The Mermaid

The Mermaid

by Paul Adams

           This week I'm doing something a little different. Instead of a chapter from my book, I'm uploading a short story I wrote last year. This is the first draft rather than the revised version, because I prefer this out of the two. I hope you enjoy.

            I sat alone, surrounded by darkness and cold.

            I breathed in, knowing full well that for anyone else such a thing should be impossible. The rock I sat on was smooth and solid, made that way by thousands of years of constant pressure. A batch of fan worms grew from the cliff face nearby, their feathery heads swaying in the gentle current.

            I looked up in the direction of the faraway surface. How deep was I now, I wondered. About six miles, maybe. Certainly deeper than any other human had come down so far. But then again, I’d been down here for over twenty years now. Who knows how far technology had come in that time.

            I pushed off my rock and let myself sink even farther. My hair flowed around me, tickling my skin like the seaweed higher up. I closed my eyes, feeling the water rushing around my body, groaning slightly as the pressure pushed at me, trying to crush me into nothing. It wouldn’t work. In my life, I had been shot, burned alive as a witch, mauled by a tiger, run over by a train, bitten by a shark. Nothing had ever affected me, and most likely nothing ever would.

            As the darkness grew deeper and deeper, memories surfaced from my . . . six? . . . seven hundred years of life? I couldn’t even remember anymore. I remembered the country I was born in, long since gone, merged into some new country, some new empire. As I recalled, that empire didn’t even exist anymore. I remembered technology coming and going, replaced by more and better technology. I remembered people, standing out in the beginning, but then merging together as an incomprehensible mess of faces as they came closer to the present.

            I remembered my parents, simple farmers who wanted nothing more than to provide for me and my siblings. I remembered my first husband, a cruel man who had raided our village, burned our farm, and killed my family. I could still feel the terror as he held back his sword from striking me down, enraptured by my beauty. I could feel his rough hands grabbing me and taking me away as his spoils.

            I could remember the old nurse who tended to my wounds every time he beat me or raped me. I remembered the close friendship we formed, the companionship and love we shared. We became so close, she shared with me a secret she had never told anyone before. A secret she couldn’t tell anyone under threat of death. A secret she inherited from the ancient people she had been taken from.

            She had spoken strange words to me. A tingle had run through my flesh giving me a strength I had never felt before. I didn’t understand at first, but I soon did. My husband never hurt me again. He couldn’t if he tried. It was only two more years before he passed, his throat slit as he lay in his bed at home.

            My feet found rock and sand. The senses I had developed over the past twenty years wandering around down here told me that I had only found an outcropping and that the trench went even further down from here.

            Over the last few centuries before I came down here, I had read a number of works of fiction about people like me. Immortals, people for whom death had no grasp. People immune to harm and pain. In each, the stories always depicted the immortals wasting their endless life, throwing it away on debauchery and violence, free of consequences. I understood the impulse, the reasons why the stories always went that way. I had even delved into the practice myself a few times over the years, but after a while it became boring to me.

            Sometimes I wished the stories would focus on something like this. The immortals using their invulnerability to do and see things no other human ever could. I remembered the first few years, exploring the higher levels of the ocean. No scuba gear, no submarines, nothing but my own body among the coral and fish and seaweed. The beauty of it all was unlike anything I had ever seen before.

            Shortly after my last husband passed, peacefully in his sleep at the age of eighty-six, I remember reading somewhere that ninety-five percent of the world’s oceans were still unexplored. Once my last child was gone, I decided to try it out. I walked away from my world, or at least what had been my world for the past thirty years or so. I left everything behind and walked straight into the ocean.

            Carefully, I sat myself down on the rocky outcropping. The stone felt cool and smooth against my skin, just like every rock before it. A small crustacean scuttled away as I rested my right hand against the stone. Something made of plastic and fabric met my fingers. I pulled back in surprise at first, the feeling alien to me after so long. I tenderly wrapped my fingers around it and picked it up. It was a pair of scuba goggles, green and black with thick lining around the giant lenses. They looked like they had been down here a while, maybe a year or two, judging by the wear and tear they had received. The colors were faded and the straps were threadbare. The plastic felt flimsy, the lining coming apart at the seams.

            The goggles reminded me of a number of times in the early years, when I would swim to the surface on occasion and convince the sailors of a passing vessel that I was a mermaid. A small laugh escaped my lips as I remembered once when a sailor got so excited he threw himself off the boat. I let myself sink back down to the bottom before he got his bearings and spent the next several minutes laughing as the sailor swam around frantically searching for me while his buddies tried to reel him back in.

            I looked up toward the surface again, to where the goggles had fallen from a ship long since gone. Maybe it was time to go back up, I thought. I had seen amazing things down here, things no human could ever dream of. Animals and plants of all shapes and sizes, colors beyond the spectrum of imagination. But now, once again, it was all starting to blend together. More fish, more coral, more seaweed. A lot of blue and a lot of black.

           The more I sat, the more I thought about returning to the surface. The more I thought about returning to the surface, the more I realized I didn’t want to do that either. There was nothing for me there. In my life, I had been a queen, a slave, a mother, a housewife, a CEO, a soldier, a prostitute. I had seen America, England, China, India, Africa, Egypt. I had been through more wars than I could count. I had climbed to the top of Mount Everest, and now I sat near the bottom of the Mariana Trench. I had seen the rise and fall of empires, and I had seen the dawning of the industrial age, followed shortly by the information age.

           Faces stuck out in my mind. People I had loved and hated. My mother, father, brothers and sisters, all burned alive in the flame. My first husband, that cruel tyrant, stretching out his hand to strike me down. The woman who made me what I am, eventually succumbing to old age. She saved me, but in the end, could do nothing for herself. My second husband, the one I had cared for most, dead on a battlefield. My last husband, a good man and a good friend. Other husbands, most of whom I could barely remember.

            My children. Thirty-six in total. Wasn’t it interesting, I thought to myself. After all these years, I couldn’t remember how many husbands and partners I’d had, yet I could still remember every child. I could see their faces each as if they were right in front of me. I had watched each one grow into adulthood, build a life of their own, and eventually succumb to old age.

            My heart hurt for all of them. For my parents, my husbands, my children, my friend. Other friends I had made over the years. All of them gone. There was nothing left for me on the surface. I had seen and done it all. I turned to the ocean because it was all that was left. And now, I had seen all of that too. What else was there to do?

            The goggles slipped from my fingers and disappeared into the deep.

            I sat alone, surrounded by darkness and cold.

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