A Merman’s Place

Chapter 10

A ray of white light.

Boom!

Red and orange dancing in the rain.

Falling, falling, and falling fast.

Screams of panic.

Crash!

Cold and wet.

Water.

Pain. Sharp pain.

I shot up from the sandy ground in cold sweat and panting heavily. My heart was beating rapidly against my chest and my whole body was trembling. I laid back down on the sand and rubbed my eyes hard, trying to remove the sleepiness from them. My brain was thick with fog that I couldn't focus. Not on anything outside my head. There was that feeling of terror again, but like before I couldn't conjure up what it was in my dream that had me experiencing it. Actually, I couldn't remember any of it.

Groaning in frustration at the situation I rubbed my fingers to my forehead like I was willing my dream to come out by doing that. Nothing though, and that just made me more frustrated. However, the fog in my head was slowly thinning and I'm just recalling something important. I can feel the ground beneath me, the heat on my skin, the soreness and pain in my body and my fingers against my head. I can smell the air filled with the strong scent of salt and hear the water crashing back and forth on the shore.

I'm still alive?

With that thought I quickly sat up, not without experiencing a serious head rush, and looked at my surroundings. Sand below and around me just like I felt. And the scorching heat of the sun on my skin. The shimmery and vibrant blue ocean stretching out onto the horizon, that's what I heard and smelled. All of this is real, right? But it's shouldn't be. I should be dead by now. From what I remember I drank all that sea water, I shouldn't be alive right now. And I am.

It was then I noticed something shocking. My throat wasn't on fire anymore, I didn't feel anything. The ache, burning, and thirst were all gone.

It was just then that my stomach gave out a growl. I sighed and laid back down again for the second time. It seemed there was still my hunger problem. Even when surprisingly drinking sea water quenched my thirst my body still felt heavy and weak. I would've gone out into the water to catch fish to eat if it wasn't for that fact.

As I laid there on the beach with the sun glaring at me, I heard a faint splash among the sound of the crashing waves. I sat back up to see where that sound came from, but I didn't see anything. Maybe the heat was getting to me. But then I heard it again coming from my right side. Quickly looking towards that direction I saw something on the ground a few yards away that I'm sure wasn't there before.

Slowly getting up from the ground I walked towards the object and stopped in front of it to see two full body fish. Shipjack tuna to be exact.

My stomach continued to growl loudly and that feeling of extreme hunger was torturing me. Something from above has taken pity on me and conjured up these fish for me, but I was hesitant. Eating fish raw, even if they were safe to eat like this one, never appealed to me; I always fully cooked them. But, I had no luxury for that; I have no idea on how to build a fire.

These fish, with their dead glassy eyes staring at me, sitting right in front of me are just begging to be eaten. My head is battling between my dislike of eating fish raw and eating it raw to quiet my empty stomach and for survival. It was the same thing with my raging thirst. I really wanted something to put out the fire in my throat and all I had was sea water, so I eventually caved.

I should have expected it would go the same way. With another loud rumble in my belly I basically attacked the fish. With my left hand holding onto the tail and the right holding the head I dug my teeth into its soft and smooth flesh. Thank god I was delivered a fish species that hardly had any scales or this would have felt uncomfortable.

The taste of the fish was exquisite that I moaned in satisfaction. It was strange though, I've eaten this fish plenty of times before and it never tasted this delicious. Perhaps it's because it was raw or I was starving that anything would have tasted like heaven. Whatever it was, I continued eating until I ate all the meat and then did the same to the second one. It was pretty animalistic on how I ended up devouring both fish, but I'd chalk that up to starvation.

Finishing up on the last fish I dropped it on top of the other one. I looked at my hands to see how messy and gross they looked and even felt with all their blood and juices. Feeling thirsty again after the meal, I went towards the water to drink and clean up while I was at it.

Kneeling in the water I dunk my hands and rubbed away all the fish gunk. I then cupped my hands to scoop up the water and drank until I was sated. It's so strange that the water, while salty, didn't bother me. I might as well have been drinking fresh water with how natural it felt drinking it.

