The Mermaid Disease
1/ Drowning
Crying while scuba diving is generally inadvisable, but Eric Glass had a good reason to let water into his mask via his tear ducts. He completely believed that he was about to die. He would never see his family again.
Oh God. His family. Everyone was supposed to meet up in a week for his fiftieth birthday. Now, instead of a celebration, they would have a funeral. His funeral. And it was completely his fault. Eric would never be able to see his wife, children, or grandchildren ever again.
He should have known better than to agree to go cave diving despite not having been diving in years. When his buddy became too sick to go, he should have stayed home instead of going solo. When he bumped his elbow and dropped his camera, he should have let it sink, no matter how expensive it might have been. When he saw that the camera was just within reach if he did a little wiggling into a narrow part of the cave, he definitely should have given up. But he didn't.
Eric Glass was an idiot, and because of that he was going to die alone, wedged into an uncomfortably tight spot in a dark cave. To top it off, he was running low on air. He should have been heading back up to the surface by then.
At least he had his camera. Maybe someone would eventually find his body and the pictures he took in his final moments. Not that they'd be any good; his vision was blurry with tears. In fact, his vision was becoming so bad that it looked like the shadows were dancing before his eyes.
No … Wait a second … Surely he must be imagining things now, or else he was seeing the tail of a damn huge fish moving through the shadows.
The man blinked rapidly, trying to get the tears out of his eyes. If he was going to die in this cave, he might as well get a decent picture of this monster.
Eric raised his camera, pointed it towards the shadows where he thought the fish was, and clicked the button. With a flash, the cave lit up. What he saw nearly caused him to spit out his mouthpiece in shock. As it was, he dropped the camera that had, partially, gotten him into this mess.
The creature that was crawling in the darkness towards him does not exist. He must have died already and was trapped in some kind of hell. Yep. That's it.
Eric Glass passed out when the thing tried talking to him.
-x-
Kelsea Glass was the only one home when the telephone rang late in the afternoon. She did not even glance at the caller ID before picking up the phone. She assumed the incoming call was from one of her parents checking up on her (Though it was not like she needed checking up. She was eighteen years old, for Pete's sake!) or one of her siblings calling about her dad's birthday party.
The call was not from anyone in her family; it was about her father's disappearance while cave diving earlier that day.
Kelsea was normally the one asking a million questions, but for once in her life she was stunned speechless. She could only listen as the man on the other end of the phone explained that her father had been seen preparing to dive earlier that day. He never surfaced. Considering how much gas his air tanks contained, he should have returned. At that moment officials were trying to gather a volunteer group of divers to investigate what had happened.
She knew what the man on the phone meant to say: They wanted to recover a body.
When the mostly one-sided conversation ended, the girl called her mom. The call was much shorter than the previous one as her mom rushed off to the park where the underwater cave was.
With the reality of the situation finally sinking in, Kelsea studied a framed picture on the nightstand next to her bed. It was of Kelsea and her father on the beach in front of their house. Their blonde hair (well, his was going white) shone in the bight Florida sunlight and their matching gray eyes sparkled with laughter at some forgotten joke.
They looked so happy.
Tears began to flood Kelsea's eyes. She grabbed the picture and held it close as she sat on her bed and sobbed.
-x-
It took Eric a minute to realize that he was actually alive. Truth be told, it was the slight headache that made him realize that he was amongst the living. Nothing like a little pain to make one self-aware.
He was lying on the cold, wet floor of a cavern. Light seemed to be coming in through somewhere above. The sound of water dripping was a bit irritating, but understandable considering the pool of water on the left.
A few things confused him. He had no idea how he had gotten to this particular location considering his predicament when he was last conscious. Also, he had not the faintest idea where his equipment might have gone. A missing camera was easy enough to explain, but two gas tanks was a bit more difficult, especially considering how they had been strapped on to him so well.
