The Merman Boxset: Gay Merman Romance

by Aratare, X.

  Gabriel took a swig of orange juice, rolling the pulp against the roof of his mouth, relishing the tartness. “Sounds like he’s doing the right thing then.”

  His grandmother put a pat of butter in the pan to cook his eggs as she answered, “Yes, but it’s been contentious, as these things always are.”

  “Grandma G, you’re burying the lede! Tell him about the inscription inside the temple about the Mer people,” Corey said with a waggle of his eyebrows.

  “There’s an inscription? I didn’t think that any Native American tribes had written languages, except for the Cherokee,” Gabriel pointed out. “Is it Cherokee? Is that how Johnson translated it so fast?”

  “It isn’t Cherokee,” his grandmother answered as she cracked two eggs into the pan and they began to sizzle. “The group that built the settlement is a wholly unknown tribe. But my understanding is that the language used in the inscription is similar to another one that the scholars at Miskatonic were already familiar with, so the translation is going very quickly. Johnson will be able to explain this to you far better than I. Ask him to tell you about it at dinner tonight.”

  “He’s coming here?” Gabriel’s interest perked up.

  “Johnson Tims is Grandma G’s boyfriend,” Corey informed him sotto voce.

  “What?” Gabriel squawked. He was aware that his grandmother and the professor knew one another, but not that they were dating. His grandmother had rarely dated since a heart attack had killed his grandfather the year Gabriel was born. Though his father had urged her to find someone special, she had responded that relationships like the one she had had with her husband were a “gift, not a given” and she didn’t expect lightning to strike twice. Had it now with this Johnson Tims?

  “Ah! One yoke broke! Gabriel, don’t shout or your breakfast will be ruined,” she chided him as she moved to put some bread in the toaster. “Johnson is a friend. That’s all. For now. I think you’ll like him, though he’s a little … gruff. Comes from being in the military, I think.”

  “I want to meet him. I’ll keep an open mind, but he has to pass inspection,” Gabriel said. If this guy was dating his grandmother, he needed to check him out. “So tell me about this inscription.”

  “Well, they’ve only translated part of it and he hasn’t even told me all they’ve discovered. But I do know that it mentions the Mers.”

  “Mers like your swimmers in the deep. Mermen and mermaids! Not humans!” Corey burst in.

  “Oh, you! You’re making it sound silly but it’s really quite fascinating, and for Johnson it’s deadly serious.” She ground pepper and salt over the eggs.

  “And Johnson is a deadly serious dude.” Corey nodded sagely.

  Gabriel laughed. His grandmother set a plate of eggs and toast down in front of him. He eagerly tucked in. “So what does this inscription say about the Mers?”

  She began to clean the stove as she answered, “Supposedly, the Mers—and as Corey said, they were not considered human—would come ashore to meet with the tribe.”

  “Tell him about the loving! Don’t forget that!” Corey crowed.

  Gabriel’s eyebrows rose up into his hairline. “Is that in the inscription, or is this part of Corey’s delusional need to put love into everything?”

  “Corey is correct. The Mers and the tribe exchanged gifts, ideas and … uhm, well, people.” His grandmother blushed. “The Mers were apparently very beautiful.”

  Gabriel’s fork paused halfway up to his mouth. Golden yoke dripped down onto the plate. “You mean they married and—”

  “Had half-human, half-Mer babies! Didn’t they go over this with you in health class?” Corey asked.

  “Interspecies breeding? No, no, they didn’t,” Gabriel said. “What kind of health classes did you take?”

  “The fun ones!” Corey chortled.

  “The Mers were undoubtedly just a seafaring tribe and very human, just like the rest of us. But it’s fascinating in its own right, even without the mermaids,” she said.

  “Or mermen for our Gabriel here,” Corey chuckled.

  “Ha ha. Are you saying my situation is so dire that I need to start looking at a different species for love?” Gabriel gave Corey a mock outraged look, but he felt a flush come to his cheeks as he thought of his dream of being with the man in the water.

