The Fiberglass Merman

1

(Two Days Before)

A s part of the opening shift at Water Zone, Blake DeLuca’s job was to walk the dry slides every morning to check for fractures or debris.

As the hulking young man slogged across the lazy river, he gazed up at the main tower, a massive tangle of dripping and cracking plastic silhouetted against the smoggy California skyline.

Eventually he got around to the kiddie pool and climbed into the big pirate ship playground. After checking the little slides on the side of the ship and the water cannons, he climbed down the large slide that extended from the aft, still nursing his energy drink.

Then, from above him, a voice said, “Can I have some?”

Without thinking, Blake replied: “No.”

Then, it slowly dawned on him: he didn’t recognize the voice at all.

What was more, there was another twenty minutes until the park opened to the public and not a single other staffer in sight.

Blake did a double-take, glancing back up the slide and onto the ship.

It sounded like it came from the top of the slide, but there was no one there.

“Hello?” He huffed, already exasperated. There’d been a lot of kids trying to hop the fence into the park lately and Blake did not want to bother with calling the cops before they even officially opened for the day.

“Up here,” came the eventual reply.

Blake’s eyes flicked up in disbelief.

Plastered to the front of the fiberglass pirate ship was the figurehead of a merman, staring down at him with dark eyes.

His arms were crossed neatly over his chest, blue and lilac hair spilling down around him, festooned over the aft.

His usually serene expression was contorted into one of expectation.

Blake always thought the merman looked a little too realistic and pretty for a kiddie pool pirate ship, but who was he to judge the lonely soul who took the time to mold and paint it?

In fact, his coworkers had even taken to playfully referring to the figurehead as Blake’s “boyfriend”—an unfortunate side-effect of Blake’s single status and an innocent quip about the figurehead’s attractiveness.

Blake didn’t respond. Instead, he looked down at the energy drink in his hand and turned it to check the ingredients list for hallucinogens.

“You always have that flavor,” said the merman. “Is it any good?”

“I…” Blake looked back up at the merman who continued to peer down at him with an expectant expression, and then back down at his energy drink. “It’s… Pipeline Punch.”

“I don’t know what that tastes like,” the merman said, tone flat.

“It’s… fruity?” Blake answered.

“Very descriptive,” the merman retorted. “The only thing I’ve ever tasted in my life is chlorine.”

“It tastes way better than that,” Blake assured him.

“Thank you,” the merman said, voice thick with sarcasm. “I’m sure it does.”

“How. Uh.” Blake stared up at him, mesmerized. He knew that the dangerous cocktail of sleep deprivation and working doubles was going to catch up with him eventually. That, or skipping breakfast to cut down on meal costs was taking its toll. “How’d you manage to get up there?”

The merman looked at him like he was stupid. “I was built into this boat, wasn’t I?”

“Of course,” Blake said, like this was a totally common everyday occurrence. “Sorry. I… what did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t. And it’s Marin, by the way,” the merman provided him.

“I’m—”

“Blake. I know,” Marin said, uncrossing his arms and taking up a lock of fiberglass hair. It melted into soft, real tresses and he combed it over his shoulder, thoughtful. “I hear everyone calling you that all day. You worked here last summer too, right?”

“Um, yeah.” Blake nodded. He wasn’t sure how long this evidently-haunted merman figurehead had been watching him for, but the situation was starting to stray into unnerving territory. “Look, I—I’ll be right back, okay?”

“Take your time.” Marin waved him off, continuing to play with his hair. Blake nodded again and turned towards the castle.

He took several steps, stopped, and then looked back over his shoulder at the merman.

Marin was still languidly finger-combing through his hair, expression pensive.

Totally normal stuff. Blake nodded to himself for a third time and continued walking towards the castle-shaped arcade at a casual pace.

By the time he’d made it halfway through the park, he’d increased his speed to a dead sprint.

He busted in through the doors of the arcade, met by the sound of blaring videogames and the Christian pop that their boss liked to pipe into the establishment twenty-four seven.

“MATT,” he shouted over the din, stalking the nearly-empty rows of shoot-em-ups and crane games. He found his best friend wiping down the counter of the snack bar, mouthing the words to the demo song playing on the DDR cab.

“ There you are,” he started. “Look, you need to come out to the pirate ship with me—”

“Ugh, B,” Matt Nghê groaned, flopping over onto the counter in what Blake figured was a health and safety violation. Matt’s overgrown dark bangs flipped over his piercing-laden face like a mourning veil. “Why did you let them drag me in at the crack of dawn? I’m exhausted. ”

“It’s almost eleven!” Blake argued.

“Like I said, the crack of dawn ,” Matt complained, dropping his cloth into the sanitation bucket with a despondent groan. He began to scratch at one of his new tattoos in a fit of frustration. “I swear to God if I get called in this early again, I’m quitting. What about the ship?”

“You— stop scratching that— ” Blake shook his head. “Come with me, it’s better if I show you.”

In several minutes they were back at the kiddie pool, and the merman had regained his initial position, expression as peaceful as ever.

