OMG it's...orignial fiction?
I don't normally write short stories. I'm one for mutli-chaptered monsters that I lose interest in around 36,000 words. But I have been reading Stephen King lately and then saw pirates and this little thing would not go away. There was such potential for horror with the mermaids in the new one that I couldn't resist. I don't think it came out scary so much as unsettling, but I like it.
Title: A picture
Rating: PG13
Summary: All he wanted was a picture. All he needed was a picture.
I can hear them from the woods-the high pitch whistles and shrieks closer to the sound of dolphins than anything else I’ve ever heard. I lean my bike against one of the evergreens-there’s no road or actual trail up here. The locals don’t come up here, and, for all the conventional wisdom the government spouts about creatures like this not existing, they won’t build a road up here. There are records that show they tried it once in the late 30s, a combination of the depression work programs and the effort to modernize the roads because of the war. It lasted close to three months before the loss of manpower was too great. The records list it as desertion. But both I and the locals know what it was.
I push the thick branches out of my face as I near the cliffs, the roar of the surf pounding the New England Coast almost drowning that other sound. I make sure I’m hidden as I spot the first one. She jumps out of the water in a graceful arc and it’s easy to see how most scientists dismissed the stories as early sailors seeing dolphins for the first time. But there is no mistaking her form even without the binoculars I scramble for. Her mane of hair is long, snarled and red. The skin of her upper half the color of porcelain, her breasts round and full, and her body toned. But it’s the other half that makes her special-a fish tail, long and thin like a serpent, the fins nearly translucent. It’s beautiful to look at; the color like the inside of a mussel shell, shifting in the glimmer of the sunlight.
There are dozens of them and there will be more as the day goes on. I’m a crypto-zoologist. I look for new species of animals and document what I find. It’s not always things like what they show on T.V. We don’t really go looking for dragons or big foot. Mostly, we just spend a lot on time in the parts of the world that aren’t all that well documented. Most of the new creatures we find are microbial. Nowhere near this scale. As a matter of a fact, I’m here on vacation. I heard the stories, ones told only at night and in hushed voices, and had to look for myself.
She heaves herself onto a larger rock where the others have gathered. They look so much like women gossiping a small smile lights my face, but I know better. I’d listened to the stories the fishermen told. Men snatched clean off the decks of ships, found face down in the water the next day. Vessels, even those made of metal, torn apart and crews gone. Fishermen is a misnomer here: only the women go to the sea. For that is one thing in common about the tales-the creatures want/need men. Some tales claim they eat them. Others that there are only female ones and they need human men in order to reproduce. Still more claim that like dolphins they just want to play or are curious about these creatures on two legs and don’t realize that men can’t breathe underwater.
I put the binoculars down and reach for my camera. The bulky thing is high powered and guaranteed to get the shot that will save me. I have to get this picture. My house is in foreclosure. It’s been so long since I’ve found anything new there is talk about pulling my funding. Once my funding is pulled the university will pull my tenure. I unzip the cloth bag the lenses are kept in looking for the right one. Frantically, my hands run over the protective pouches as it becomes more and more apparent that I have forgotten the one I need. I stifle the need to panic forcing my breath to regular patterns. I need this picture.
I bite my lower lip as the idea of what I could do comes to me. There’s a path, rocky and treacherous, carved into the side of the cliff by the waves and rock fall. It’ll bring me closer to where they are gathering. But, the voice of caution rambles in the back of my head, they might see you. My hands shake as I screw the other lens onto the camera. I have no choice.
The decent is slow. I’m careful for two reasons: I don’t want to scare them off and I don’t want to fall. The rock is sharp and hard against my fingers and I know I’ll have dozens of tiny cuts in them when I get home. But it won’t stop me from having a beer in that bar close to the docks. I’ll never have to worry about losing my funding again. The thought is enough to see me the last few feet to the sand of the beach. There are at least thirty of them now, some in the water, others on rocks. A smirk curls on my lips. This picture will be better than anything I could get from the top of cliff, harder for others to argue about it being fake.
