I woke up the next morning, in my bed. The sun's rays piercing through my thin white curtains had stirred me from my sleep. As I let out a soft groan I cracked open one of my eyes. My vision was blurry due to some sand from my eyes. Through the blurred sight, I noticed a fuzzy-looking shape of orange and weight resting on my body.
It was only when I felt the cold breeze of my open window and my vision focused that I began to piece things together. There, sitting on my stomach naked with two legs was the mermaid. I pushed my head back deeper into my pillow as I took a deep breath. My tongue rubbed one of my teeth on the inside of my mouth.
Where to begin with this...? I wondered to myself desperately trying to remain calm. Though I was managing to do so at this very minute. It was a very thin victory of will power. Taking a deep breath, I held it for a few moments. Upon releasing it, I finally spoke.
"What...?" I uttered out with as steady of a voice as I could muster. I sat up slowly, my hands accidentally finding their way to her bare legs. Feeling this, I immediately jerked my hands away. Glancing her up and down I felt my will power begin to crumble with each passing second. Realizing this, I spoke up once more.
"What are you doing in my house?" I manage to get that sentence out with very little panic. Though I felt it rising quickly as I looked back to her legs. "Where is your tail!" I exclaimed I was about to ask how did she get in, but then I looked over and saw my window. It had not been simply open as I thought before.
I mean it was open, but, it had been busted open. I spotted a rock on the ground, my guess was that was the instrument of her entrance. The mermaid opened her mouth to say something and then seemed to remember that I would not be able to understand her. She closed it looking distressed at this information and lost in thought.
As she was preoccupied with her thoughts, I slowly sat up. The mermaid took the hint and got off of me. Feeling the weight remove itself from my body, I took a deep breath appreciating an unrestricted airflow once more.
The mermaid sat on her knees at the edge of the bed as I carefully slid off the bed. Pausing for just a moment as my right foot hit the floor. I felt the cold sensation of glass on the carpet of my bedroom. Taking a breath, I moved my barefoot over to the side and finally stood up.
The mermaid watched as I tiptoed around bits and pieces of glass before making my way over to the bathroom door. I looked over at her after finally getting a better idea of what kind of damage she had done to my window.
"I'm going to get ready for the day. When I come back out we're going to talk about the virtues of not breaking and entering." I scolded wagging my finger at her. She tilted her head to the side in confusion, I rolled my eyes and took a breath. "Also," I added glancing her up and down. "We're going to get some clothes on you." With that said I shut the door and got ready for the day.
Getting ready was still a struggle, but less so due to my ankle feeling a bit better. Though my arm started to itch from the bite mark finally healing. As I cleaned myself, I momentarily forgot about my guest in the other room. Something about the shower always managed to fill my head with white noise and made me forget about any responsibilities outside of the bathroom.
I lathered my hair up with soap. I was still working on a bottle of hair dye safe soap despite my hair being it's natural color once again. Vaguely I wondered to myself if I should dye my hair. I had previously gone green, maybe a different color would be better--.
My train of thought came crashing to halt when I felt my loofa rub across my back. Instantly jumping to conclusions I let out a scream thinking it to be a murder- a pervert- or even a ghost! I whipped around using my detachable showerhead as a gun!
Only to spray the innocent mermaid in the face.
Unaffected by the blast of water she stared at me now soaked holding my loofa. I stood there breathing heavily having been frightened. "Why are you in here?" My voice echoed off the tiles in a tinny sound.
The mermaid not even responding to my question took the showerhead out of my hand and sprayed herself in the face once more. Watching this for about three minutes I finally had enough. "Stop that," I demanded only to be sprayed in the face. The soap that had been in my hair was blasted away. The mermaid noticing this took it on herself to nearly drowning me by spraying my head.
"S-Stop!" I shouted coughing and hacking when water found it's way into my mouth. Finally having enough I wrestled with the mermaid in order to get the showerhead away from her. "Stop," I ordered, the mermaid seemed displeased by my grabbing away a new toy for her to play with.
Taking a breath I sat the showerhead back in its proper place. Steam hung thick in the bathroom air and the water from the shower was slowly growing colder. I took this as a sign that my shower was finished. Not that the curious mermaid wasn't a big of a sign enough. Glancing over at her I saw her holding my razor in her hand looking confused.
