The Summer I Saw A Mermaid

"I'd always told my older brother that it was girly to be obsessed with mermaids. He'd strongly disagree, insisting that it was cool to be on the pursuit of such a beautiful mythical creature. When he was eighteen and I was sixteen, he dragged me to some godforsaken beach on the coast of a small town- the type too insignificant to be on the map. The beach's name and how Ethan discovered it are lost in my memory. However, the crazed locals screaming ramblings and warnings made a deep impression on my young mind.

They explicitly said not to roam the beach at night.

We had dollar-store flashlights and the full moon to guide us, and not much else. Ethan wanted to scour the southwest end of the beach, insisting the breeze was more appealing to mermaids there. I took the western area, and within minutes, I couldn't make out Ethan's flashlight beam at all.

As a natural skeptic and general pessimist, I was having an awful time out in the cold damp air, not aided when the batteries in my flashlight failed after an hour. When I heard a disturbance on the water's surface, I assumed Ethan was messing with me- I was inclined to believe that the entire trip was an elaborate prank. It made more sense than the figure I saw in the water.

A silky sheen of wet hair sparkled in the moonlight as she ascended, and that was where her beauty ended. Grey skin hung on a bony frame, and peeled in several places, as if opposed to its own wearer. The skin between her fingers was torn and filmy, and her fingers themselves ended in claws. Her fins tapered off into poisonous-looking spikes, and her tail was adorned in scattered patches of dull green scales.

"Come with me," she crooned in a deep, watery voice that failed to match her appearance. "Come." I shook my head, and she offered what was meant to be a heartwarming grin- if only it hadn't included so many needle-like teeth. "Please," she beckoned, and again I shook my head, backing further and further away from the water. On the sand, there was nothing she could do. She frowned, knowing this, calling to attention a few spots on her face, as well as a blue smear across her mouth.

Scales and fish blood.

I suppose my brain forcibly blocked out the next few hours after that, because all I recalled from then on was stumbling around the beach in the dark, looking for Ethan. Then the haunting image of calling his cell phone, only to find it vibrating in the sand a few feet from the water's edge. It occurred to me that Ethan had been obsessed with mermaids his entire life, and that the appearance of one would not serve as much of a deterrent, so long as his dream of meeting a mermaid became reality.

I suppose, then, that he wasn't inclined to tell one, "No."

story credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/shortscarystories/comments/6uaj5m/the_summer_i_met_a_mermaid/