I raise the camera, adjust the lens so I can capture a picture of the ones on the rocks, and push the button that will spur me into my future. The sound of a camera fills the cove, and I curse myself as the noise of them talking stops. They’re staring at me now. One of them is close enough I can see the slited pupil in her grey green eyes as her blinks back an extra eyelid. The excitement I feel at realizing she has an extra eyelid is beaten back as I go over every creature I know of that has one-crocodiles, sharks, even dogs and cats have one to a certain extent. All of them have one thing in common: they’re predators.
I take a step backward, the movement happening before I could squash my flight instinct. My blood rushes in my ears as a single trilling note sounds. They move towards me, a slithering swimming movement, the ones on rocks entering the water with heavy splashes. I can’t stop the backing up movement and drop the camera into the sand. It makes noise again and I know it has taken another picture.
They’re close now, at the edge of the surf. They weave in and out of each other, excited by the sight of me, but coming no further than the line of the water. I feel some of my panic ease as I realize that they’re not going to come out of the water after me. I turn my back to them, put my foot on the thin path I took down to them, and hear it. It’s high pitched and mournful, like hearing a violin played by a master. Before I realize it, I’ve turned back to them and taken a step towards them. Gathering my will, I slam my hands over my ears. It’s enough to separate me from the sound, and I start back towards safety. Then the others begin.
A chorus of noise, music, generated by these creatures echoed and thundering back off the cove walls washes over me and it’s no use. It’s like all I can hear, feel, think is that sound. The sound of mothers mourning children not born, of watching lovers from afar and not being able to touch, and those dead before their time. Tears leak out my eyes as my hiking boots touch the surf. A hear a faint clicking behind me and realize that I must have hit the timing button before I dropped the camera. The red head from before rises out of the water so her eyes are level with mine. Her features are perfect, lips pale pink and lovely. Looking only up at her face I can pretend she’s human. Until I look into her eyes.
She’s intelligent-just as smart as me or anybody else. But not human. It’s an alien intelligence: that of a predator looking at prey. I shiver and make a twitch before the music captures me once again. She smiles and I see rows of pointed and sawed teeth just like a shark. She reaches forward with a flawless delicate hand and all I know is the music.
Title: A picture
Rating: PG13
Summary: All he wanted was a picture. All he needed was a picture.
I can hear them from the woods-the high pitch whistles and shrieks closer to the sound of dolphins than anything else I’ve ever heard. I lean my bike against one of the evergreens-there’s no road or actual trail up here. The locals don’t come up here, and, for all the conventional wisdom the government spouts about creatures like this not existing, they won’t build a road up here. There are records that show they tried it once in the late 30s, a combination of the depression work programs and the effort to modernize the roads because of the war. It lasted close to three months before the loss of manpower was too great. The records list it as desertion. But both I and the locals know what it was.
I push the thick branches out of my face as I near the cliffs, the roar of the surf pounding the New England Coast almost drowning that other sound. I make sure I’m hidden as I spot the first one. She jumps out of the water in a graceful arc and it’s easy to see how most scientists dismissed the stories as early sailors seeing dolphins for the first time. But there is no mistaking her form even without the binoculars I scramble for. Her mane of hair is long, snarled and red. The skin of her upper half the color of porcelain, her breasts round and full, and her body toned. But it’s the other half that makes her special-a fish tail, long and thin like a serpent, the fins nearly translucent. It’s beautiful to look at; the color like the inside of a mussel shell, shifting in the glimmer of the sunlight.
There are dozens of them and there will be more as the day goes on. I’m a crypto-zoologist. I look for new species of animals and document what I find. It’s not always things like what they show on T.V. We don’t really go looking for dragons or big foot. Mostly, we just spend a lot on time in the parts of the world that aren’t all that well documented. Most of the new creatures we find are microbial. Nowhere near this scale. As a matter of a fact, I’m here on vacation. I heard the stories, ones told only at night and in hushed voices, and had to look for myself.
