Becoming Mermaids Read online

  Coquette rolled onto one hip, defiantly. A red gemstone at the end of her necklace swung like a clock against Coquette’s chest.

  “You got anything to wear? The air’s cold.”

  Sam fluttered her eyes and said, “Would you like some jeans?”

  “Ha! I knew it! You’re funny.”

  “I could get you a shirt.” Sam stepped gingerly across the room. There was a path, of sorts, between piles of dirty clothes, cardboard boxes, stacks of overdue library books, and other junk. The lack of furniture made it feel less cramped than it would have otherwise. There wasn’t even a proper bed, just a stack of blankets on the floor, deep enough to give some protection from the wood underneath. By morning, they were always strewn about and had to be realigned.

  Sam tossed a flannel shirt across the room and the mermaid caught it. “Thanks.”

  “Sixteenth century France,” Sam mused. “What was that like?”

  “Dunno. Never been.” Coquette buttoned the flannel over her necklace. “I was born in 1905.”

  “But— you said—”

  “It was a nice name, so I took it. Look— would you really like to know how this happened? I’ve got a visual aid.”

  “Sure.” Sam uncrossed her arms and hunkered down beside her.

  “First thing you gotta know is that mermaids’ve got no pockets. Can’t carry anything except what you can wear.” She pulled her blonde-white hair out of the flannel and undid the hook of the necklace behind her neck. “So I keep it all in here.” She handed Sam the gem.

  “In here? What do you mean, in?” Sam examined the rock. It was rough, but crystalline, glowing warmly red. It was the brightest thing in the room, with the blinds shut tight against the rising sun.

  “It’s magic, of course. You think you get to be a mermaid without magic?”

  “What’s that inside? I see something...” Sam turned it over. “I don’t know... wiggling around in there.”

  Coquette’s eyes flicked from the gem to Sam’s face, then back to the gem.

  Sam felt something fluid moving inside her. She set the stone down. Her insides were all tied up in knots.

  “What you’re feeling now is perfectly normal,” Coquette reassured her, but it didn’t feel normal.

  “No, I...” Sam turned aside because she felt like she was going to puke, but when the spasm came, it didn’t come out of her mouth— it traveled the length of her body and reflected down to her toes.

  “Shhh, you’ll be fine.” Coquette tried to brush the hair out of Sam’s face. Sam batted her away. Her body straightened with an inner motion, her frightened eyes darting this way and that, uncomprehending.

  She felt a tingling in all her extremities, alternating cold and warm. She couldn’t see what was happening to her body because of the way it stretched and wouldn’t let go— stiff and arched like a bow. But she could see Coquette’s calculating eyes, examining the changes.

  The first, squishy feeling inside her pelvis was actually her bones reshaping and rearranging themselves. The femur and tibia of her legs segmented and became new spinal vertebrae. Muscles made way for them as they migrated and the skin stretched between her legs to grow a new column. Her feet flattened, the toes extended and pushed the sandals off her feet, which flapped under their own weight as she rolled over and tried to cough. Her underwear simply snapped and hung loose around her waist, which slowly extruded down.

  The first Sam saw of what was becoming of her legs was the misshapen column, pushing downward, merging her legs into a globular mass. She kicked her feet and they swung like seal fins before zippering up into a single fan. She would have screamed if there had been any air in her chest. She could only gape in horror as the tail extended, smoothened, and then wrinkled over in scales. Tiny steering fins sprouted from what felt like her shins and her hips, though they were too far away to be that. The scales speckled yellow, pink, brown, and gray.

  When she could finally breathe again, Sam hyperventilated. The tail, sprouting from somewhere under her skirt, swiped angrily on the floor, knocking everything over. A pair of naked human legs stepped over her, picking their way through the mess to a full length mirror. Coquette’s butt was bare. She pulled up the flannel shirt so she could see her now-human waist. “That’s so much better,” she said to herself.

  “Y— you!” Samantha struggled to spit out the words. “How— how could you?” Her whole body shook, down to the tail.

  Coquette turned around, exposing her very human nether regions as though it was nothing. “Don’t worry so much,” she said in an effort to be calming.