"Give me that," I grumbled snatching the razor from her hand before she cut herself. The last thing I needed was her hurting herself again. That thought hung in my head as I sat the razor down further away from the mermaid's reach. Turning around I looked down at her leg. I was trying to figure out where it had been last night.
Where I had pulled out that hunk of plastic from her.
Remembering removing the plastic sent my mind back to last night.
I had just placed myself across her lap. The wound was positioned on the right side of her upper thigh. It was in such an angle that working at it from the side would've made it nearly impossible.
After I asked her to trust me but only once she gave me consent. I got to work on this mess. From a distance, the wound hadn't seemed too bad, just a little swollen. But it was deep, much deeper than I thought possible. The cut went past my knuckle of my index finger.
When my gloved finger plunged into it, I felt the mermaid stiffen and let out a muffled scream. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" I exclaimed glancing back at her. Seeing the tears stream down her face didn't help the growing guilt forming in my stomach. Though the feeling didn't make sense, a part of me felt guilty as if I had been the one to injure her in the first place.
Biting the inside of my cheek I looked at my tools, I grabbed a pair of tweezers, a squeezy bottle of water, some antiseptic, and some numbing spray. Though the numbing spray wouldn't do much, but, something was better than nothing.
Spraying the wound down with numbing spray, I ended up using the entire bottle for good measure. As the medication took effect, the mermaid's squirms of pain stilled and I heard her heaving breath behind me.
"There, that's better." I breathed a sigh of relief, seeing her in pain hurt me more than what I had expected. I had never been much of the sympathetic type, but something about her. It broke my heart to see those tears and it nearly killed me to know that I had caused them.
Flushing out the wound of any impurities. Things I won't go into too much detail about because honestly, it was pretty gross. I slipped a flashlight into my mouth to hold it as I got to work getting whatever was in there out.
She squirmed and moaned in pain when the tweezers began to move around in the wound but it wasn't as much as before. Leaning in close I held apart the wound as far as it would go without causing any more damage. A lesson I had learned when I did a similar operation during my time in Africa. Though to be honest operating on a hippo is different than operating on a mermaid.
After what seemed like forever, I finally found it. Under a mess of swollen flesh and blood there it was. A large hunk of plastic, I pulled it out carefully. It was thin and would be easily lost in the wound if my grip slipped even once.
Finally, the hunk was removed from her. I let the wound go and the two torn pieces of flesh slowly collapsed back together. Though there was still a gap, the wound wouldn't heal properly if it wasn't put back together. But water doesn't play nice with stitches...
But the only thing that would help I didn't have. So the stitches would have to do which meant the mermaid had to sit out from the water. I was unsure of what that would do to her. But, I had no choice. Tossing the piece of plastic down onto a plastic bag I sat my other tools down next to it and got my needle and thread ready.
Though my stitches weren't anything like what she would've gotten from a trained professional. They were good enough that they held together. I would know. There have been a few times where I've had to do this very same work on myself.
Then with a final snap of a taut cut thread, I rolled off of her on the other side exhausted. Ripping the bloody gloves from my hands I tossed them over her into the pile of blood-soaked medical equipment.
I looked over at her, she was exhausted and my wallet was in tatters. I didn't care though. That thing was out of her and she could heal finally.
"You did good solider." I weakly grabbed her hand and held it. She used her free hand to remove the wallet from my mouth and hand it back to me. A sheepish smile on her face. Taking the wallet from her I stared at the five large punctures going straight through it.
"Hot damn, I'm glad that wasn't me again." I laughed tossing it over to the side. My laughter ceased when I felt her hand rest on my cheek. Looking over at her I smiled. I didn't need to hear her speak to know exactly what she was saying.
"You're welcome," I told her.
My thoughts were jerked back into the present moment when the ice-cold water from the shower soaked my form. "Son of a bitch!" I screamed jumping towards the mermaid. She seemed confused and reached out her hand towards the water. Her eyes lit up and she moved passed me to stand under the ice-cold water from the shower.
"Of course you're one of those weird people who likes ice showers," I grumbled moving out of shower shivering. As I did, I spotted her leg where the wound had been just last night. All was left there was a scar... A bright pink scar. I grabbed the towel and began rubbing my hair dry. "Hey what happened to-." I was cut off in the middle of my question to the mermaid by the sound of the doorbell ringing.
