Beached

We were walking by the seaside when it happened. The old lady emerged from the sea, seaweed curling round her torso like a tunic. She groaned, and when she opened her mouth, shells of red and blue came tumbling like flowers onto the sand. I grabbed Jenny’s hand and we darted backwards.

“Don’t be afraid,” the mermaid laughed throatily and fell onto her chest. Shells continued to spill from her mouth, bathing the beach in a colourful mosaic. Then behind her came two women, one haggard, one younger. Both were wrapped in leaves and spotted in algae. They lay beside the mermaid, wordless, their chests pressed into the sand, and opened their mouths to sing out the song of the sea. Saltwater trickled down the beach. Little fish writhed in the water, squirming to be free of the women’s mouths, then squirming for air and shivering to a still. A graveyard of fish bodies. Shining in the sun.

“Let’s go.” Jenny crushed my hand in her grip.

I turned to her. “Don’t you want to see what this is about?”

She hauled me up the beach, not looking at me. She was very strong, my girlfriend.

“We could sell the shells on ebay,” I said, “we could make this a tourist attraction.”

Jenny scoffed. She vaulted a fence and offered me her hand.

“At least let me take a picture, Jenny. Imagine how viral it would be.”

“You disturb me, Carl.”

Before I took her hand and left the beach behind, I turned back one more time. There were a whole assembly of them now, bodies stumbling from the waves and collapsing in the sand, glowing in the early morning sun. No one else would visit this beach for some time. It was our private spot. Nobody would see what had taken place, and no one would believe me.

“We can’t forget this, ok? You see those people too?”

Jenny stared at me, and held out her other hand. “Come on, Carl.”

“You can see them as well?”

Jenny stuck her hands through the gaps in the fence, grabbed my waist and started to haul me over.

It wasn’t that I didn’t mind leaving. “If we’re leaving, at least tell me you’ll remember what we saw. We shouldn’t tell anyone else, though, Jenny. Oh, your dad would flip out!” I toppled over the fence and landed in the grass.

“There’s a reason this beach is our private place,” Jenny said, her face tilted away from me. “I’ll make sure they’re not here next time.”