  “What have you done?” Sam’s fingers crawled along the scaly skin under her skirt, which felt like pinpricks to the flesh underneath. At the same time, the fin of her tail palmed a book and let it go. She whimpered, “Change me back.”

  “Of course! Whaddya think I am?”

  “How did this happen?” Tears were streaming from Sam’s eyes, now that the adrenaline was fully spent. “How?” Her tail flapped and toppled a stack of DVDs.

  “I showed you. You know as much as I do, anyways. The gem does it— if you stare into it, really look hard, you see a kind of fish egg— and then you take over the tail from whomever had it last. Coquette— the first Coquette— was tired of it. She missed living in society. But I thought it’d be a grand adventure, so I took it. I liked the name, too, but everybody’s different. Looks like you’re a trout!”

  “That’s not funny,” Sam wiped her eyes again and again.

  “No, I mean, inside of you. Me, I’m a silver hake, near as I can tell. But I love these colors on you! It goes well with your hair, and these spots reflect your freckles and your deep brown eyes. You’re gorgeous, girl!” Coquette sifted Sam’s chestnut hair in her fingers and drew a line with her finger along the spotty tail and up the side of her still-human chest. The touch sent a shock through Sam’s body that made her wince.

  Sam wiped her bleary eyes again and managed to see the speckled bands of color that ran the length of her tail. They were lighter and pinker on the front and dark, muddy brown on the back. Her tailfin was striated like a well-kempt comb. It couldn’t fold up like Coquette’s, but it could bend and almost grasp things.

  “Come on, take that shirt off and get a closer look! It’s not every day you get to see what your inner mermaid looks like.”

  Sam hesitated and then hiked the skirt over her head. The other way would have been much more difficult. As it came off, it took her sweater and half her bra off with it. Sam covered her nipples with one arm while she held herself up with the other.

  “Mermaids aren’t bashful,” Coquette teased.

  “I’m not a mermaid.” But Sam couldn’t take her eyes off the smooth curve where the tail became her hips and merged into the skin of her abdomen. The scales didn’t stop at a line anywhere— they just got smaller along the transition and disappeared into her skin. And the spots of color on her trout-tail blended with new freckles along the sides of her torso. She let her breasts dangle and probed the transition line with her fingers.

  “How? How?” she said softly to herself.

  Coquette smiled broadly. “I keep tellin ya, that’s all I know. One gal carries the tail for a while, then passes it to another. You can have it, if you like.”

  “No!” Sam grabbed Coquette’s flannel with her fist. “No, you change me back, right now! I don’t want to be stuck like this!”

  Coquette laughed. “Cool it, kid. You heard what I said. It’s not forever. It’s just as along as... Where’d that gem go?”

  It had been on the floor. It had been right in front of Samantha before she started thrashing with a hundred and fifty pound fishtail.

  “Couldn’t have got far, could it?”

  Coquette picked through the mess while Sam collapsed and wormed, covering her face. “I’m seafood!” she whined, wriggling from her shoulders to the tip of her tail.

  “Ha, ha, found it!” Coquette picked it up with two fingers and held it in a r
ay of sun. She hesitated. “You sure?” Sam nodded vigorously. “It’s just that... Well, it’s been such a long time and I wanted to see how things’ve changed. You know. On shore.”

  Sam stared, hugging the tail to her chest. It was as pliant as a tongue.

  “Ah well,” Coquette said, defeated. She stretched and wiggled her new toes, one at a time. “It was fun, I guess.” Then she closed one eye and looked into the gemstone, all the way in, to where it wiggled and kicked like an embryo. The change took her and she dropped to the floor.

  Meanwhile, Sam’s changes slowly reverted. Scales dissolved into her skin and the mass of bone and muscle rearranged itself into a forked column, which became legs. When it was over, Sam lay naked on the wooden floor. She sprang up and ran to the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet, she cried while Coquette called from the main room. Then she got up, slowly, and kneeled in the shower, where she rubbed herself hard until the feeling went away.

  Chapter 4: How Many Wonders can one Cavern Hold?