Drinking my fill I walked towards the center of the island and sat down under the shade provided by the foliage of the palm trees. So far I've been lucky in surviving this long, but that luck might run out sooner or later. I'm lucky that sea water doesn't affect me like I thought it would and I'm slowly gaining my strength back that I could try to attempt to catch fish to eat. But bottom line is that I can't continue on this way. If I have no way of getting back to civilization, then my days are numbered.

My gaze shifted towards the ground beside me and took notice of a small sharp looking rock. Without thinking I reached out and grabbed it. It did feel pretty sharp on a few edges and pointy on one end as I felt it with my thumb. I looked behind me where my back was leaning against the tree trunk. I sighed. Might as well follow tradition regarding the situation.

I lifted the rock and placed the point of the rock on the trunk and dug it in downward creating a mark. Then I repeated it again next to the other mark.

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Two days.

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Seven days. Exactly a week has passed since I woke up on this small island. And just like that first day I'm still utterly clueless on what to do. Not much went on during the past week except keeping myself hydrated and eat fish that I managed to catch, though that wasn't easy, especially since all I had to use were the leaves of the palm trees and made a crude looking net with them.

But on the subject of that, the strangest thing keeps on happening on occasions, and that's the sudden appearance of fish on the island. The unnerving part about their appearance is that they tend to show up when I come up empty handed in my fishing expeditions. It's almost like someone just dropped them on my lap. And sometimes they show up already there when I wake up.

It felt like a miracle the first time, but now I'm at the point of freaked out. I know I'm the only one stranded on this patch of land and it's difficult to hide yourself around here. So, I'm thinking on how these fish keep on appearing from out of nowhere. Unless I'm being paranoid and there's a practical explanation.

The ocean pushed them onto the shore.

Birds accidentally dropping them.

Fish decided to leap out of the water and got stuck on land.

No, of course not. It's a huge coincidence that all that could happen this much within a week.

Putting that mystery away for the time being, the one other thing I've done to pass the time around here was going out diving into the ocean. This basically made me think that these were like my normal dives back at home. I try not to swim out too far that I could get myself turned around and end up being stranded in the ocean instead.

I have to admit though; every time I go out into the water I have this tingling feeling of fright. I don't know where it comes from but it tells me that I should stay out of the water. I get it, the ocean is still a mystery and untamed. Danger lurks underneath that you have to be extra vigilant or that day could be your last. Even so, I never felt any sort of fear of it. The fact that I suddenly developed such an emotion has me bewildered, and yet I brush it off. I know it might not be wise but being out here is what helps me pretend I'm not in a dire situation.

The nightmares have continued to haunt me at night. I've started to remember pieces of them when I wake up in cold sweat in the middle of the night or at dawn. I remember the colors red and orange and something cold. That's what I know so far and that hasn't given me enough reason to wake me up scared as hell.

And speaking of memory problems, I still can't recall exactly how I ended up here in the first place. If I had to guess it could have been me washing up on shore after falling overboard. It could be; my last memory I could remember was traveling on a boat with Frankie and the others on our dives. Though if that we're the case I don't think they could've lost me that easily, especially when we had two merpeople on board. Maybe there was a huge storm? It was clear skies in my memory but it could have come later out of nowhere. In whatever case it may be, they have to be looking out there for me.

But what if they're not? What if they gave up already?

I dropped that thought from my mind. Thinking like that will no doubt kill any hope I have of getting out of this.

To clear my mind I got up from my place under the shade and walked to the shore. My feet sunk a little with every step on the hot sand but were relieved once they hit the cool hardened sand that the water created. The waves pulled back and came crashing onto the shore wetting my bare feet. The water gave me a chill but I didn't step away from it. Out here in the blazing heat it was like eating ice cream on a summer's day.

