Chapter 5
Hallucinations
Gulls screech above and I slowly blink my crusted-over eyes.
The salt on my lashes kaleidoscopes my vision, crackling painful prisms shoot the morning light in every which way, only adding confusion to my pounding head.
I lift it and look down the stairs. The entry way is still flooded like a little pond with light from a window illuminating all the kelp, crabs and small fry which scurry just from my stare.
Dappled between the morning rays, glimmering gold water trails towards the shadowed corner.
Golden eyes look back at me, blinking. I scream and scutter with the crabs backwards up the steps away from him.
The cornered creature’s voice loudly cracks in unison with my own.
We both yell, slowly trailing off because we don’t have the strength to run or hide.
Oh…but it’s not a creature at all; it’s a man.
But, where are his brass buttons? His uniform?
Instead, all I see is his bare chest heaving. Trying to catch his breath after our surprised panic. I could have sworn I saw golden reflections in the illuminated lens.
My gaze juts down again. “Oh, God! Don’t panic! Something’s got you by the legs.”
I grab hold of the scaly creature. Did it come in with the storm?
I begin to violently shake it. I’ve never seen a fish that could half swallow a man!
It’s not moving much, but maybe it’s choked to death on its own gluttony.
As I panic and shake the beast, the man’s head is pulled under, bubbling around and yelling below the surface.
I can’t see the mouth of this monster catch, it must be wrapped up in all this seaweed.
His arms are flailing above the water, but I ignore him.
This poor sailor must be horrified being caught up in this gullet. I reach under, if I can find the gills maybe I can get it to let go! As I frantically maneuver my hands through the muck, I realize he’s not screeching in pain—
He’s laughing at me. “Get out of there, cut it out—” he says playfully. He must be too delirious to understand the gravity of the situation. I find a gilled opening, then the tail begins to flop in every which direction, “NO. Really. Stop!” He yells with a commanding tone, and pushes me away.
Completely stunned, I land on my ass and splash around up to my neck in the shallow water. “Sir! You’re in shock from your injuries, we need to get this thing off of you so that we can assess how hurt you are!”
He begins to grin. “You know… it’s not polite to manhandle a man with an injured tail.” He squints, eyeing me up and down. “Or woman-handle.”
My cheeks burn red hot from his exploratory gaze and his smooth voice that bounces around the brick room landing back through my chest like a little arrow.
He winces in pain, but lifts the scale-covered appendage into the air, every copper coin encircling it catching the light, twinkling in glorious iridescence.
He can only raise it a few inches above the water before smacking it back down, exhausted.
Blood begins to pool around him in the water and I can tell the whole ordeal has made him move too much.
I rub my palms deep into my eyes so hard that I see bursts of light. “Okay Sailor, you’ve had too much salt water in you and I think both of us hit our heads,” I bubble out, trying to use a macho tone to cover my deep concern. I pull at my hair feeling for any bloody raw spots along my scalp.
He looks at me, exhausted and annoyed. His black hair haloing down across his sharp cheek bones.
Dark lashes encircle his pained narrow eyes like museum picture frames.
His breath is sharp and he looks at me like he’s looking down the barrel of a gun.
I’ve never had a man look at me like this before, scared but also begging for help.
Tripping through this makeshift tide pool towards him, I grab him by his underarms. With all my strength I drag him up the stairs. In tight mouthed wail he screams in pain and I feel something is not quite right with his shoulder. ”I’m sorry! I don't know where else to grab!”
He winces and groans as I pull him from the water. I try not to look at his naked torso, slim tapered muscles all leading towards…
“Oh, Fuck!”
In my moment of astonishment he slips through my fingers and I drop him hard with a loud hollow thump, he yells out another thin winced scream.
“The fish….it’s…attached..to you…You’re attached to the fish…” I point back and forth in shock, hovering over him.
He sighs breathlessly. “I tried to tell you! And it’s not who’s attached to who! I’m just a mer…”
“A mermaid.” I gasp, my hands covering my mouth.
“A merman…or at least that’s what you humans seem to like to call me.” He groans while clutching his side.
I suppose he is a man on top, and an injured one at that.
He is muscular like a young man, but androgynous enough that if he were covered—I would’ve probably questioned him with a double take as to address him with either ‘sir’ or ‘madam’.
His beauty makes him the polar opposite of my androgyny, which comes from being dirty and tired.
I look at him too long as he is now splayed across the stairs, barely able to move other than shifting weight back and forth to not strain anything else. Especially, not the large gashed cuts which cover his tail from hitting the rocks.
As I stare, he tugs on my soaked sweater and dryly whispers, “Thank you for saving me, I was really in bad shape down there.” There is something about the way he looks deep into my eyes, something about the sincerity of it. “I suppose that I’ll owe you a debt for it.”
His other warm hand rubs circles over my red cold knuckles.
Those little rings sealing his apology on every digit.
I’m kneeled behind him, my whole body crescent mooned over his frame and I can’t escape those eyes.
It causes my heart to thump slower for a small moment.
Then, gesturing with his head towards the door, he breaks us out of this bubble we’ve become interlocked within.
“Now, if you’re not going to kill me lady human—if you could just drag me back out there. I’ll get out of your weird light-up phallic structure and be on my way.”
I stutter as I attempt to speak, “I would never dream of killing something so—”
Gripping the stairs, his eyes glowing bright in the shadows. His mouth isn’t smiling—just larger. “Terrifying?” He gasps out, his—what I suppose to be, fins—flaring out around him.
