Chapter 5: Lick and Lust

"Hungry, my little poopsies?"

Ariel turned. Carcass colored faces liquefied over her shoulder. They were beautiful faces attached to beautiful fish tails, but bleached from years under the sea. After all, they were mermaids. Mermaids of Lust.

And they needed the seawitch to purge their passions.

The mermaids gathered as the seawitch appeared. The seawitch was a caecilian, an octopus maid both beautiful and voluptuous. A sinner of Wrath, she controlled the ocean and it's creatures, but the mermaids were her favorite pets. The seawitch used mermaids to lure men to their deaths.

It was a symbiotic existence. The seawitch had the power to capsize any ship, but she preferred foreplay. Like a bizarre fisherman, she caught men by using mermaids as bait. The mermaids seduced sailors into the sea where the seawitch waited with open jaws. In this coexistence, the mermaids sated their desires and the sea witch sated her wrath for mankind .

"My lovelies." The seawitch purred. "Come to me."

Ariel swam with her sisters and together they groveled to the seawitch like worms. Breathing in octopus ink, she lowered as the oil coated her lips and nostrils. The seawitch's tentacle caressed her red hair all the way to the birthmark on her lower back - a vertical infinity knot with an inverted heart.

Ariel, like her sisters, was a mermaid of Lust. She played the seawitch's game to kill sailors with suffocating kisses, strangling tongue, and venomous love songs. And Ariel never swayed from the practice or doubted the seawitch's command, because it quenched her lust.

Until today. Until she saw the boy...and helped him steal from Captain Hook.

Ariel turned for fear the seawitch would read her mind, but also to hide a very small smile. The boy was nothing particularly special, she'd drown all manner of men before. The boy had wild, ratty hair to match a wild, ratty comportment. His face was hard as stone, but when Ariel swam beneath him she saw a baby button nose and soft, teal-grey eyes in the boy's reflection.

Ariel wanted him. His arrow hit her heart and she burned with desire, more than ever before. But she wanted him not just once. Not just twice. Not just thrice. Not just for a kiss. Not just until he drowned in the fathoms below. She wanted the boy forever.

So, Ariel helped the boy. Rising from the murk, she swam him to the Jolly Roger and escorted him back to shore. Without Ariel's buoyancy and speed, the boy would have never escaped Captain Hook's pirates because he had kidnapped a girl.

Ariel ached to free the boy, especially with the girl. But his grateful smile was well worth the ache. It also gave Ariel a devilish idea. A idea to become part of his world.

"My lovely, dovey, poopsie, woopsies."

The seawitch rolled her tentacle under Ariel's chin. Ariel lifted as the suctions pushed against her glands.

"Tell mommy…." the seawitch twirled upwards, tentacles spinning like a saw. She pointed the bottom of a longboat outlined by moonlight. "...who's hungry?"

In unison the mermaids rose. Flicking around the seawitch they surrounded longboat, singing a haunting hymn.

Ariel snaked between her sisters as they vied for possession of the sailors aboard the longboat. Normally she partook in the petty frenzy, but this time she refrained. The image of the boy was locked in her memory, and Ariel was disinterested in the new prey.

"What's the matter dearie?"

Ariel hissed. A mermaid with shimmering orange hair scratched her back. She slashed as the redhead laughed and a blonde squeezed her chest.

"Poor dearie." the redhead sneered. "Too ugly tonight?"

Ariel thrashed. Twisting over the readhead and thumping her aquamarine tail, she seized an oar. The sailor released and Ariel sunk. Gleefully the mermaids darted by and lifted over the lip of the boat.

BANG.

Ariel jerked back. Two of her sisters, Attina and Arista, veered from the longboat as the blonde dropped from the rail, a bullet hole in her head.

The seawitch watched the mermaid sink. She snorted at the blood draining from the mermaid's forehead like red smoke.

"My poor little poopsie." Furiously, the seawitch looked up. Then, snapping together her eight tentacles she and the mermaids vaulted to the surface.

"Pirates!"

Water peeled from Ariel's face. She attacked the longboat as her sisters cried the pirate's name. "Captain Hook!"

Captain Hook grinned. "Ladies." he aimed his pistol between Ariel's eyes. "Lovely evening to catch a thief?"

"...thief?" Ariel choked. She lifted her deep blue eyes. "How did you know?"