“Look, it was — ” Blake sputtered, pointing at the unmoving figurehead. “ Five minutes ago, it was—”

“What am I looking for?” Matt frowned, glancing around the play area. “Did one of those little turds wedge rocks into the water cannon again? I swear to God I was picking pebbles out of them all last summer. They like to shove them in to get the water pressure higher.”

“No, the merman!” Blake pointed at it—him?—in desperation. “He… he was moving and talking to me!”

“Your boyfriend…” Matt squinted up at it, still looking half-asleep. “Was talking to you?”

“Yeah, I…” Blake trailed off, only then realizing the extent of how insane he must have sounded. “It was asking to taste my energy drink, and—and for Christ’s sake M, don’t call him my boyfriend!”

“Hm, I’m gonna have to ignore that request.” Matt pursed his lips, expression a strange mix of imperious and judgmental. “You’ve spent the last two summers wistfully gazing at him, that’s gotta constitute dating status by this point.”

“ Matt, that is not the main issue at hand.”

“You’re the one who pushed it!” Matt pouted, set a hand on Blake’s shoulder, and looked up at him in concern. “And B, this is Water Zone, not Disneyland. The only thing here that talks is that awful Laffing Sal in the arcade.”

Blake shivered, recalling the deeply cursed antique animatronic that howled and trembled behind glass whenever someone was foolish enough to drop a token into the display.

“No, but—it wasn’t like an animatronic. It was moving around like a person,” he insisted.

Matt fixed him with a disbelieving look. “It’s way too early for you to be messing with me like this, B.” He squinted at Blake, eyes teeming with suspicion, “Have you been getting enough sleep?”

“Uh.”

That was a good question and the answer was a resounding “no.” Blake had spent the entirety of the previous night working on synthesizing his thesis notes.

He wasn’t even supposed to be at work, but he had been unable to refuse when his manager Lovepreet had called him up, begging him to take a vacant shift.

If Blake was being honest with himself, climbing around the slide tower running on nothing but half a can of Monster was a poor choice.

Not that he was about to admit any of that to Matt.

“Look, I am not messing with you,” he contended, jabbing a finger at the merman. “I swear to God that thing—that he —was just moving and talking.”

Matt frowned at him, unconvinced, before scaling the slide up to the aft of the pirate ship. Once he got to the top, he reached up and tapped the merman’s tail with an open palm. It made a dull thwump noise.

“Nope, definitely not alive,” Matt surmised. He turned to Blake, folding his arms over his chest in concern. “B, are you sure you’re okay? I know you’ve been pulling double-shifts on top of working on your thesis…”

“I’m fine,” Blake insisted, shaking his half-empty can at Matt. “What about the upper part? Are you sure someone didn’t manage to fit a live actor in there?” Maybe this was all part of an elaborate prank by the other staff or a hidden camera show.

“Do you really think Water Zone has the budget to pull something like that off?” Matt scowled.

“Back in high school, Sam quit two weeks into wearing the Walter the Wacky Water Wizard costume ‘cause the kids kept pummeling him so hard he got bruises. I doubt anyone would have the patience to get paid minimum wage to drown in pisswater all day.”

Blake couldn’t argue with that, but still…

He motioned for Matt to step aside and walked up the slide himself. He was able to reach much higher on the merman’s tail than the petite Matt, and when he jumped he managed to smack its stomach. There was nothing more than the spongy feel of fiberglass and the dull thunk of it being struck.

He stared at the merman in disbelief and then back down at his open palm. Matt stood on the pirate ship, expression clouded with concern.

“ Are you getting enough sleep?” he asked. “Do you remember that movie Nightmare on Elm Street ? ‘Cause in that, the final girl was so sleep deprived that she started having microsleeps—and I think those might be a real thing that can happen if you go too long without sleeping.”

It was rare for Matt to make such a good point. Blake was uncertain if his insomnia had finally caused him to hallucinate, but it sounded like the only logical explanation.

Matt walked down the gangplank slide on the side of the ship, groping around in his pocket for his phone.

“I’ll call around and see if someone else can come cover for you. You go home and get some sleep, all right?”

“I’m fine,” Blake insisted.

“No, you’re not fine,” Matt huffed, holding his cell up to his ear. For someone who had to be cajoled from his bed on a regular basis, Matt was being obnoxiously responsible that day. “I don’t want to see your ugly mug back here until you’ve slept, okay?”

“Thanks, Mom ,” Blake rolled his eyes, climbing back down the slide. He would hate to miss an extra shift (that implied a lot of Top Ramen in the coming weeks), but Matt had yet another good point—if he was talking to fiberglass mermen, then he needed some rest.

Within several minutes, Matt was able to get ahold of someone else to pick up Blake’s shift. Securing this, he banished Blake to the employee lounge, encouraging him to take a nap before riding his motorcycle home.

Blake agreed and headed off towards the castle, but not before he stole one last look back at Marin on the aft of the pirate ship.

He was as still as ever and Blake wasn’t sure if he was projecting, but did his smile now look a little more mischievous than before?