2
(One Day Before)
A fter an appointment at Sacramento State’s health center, Blake was surprised that he hadn’t been shipped off to what his friend Faren lovingly referred to as “grippy sock jail” the moment he stepped into the office.
He’d half expected the doctor to laugh at him when he mentioned a talking merman, but the practitioner had listened to Blake’s anecdote without question and rewarded his efforts with a recommendation for melatonin, a note for three days off of work, and instructions to get at least eight hours of sleep a night from there on out.
Blake returned to his apartment off-campus and settled down onto the sleeper couch in the living room. Ryan, his roommate, was probably still at work, and the apartment was quiet without his emo music playing at low volume at all times.
Blake had looked up sleep deprivation the night before, determined to put his thoughts to rest. From what he’d read, Matt might not have been far off—maybe he had hallucinated the whole thing.
After all, between working on his thesis, pulling double shifts at the water park, and suffering from insomnia, Blake had only been sleeping for three hours a night, if that.
Not to mention, he was running on energy drinks and protein bars, wanting to make his meager collection of groceries last as long as possible.
Whether he was hallucinating talking mermen or not, it was clear that he needed an extended rest.
Although the clinic doctor had written him an excuse from work, missing so many shifts would put Blake at a huge financial detriment.
The federal student aid program had been reluctant to cough up more money for his graduate courses and he needed to work as much as possible during the summer to make up for it.
Maybe I should get a remote job , he thought, grabbing his phone and punching “psychology bachelor’s temp work” into Google. Most of the results were volunteer jobs. Blake sighed and tossed his phone aside.
It was ironic that he of all people was hallucinating. He’d taken a class the semester before with entire units on delirium and schizophrenia. It wasn’t the same thing as sleep deprivation, but it was weird that he was now experiencing hallucinations firsthand.
But it had been so real —he hadn’t even been that tired at that particular moment.
Most of the first-hand accounts on Reddit said that they had been nodding off or fighting sleep when they’d hallucinated.
However, Blake had even been well enough to be going up and down the slide tower before it had happened.
He looked down at his phone, navigating back to Google. He stared at the search bar, thumb hovering above the keyboard. Despite the doctor’s dismissal, the incident was still bothering him. He promptly typed in “talking statues.”
He got a few hits for an educational project, a set of statues depicting the senate in Rome, and a defunct animatronic show at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. He then searched “talking merman” and “talking mermaid statue” to no avail.
He hesitated before looking up: “Marin merman.”
The first result was a review for Slide Palace—Blake recalled that Water Zone had bought out Slide Palace some time ago, which explained how it hadn’t shown up in his earlier searches—it was from eighteen years earlier and listed as defunct.
Blake could only see a snippet of the review from the search page, but it sounded promising and he clicked without hesitation.
Get the goddamn pygmalion out of your stupid boat
★☆☆☆☆
Review by Nikki C.
8-11-2004
I’ve tried contacting you about this stupid merman five times!
! Who the hell at your water park cursed the merman figure on the boat to be a pygmalion?
? Are you out of your damn minds??? Took my kid to this place and this stupid thing wouldn’t stop asking for a churro so my kid’s been crying all night.
He says his name is Marin. Speaks English and Japanese.
what is wrong with you people you need to fix this immediately! !!!
Blake selected Nikki C.’s username. The profile picture displayed a pretty woman in her mid-forties—it listed her as a business owner of a shop called Celestial Gems. On her page, there were several reviews credited to her that had been made in the past couple of years, often for new age shops and local restaurants.
He scrolled down the length of the page until he reached the review mentioning the merman.
It was clear that this Nikki C. knew more and Blake opened up Google Maps to bring up her storefront.
Celestial Gems was a new age boutique in a strip mall a couple minutes down the road from Water Zone.
A picture on Yelp Reviews displayed a small group of people standing outside the shop, labeled with Family Owned and Operated Since 1996 .
His glance faltered over the face of a young person in the photo.
Is that Ryan’s datemate? Blake wondered. The picture was several years old, and he’d never met the person in question, but their resemblance to the photos on Ryan’s bedroom wall was striking. Blake stood up, heading towards his roommate’s open door.
Inside, Ryan kept his room simple and orderly.
The only furniture was an IKEA bed and a desk with a small radio on top.
On the wall, a few motorcycle and band posters bordered a cork board covered with memorabilia from Ryan’s youth.
Blake approached it, scanning the photos, and a familiar countenance leapt out at him at once.
Blake held his phone up and compared the pictures. The young person was almost identical—mismatched orange horns and grey face paint aside. Careful not to damage it, he unpinned the photo from the board and flipped it over: Ryan & Celeste Halloween 2013 was scrawled on the back in neat cursive.
Blake put the photo back and opened up Instagram on his phone, navigating to his roommate’s account.
The first post was a blurry selfie of Ryan and his datemate, taken during the fireworks display at the State Fair a week earlier.
They were crowded around a cinnamon roll the size of a baby’s head—Celeste looked beatific, but Ryan’s smile was withdrawn.
“Best cinnamon roll of my life at #CalExpo with the SO” the caption read.
“omg at least tag me, you loser!!!!” was the first and only reply. Blake clicked on the username and was met with an Instagram page full of crystals, tarot card spreads, and heavily-edited selfies of the same person in Ryan’s picture.
Without wasting time, Blake clicked ‘message’ and typed out: “Hey, my name is Blake. I’m your boyfriend’s roommate. This is going to sound really weird, but what do you know about the merman at the water park?”