  Samantha and Coquette spent the entire day on the Internet. Coquette last lived on legs in 1927, when she took the tail and the talisman from Coquette the First— French Coquette— and explored the high seas.

  “There’s not much to say,” was how she summarized nine decades in the water. “Beautiful, at times, so gorgeous you couldda— I don’t know. I’m no poet. You’d have to be there.”

  She knew something of the world of men as it unfolded over the years. There was plenty of trash and magazines, stuff she nicked from yachts and modern shipwrecks, especially submarines. She’d been kicking herself (figuratively) for missing the sixties. Sam sat her down in front of YouTube and explained everything in a whirlwind of “did you know?” and “you gotta see this!”

  She felt it was vitally important to inform Coquette about the basics: that there had been a Cold War and World War II and then computers. But Coquette knew all of that. “It’s not like I’ve been on Mars,” she said. She was much more interested in what people wore nowadays. The only world event that fascinated her was the fact that Baby Princess Elizabeth was now Queen and had been for sixty-five years— perfectly coinciding with Coquette’s reign over the seas. She wondered if there might be some mystical connection in the alignment of dates. Sam explained that the Queen’s just a figurehead and all important decisions are made by the Prime Minister.

  The briefing quickly devolved into pop culture. Sam thought that Coquette really ought to see Disney’s version of The Little Mermaid, and Coquette dutifully watched it with her. The name “Disney” didn’t make much of an impression on Coquette, nor did cartoons in general. She had seen a few in her time— grainy, jerky, and silent— the life-like style of Mickey Mouse debuted after she was already in the ocean, exploring the ports of Havana. She sat upright like a cobra, her tail curled around her waist, watching the wildly proportioned vaudeville drawings try to induce a sense of emotional gravity that was completely out of touch with their exaggerated features. The cuts were too short to follow and the film was much too long. Sam got anxious and stopped it.

  “Maybe later,” she said.

  “What? Why? I was enjoying it,” Coquette lied. Sam could tell, though, and couldn’t subject her childhood memories to Coquette’s squinting gaze.

  At no point did Coquette marvel at the laptop from which all this knowledge sprang. She had seen typewriters and televisors, and was well acquainted with the invisible radio waves that permeate space to deliver information— it was hardly surprising that the future would be littered with magical devices that combined all three. In fact, she had seen hundreds of them, non-functional, in the garbage islands of the pacific, particularly near China. She only got excited when Sam managed to order dinner online.

  The idea that Thai food would just show up at your door thrilled Coquette. She had a complimentary opinion of the delivery boy, too, whom she peeked at from under Sam’s bedcovers. While they ate from boxes on the floor, Coquette mused that this would be an excellent way to lure young men to their deaths.

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “No one would know what happened to them. They’d just— disappear. And I can think of less pleasant ways to go.” Her tail fan jittered with the disturbing sound of a rattlesnake.

  “Well, the restaurant for one. If the delivery boy doesn’t come back, they’d check the addresses he last visited...”

  “I knew it! You are thinking about it! You’d make one hell of a cold-hearted siren, Sam.”

  “You don’t actually do that, do you? Lure sailors to their deaths?”

  “Pffft! What am I, some sort of psycho? Course not.”

  They ate in silence for a moment.

  “But you could try it,” Coquette suggested. “Take the tail for a couple of days, see if you can round up a handful of lusty young men.”

  “No.”

  Coquette accidentally dropped a bit of pad-sieu. Eating with a plate in one hand and a fork in the other was a new experience to her. Somewhere between dining at a table and stuffing live shrimp in your mouth.

  “I mean, I don’t know,” Sam clarified. “It’s too weird, don’t you think? No offense.”

  Coquette cast her a sidelong glance. “None taken.” She thought a moment, then laughed. “Look at us! You’re the one who’s got the mermaid temperament.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “The soul of a mermaid! Love-struck, pining at the silvery moon.” She fluttered her eyelashes.

  “I wasn’t pining!”

  “With your midwestern curls and your dimply cheeks!”

  “Shut up!”

  Coquette laid off, scorned, but only for a moment. A wicked glint caught her eye. “Well then, how about that boyfriend of yours?”