  “Hey, we’ve got to get you interested in someone. Maybe a merman is the trick,” Corey said.

  “With my fear of water, I’m sure that’s just the thing for me. Talk about star-crossed love,” Gabriel said.

  “You never know,” Corey teased. “Love is in the air!”

  “You’re always saying that. What is it with you and trying to set people up these days?” Gabriel asked. It wasn’t like Corey needed to live vicariously through others. He was constantly dating, and had more girls after him than he knew what to do with.

  Corey threaded his fingers over his stomach, looking like a serene Buddha. “My purpose is to spread joy and well wishes wherever I go.”

  “Just so you know, Gabriel, the Native Americans were not the only people romanced by the Mers.” His grandmother’s eyes twinkled eerily like Corey’s. “Supposedly, some of the people in this town have been as well. So your idea behind Swimmers wasn’t completely unique.”

  “You’re kidding!” Gabriel let out a laugh.

  She shook her head. “Over the years there have been urban legends about beautiful people from the sea seducing many a person.”

  Corey perked up. “What about the Bravens? Do they have any fishy blood?”

  Something in Gabriel’s chest twisted. If the Bravens really did have Mer blood, would his father have drowned? It was a ridiculous idea anyways. Mers were not real.

  His grandmother grew thoughtful and slightly sad. Gabriel wondered if she was thinking the same thing. “Every family has its dark secretes, Corey. But if the Mers ever touched the Bravens, it wasn’t deeply enough. After all, I love the sea, but I’ve never been able to breathe underwater.”

  “Still doesn’t mean that Gabriel can’t find a little Mer love,” Corey sang.

  “I think I’m ready to work now, since I’m sure we won’t get anything but unwanted dating advice from Corey for the rest of the morning,” Gabriel said. His plate was sparkling clean. He had devoured his breakfast with an appetite that surprised even him. Maybe he did just need some brisk ocean air and sunshine to get back to his normal healthy self.

  “Go on down and look around. I’ll join you in a moment after I clean up the dishes.” His grandmother opened the door to the basement and flipped on the light switch. A small pool of yellow light came on at the very base of the wooden stairs.

  “What about Corey? Isn’t he joining me in this task?” Gabriel asked.

  Corey stuck his tongue out at him as he helped bring the remainder of the breakfast dishes over to the counter to be cleaned.

  “He’s going to be sorting through some boxes of books in the attic,” she said. “I figure divide and conquer. We’ll get things done more quickly this way.”

  “Hmmm, sounds logical,” Gabriel said.

  “Don’t worry about the dishes, Grandma G. I’ll do them. You go down with Gabe,” Corey offered.

  “All right. Thank you, Corey,” she said.

  Gabriel hiked down the stairs first, only slowing as he reached the bottom. That was when he understood the magnitude of his task. There was only a single bare bulb, which hung in the center of the basement. The basement was one large room that stretched out amoeba-like beneath the entirety of the house. Hulking towers of boxes sprouted up everywhere like trees in a forest.

  “Overwhelming, isn’t it?” his grandmother said as she walked down the wooden stairs and stood beside him in the pool of warm yellow light.

  “Uh, yeah, a little.” Gabriel rubbed the back of his neck. “I can see why you wanted help with it.”

  She laughed lightly. “I’ve been putting it off way too long. But I think that the time to go through and purge what’s
isn’t necessary is ripe. A new start.”

  “So while I’m pawing through this stuff, you have Corey looking at paperbacks?” Gabriel asked.

  “I’m giving most of them to the library and the assisted living home. As a librarian, I feel it’s my duty to make sure that books continue having a shelf life for as long as possible,” she said.

  “You know that Corey will totally get caught up in reading them and get nothing done?” he asked with a wry grin.

  “True, but we have all summer. Getting lost in a good book is a completely acceptable pastime in my opinion.” She glanced quickly at her watch. With a grimace, she added, “I hate to put an enormous task in front of you and leave, but …”

  “You’ve got plans?” he asked, bumping her shoulder affectionately with his own. “Something for the library? Or does it have something to do with Professor Tims?”