She heaves herself onto a larger rock where the others have gathered. They look so much like women gossiping a small smile lights my face, but I know better. I’d listened to the stories the fishermen told. Men snatched clean off the decks of ships, found face down in the water the next day. Vessels, even those made of metal, torn apart and crews gone. Fishermen is a misnomer here: only the women go to the sea. For that is one thing in common about the tales-the creatures want/need men. Some tales claim they eat them. Others that there are only female ones and they need human men in order to reproduce. Still more claim that like dolphins they just want to play or are curious about these creatures on two legs and don’t realize that men can’t breathe underwater.
I put the binoculars down and reach for my camera. The bulky thing is high powered and guaranteed to get the shot that will save me. I have to get this picture. My house is in foreclosure. It’s been so long since I’ve found anything new there is talk about pulling my funding. Once my funding is pulled the university will pull my tenure. I unzip the cloth bag the lenses are kept in looking for the right one. Frantically, my hands run over the protective pouches as it becomes more and more apparent that I have forgotten the one I need. I stifle the need to panic forcing my breath to regular patterns. I need this picture.
I bite my lower lip as the idea of what I could do comes to me. There’s a path, rocky and treacherous, carved into the side of the cliff by the waves and rock fall. It’ll bring me closer to where they are gathering. But, the voice of caution rambles in the back of my head, they might see you. My hands shake as I screw the other lens onto the camera. I have no choice.
The decent is slow. I’m careful for two reasons: I don’t want to scare them off and I don’t want to fall. The rock is sharp and hard against my fingers and I know I’ll have dozens of tiny cuts in them when I get home. But it won’t stop me from having a beer in that bar close to the docks. I’ll never have to worry about losing my funding again. The thought is enough to see me the last few feet to the sand of the beach. There are at least thirty of them now, some in the water, others on rocks. A smirk curls on my lips. This picture will be better than anything I could get from the top of cliff, harder for others to argue about it being fake.
I raise the camera, adjust the lens so I can capture a picture of the ones on the rocks, and push the button that will spur me into my future. The sound of a camera fills the cove, and I curse myself as the noise of them talking stops. They’re staring at me now. One of them is close enough I can see the slited pupil in her grey green eyes as her blinks back an extra eyelid. The excitement I feel at realizing she has an extra eyelid is beaten back as I go over every creature I know of that has one-crocodiles, sharks, even dogs and cats have one to a certain extent. All of them have one thing in common: they’re predators.
I take a step backward, the movement happening before I could squash my flight instinct. My blood rushes in my ears as a single trilling note sounds. They move towards me, a slithering swimming movement, the ones on rocks entering the water with heavy splashes. I can’t stop the backing up movement and drop the camera into the sand. It makes noise again and I know it has taken another picture.
They’re close now, at the edge of the surf. They weave in and out of each other, excited by the sight of me, but coming no further than the line of the water. I feel some of my panic ease as I realize that they’re not going to come out of the water after me. I turn my back to them, put my foot on the thin path I took down to them, and hear it. It’s high pitched and mournful, like hearing a violin played by a master. Before I realize it, I’ve turned back to them and taken a step towards them. Gathering my will, I slam my hands over my ears. It’s enough to separate me from the sound, and I start back towards safety. Then the others begin.
A chorus of noise, music, generated by these creatures echoed and thundering back off the cove walls washes over me and it’s no use. It’s like all I can hear, feel, think is that sound. The sound of mothers mourning children not born, of watching lovers from afar and not being able to touch, and those dead before their time. Tears leak out my eyes as my hiking boots touch the surf. A hear a faint clicking behind me and realize that I must have hit the timing button before I dropped the camera. The red head from before rises out of the water so her eyes are level with mine. Her features are perfect, lips pale pink and lovely. Looking only up at her face I can pretend she’s human. Until I look into her eyes.
She’s intelligent-just as smart as me or anybody else. But not human. It’s an alien intelligence: that of a predator looking at prey. I shiver and make a twitch before the music captures me once again. She smiles and I see rows of pointed and sawed teeth just like a shark. She reaches forward with a flawless delicate hand and all I know is the music.