An Exchange for Salt

A mysterious girl in the night dangles April's camera, now broken and water clogged, on her finger with a grin. Alice think she's getting pranked. All she wanted to do was take a few pictures at the ocean by the rocks. Not meet a crazy girl who thinks she

An Exchange for Salt

  

 

            I dipped my feet into the cool ocean water as it lapped on the rocks in an uneven pattern. The moon watched overhead as I perched on one of the boulders. I kept my camera in hand, capturing the way the moon and stars reflected off the black water.           

            My feet slipped on the rocks as I prepared to stand. I wobbled my way up, using my hands as wings. When I was sure I had my balance I lifted my camera to my eyes and took another picture, but as I did, my feet slipped again.

            “Woh!” I called out as my butt hit the rocks and my camera went flying into the ocean. My body skidded on the rocks, plunging down for the dark water. My hands flew to grasp another rock, stopping my dive at my hips.

            I grumbled as I maneuvered myself back onto the rocks, not in the mood for a night swim, not even in the right cloths. My jeans weighted me down as I began my search for my camera in vain.          

            “Looking for this?” a chipper voice called as I let out a high pitched squeak. The girl gave a giggle as she splashed some water and revealed herself. “Hi, I’m Alice Shell!”

            I watched as the girl treaded water. She had long dark black hair with vibrant pink streaks in it and pale skin. It was an odd color choice but people these days were pretty strange. Her eyes were elaborately decorated with pink sparkles that ran away from each side’s of the eyes in odd patterns.

            “Oh um hi,” I said back, not understanding the reason she would be swimming at night in such cold water. I watched as she dangled my ruined camera in one of her fingers. I pointed to it, “that’s—”

            “—I know such a common name,” she intervened giggling and showing her pearly white teeth. “I’ve been watching you lately,” she said nonchalantly as she backed away from the rock and swam a little farther out. Something pink shined under the water but was gone in a flash as Shell came back. “You come out here a lot, always alone. You must really like the ocean. What’s your name?” she rambled as I struggled to keep up.

            It took me a second to respond as I positioned myself further onto the rock, away from the strange girl. “April,” I said, warily inching my way back.

            “I’ve never heard that name before!”

            “Really?” I asked, stopping a second from my retreat. It wasn’t the most common name, but it certainly was heard of. She grinned and sunk under the cold icy water for a second. I watched in amazement. Wasn’t she cold? When she resurfaced I called out, “Aren’t you freezing?”

             Looking at me funnily, she only laughed some more and responded, “Why would I be cold?” Swimming further back, she sunk lower into the water and exclaimed, “It’s beautiful out tonight!” With that she took a giant leap out of the water sending millions of sparkling water pellets into my flinching face. Although, it didn’t escape my notice the giant pink blur following her.

            “What was that?!” I stood and frantically pointed to below the surface.

            Titling her head she asked, “What do you mean?”

            “I mean, the giant pink thing?!”

            An explosion of giggles followed my exclamation as she started to sink under the water again. “You mean this?” She asked after she’d caught her breath. Slowly, the giant blurry pink thing came into view as it inched its way up to the surface of the water becoming clearer every inch.

            I gasped, “Is that a—a—what is it?” It looked like the backside of a fish, except that it was connected to her... “Is it stuck to your hip? Where are your legs?”

            Shell gave me an exasperated look. “Come on, you still haven’t figured it out? Wow, they weren’t kidding,” she said amused, “you humans really are stupid.”

            My jaw was dropping slowly as I fought the urge to continue with my escape back against the rock.

            Rolling her eyes, she flung her hands in the air and shouted “Mermaid!” Flipping the pink scaly thing out of the water towards me, making me screech and scramble further away. She ignored my scene and continued with her insane tantrum. “You know, underwater ‘people’” she added air quotes. “Breath and live underwater with tails!”

            Oh, so this was a joke? This was some kind of reality show with hidden cameras everywhere. Does this mean I’m going to end up on TV in a month for some show like “What Would You Do?”