“Beautiful.” I say, slipping out in the smallest whisper.
Everything about him slowly lowers; his fins, his mouth, and his temper. He sighs, “The door, please.”
“But, aren't you really hurt? I don't know how to care for you really…but…you might still not make it—”
He smiles, gritting through his teeth, and sluggishly lifts his hand and gestures for the front entry. I can see the shake in his now blood-soaked limbs, a shake I’ve seen as an elderly man points towards the door in their final moments, beckoning for the reaper they believe to be seeing.
I oblige by pulling the door handle and all the water rushes out onto the jagged obsidian rock.
I watch as the small sardines flop around on its uninhabitable surface.
I try to grab a few of the poor creatures to throw into tiny puddles, I can’t bear to see them suffer.
Yet, the more I try to grab, the more they panic and shake.
The stranded fish just keep slipping between my fingers, just hurting them more as I uselessly try to help them.
I hear him groan behind me, holding his shoulder as he waits for me to stop flailing about.
Gently as possible, I pull on his tail down the steps.
I can’t believe I carried him with all my adrenaline last night, he’s twice as heavy as a regular person.
With the water drained, I can see that just his tail is about six feet long.
Once we’re out of the landing, I pull him by his shoulders again.
“I asked you to not kill me! That doesn’t mean I am fine with torture—” He yells, as we pass over all manners of rocky paths. Leaving no stone unturned as he flops against their painful textures, which range between arrow point quartzite and sandpaper lava pumice.
“Yeah, yeah. It would be easier if you were—” I grit my teeth as I pull him over a small mound. “—just not so damn large!”
The tide is way out this morning, a less treacherous trek than last night but still a long jagged distance to drag an injured person.
I keep my eyes on the horizon as I heave and pull, but I can tell he’s trying to also push himself as to not burden me, but in his current state there’s not much help provided.
Soon though, I feel as if there’s less resistance against the rocks and that we’re going to move along much more smoothly.
“See! Now we’ve got this! How the hell did you manage to feel lighter—” I say, but as I look down, my excitement is cut alarmingly short.
I see our crimson trail and my face goes pale.
Our gliding movements have been lubricated by the blood now slowly pouring out of his wounds.
Horrified, I kneel down and try to stop it with my hands—but it flows up like tar cracking through the Earth’s mantle.
I can’t stop it. Oh God, why won’t it stop!
He looks down at me sad, but knowing. Does he know that if he reaches the sea he’ll die?
I grab him by the shoulders. “Are you magical at all?” I shake him, “Can’t you heal yourself or something? I thought you were some sort of myth, but are you just some stupid-fish-man?!”
He looks at me shocked, and then composes himself. “Everything must eventually die…”
I shake him more, my tears and sweat bubbling up. “But, I saved you! But, I thought I could save something!”
Before he can give me any sort of sensible answer, I look back towards the lighthouse—there’s a large tide pool back there, it’ll have to do because there is no way he will make it to the ocean alive.
I turn around and start dragging him by his tail.
He starts to squirm and resist, but as he bleeds more and more it begins to slow.
I cry and gasp as I pull him into the natural bath.
He flops down into it, his head resting on the cushioned sea-moss covered rocks.
He looks horrifyingly peaceful as the water turns rapidly into a stained goblet, running red and thick from the cask of his body.
I run.
I run hard and fast back to the lighthouse.
Winding up the stairs making record time, I burst into the store room.
I had watched my father treat the wounded during the war when I was only a small child.
Peeping through those stain covered curtains, hearing their screams as he eased their suffering, I had learned a thing or two.
I find a thin waxed thread, a torn sail, some of my personal absorbent cotton and an almost useless medical kit.
I run back out, tripping over the stairs, almost knocking myself out again.
The gulls fly alongside me. Oh, how I wish I had wings to move through the air—to save people, to be free.
Not just to mock those of us tied and weighted to the Earth like these flying bastards do.
My clothes flutter in their outstretched shape, but only give me drag and slow me further against the elements.
I slide across the ground on my knees as I reach the pool.
Little rocks skip across the dark water before sinking into the painful abyss.
My hands are shaking so fast that my eyes can’t follow them.
I pull his tail out of the water and begin my operating room prayer.
My hands aren’t steady and my mind is weak from my own pain.
I wish desperately for some other power out there to please guide them, please guide me to save him because the small amount of basic human medical knowledge I possess probably isn’t going to help me with this unusual patient.
As I said before, I’m practically useless at handy crafts, but I try to close the cuts the best I can. Every puncture of the needle physically squeezes my heart as I have to cause these microscopic injuries to the stretched out canvas before me.
I rip the fabric I found to tourniquet some of the bleeding.
Just that pressure make him scream an airless sound between his teeth, but I block it all out.
The supplies I brought down aren’t enough to stop the bleeding.
I pull a knife out of my pocket and I begin to unravel the bottom of my sweater.
Violently pulling at the yarn to create an absorbent fluff to place in the deep punctures and then wrap them up as well.
The water has stopped changing color and I can’t feel the terrifying pumping of his blood flowing out. Are his cheeks rosier? Can he speak? Can he look at me?
All I see are the black rocks spinning around me as I pass out again on the edge of the pond from my adrenaline finally reaching its absolute plummet.