  She blushed again and playfully slapped his arm. “I am going to see Johnson at the dig site for the monthly inspection, if you must know.” She patted her hair.

  “Oh, ho ho! You’ve got a date!” Gabriel exclaimed. “All this talk about me needing someone special, and you neglected to mention that you’ve found someone. I really have to check out this Johnson Tims.”

  She colored more deeply. “Maybe experiencing my own happiness at finding a—a friend made me wish that you had one, too.”

  “Why didn’t you mention this before?” he asked.

  “I was going to. I guess I was afraid to jinx it. My goodness, it’s been so long for me that I hardly know what I’m doing,” she confessed.

  “You’ve still got it, Grandma. I’m sure he’s in your thrall,” Gabriel teased her.

  She shook her head, laughing girlishly, and touched her nicely styled hair again. “Don’t tease me too much, Gabriel, I don’t know if I can take it. Do you think you’ll be okay down here?”

  He ticked off on his fingers the instructions she always gave him in regards to possible history. “Throw out stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with our family history. Make sure to separate out any photographs. And keep my eyes and mind open to all the rest. History is priceless.”

  “History is priceless,” she agreed, repeating her favorite tagline.

  “Words to live by. Okay, go, get out of here and enjoy your date,” he said, gesturing for her to go up the stairs.

  “Don’t work all day, Gabriel. I also want you to have fun,” she said. She patted his cheek, and with a waft of her rose perfume she was gone.

  Gabriel looked around him again. There had to be over a hundred boxes, half a dozen bureaus, two or three roll-top desks, and who knew what else down here for him to go through. His grandmother wouldn’t be content until every single paper had been looked at and then catalogued. He would put the things he thought should be tossed out in a pile for her to go through before they actually threw anything away. His grandmother had a better eye for what should be trashed or salvaged than he did.

  “Now where the heck to start?” He let out a soft laugh and grabbed the nearest box.

  A few hours later he was sitting with his back against one pile of boxes while he pawed through boxes from another. His eyes were watering and his nose was running as a century’s worth of dust rose up from the bills he was paging through.

  “Who the hell thinks their dairy bills from the 1940s are worth saving?”

  He tossed the bills back into the box and kicked it away from him. So far he had managed to find ancient bills, tons of back issues of National Geographic and scribbled grocery lists. He doubted any of it was precious history. Not to mention it was boring as dirt. With a sigh, he sat there idly letting his gaze roam around him. He froze when his eyes hit upon a hand carved box that was half-hidden beneath a bureau. It looked far different than anything else he had gone through so far. He scooted along the floor until he could grab the edge of it. It felt heavy.

  “Definitely not just papers in here,” he murmured.

  The top of the box was carved with a graceful sunfish surrounded by glued-on seashells. The arched lid reminded him of a treasure chest. There were two brass hinges that had turned green due to age. He flipped the lid back.

  Inside was jewelry. The jewelry was made of delicate shells strung on thin silver wire. There was a necklace, a pectoral and a multi-tiered tiara. He ran his fingers over the thin metal links that attached the shells. It must have taken ages to create them, and then to find the perfect sized shells and burnish them to an amazing shine.

  “Beautiful,” he whispered. His grandmother would love this. The workmanship indicated something that should be in a high end jewelry store, if not a museum. “These have got to be one of a kind.”

  He wondered who had made them. He noticed that the necklace looked rather masculine, yet still had a delicate touch. It was a single fanned shell with a blue cast to one side strung on a thin silver chain. Gabriel found himself stroking his fingers over the silky inside of the shell. He put it around his neck and fastened it.

  The cool shell immediately warmed against his skin. He then noticed a thin brown journal lying beneath the jewelry. The leather cover was worn from use. He eased it out of the box and opened it up. The paper inside was yellowed, but still strong. The writing was in a man’s hand and quite legible. He started to read an entry near the end.