Wrapping a towel around me, I headed out to my room hearing the doorbell more clearly now that the sound of the shower wasn't drowning it out. Opening the door to my bedroom I yelled at the door. "I'll be there in a minute!"
Unfortunately, it seemed as if whoever was at the didn't hear me because they kept ringing the doorbell. Sighing at this, I quickly got dressed and headed for the door.
"I'm coming!" I yelled at the door getting annoyed, what could be so important that someone would ring the doorbell so much. With a huff I swung the door open, a towel still resting on my shoulders from my still-damp hair.
"What?" I snapped at the person behind the door. A young girl jerked back from the door and Veronica stepped in front of her. "Hi, Gloria!" She greeted, my scowl softened and I took a deep breath.
"Hi Veronica, sorry about that, I was in the shower." I informed her, Veronica let out a breathy chuckle, "Oh it's fine!" She said resting a reassuring hand on the young teen girl's shoulder. "It's pretty early, but I wanted to come over and ask if you'd like to join us for lunch today at our house!" Veronica said motioning over to her very fancy and very large house in the distance.
"Sure," I said leaning out of the door to get a good look at the house. It seemed like it was going to be a twenty-minute drive just from the huge-ass driveway.
It was seriously disgusting how damn rich my neighbors were.
"That's wonderful, my hubby just installed the new chandelier in the dining hall! It's made out of Murano glass!" Veronica excitedly to me as I rubbed my hair listening to her. "Murano glass? Like that really nice Italian glass?" I asked glancing at Veronica then to the girl with her.
"That's the one!" Veronica said with a laugh, I winced at this. I had dated a girl in college that loved that shit. It nearly broke me just getting a stupid little elephant for her. I couldn't imagine what a big ass chandelier would cost. I'm sure it would make me sick if I knew the price.
"That's really cool." I spoke up just to keep up a conversation with Veronica despite my mind being elsewhere. Veronica then saw the girl and I make eye contact. "Oh! Gloria!" She exclaimed before pushing the girl towards me. "This is my darling, Sam!" Veronica rested her hands on the girl's shoulders. The girl's face lit up red and she adverted eye contact from me.
I smiled a half smile, what a shy kid. Nothing like me when I was younger. I was so full of anger and rage back then. But of course, I didn't have a good mom like Veronica either. My eyes shot up to Veronica who smiled back at me. I could tell on her face that this kid was her world. The kind of pride and love she held for this kid.
I couldn't help but be envious. But that was okay and if this kid's journey was all that much easier then all the better for it. Kneeling down I made eye contact with the girl. She couldn't have been no older than 13. I couldn't help but chuckle, I figured things out around that age too.
"Hi Sam, my name is Gloria." I said holding out my hand for her to shake, "I'm a friend of your mom's." I reassured her, barely managing not to roll my eyes when I heard the delighted gasp from Veronica. Sam's eyes slowly removed themselves from the ground to meet mine. She opened her mouth to say something before turning bright red.
"What?" I asked I looked over at Veronica who had a bright pink flush on her cheeks as well. I followed her gaze and turned around. There in the kitchen, in the sight of the wide-open door was a dripping wet mermaid standing there.
"Jesus Christ!" I yelled feeling embarrassed as hell. "Is this a friend of yours?" Veronica asked sheepishly, I turned back to her giving her a look before looking at Sam who was just like deer in headlights.
Jerking back to the mermaid, "Go to the bedroom!" I shouted, she looked at me confused and pointed at Veronica and Sam. "Don't worry about them!" I shouted she shook her head in response.
"Are you fucking me right now!?" I yelled at her wanting to pull out my hair. She cocked an eyebrow giving me a look that said 'Do you want me to?' "Go! Just fucking--!" I stopped myself short remembering that I had guests. Turning to said guests I gave Veronica a smile.
"Sorry about this. Can you wait a minute?" I apologized grabbing the door to close it. As I closed it, Sam tried her best to keep looking.
Once the door was closed I heard the muffled voice of Veronica say. "Here's hoping you find a looker like that one!" and then another voice shouting in embarrassment "MOM! STOP!!"
Comments (0)
See all