Becoming Mermaids

by Jamie Gann

  Her phone pa-linked again and she angrily flicked it off before anyone could see what came up on the screen. Coquette had discovered “NSFW” as a search term, but not its intended purpose. She must be really bored.

  An hour later, Sam finally relented. Just one day wouldn’t be too bad— except that she had work the next day, so maybe only overnight. How much trouble could Coquette get into in one night? She flicked on the phone and typed, “kk, i’ll do it. b back in an hour.”

  A moment later, Coquette responded, “?? Didn’t mean you and me,” referring to the picture she’d sent.

  “not that. the switch. sea change.”

  “Oh!!!!!!” And then, “You’re the darb, babe!”

  * * *

  When Sam got home, Coquette was sitting in a chair with a blanket around her tail. She cheered.

  “Someone’ll see you,” Sam grumbled.

  Coquette gestured at the blanket, which curled in ways human legs couldn’t and flopped excitedly. She immediately got down to business— when and for how long and what she would wear. She regretted not measuring her legs the previous day— didn’t know if Sam’s pants would fit.

  “You could just wear a skirt.”

  “Honey, you all wear pants now. I’ve seen it.”

  “I wear skirts.” They agreed to order dinner first, over Coquette’s insistence that Sam should try eating as a mermaid— everything felt different, even small things.

  “I just want to get my head around this first,” Sam explained.

  So they ordered in and traded advice. Sam told her how to get around in La Jolla, but Coquette wanted to go downtown and see the lights. Coquette suggested calling Andrew over for sex.

  “Are you insane? I thought you wanted to keep this a secret.”

  “A three-person secret, then. Honey, it’s your chance! Don’t squander it!”

  “No.” Sam was confident that the experience of being half animal would be adventurous enough.

  Once dinner was over, Sam prepared an exact travel route with contingencies, then loaded a purse with maps, transit cards, a little money, and her old phone. She also gave Coquette a lecture on how much more dangerous the streets are than they were in 1927: muggers and rapists and kidnappers. Coquette listened quietly, reminiscing about gangsters and bootleggers and murderers. For her part, Coquette reminded Sam to keep the stone on her at all times, always around her neck, and where she could find some orifices that might otherwise be overlooked. When they were ready, it was well past dusk.

  “Should we— I don’t know— light a candle or something?”

  Coquette raised an eyebrow. “Feeling romantic?”

  “Forget it!” To Sam, it seemed to be a major life event and probably warranted ceremony. Her Catholic upbringing asserted itself in unexpected ways.

  “You’ll want to be naked.”

  She grimaced. “I guess.”

  When they were both ready, Coquette unhooked the gemstone from her neck and set it on the floor between them. They both lay on their sides, each facing each other upside down.

  “Your move.”

  Can turn back now, can turn back now, can turn back now, Sam’s mind raced. But she didn’t want to disappoint Coquette. She took the jewel from the center of the circle and glanced from Coquette’s expectant face into its glowing heart. Her field of vision climbed into the red, cloudy translucency, into the center that was moving. She felt a jolt and almost dropped it, but rolled it in her fingers so that the thin gold chain looped around her thumb. She went all liquid inside and tensed, but bent at the waist instead of stretching flat. She wanted to see it happen.

  Her skin rippled like troubled water. Under the surface, muscles and bones were rearranging themselves. The waves seemed to be emanating from her crotch, which crawled like a live animal.

  Everything grew downward. Her legs got longer, her feet got longer, and her waist became a column with no clear dividing line between the upper skin and lower scales. With her free hand, Sam touched what had been her thigh, but her fingers went right into the changing flesh like clay. She jerked it back. The indentation warped and righted itself. What if her hand was in there when it stopped changing? It’d probably get stuck.

  Meanwhile, Coquette was on her back, slapping the floor with a tail that was dividing itself up the middle, turning into flappy, rubbery legs. Once they had bones, she spun them energetically in the air as though she were riding an upside-down exercise bike, kicking enthusiastically.

