping with disdain. "Do you want me to eat you."
"Of course I don't!" Quinn quickly replied. "But why wouldn't you?"
The siren gazed at her for a while. "I'm sure you are delicious," she said finally.
"I am! I'll have you know my muscles are very well developed, and I'm young and healthy, probably very tender, and – well, fuck," she finally caught herself. "Please don't eat me, I'm probably disgusting. And my bones are so unfashionable, I swear."
The siren looked at her sternly. "Go to sleep, human," she said. "It's dark out, and I'm given to understand that your feeble constitution requires regular prolonged rest periods."
Quinn wanted to protest, but she did in fact feel a bone-deep exhaustion like she hadn't experienced in a long while. Whether it was due to the long swim and climb or the overpowering, invasive magic of the siren's song, she couldn't say. But either way, she just really wanted to lay her head down for a while.
Just as she fell asleep, she heard the siren slip back into song. That night, Quinn's dreams were saturated with yearning, loss, and indescribable wonder.
When she woke up, for one disoriented moment, Quinn felt the customary urge to grab something and throw it at Santana. Preferably a rotten potato. But then she saw the siren, who was weaving seaweed into her hair, and remembered that she wasn't on the ship anymore, and Santana wasn't here to wake her up in an aggravating fashion. She was on a rock in the middle of the sea with only a carnivorous monster for company. And she also had no potatoes.
"Hello, human," the siren said to her when she noticed she was awake. "You must be feebler than I'd assumed. Your rest period was exceptionally lengthy."
Quinn scowled at her. "I'm hungry."
"Yes, very feeble," the siren said, nodding subtly to herself.
"I'm going to staaaarve…" Quinn whined.
"You won't starve."
"I'm starving!"
"It's been less than a day. Have some dignity, human."
"My name is Quinn!" Quinn cried, sitting upright. "Quinn Fabray! And I. Am. Starving!"
"Then go catch yourself some fish, Quinn Fabray," the siren told her.
Quinn deflated a little. "I can't. I don't know how to fish."
"Aren't you a fisherwoman?"
"No! I'm a pirate."
"Isn't that the same thing?"
"No! We board trader ships and rob them pantsless. We do not fish."
The siren curled her lip in disgust. "That is despicable."
"Yeah?" Quinn said, raising her eyebrow. "Well, you are a cannibal."
"I am not. I only eat human men," the siren said.
"And we only rob human men," said Quinn.
The siren regarded her silently for long enough to make Quinn squirm. Then, she said, simply, "I see."
Quinn resisted the urge to fidget with her hair and try to cover her bare chest. The siren's gaze was incredibly discomfiting. "Hey, siren," she said, injecting her voice with as much forced confidence as she could manage. "What's your name?"
The siren continued to stare at her. For a moment, Quinn thought she might have detected a trace of regret, or maybe anger, in her face. But then she looked away.
"You can call me Rachel," she said.
"Rachel," Quinn repeated quietly. "Kind of a strange name for a siren, huh?"
Rachel didn't respond. Subtly, she dusted off some of the dried salt that encrusted her skin, and, in an impossibly graceful, fluid motion, she jumped off the steep rock and into the water below as casually and comfortably as a foot into a well-worn sock.
Realizing she'd been staring in wordless admiration, Quinn quickly stumbled to her feet and cupped her hands around her mouth. "Hey!" she called after Rachel, who had already swum several feet away. "Are you just gonna leave me here?" Rachel swam on, showing no signs of having heard her at all. Quinn dropped her arms. More quietly, she added, "Alone?"
Hours passed, and eventually the sun began to set again. Quinn occupied herself with building castles out of pebbles and halfheartedly gnawing on her arm in hunger, only to conclude that cannibalism just wasn't for her. It was hard, and kind of painful, and didn't seem all that appetizing.
She imagined Rachel picking her teeth with a human finger bone and burping loudly, and couldn't help laughing at the image.
Quinn was lying on her back, wriggling her toes and drawing random shapes on her stomach with her own blood when Rachel suddenly emerged from the water, dragging behind her a string of fish tied with algae.
