Mythical
by Amber Averay
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The legend of the mermaid is supposed to be just that: a myth. Fable. Folklore. But I have a story for you – you won’t believe it. Hell, I barely believe it, but it happened. I swear on my mother’s…well, she’s still alive and well, but she’s already bought her plot for when she pops her cogs and so I guess I can swear on her as-yet-unused plot, right? Means the same thing.
Anyway, the ocean scares me. That stays between us, right? It’s just so big, and it’s deep, and harbours so many secrets that we know more about planets in outer space than we do about our seas. That’s kind of concerning. In the dark, the unknown deeps, what hides there that we have no knowledge of? And it would be so easy to disappear out there, and nobody would find you. And the water itself is a soup of human DNA – rotting corpses, human waste, dead animals…it’s just revolting.
But that has no relevance to this particular recollection. Some years ago I was invited on a friend’s yacht – his Bucks’ ’do (also known as his bachelor party). As the best man, how could I refuse? Tell the truth, and be mocked for the rest of my life? Come up with a fool excuse and lose my oldest friend? No, I had to go through with it.
As my Daddy used to tell me, man up!
So we were on the ocean, on this boat – fancy, expensive, and yet so tiny compared to the endless stretch of water spreading about us. As far as the eye could see, nothing but water.
I felt sick, my stomach queasy – and it had nothing to do with the boat’s motion. While my friends were diving into the ocean, swimming, larking about – I sat on deck cat-calling and, when they really pissed me off, helpfully shouting ‘Shark!’ (They nearly threw me overboard for that one! Luckily my grip on the fence – the rail – whatever – was stronger than their urge to hurl me into the sea.) I hated that there was no land in sight, but I felt somewhat safer on the deck or in my cabin – and I made sure I knew where the dingy was just in case. (Of course, those bastards decided – after the third fake ‘shark’ warning – to move the bloody thing and not tell me where it was! I did find it, after almost hyperventilating and passing out.)
Anyway, the second night of our ‘cruise’ (and I use the term lightly), I was trying to sleep when I heard the most beautiful sound. It was…I can’t describe it, not really. It sounded like…like an angelic choir, the words not quite audible but the melody sheer magic. It stole my breath away, brought tears to my eyes, filled me with a desperate need to find its source.
Of course, I hunkered down in my bunk, drew the bedding over my head, sang cheesy love songs (totally out of tune), but nothing could drown out that mesmerising sound.
When dawn’s blush bled across the sky that haunting, alluring voice was silenced. I was both relieved, and sorrowful, for while my soul no longer reached for the owner of that voice, I was bereft at its loss and wished it would return.
I spent the day as a zombie, going through the motions, my thoughts preoccupied by the voice, the tune, the beauty that no other seemed to have heard. I found myself counting down the minutes ’til nightfall, hoping almost desperately it – she – would return.
I can’t tell you what happened that third day. I have no memories of it, whether I laughed with my friends, joked, what I might have eaten, drunk, said – there is nothing. Only a void, the echo of the voicetantalising me with its melody.
My recollections return when I was in my narrow bed. It’s like I was asleep, and only awoke once the tune started up again.
I tried to fight its call. I’d waited all day for this moment, and when it came all I could think was don’t go near the water! My fear was greater than the lure of that enchanting song, and I put headphones on, the volume blaring – but once again, nothing could block out the siren’s music.
By morning I was weeping with exhaustion and my eyes were raw, red, sore. I think I remember someone asking if I was sick, or taking drugs, or hungover – which I might have been (hungover, that is) because I have no idea what I might have drunk the day before.
I have flashes of memory of that day, basically just my friends looking bright-eyed, healthy, suntanned and happy. I either voluntarily retired to my cabin or was forced in there, because I awoke that night fuzzy-headed and skull pounding, but knowing I’d actually slept.
