Becoming Mermaids

Chapter 1: They Bore Her Up

Samantha curled her toes into the beach sand, under a pier, under a moonlit sky. Fine grains of silt ground into her skirt- the washing machine was gonna be full of them. She crushed another handful in her fist.

The bay was at the lowest point in its tide. The moon was full on the horizon, drawing all of the water toward it, like the train of a royal robe. The sun would be rising over the mountains in a few hours.

This was Sam's favorite spot, her private place to sit and think, between the salt-crusted beams of wood, sprouting clams. But she was not happy. She was embarrassed and sore. Her lover, Andrew, thought she was not spicy enough. At least, that's what he implied when he said he wanted to spice up their love life. He said he loved her, but wanted to try something more sensual as an experiment. Unbeknown to either Sam or Andrew, she was far more sensual than he was, easily.

Andrew's experiment was entirely cerebral. He wanted to imagine growing fur and a tail, and other animal parts, while he and Samantha made love. He found some pictures on the Internet to aid his imagination. All of this was going on in Andrew's head while the two of them coupled, rolling in the flannels that served as a bed in her tiny box apartment. Samantha was thinking of his skin, how smooth it was as it was, without fur, when she was jolted by an unexpected thrust that hurt her. She didn't have time to react, to guide him, before it was over. When he rolled to her side, she didn't feel any glow of warmth. She felt like an empty balloon. Andrew wanted to try it again someday.

That's why she got up and dressed, drove to the beach and climbed down the embankment to the gully under the pier where she ground sand in her toes and watched the silver waves dissolve and solidify the sand, over and over until dawn. She wanted to think about what she'd say to Andrew, how to tell him that his experiment backfired, but what she thought about instead was the first time she came down here, ten years ago, shook off her clothes and waded out like doomed Andromeda among the curling waves. The water licking her skin. The light of the moon gilding her and everything around her in silver. The grunions worming in the mud between her ankles.

Samantha had a deep love of touch that she hardly understood and Andrew couldn't begin to recognize. What he experienced through his eyes and turned over in his mind, she absorbed through the skin and churned in her belly. And despite all of this, he thought he was the more sexually adventurous of the two, and she thought she was more shy.

The moon swelled and tinted orange as it slipped over the edge of the Earth, and everything went dark. The hour between moonset and sunrise was lit only by stars, which crowded the sky and reflected on the water. Sam couldn't see the waves anymore, only hear them.

And yet, she did see something in the water. Or if not seen, felt it, the way a fish knows it's being watched. Hairs raised on the back of her neck. She thought she saw a log or something disturbing the flow of water. The pupils of her eyes dilated. The thing stared back.

Samantha was aware of the face in the water, watching her, long before she moved. In the dim light, she couldn't see the eyes, only shadows in the skull cast by the shape of its brow- a skeletal face. It was too dim for any colors other than gray, blue, and blackness. And it wasn't above the water but in it: each inflowing wave obscured it, each outflowing wave revealed it.

What eventually made Sam move was not fear but the overcoming of fear, the realization that it might be someone drowning out there- or someone who had drowned- and only she could help. It could take ten minutes just to get to her phone. Ten minutes could be too late.

So Sam ran into the water, chasing the outflowing wave to where the body lay. When the next wave came in, it shocked her with cold- even in southern California, the ocean was frigid in spring. It went right up to her waist; she gave up trying to hold her skirts above it. Running through waist-deep water was next to impossible. She didn't get very far before the wave flowed out again, revealing the face.