Salty

By Michael Dolan

It was a beautiful day on the shore. The sun was shining bright, the waves were gently tumbling, gulls were staying at a pleasant distance, and I was having an ideal time sunbathing, when it was all rudely interrupted by a loud, “Hey look. It’s a mermaid!”

I pushed myself up onto my tail and scanned the beach. Far up the sand, I could just barely discern a figure descending the crest of a dune. I yelled back, “Hey look, it’s a human!”

That seemed to throw him off, but only for a moment. He kept running across the sand in uneven lurches. Did all humans look so undignified when they needed to get somewhere fast on their strange limbs?

An uncomfortable four and a half minutes passed while I studied my nails and the human male jogged across the empty beach.

Finally, he reached me, raised a finger, and bent over to catch his breath. I shifted my tail to avoid his shadow falling across it.

“You’re beautiful,” he gasped out. His wide eyes suggested he had never seen a mermaid before—though he didn’t seem to pay particular attention to my scaled tail. He straightened and said between wheezes, “Want to go on a date?”

I doubled over, laughing and slapping my tail against the rock. I even felt tears springing to my eyes at the joke.

I brushed them away and looked back at him.

His eyes remained fixed on me, waiting for an answer.

“Oh.” I leaned back and raised an eyebrow. “You’re serious.”

“Of course. You’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

“Well gee, I wonder why.” I stretched out my tail and shook it a little.

He fixed his gaze on it. “Amazing.”

“Hey, hey.” I snapped my fingers twice in his face. “Eyes here, buddy. Actually,” I said, pointing back where he had come from, “eyes over there. You’re ruining my siesta.”

“But we still haven’t picked a place for our date. Do you prefer seafood? Or do you get enough of that on a daily basis? I know a great gyro place.”

“As much as I love a good Mediterranean dish, I’m going to have to pass. You see, you’re not. Exactly. My. Type.” I enunciated each word slowly.

“Ohh, ok. I know, I get it.”

“Do you?”

“Of course. I’m from the city. You’re from the sea. We’ve got a few things to work through. But why don’t we talk about them over a nice dinner?”

“You’re being… ludicrously persistent.”

“Please? Just one chance.”

“Look, I don’t think you’ve considered some of the pitfalls of an inter-species romance. For example,” —I started counting off the points on my fingers— “our date options would be severely limited, hosting parties for all our friends would be nearly impossible, we couldn’t swim our pets together, our parents probably don’t have anything in common, food allergies, and the list goes on!”

“Hey, I’m not saying that it would be easy,” the man insisted, “but true romance is worth fighting for. What we have is special.”

“What you call special, I call one-sided. Look, I’m sure you’re really nice, and if you didn’t have those funny little appendages on your lower half, you might even look handsome. I’m sure lots of human women would be interested. But I don’t see it working out between us.”

“Are you telling me you don’t have any desire to be… part of my world?”

“What? No. Your world’s boring.”

“Please, is there any way I could prove myself?”

I thought for a moment. Not about how he could prove himself—that was beyond the realm of possibility. What could I possibly say that would get him to leave me alone?

“Listen, have you ever heard of Cthulhu?”

“Kooth who?”

“Close enough. Imagine an ancient cosmic entity that looks like you, except shaped like a dragon with an octopus head.”

“How is that supposed to look like me?”

“Don’t interrupt. The important part is that he’s the ruler of the ocean and has a particular distaste for humans.”

“Forbidden love? How romantic.” He stared out to sea with determination in his eyes.

“Hey, hey”—I snapped my fingers in his face again— “have I mentioned he’s the size of a small island? Or that he fights his enemies by literally driving them insane?”

“Ahhh, you did not.” He seemed to be deflating.

Clearly Cthulhu—whom I hadn’t talked to in several months but actually had a pretty good relationship with—was my ticket out of this mess. Hopefully he wouldn’t mind me painting him in this light too much. I’d set a lunch date the next time our schedules lined up and tell him this story. He’d get a kick out of it.

But back to the task at hand. I turned to the human. “Yes, and I can assure you that if we started dating, he would hear about it. And while I respect your resolve, I don’t think this would work out for us.”

“I don’t suppose… I could fight him?” It was a half-hearted, last-ditch effort for my affections, but I appreciated it nonetheless.

“He sunk Atlantis because a restaurant there took too long bringing out his elder calamari appetizer. I wouldn’t chance picking a fight with him.”

“Okay. Yeah. Sounds like not the best idea.”

“Don’t worry though.” I waved my arm inland. “As they say, there’re plenty of mammals on the land. And I’m sure there’s a beautiful mammal who’s just perfect for someone like you.”

“Really?”

“Really. Just maybe tone it down a bit with the next girl you go for.”

“Okay. I can do that. In fact—” He turned to face inland. “I think I glimpsed an elf in the forest this morning.”

“That’s not exactly what I—”

He’d already started running across the beach, kicking up sand with those ridiculous things they call feet.

Can you guess which song from the 1950's inspired this story? Share in the comments!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Dolan’s short stories have appeared in Havok, Splickety, and The Norwegian American. When he’s not writing marketing materials for a global nonprofit, he can be found hiking, reading, gaming, or writing some more. He and his wife live with a small library loaded with YA and fantasy books in Seattle, WA.

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