  “What about him?”

  “Give him the siren treatment. Hunt.”

  Sam shook her head and took a big bite of curry.

  “You can make love with the tail, you know. I know it doesn’t look like it, but there’s a trick.”

  “I’m not listening.”

  She leaned back and probed with her fingers. “It’s pretty well hidden, but see this? It’s a trap door.”

  “La! La! La!” Sam dropped the plate and covered her ears.

  Coquette slumped. “Your funeral. I mean, haven’t you ever wanted to do something incredible with your life?”

  “What? I transform and you get legs? Then what? What if you never come back?”

  “I would never do that to you.”

  “Look, I’ve only just met you.”

  “You don’t trust me?” Coquette glowered.

  Sam threw up her hands. It seemed obvious that she couldn’t give her freedom and her very body to a complete stranger who washed up on shore. But saying so would sound callus, so she didn’t.

  “Okay. You’re right,” Coquette said. “I do want to see what’s become of the world. On legs.”

  “It’s too bad we couldn’t do it together. If there was some way I could show you around...”

  Coquette picked up the plate and had a little more pad-sieu, distracted by something she didn’t want to share.

  Chapter 5: I Weird Thee to a Laidly Worm

  Sam had long dialogs in her head at work. She knew she’d probably given Coquette the impression that she’s the sort who shrinks from strong emotions, that she’s overly modest or shy, afraid to cut loose. But that would be wrong. She experienced the world more vividly than most— what was a mild arousal to normal people was shocking, delicious, or painful to her. She felt so much that she had to hold back the tide: only hypersensitives wear gloves.

  She was wiping the counter at Starbuck’s while Coquette waited at home with a mountain of snacks and the laptop plugged into its charger. Coquette had offered to substitute for her at work, to take her place and call herself a distant cousin. Sam assured her that it doesn’t work that way in the modern world.

  In fact, Coquette was probably underestimating the amount of paperwork one needed just to g
et by. She had no driver’s license, no birth certificate that anyone would believe, and she predated social security. If she tried to ditch Sam, robbing her of legs, she’d eventually have to get a job and would probably get labeled as an undocumented worker. She’d be caught sooner or later.

  It would all end with police and lawyers and would embarrass Samantha to death.

  Her phone pa-linked. “I’m boooored. (sad face).” Sam was beginning to regret lending Coquette her old phone. A customer snapped her fingers at her. Botched order.

  For the most part, Sam’s job left her with too much time to think. Every moment she whipped lattes, a mermaid who had waited ninety years to return to land languished in her apartment, surfing the web and watching NetFlix. She couldn’t even open the blinds and let a little sunlight in, for fear that a neighbor might see. Sam’s guilt began to gnaw at her.

  But the alternative, switching places, would do the same to Sam. Coquette would get an exciting day on the town while Sam has to watch TV. Or swim in the harbor. She shuddered. The thought of going out to sea made it seem too real.

  Besides, she didn’t really owe Coquette anything. It was her own idea to come stay in Sam’s apartment, and that’s exactly what she’s getting. What did she expect? She can come on land, but she can’t get rid of her fishtail. Unless she found somebody else to take it.

  An unsettling idea came to mind: Sam could find somebody else to take the tail. Maybe permanently.

  No— she wouldn’t allow herself to think that way. As much as she wanted to take Coquette by the hand and show her how everything had changed since the 1920s, imprisoning some sucker in an animal’s body was too evil to even think about.

  Instead, she considered taking the tail herself, purely out of sympathy.

  At Starbuck’s, she was surrounded by hidden mermaids. They were embedded in the company logo, which had once looked more like an eighteenth century woodcut, but was now so stylized it was hard to recognize. It had two tails, spread wide, inviting sailors to dive on in. The new logo focused on her face.

  Somehow, the idea of becoming a two-tailed mermaid wasn’t quite as disturbing as the conventional kind— two tails is like two legs, the same basic form as a human being, though perhaps a bit squishier. A single tail, on the other hand, turns you into a worm. An evolutionary reversion that goes back further than frogs. Sam had only experienced that state for five minutes and the sensation couldn’t be erased from her mind.