"What's that?" Quinn grumbled, not bothering to sit up. "Your dinner?"
"No," said Rachel. "It's yours."
Quinn bolted upright at that. "They're for me?"
"Yes," Rachel said.
"Really?"
"Yes," Rachel repeated.
Quinn laughed delightedly, and then she looked at the fish and sniffed.
"Am I… supposed to eat them raw?" she asked Rachel, wrinkling her nose.
"Yes."
"Can't you build me a fire so I can at least roast them a little?"
Rachel grimaced and wrinkled her own nose. "What are you? A savage?"
Quinn pulled a face at her. "Just give it here."
Rachel handed her the string of fish, as well as a glass bottle filled with a clear liquid that turned out to be fresh water.
Quinn bit into one of the fish, chewed and swallowed. It was gamey and smelly, but not really so bad.
"Hey, Rachel," she said, smiling sheepishly. "Thank you."
Rachel nodded and walked away again, hopping deftly from rock to rock.
"…and that's why I'm never ever eating pickled cabbage again," Quinn concluded her fourth food horror story in a row.
"You are very preoccupied with the consumption of edibles, Quinn Fabray," Rachel observed.
"Thank you, Rachel the man-eating siren," Quinn replied solemnly.
Rachel said nothing for a while, her eerily unwavering gaze fixed on Quinn. Finally, she said, "I once ate a crab as big as you."
Quinn perked up. "Really? What was it like?"
Rachel hummed shortly, but the hint of melody was enough to momentarily sweep Quinn back into a delirious haze.
When she resurfaced she discovered a cold, slimy hand placed lightly on her shoulder. She shivered.
Immediately, Rachel removed her hand and looked away. "The meat was rather tender, but I enjoyed the shell," she said. "It had a… crunch."
"Oh," Quinn said articulately.
"Yes," said Rachel, and got up on her feet. "I will go… elsewhere… now." She climbed down and disappeared behind another rock.
Quinn wanted to call after her, but she couldn't quite manage. All she could think about was that strange slippery hand on her shoulder, and how, oddly enough, its touch wasn't really unpleasant at all.
Time passed, and no glimpse of Rachel. Quinn took to using the fish bones and pebbles to play tic tac toe, but it wasn't particularly entertaining. She already knew all of her own strategies.
Finally, she spotted a tiny figure in the distance, approaching in her direction. But as it got closer, she realized: that wasn't Rachel. It was a rescue boat.
That this occurrence was actually disappointing to her was a very strange realization to make.
"Quinn!" a familiar voice called to her from the small boat. "Quinn Fabray!"
Squinting, Quinn recognized Kurt's smug face.
"Kurt!" she called back to him. "I can't believe this! What are you doing here?"
He rowed closer and threw her a rope. "Well, apparently I am Kurt Hummel, homosexual for hire. According to your endlessly charming captain, at least." He sniffed. "Anyway, I'm here to rescue you. Come along."
"Wait! I have to say goodbye!"
"What? To whom?"
"To Rachel. Rachel! Where is she?"
"Who is Rachel? Your new pet sea slug?"
"No, she's the si– the, uh, never mind. Um, hold on just a second." She swept an armful of pebbles to her and quickly arranged them in the form of a short message. "Okay. Let's go." She tied the rope to a strong corner of rock and started climbing.
"I brought Blaine with me," Kurt told her. "Don't complain."
"Fantastic. Like I haven't heard enough singing for a lifetime."
"What did I say about complaining," Kurt sing-songed. Probably on purpose. "We are currently in the process of saving your life and all."
"Yeah, yeah. You'd better have some decent food with you."
"We've got Mercedes on cooking duty, what do you think?"
Quinn released a blissful sigh, spared the siren's rock a last glance, and followed Kurt into the rescue boat.
And on the siren's rock, all that was left were some bare fish bones, some dark smudges of Quinn's blood, and a haphazard message spelled in pebbles:
Rachel,
I'll find you.
Don't stop singing.