            Shell shook her head and grumbled, “God I can’t believe you didn’t catch on.”

            “Well I’m sorry, this doesn’t happen very often!” I bit back and crossed my arms stubbornly while she did the same. Okay, when were the stupid crew people going to come out? I took a quick look around the dark desolate area. Not many places to hide, but I knew these people, they got creative. Deciding to make conversation I pointed to her pink “tail”. “How’d they do that?”

            Looking down and flipping it back up into the moonlight to let the pink sparkly material shine once again. “What do you mean?”

            “I mean, how do you manage to stay afloat with your legs trapped inside so tightly?”

            She raised an eyebrow at me like I was crazy. “I don’t have legs.”

            Patience wasn’t coming easily to me that night. With a big intake of breath I hissed, “Seriously.”

            “I am, I don’t have legs.” She was either a really great actress or she really didn’t have legs. How sad.

            “Oh,” I tried to make up for my harsh remark with some sympathy. “I’m sorry, how’d it happen?”

            She looked at me like I had two heads. Hey, I wasn’t the one with a pink fake tail strapped to my hips. She explained slowly, “I wasn’t born with them.”

            “Really? I’m so sorry.” I said, for lack of better words.

            “Not really, it would kind of be inconvenient for me and my people if we were born with legs.”

            What was she talking about? And then it struck me. Her people, her ‘mer-people’. “Your still talking about that? You don’t actually think I’m going to believe you, do you?”

            “Well unless you don’t like believing in the truth.”

            “The truth? Like mermaids are true!” I accused. I was officially done with this random talk. Maybe if I started sauntering off the camera men would finally jump out and scream “You’ve just been punked!” Or maybe it wasn’t a reality TV show. Maybe I was truly just talking to a sick, insane young girl who called herself Shell and really believed herself to be a mermaid; a mad and possibly hazardous girl; all the more reason to get the heck out for here.

            “Want me to show you?” Shell asked just as I began to stand up in my ten pound soaked jeans.

            “No,” I said bluntly.

            “Come on!” Before I could protest anymore, the crazy girl leaped up and grabbed my hand to pull me in. I screamed bloody murder but couldn’t finish my scream for the salty ocean water filled my mouth. I flailed my arms and thrashed my legs, trying to get a grasp of which way was up in the salty, freezing water.

            She allowed me to come up again for air, although quickly covering my mouth after I got my air to stop the scream. “Hold still!” She commanded. Oh, yeah, that’s a rational demand. Who wouldn’t hold still? “I just want to show you!” By bloody man handling me?! Her left hand dipped down into the water and came back with a hand full of pink tinted slime.

            She brought it to my face. Oh no. I gagged and thrashed away, but she was surprisingly strong and very confident in the water. She lifted her hand off my mouth and I let out my scream but was chocked off by a slimy, fish gut tasting slime forced into my mouth which started sliding down my throat, forcing me to either swallow or choke. I chose to the first. It was the most awful tasting thing I’d ever let my tongue touch. If this girl wasn’t going to kill me, the slime would.

            She ducked under the water and immediately started pulled my jeans down. At first, I thought she was trying to take advantage of me or something, until a sharp tingling pain jolted through both my legs and I found myself frantically helping her take the jeans off for the suffocating feeling they gave.

            It was the weirdest sensation, of burning skin with an icy feeling as uncomfortable as sleeping on nails. My bones snapped together, staying in place like magnets, unable to pull apart. My skin bubbled and hardened, scaling off. What was only a minute, felt like a lifetime.  And the result... Looking down, I let out a shriek of horror.

            It was lime green! 

 

 

Reviews

[perfectlymetiKulous]

Whoa... this was interesting. I wasn't expecting the narrator to turn into a mermaid. Will she turn back?
And I rather enjoyed the way she didn't understand April's name, or thought of humans as stupid -- anything we don't really accept as reality, we definitely are closed off to, and it was humorous that the mer-people had already assessed that about the human race and deemed us stupid for doing so. :)