The confused man sat up and pulled off the hood of his diving suit. He ran a hand through his hair and asked himself, "How?"
"How?" repeated a masculine voice not belonging to Eric. "You are going to have to be more specific than that."
Surprised, Eric looked around, trying to find the speaker. "Who are you?" Eric asked when he realized that he wasn't going to find whoever spoke. It was just too dark and there were too many shadows in this stupid place.
"You are changing the question."
"How, then," Eric said, "did I get here?"
A laugh echoed through the chamber, though the original had just been a short bark of laughter. "You were in a tight spot, but a good push freed you. Because you were in a precarious location to be resting, I relocated you to here. I may have been a little rough in the handling, though; you humans are fragile creatures."
The word humans sent a shiver down Eric's spine. Its use implied that the man talking to him wasn't so much a man as it was a thing. But that made no sense … Unless … Unless it was the creature he thought he had seen before blacking out.
He didn't want that to be true. He wanted to pretend that in his last conscious moments he had imagined something. The vision of dying men can't be that reliable, right?
His headache grew worse.
Eric combed his fingers through his hair one more time before attempting to stand up. He felt too vulnerable, too useless sitting there. Thankfully, there was more than enough room for the man to stand upright.
"Who – no, what are you? And what have you done with my equipment?" Eric asked as he paced.
"You ask too many questions," replied the voice. A pause. Then, softer, the mystery speaker said, "You walk much better than you swim."
The man froze in his place and bit down on his tongue before he said something unwise in his impatience. He resumed pacing a moment later.
"Your belongings are in a chamber beyond your access," said the nonhuman. Its voice was back to its usual volume. "The only way you will be getting them back is if I wish for you to."
"And do wish it?" Eric was afraid he already knew the answer, but he asked anyway.
"No. You shall stay here until I feel otherwise."
Something inside Eric finally snapped. A long string a curses flew out of his mouth. "Release me!" he yelled. "You can't save me just to leave me here to starve! To die and rot!"
At that, a large handful of green stuff was lobbed out of the water and landed by the man's feet with a splat. He jumped back, startled. His gaze moved back and forth between the green at his feet and the rippling water surface.
"It is seaweed and safe to consume," said Eric's captor. "Eat and then go back to rest, human."
The blond man was not sure whether to be insulted by the nasty looking pile or grateful he was receiving any kind of food.
Eric stopped pacing and sat down, knowing that he could not win this fight. He picked at the seaweed but did not eat any. As he did so, he said, "You never told me who or what you are."
"I am an exile," the voice said. "I have forsaken my people just as they have forsaken me.
"Now look upon my form and make of it what you will."
From out of the water emerged something out of myths and stories. Any hope Eric had that he imagined the creature vanished as the creature pushed and pulled itself entirely out of the water.
The top half of the creature mostly resembled a young man of about twenty years. Dark hair – either dark brown or black, Eric couldn't tell because it was soaked – hung down to just past the chin. Its eyes reflected the little light of the chamber so well that they glowed gold.
What was inhuman about the upper half of the thing was clear because it was bare chested. Gill slits like those of a shark were located at the junction of its neck and shoulders and webbing was located between its fingers. At the creature's elbows, the spines of fins protruded so that when the arm was straight the fin was folded nearly flat against the arm; when its arm was bent the fin was spread open like a fan.
In place of legs, it had a powerful tail of gray scales.
Merman.
Eric hadn't realized that he had spoken out loud until it nodded and turned around. This allowed Eric to see the scales that covered most of its back and the large fin than ran down his spine.
Before the merman went completely in the water it said, "We shall speak more tomorrow." With that, it dove under and vanished from sight.
The man sighed and turned his attention to the seaweed. He really was hungry, so he tried to eat some. He choked seaweed down with a grimace and then leaned back against a wall.
Light still came in from above, so Eric knew that it was not night yet. Nevertheless, he closed his eyes and attempted to rest, seeing as there was nothing else to do but twiddle his thumbs.