Captain Hook frowned. The pistole lowered, just a touch. "Say again? Little maid?"

"Captain Hook." The seawitch seized the boat. It teetered and swallowed water.

The mermaids edged closer as Captain Hook scurried up the side. Captain Hook was an irresistible human; almost as irresistible, but far more unapproachable, than Peter Pan.

"Captain Hook." the seawitch pushed her tentacles up Captain Hook's legs. "You sail my seas and slaughtered my mermaid?! Tch. Tch. Wrath does not become you! Goes terribly with that hat! How about a little Lust…"

"Ursula! You seawitch!" Captain Hook picked the bulbous tentacles, water to his knees. "Fetch your sirens, or incur my wrath!"

"Too late." Ursula tipped the boat. "How about a taste of mine?"

"I have orders from the Horned King."

Ursula paused, Captain Hook suspended over the sea.

"The Horned King?" Slowly, Ursula replaced the boat. It bobbed as she slunk to the opposite side, between the captain and shore. "What orders?"

Captain Hook straightened his magnificent hat. He snatched Ariel's gaze below the brim.

"Follow me."

Captain Hook lead the procession with the seawitch and mermaids undertow. Ripples spreading from her beating heart, Ariel kept the pirate within her gaze. She knew from the angle of Captain Hook's head, he kept her within his.

"At last." Sand crunched beneath the longboat as Captain Hook crossed ashore. As Ariel surfaced, she could hardly hear the captain over hysterical giggles and growls. "The Hyenas of Glutton. Land ho."

Ariel stared. And as a half digested rib cage splashed into the water and smattered her face, she almost fled.

The hyenas were disgusting.

"OOo-oooheoOoo!" A frenzied, swollen-eyed hyena chased the mermaids. He snapped, slipped, and chewed himself when the mermaids escaped.

"Well, well, well. " A thick lipped, spikey haired hyena prowled the waves. She turned to Banzai, her bald mate. "What have we here, Banzai?"

"Hmmm. I don't know Shenzi." Banzai leered at the mermaids. "Looks like pretty fishy. What do you think, Ed?"

"OOo-oooheoOoo!" The swollen-eyed hyena laughed. Crazily, Ed chomped the saliva hanging from his nose. "OOo-oooheoOoo! OOOOOEEHEHHEOOO!"

"Yeah, just what I was thinking." Banzai growled as the hyenas circled Captain Hook. "A bunch'o trespassers!"

"Quite on purpose, let me assure you." Captain Hook replied. "I have orders. A message from the Horned King."

"Horned King?" Shenzi shrieked. "Do you mean old moose head?"

"Yeah!" Banzai snorted. "What's got his goat?"

"And how the devil..." Shenzi growled, "...did he think you'd get out alive?

Ariel tensed. She swore the pirate flexed his iron hook.

"Have you heard of the Clamshell Prophesy?" Captain Hook whispered, hand drifting to the hilt of his sword.

The hyenas grinned. "Doomsday. And get ready pie-rat cause here it comes."

"And do you know…" Captain Hook drew his sword. "...what happens at the end of the world? The panic. The terror. The…."

Captain Hook pointed at the hyena's birthmark, a bloated infinity knot .

"...schmorgesborg."

The hyenas perked. Ed cocked his ears. "Eeeeeoeep?"

Chin underwater, Ariel grinned. She feared Captain Hook but his eloquence was inspiring; with a few magic words, he had the hyenas eating right out of his hand. Rather, his hook.

Ariel inched closer. She tracked Captain Hook as he addressed the assemblage of sinners.

"The Clamshell Prophecy, dictated by the Blue Fairy - "

The mermaids spit. The hyenas snarled.

"- foretells the apocalypse! Doomsday! The end of the world! And it is addressed…" Captain Hook directed his sword. "...to sinners! Not angels! Not saints! Sinners!"

"Sinners?" The hyenas howled. "Doomsday for sinners? That's us!"

"No wonder we're dangling at the bottom of the food chain!" Shenzi barked.

"Man I hate dangling!" Banzai extracted his claws. "This don't sound like a schmorgesborg!"

"wehOOooeeha!" Ed agreed.

Shenzi darted at Captain Hook. "This stooge is playing us a hoax! Arf-"

A bullet skimmed Shenzi's snout. The hyena's yapped as Captain Hook brandished his pistol.

