le Mermaid Who Loved Too Much
Chris Van Dyk
Copyright 2013 Chris Van Dyk
Licensing Statement
“Call Me Ishmael…”
“Kevin, oh my God, man. Stop with that.”
“What’s wrong with Kevin?”
“Ever since we reached the freaking Arctic he’s been going on and on about this Ishmael crap. He just stands there at the hull, staring out to sea.”
The three sailors weren’t particularly fond of each other, but after three months underway, it was either get along and make small talk or degrade into total anarchy. Because they were in a poorly charted territory without even so much as a satellite signal, they decided that some form of human contact was better than nothing.
The idea of cannibalism had not been ruled out, however.
Tense work relations around the office aside, there had been relatively little violence other than an eye-gouging here and there. Those were to be expected though. Sadly, many like Kevin were slowly making the glorious descent into madness.
These really aren’t men to be pitied, however. They signed up for a whaling expedition. Half of them signed on for the wanton violence of murdering an animal of intelligence; the other half were running from everything ranging from gambling debt to the mercenaries hired by their ex-wives (plural for each singular man) looking for alimony.
One was running from Home Depot as a corporation and refused to talk about why.
“Has anyone even seen this ‘beige whale’ we’re supposed to be trying to harpoon?”
“There it is.”
“Where?!”
“Over there, in the distance.”
Three sets of eyes squinted into the distance at the off-white mass on the horizon.
“You’ve been pointing at that for over a month. A month, James.”
“Captain Rehab says that’s the whale. We’ve been going after it full-speed ahead this whole time.”
“Creepy… it’s like it knows we’re coming for it.”
“The rivalry runs deep, man.”
On the bridge the man known as Captain Rehab stood in solitude. He was a grave man. He lost a leg to a shark attack. He lost his hand in a bar fight. He lost his eye when a seagull pooped in it and… well, he’d only had the hook-for-a-hand for a day at that point.
He stood with a vigilant watch. However, if his men weren’t afraid of getting tetanus from that nasty hook of his, they’d realize he wasn’t watching the beige whale ahead of them. He was looking back…
She glided effortlessly through the freezing, murky waters. Her wild, penetrating eyes could see through the depths of the oceans as easily as a clear swimming pool. Locks of long, reddish hair flowed behind her, an underwater mane of fire.
Her razor sharp nails were chipped from piercing the scaly armor of her prey. Her jagged teeth still harbored a small boneyard of said prey.
Barnacles clung to her tale and the pale skin of her upper body.
In her excitement she breached the water and dove deep, all but disappearing into the depths. As suddenly as she vanished, she rocketed back to the surface and leapt again for all she was worth.
It was happening. It was finally happening. After trailing that giant metal whale thing for months, she was finally going to be with the strange land thing she loved!
It happened seven years ago.
She was swimming along as sea creatures often do when the smell of blood caught her attention. Not wanting to miss a hunt, she dashed through the currents like a living torpedo.
It was a shipwreck. A whaling vessel had bitten off a bit more than it could chew with a particular quarry. The beige whale, still with a harpoon in its side, swam past the mermaid with a great sense of urgency.
“Hi, Frank,” she said in a blasé tone.
“Hi, Adrian. Don’t go back there. Those psychotic apes are out for blood!”
“Did they stick that thing in you?”
“Yeah. Jerks. Something about ‘vengeance’ or some other nonsense. Hey… since you have hands, would you mind…?”
“Not at all, Frank.”
After moments of tugging and straining and absolutely zero ability to get any form of traction in the water, Adrian managed to dislodge the comically large harpoon from Frank’s side out of sheer willpower and rage.
“Thank you! Now, I have to go. Tim’s back there having a time with those guys. Last I saw he had the crazy one with the sharp, pointy stick gun by the… what are those strange appendages called?”
“Legs?”
“Yeah, those! Creepy things. Anyway, he had the guy. I better get going before he smells me. I’ll probably bleed out and die in a few days. Feel free to come grab a bite for dinner when I do.”
“Bye, Frank!” Adrian called cheerfully. Nice guy, that Frank.
Of course, these underwater conversations don’t take place in English. The author has taken great pains to translate them for you. All you would have heard were a series of screams and clicks that make your nightmares seem like a happy place.
Adrian swam on and eventually came to the rubble of the sinking ship.
Wow. Frank really did a number on these guys. One was flailing at the great white shark named Tim that was busy tearing off his leg.
“Tim!” Adrian called. “Did you leave any for me?”
Whoa.
This guy… this one wasn’t creepy at all. He was hot. That scraggly hair, that brilliant bald spot, those wide eyes of distilled terror.
“Oh, Tim! Let that one go,” Adrian pleaded. “I like him. I’d like to keep him as a pet.”
Tim was having none of it. He twisted and jerked. With startling suddenness, the leg popped off. He swam off a distance while he chewed and swallowed (sharks have surprisingly good table manners) and then circled back for another attack.
“Don’t worry, beautiful man-creature,” Adrian said in her native language of strange shrieking sounds. “I’ll save you!”
With that, she grabbed the man that by now you’ve probably guessed is Captain Rehab and swam through the water. She led Tim on a pretty interesting chase that culminated in her stabbing him in the face with a crustacean. Unfortunately, she forgot that primates need oxygen to survive.
Rehab blacked out either due to lack of oxygen, loss of blood, terror, or all three. When he came to, he was on his back on the sandy beaches of a beautiful island. He was staring at a vibrant, azure sky. His stump had been bandaged with seaweed. And looking down at him was the single most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.
“Why… hello,” he managed.
She smiled and revealed her rows of vicious, predatory teeth.
“Ah! Oh God no!”
He thrashed feebly in an effort to escape as she attempted to sooth him in her demon language. The flailing made the bandages on the stump come loose, so now he was getting sand in there. To make matters worse, he had just enough lucidity left to look down and see…
A tail?
He blacked out again. But his shipmates found him later, unconscious and being violated by what they thought from a distance was a very strange seal.
Now, after all these years, she had her love in her sights. He had strange appendages now, he’d lost even more hair, and he had put on weight – which she assumed meant he had matured to being able to fertilize a clutch of eggs. What a glorious wedding night they would have!
The sun was setting to her left. She must hurry. With psychotic, gleeful thoughts racing through her demented little mind, Adrian sped through the water as she sang her siren song…
Captain Rehab awoke when someone was banging on his cabin door.
“Wh
o the devil is it?!” he demanded groggily.
“Call me Ishmael…”
“Kevin, shut up! Uh… sir? It’s your crew. We’re almost upon the beige whale!”
“What?! That can’t be!”
Rehab threw his legs over the edge of the bed, momentarily forgetting he was on a dinghy little whaling vessel and placed his one human foot on the floor. He got a small nick from a raised edge of steel. He sighed. It would probably mean hepatitis.
Quickly pulling on just enough clothes to hide his shame and keep him from freezing to death, he rushed to the bridge.
“Sir, look! There it is!” cried an enthusiastic sailor.
“It can’t be…” Rehab whispered.
“I know, sir, I know! We’ll man the harpoons. All hands on deck! Prepare to take our mark!”
“No, I mean it can’t be!” Rehab screamed.
“What? Why?”
“Because there is no beige whale!”
Every man on the bridge and every hand that had reported for duty stopped dead in their tracks.
“… what?”
“Turn the ship! Turn the ship before it’s too late!”
Too late.
They collided with the “beige whale” only to discover it had been an iceberg all along.
The ship’s impact alarm sounded. They were