-x-
It took Eric forever to fall asleep and the sleep he did get was poor. Sleeping on the cold, hard ground did that to people.
When the next morning came, the blond man found a new pile of seaweed on the ground next to him. He left it there even though he was hungry.
His thoughts returned to his family. By now they would have noticed that he hadn't come home. Maybe they'd have sent in the rescue divers by now, not that divers would have found him alive if he hadn't been saved by the merman. If the divers had gone through the underwater cave already, they definitely missed him.
Regardless, by now his family would have thought him dead.
Gah! He wished there was some way for him to tell his family that he was alive. He'd scream it to the heavens if it meant that an angel would overhear him and pass on the message. (Hey, if fish-men were real then why not people with wings?)
That gave Eric an idea. There was a hole somewhere at the top of the cavern, so maybe if he yelled loud enough someone would hear him. It was a long shot, but worth a try. He leaped to his feet, cupped his hands around his mouth. He was about to yell for all he was worth when he heard the voice.
"No one will hear you, human."
Eric's hands dropped down to his sides as he looked down at the merman. "What do you want?"
The creature raised an eyebrow. "To talk, perhaps strike a deal or two."
"And what do you want to talk about today?" Eric crossed his arms.
"Why is it so important that you return to your people?"
The man's brow furrowed. Was the thing seriously asking him that? He missed being in the sunlight, being dry, eating real food. But most of all: "My people!" Eric threw up his arms in exasperation. "My family needs me."
"I doubt that," the merman said with a sneer. "Why did you nearly die if your family needs you?"
"It was just a stupid accident. I wanted my camera back so I could give pictures to my daughter. I figured she's put a nice one in her journal."
"You have a daughter?"
"Three."
The merman's eyes gleamed with mischievousness at this. "I believe it it time to begin dealmaking."
Eric stared, saying nothing. His stomach growled. It made him mentally wince at the bad timing, but he tried not to externally acknowledge the noise.
"I shall let you give your daughter the pictures. From the moment you leave this cave you will have three days for you or one of your daughters to go into gulf water. No one will die if someone willingly comes to me."
The merman grinned. Its smile was so large that for the first time, Eric saw that it had long and pointy canine teeth. There was not a doubt that the creature could pack a mean bite.
Bastard.
-x-
Crying while mourning for a lost father is generally understandable, but Kelsea Glass had a good reason to refuse to cry. She completely believed that her father wouldn't want her to be sobbing her eyes out any more. The girl gave herself one day to cry all of her tears, and after that she refused to let even one tear run down her pale cheek.
Well, until her dad's body was recovered, anyway. Until then, it didn't feel like he was gone for good.
Kelsea closed her journal after not being able to write a single word for over half an hour. She sighed and wondered what her father would be saying if he could see her now. Probably something like "it's Sunday afternoon, you should be finished with your homework by now."
She rummaged through her backpack for a moment before finding a packet she had to read and answer questions on for homework. She could almost certainly get an extension on the assignment if she wanted to, but at that second she wanted a distraction.
"'The following excerpts are from the journal of Marco Marendilla, the doctor of a Spanish merchant ship in the late seventeenth century,'" Kelsea started reading. When she got to the end of the reading, she nearly tossed the packet into the trash.
Mermaids do not exist, and anything that implies they do is junk.
July 22, 2014: This chapter is dedicated firstly to my friend Aimee, and secondly to anyone who has waited ever so patiently for this update. Thanks for your support and sorry about the wait.
This chapter was hard to write. I began writing more than five different versions of this chapter before realizing that none of them actually started at the beginning! I'm still surprised that I wrote so little about Kelsea and so much about our merman. I promise that in the next chapter we will see much more of Kelsea (and less crying, too).
Please let me know if you spot any mistakes (grammatical or otherwise) or have any questions/comments. I'm super nervous to know what you all think.
Thank you so much for reading!
-Lauren