Without hesitation I walked right into the water and dove under. My whole body instantly refreshed by the sea, and like always, time seemed to freeze and the world above gone. This is a new world down here. Land and sea divided by a fine line easily crossed.

I swam far enough that I was starting to see some life. Small schools of shiny silvery fish, the odd shells here and there housing sea snails, and the vibrant greenery of different types of seagrass. Looking closer I ended up spotting a few small fish hiding among them, but as I got closer they dove in deeper into the swaying cluster of vegetation.

The farther I swam I began to see how much the distance between the ocean floor was to the surface. It's around here where I drew the line of not going any farther. But still, I wanted to keep going and explore more. I didn't want to go back near where that island was waiting for me to return. Here is where I felt freedom, where I didn't feel trapped.

Mind made up I crossed the line and swam ahead. Going deeper I began spotting huge boulder rocks covered in algae; a handful big enough to hid behind. A forest of corals in different wacky shapes and colors has covered most of the ocean floor. The coral reef had the feel of city life with how many fish were swimming around, and even spotted a few sea turtles and greenish yellow moray eels. If the surface world wasn't bound by gravity we'd be traveling around like these fish using all the space provided.

I basically forgot about my problems here, except when the familiar tremble of nerves have appeared. When that uncomfortable feeling hits me it's what I use as a signal to head back. I have no idea what I should be scared about when I've never felt like this before in the water. I didn't want to go back just yet, so I stuck around a little longer in spite of the uncomfortable feeling in my gut.

Swimming onward something shinnying caught my eye to the right. Figuring it was just another school of the flat silver fish I'd only give it a short glance. Though what I spotted wasn't a school of fish. It still might have been a fish, a big one at that, but that thought went out the window when I noticed its tail. This creature's tail went up and down rather than side to side as fish are known for. It didn't look like any marine mammal tail that I've seen, I know that it had scales. If anything that tail looked like it would only come from a merperson. I've known a handful of merpeople with a tail like that.

Could it be Tia, or even Kenneth? Were they actually looking for me?

Filled with hope that I can finally go home I swam quickly after where I saw the tail disappear behind a rock. Looking behind the giant formation I saw nothing. I looked all around me trying to spot that silvery blue tail but still didn't find anything. Maybe I just imagined seeing it. Dejected, I decided to swim back to the island, clearly I had enough for today.

As I swam back I was taken completely by surprise when out of nowhere I was grabbed by the neck and pinned hard to a rock wall causing me to blackout for a moment. My bare back also took a nasty scrape when it rubbed against the rough and sharp texture that I tried not to hiss at the stinging pain. Whatever had me by the neck was squeezing tightly by the second that I was afraid it was going to be crushed. In panic and desperation, I tried to pry them off my neck and even went on the offence by kicking and punching the creature. When I thought I couldn't handle anymore of its crushing grip they suddenly came off, though not without scratching me with what I assume were its sharp claws.

I rubbed my aching neck, but that was a bad idea when I had another injury on top of that which stung like hell. I could already detect traces of blood floating around me from my wounds. But, the blood no longer held my attention when my focus went to what was going on not far away from me.

It was a fight. Not a fight between animals, but mermaids. Although, with the way they fought it did look rather savage-like.

The one with blond hair landed a swift kick with her tail onto the black haired mermaid's abdomen. That didn't seem to affect her greatly as a second later she grabbed a hold on her opponent and bit onto their shoulder. The blond one screeched in pain and was clawing at her back. Suddenly the black haired mermaid let go and pushed the blond against the ocean floor and repeatedly clawed at her face. Blood was seeping out into water like mine was currently doing. The black haired stopped her assault and the blond weakly made these hand gestures while making these pained noises. The other also made hand gestures that started to look familiar.

It's sign language. Kirk had me and Marvin learn it when we began working for him to communicate with merpeople underwater thinking it would come in handy in our line of work. He once told us they had adopted our silent language when theirs were long gone.

I couldn't tell from my point of view what they were saying, but since they were distracted I decided to escape unnoticed back to the island.