  I know she saw him today. Gabriel blinked. That wasn’t really what he had expected to read, but it grabbed his attention. She was smiling and humming contentedly under her breath. My heart clenched in my chest. How can he—that THING—make her happy when I, her husband, cannot! I swore to myself that I would trust her. But that creature has bewitched her. And there is only one choice left to me now ...

  The writer had pressed down so hard on the paper that it had ripped in places. Gabriel turned to the next page to see what choice the writer meant, but there were no more entries. He quickly flipped back to the first page of the journal. The inner flyleaf had a man’s name: Samuel Braven. It was dated from early in the last century.

  “An ancestor of ours. Have to ask Grandma about him,” Gabriel murmured.

  The first entries were more generic with their descriptions of the everyday life of Samuel Braven. He was married to a woman named Tabatha whom he seemed to barely tolerate until she started drawing away from him and towards the “creature.” The first entry that indicated something amiss in his marriage was written after Tabatha had gotten caught in a storm and sought shelter in some nearby caves.

  She was touching her hair as she told me how she had had to go inside the caves because the downpour was so strong. Lucky for her the tide was not in, otherwise she might have drowned in there. But the caves gave her shelter from the storm. The way she ran her fingers through her long, dark tresses and avoided my eyes as she haltingly told me of this innocent adventure aroused my suspicion that more had happened than what she was saying. But Tabatha has always obeyed me. She knows what she risks if she does not.

  A cold chill went through Gabriel. Samuel sounded like a controlling bastard. Gabriel skimmed through a dozen more entries that talked about shipping and local politics. Finally, there was another entry about Tabatha.

  She’s been going to the caves. Not every day, but enough to make me wonder. Her eyes are bright. There’s a lightness to her step. She braids her hair the way she used to for me before we wed and discipline had to be instituted. I followed her yesterday. She was wearing her bathing clothes underneath a loose muslin dress. I thought I was mistaken about her. That she was simply going to swim. But why go so far from the house? Why look so nervous? She kept glancing over her shoulder. It was hard to hide from her gaze. But then I saw them exit the cave together. The man was wearing NOTHING. Even I could see he was perfect. They splashed into the water together and vanished.

  Gabriel stared at the page in surprise for a long moment. The darkness of the basement and Samuel’s words pressed down on him. He suddenly didn’t want to spend another minute in the musty basement that day. He loo
ked at his watch. It was almost four and he hadn’t eaten since before eleven. He gathered up the journal along with the jewelry box. He would store it up in his room and look through it later. He would then present it to his grandmother. She would be thrilled with his find. He took the stairs two at a time.

  6

  CAVE ART

  Gabriel stowed the jewelry box in his room before he went in search of Corey. He found his best friend out on the back porch, sprawled in the white string hammock that hung between two of the weathered white columns that held up the roof. Corey had on a pair of dark blue board shorts and a T-shirt that fit snuggly over his protruding belly and biceps. One of Grace’s paperback books was loosely held in his large hands. He was deeply engrossed in reading.

  “Hard at work, I see,” Gabriel said with a good-natured laugh.

  “How goes the excavation of the basement?” Corey asked as he stretched his arms over his head and gave a satisfied sigh as his spine popped.

  Gabriel swiped at the layer of gray dust that had rained down and collected on the shoulders of his white T-shirt and frowned at the dark streaks that were left behind. “It’s going. I swear, why does anyone keep magazines after they’ve read them? There are like fifty years of National Geographic down there.”

  “Hey! Those are cool, and some are valuable. It’s like time travel as you look through them,” Corey objected.

  Gabriel suddenly noticed that a few of the copies he had brought up from the basement and put in the trash pile had migrated out to the porch and were now lying on the ground beside a perspiring can of Diet Coke.

  “I pitched those,” Gabriel growled.

  “They’ll go back in the trash when I’m done with them,” Corey promised with a lazy grin.

  “Really? They’re not going to show up in our apartment next year, right?” Gabriel stared at the magazines with narrowed eyes as if they would suddenly leap up and settle themselves happily on a dusty shelf in his future abode if he didn’t.

  “Maybe one or two will be important enough—”