And it was that captivating, beautiful, mesmerising voice with its hauntingly tragic melody that roused me, and this time I couldn’t fight it. I rose from my bed, every second of that night etched into my mind with startling clarity, and drifted up to the deck. I needed to see the owner of that voice, desperately needed it!
I almost floated to the rail, and gazed down into the black water. It was so calming, so tranquil. I wanted to experience its silken touch on my skin.
I began climbing over the rail, my eyes fixed on the glass-smooth surface, and my breath caught in my throat when a slender, almost luminescent hand emerged from the sea. It seemed to be reaching for me, not seeking aid but beckoning that I hold it, caress it, slide into the ocean with it.
And then… I forgot to breathe, I forgot to blink, I forgot everything. For what followed the arm from the depths was the most exquisitely stunning woman I’d ever seen. Ink black hair drifting about her shoulders, gleaming in the moonlight and almost melting into the sea that the entire ocean was come from her. Her skin was perfect, almost eerily pale, almost glowing, and her eyes were an unusual, spellbinding aquamarine.
She called to me. She sang for me. She loved me. She wanted me.
And I wanted her.
Her arms reached up, and I slipped off the yacht and into the ocean.
It was so cold. Pinpricks of ice stabbed into me, but I needed to be with her. Even under the water I could feel her song, it pulled on me, drawing me to her waiting embrace. I knew exactly where she was though I could see nothing.
Breaking through the surface of the water I was face to face with her – and I screamed as her lips closed on mine. Her eyes were milky white, decayed, her flesh the bloated grey of a corpse. Her teeth, gleaming in the opening mouth, were spiky, sharp, like needles, and her hands, tight on my arms, sprouted talons at their tips. They cut into my skin, leaking blood into the water, and beneath me a tail – rough like a shark’s skin – whipped the sea to foam and cut up my bare legs. Her teeth sank into my lips, slicing through them, and my screams became desperate moans of pain, of terror. I was going to die.
I deserved to, for my stupidity alone!
I struggled to fight her off, but it was no use. The water around us frothed and foamed, her tail thrashed, my blood poured – and then somehow arms closed around me from behind, pinning me, dragging me backward. I screamed, I flailed, I wept – but I was drawn inexorably backward, and hands grabbed my shoulders, arms, torso, and I was lifted up, up, until I flopped onto the hard deck.
They tell me now that I was incoherent, babbling about fins and hands and teeth, and they applied what pressure they could do my various injuries and wounds while the captain or pilot or driver – whatever the yacht-big-cheese’s name is – rushed us back to shore. He even radioed ahead, alerting the coast guard to a shark attack victim needing an ambulance.
When I awoke again in hospital, I was told by my friends both my legs had been shredded down to the bone. My lips torn away, leaving a hole in my face through which teeth bared like some twisted Hallowe’en mask. Puncture marks had torn through skin and tissue and muscle of my arms, scoring the bone, and the doctor told me there was nothing they could do to save my legs. They were amputated between hip and knee. I would require plastic surgery for my face – and my best friend, the man I’d gone on the yacht with to show I was a good mate – informed me that as I’d be in hospital a long time I would not be able to take part in his wedding. His relief was palpable – who wanted a half-faced, half-bodied man in his wedding photos?
Everybody told me I’d been on drugs, that I’d gone for a moonlit swim and been mauled by a shark. But sharks don’t sing. They don’t kiss. And they don’t chew through a person’s lips while scouring the flesh from other parts of their bodies.
I know it was a mermaid that summoned me to her embrace. She spent some nights seducing me with her voice, with her song, and when I could withstand it no longer I went to her. And I would have died, had not Dave leapt in to save me.
He swears there was nothing in the water with me, nothing but blood and a silvery shadow vanishing into the depths. But I know what I heard, what I saw, and what I felt.
So my warning to you – beware the ocean, and all the secrets we don’t yet understand. Because you might not be as lucky as me – you might not have a friend to pull you out just when you think you’re about to die for your foolishness…
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