"Now listen. All you mongrels and sea urchins." Captain Hook growled. "Allow me to be perfectly clear. The Clamshell Prophesy is coming true. And the Horned King demands the prophetic clamshell be found and delivered to him."

"So…." Banzai flapped a paw at the mermaids. "...shouldn't you be asking them? Clamshell? Fish? Under da sea?"

The pistol clicked in Banzai's face.

Shenzi retreated. Ed wet himself.

"The clamshell is a metaphor." Captain Hook continued as Banzai gulped, "A person. A person that the Horned King believes to be a little girl. A little girl named Wendy, with a blue bow in her hair. Wendy was stolen from me before I could deliver her to The Horned King. She was stolen this very night by…."

Captain Hook glanced at Ariel. His eyes flashed red as he completed the sentence.

"...by a thief. A thief of Greed."

Ariel shrunk as the seawitch climbed ashore. The hyenas jittered anxiously as her tentacles gripped the earth.

"A thief of Greed and a little girl. Two little fish lost in a little fishy pool." Ursula traced a tentacle across the captain's lower back. "And the Horned King wants us to find them?"

"What's in it for us?" blurted Banzai.

"What are our perks?" Shenzi said.

The hyenas slit their stained yellow eyes.

Captain Hook smiled. Delicately, he selected a single word to answer both the sinners of Glutton and Lust.

"Flesh. When Doomsday comes you will feast on the panicked, sprawling, helpless loins of mankind."

Ursula curled her tentacles. "Agreed."

Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed lead the hyenas' celebration. Delirious in excitement and hunger, they prepared for the hunt.

"The thief you can eat. Or…" Captain Hook flourished o the mermaids. "...what have you. But the girl stays. She must be delivered to the Horned King at The Crossroads. Alive."

"Aw!" moaned Banzai.

"Man!" sulked Shenzi .

"OOo-oooheoOoo!" Ed said.

"Not to worry." Captain Hook nodded behind the hyenas. "I've brought a friend to help curb your appetites. My gluttonous hyenas...meet the Beast of Wrath."

Ariel did not see The Beast, she only saw his shadow and heard his breath. But, as the mermaids submerged and the hyenas laughed, a hook crossed her throat.

"I've been told…" Captain Hook dragged Ariel into the air. "...that redheads must never be trusted. Tell me."

Ariel gagged. Captain Hook dug his fingers into her neck.

"Before you spoke of the thief. What do you know? What…" Captain Hook squeezed. "...have you done?"

Ariel thrashed. Her fins grazed the water.

"I…."

"Quickly." Captain Hook said. "Like a fish out of water, my dear. Or do I have to feed you to the hyenas - "

"I want to sell my soul."

Captain Hook stopped. Startled, he stared at the mermaid.

"You what?"

"I want…" Ariel gasped, hook cutting into her skull, "...to be...a Devil Incarnate. Sell the Devil...my soul."

Captain Hook paused. Then he released.

Ariel crashed. Water cleared her head and poured into her lungs. But before she could escape, Captain Hook seized her brilliant red hair.

"Why?"

Ariel gazed. Then, she coiled her aquamarine tail into the moonlight.

"I want legs."

Captain Hook was stunned. He stared, unable to reply.

Ariel smiled.

"If I have legs, then I can have the thief. And The Devil…." Imperceptibly, Ariel wrapped a hand about his iron hook. "...can have the girl."

Ariel lifted the captain's hooked hand.

"Do we have a deal, Captain Hook?"

No one saw the mermaid and pirate shake. The hyenas tripped dizzily beneath the shadow of a Beast, and the mermaids dreamed wicked fantasies beneath the shadow of a seawitch.

Only one witnessed the bargains made that night. One that slipped silently away, in search for the thief of Greed and a girl with a blue bow in her hair.

"Hey!" Banzai sniffed. "You smell that?"

Shenzi peered into forest. She smelled the spy's tracks. " Oh yeah! I smell it. Half dog?"

Banzai grinned. "Half wolf?"

Together the hyenas turned. "Ed?"

"OOo-oooheoOoo!" Ed cackled, insane for the scent of a half dog - half wolf. "OOo-oooheoOoo! OOOOOEEHEHHEOOO!"