  The transition was over faster than it had seemed before. Even after the iron had cooled and Sam’s fins, trout-colored scales, and side freckles were fully formed, she was afraid to touch it, still reeling from the sensation of touching herself while the flesh was clay. Coquette stood over her, hands on her hips like Peter Pan. “Well!” she said. “Looks like you and me are ready for an adventure!”

  Sam lay still and examined the tail while Coquette stepped over her and got dressed. It undulated a little, even without her thinking about it. The movements were like breathing: she could stop if she tried hard enough, but its natural state was to swim.

  Sam’s downstairs neighbor pounded on the ceiling. Coquette glanced at her, then laughed. Sam covered her face. Coquette slipped high-heeled shoes over her silk stockings (Sam’s prom clothes) and attempted to walk. She faltered, but only because of the many obstacles in her path.

  “Are you sure you want to go out like that?”

  “Honey, if you had something sleeker,” she started, but recalculated when she saw the look on Sam’s face. She kneeled beside her. “Hey.” Sam peered down over her own cheeks. “I’m very, very grateful for this,” Coquette said. “You have no idea what this means for me.” Sam smiled, dimpling those cheeks.

  Chapter 6: ’Till it Make Me Cry

  For the first hour after Coquette left, Sam lay flat on the floor, breathing and letting the tail writhe. She was inside herself, feeling the blood flow between the human flesh and the fish flesh. There were fins along the sides of her tail— she could move each one individually, just by thinking about it. It gave her shivers.

  Eventually, she did get up and move around. Her first voluntary act as a mermaid was to lift her tail over her head— not straight, bent at the waist or knees, but in a continuous arc. With her palms on the floor, she brought the tailfin all the way to her face and saw the strands of it up close. It rattled a little like Coquette’s when she was excited, but Sam’s tail had a completely different shape and couldn’t fold up or fan out. It was almost like a hand, she thought, and to prove it, she cupped her own chin with it— feeling the gauzy membrane on her cheeks and her face in the strands of the fin. The sensation seemed to come through the skin between her toes, or at least, that’s how she imagined it.

  She let the tail down slowly again, mindful of her neighbor, and flipped herself over to lie on her front. She curled the tail back the other way: she could roll herself into a circle in both directions. The human-fish transition region pressed warmly into the floor. Carefully, she reached with her hands to hang onto the tail from behind her head, at its thinnest point, just above the big comb of her tailfin. She felt the firmness of her fingers in the softness of her tail flesh.

  For a moment, she was a perfect letter “O.” She could have rolled down a hill that way. Instead, she fell over sideways with a crash.

  So much for mermaid yoga.

  Picking herself up, she tried to sit on what had been her butt, though it couldn’t bend as squarely as a human waist. She had seen Coquette sit that way, and hoped she could still use chairs. She wrapped the tail around her base like a snake, the way Coquette liked to sit, but the movements were so perplexing that she had to pick up her tail and move it with her hands.

  Once the tip of her tail was tucked into a pretzel fold, she felt a sense of accomplishment. She put her hands on her hips and turned her head to each side like a sultan, inhaling deeply to raise her breasts. She was surprised
to find the tops of her pelvic bone were still in there, deeply buried.

  Uncurling the tail in one continuous motion, she arranged it so that it pointed straight up in the air and pressed it to her chest. The fluke was just wide enough to cover both breasts like a one-piece bathing suit. She slid her hand along it, feeling pressure both in her tail and in the skin of her belly on the other side. Her tail wasn’t slimy like Coquette’s, she thought proudly. It was dry as a snake.

  That thought came around to disturb her later, and made her feel itchy. Coquette had never needed a bath in the day that she visited, but Sam reasoned that she was probably different. After all, she was a different species of fish. Perhaps her first evening as a mermaid should be spent in a warm, sudsy bath, Sam mused. Or salty. The trouble was, Sam didn’t own a bathtub.

  Her apartment was billed as a “highly efficient” efficiency, a single room with a kitchen-like corner and a tiny bathroom beside it, consisting of a sink, toilet, and shower. Ever since she moved out on her own, baths had become a luxury Sam indulged in wherever possible— at home or hiking with Andrew and his friends. Still, she thought as she dragged herself across the floor, she could curl up in the corner of the shower and let the water run.

  Even simple tasks like climbing over the divider into the shower had become real challenges. Sam didn’t want to think about how she would use the toilet. She was disappointed to find that she couldn’t reach the knob to turn on the water while sitting on the floor, and that she couldn’t stand up on her tail, either. Just trying to do it made weird muscles bulge and change shape. To an extent, the tail could get rounder or flatter like a tongue, and was somewhat stiffer when flat, but not enough to stand on. She eventually managed to creep high enough to reach the knob by lying partly on the floor and partly on the wall. When the water first came on, it was a relief. Then it was too hot.

  Sam dialed the temperature down until finally it was as cold as it could possibly be. She slid back down to the floor and reveled in the downpour. Cold water, she thought as it pelted her skin and tail. Makes sense. The ocean wasn’t exactly a warm bath. What surprised her was that even her human half enjoyed the frigid water. It raised goosebumps, but not in a bad way. It was like every movie where somebody stands out in the rain, raising their arms, having some sort of epiphany. Like that, she thought, except actually nice. It would never be comfortable to be soaked in rain, unless you live in a steaming jungle or have mermaid flesh that craves the cold.

  But it does mean, she thought, that my human side isn’t really human, either.

  She sat up from the puddle to feel her neck for gills. Nothing. Armpits, she thought next. Nope. For all she knew, she was like a seal or something that couldn’t breathe water— she never thought to ask Coquette. There was nothing mammalian about her tail, though.

  Eventually, Sam remembered her water bill and struggled— much more difficult when wet— to climb the shower wall and turn off the water. The towels were too high to even try for. Leaning on the toilet or sink with one free arm reaching above her head, while everything was slippery, could only end in disaster. She slid out into the main room, leaving a trail of puddles behind her.

  Out in the main room, the droplets that clung to her skin felt cold. She shivered all the way to her bed, soaking the sheets, but she didn’t care. The wet warmth under mounds of blankets was a new luxury. Whereas cold was invigorating in water, heat was soothing in bed. I’m two creatures now, she mused, enjoying the comforts of both. Out of the water, it was the human in her that craved warmth. Her hand was already sliding down her chest, over her breasts, into and around her bellybutton, and then lower— but not low enough. Her clit was gone.

  She lifted the sheets and looked, but couldn’t see anything in the half-light. She rolled to her side and reached farther, splaying and retracting the fins on what would be her hips, until at last she found it, about a foot lower than she expected it to be. Coquette had said something about that, but it hadn’t seemed relevant at the time, considering the scope of the other changes. It was far away and well hidden, but responded to touch just as it ever did.

  Sam spent much of that evening kneading herself, tail pumping as though swimming for miles and miles. Eventually, she fell asleep, frustrated. She had vivid dreams of sensations as sounds and shapes, but had no idea what she was looking at. She woke at 1 a.m. with the lights still on, horny as hell.

  By then, the bed was a mess of sweat as much as shower water, and her whole tail emanated something sweet as well. At that moment, yes, she would have drowned someone to have sex with them. With a quivering lip, she reached for her phone and dialed Andrew’s number.

  “Lo?” was his groggy response. “Who is it?”

  “It’s me, Sam,” she said, struggling to find the breath to speak.

  “What do you want? Jeez, Sam, it’s one in the morning!”

  “Why don’t you come over and find out?”

  Silence. “Is that you?”

  “Mostly,” she said.

  “I’ve got work tomorrow.”

  “I’ll make it worth your while.” She pressed the gemstone’s rough edges into her sternum.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Bring your pictures,” she said, hoping to imply what she wanted without really saying it. She didn’t think he’d need the pictures, though.

  “Are you serious? Can’t we do this another time?”

  “No,” she said, and hung up. Ending the conversation abruptly wasn’t intended to be strategic, but it worked. Andy’s curiosity was roused. Before leaving his parents’ house, he packed for the next day, including his work uniform, shampoo, and deodorant.

  * * *

  When Andy arrived, the lights were out. The wall switch didn’t work because Sam had pulled the plug from where she could reach it by the bed.

  “Sam?”

  Something moved in the bed. Slithered, perhaps.

  “Are you in bed?”

  “Come and see for yourself.”

  He was going to say, “That’s not funny,” until it occurred to him that she might have finally understood the spirit of role play, albeit not a scene they had set up in advance. He grinned, uncertainly. As he stumbled through the messy, darkened room, the bedcovers moved in disconcerting ways.

  He bumped into something and a stack of empty CD jewel cases clattered loudly on the floor. “Could we turn on the light? It’s really—” He stopped in his tracks because Samantha was slowly peeling back the sheets, revealing the whole left side of her upper body, glowing like marble in the moonlight. “Wow,” he breathed.

  Sam swallowed hard. It was like transforming all over again to show herself to him. And on top of the personal sensitivity of the act, she had no idea how he’d take it. Logically, he should be excited. Mutating and growing animal parts was his kind of thing. But he wasn’t as logical as he liked to believe. Besides, from what she’d seen of his preferences, he swings more furry than scaly.

  Andrew navigated the rest of the way to her bedside and crouched down beside her, leaning his backpack against the wall. “Is this what you wanted to show me?” he asked, still playing along. Sam shook her head to say no and continued to peel back the sheet.

  Her eyes were watching his, to give up at the first sign he didn’t like what he saw. He ran his fingers along her exposed side, which only made her mad because he wasn’t looking where she was obviously directing his attention. It wasn’t clear if he even saw the way the scales rode high on her half-revealed hip.

  “Andy, can you keep a secret?” she said at last.

  He smiled. “What kind of secret?”

  Her mouth jittered. She couldn’t put it into words. “This,” was all she said. With that, she pulled the covers all the way off half her tail.

  “Baby,” he said, grinning. The idiot still wasn’t looking low enough. She took his jaw in her fingers and turned his head for him.

  His smile took a mom
ent or two to fade. What he saw were scales, glimmering in the moonlight, in a column that buckled upward and thickened from the contraction of muscles within. He didn’t see enough fin to know that it was a fishtail, but there was clearly something very wrong. He jerked from her grip and stumbled backward. Samantha kept slithering out of the bed until her whole tail was in the air. She leaned back on her elbows and stared at him expressionlessly, in a “there you have it” kind of way.

  Andrew’s reaction was similar to Samantha’s when she first encountered Coquette— stammering, shivering, disbelief— with one important difference. He jizzed in his pants. He didn’t enjoy it, though.

  “It happened earlier tonight,” she said, by way of explanation.

  “How? How? H— h— h—”

  Samantha put her finger to her lips. “Magic.” Then she patted the bed. “Come here.”

  Andrew shook his head from side to side. A lot.

  “Come on,” she said pleasantly, hoping that soothing words would help him overcome his fear. It didn’t. “Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted?”

  Andrew’s face creased in confused lines. No idea what she was talking about. Then he remembered the furries fantasies and the words “oh my God” dribbled out of his mouth.

  “Come on, baby.” She stretched her arms above her head, which stretched her chest flattened her breasts against her ribs. “You’ll like it. I’m really flexible now.”

  “You didn’t—” he stammered, “You didn’t do this because of me, did you? I— I— I mean, I never meant for it to be real. Is it— real?”

  “Oh yes.” She grinned.

  “Oh God. Why? How? How could you do this to yourself?”

  “Magic. I’ll show you.” She twisted the gemstone in her fingers.

  “What is that?” He approached cautiously. Samantha’s tailfin curled around him on the floor as if to drag him in like a hook.

  “Touch me first,” she said, taking her hand and guiding it to her hip, where the skin got bumpy. The vestige of a hipbone was barely tangible under its surface. She slid his hand down to where the bumps became scales. He curled his fingers back.