"Hey, Jed?" Mick says from the driver's seat.
"Yeah?"
The two men are in their old pickup, on their way to Jed's home.
"Maybe we shouldn't tell people right away."
Jed turns to his brother in the passenger seat. "Why's that?"
"Well," he shrugs, "what if... well, what if once the word's out that there are mermaids, people'll start rushin' around to get their own?... Would ours matter when dozens of other people will be picking them up too? There's gotta be more out there... we could get more."
"Well, let's take care of what we got first." The car pulls into the driveway, the tires crunching on the gravel. "I'll open the gate, then help you carry the girl in. Careful she doesn't bite you. We don't know what kind of bacteria could be in her teeth."
Jed steps out of the car and opens the white gate surrounding the pool in his back yard just as Mick wrestles the young girl out of the back seat. Jed rushes forward and secures the girl's lower half, wrapped in a tarp. They rush in through the gate, Mick closing the gate with his foot on the way in.
They shuffle toward the pool, trying to restrain the squirming creature in their grasps. They reach the edge and drop the weight into the water, making a loud splash!
The sliding glass door opens and out walks an older woman. Her hair, a mix of blond and gray, is pulled into a ponytail. A loose cardigan is draped around her shoulder, the ends long enough to touch the hems of her knee length pants.
She steps out of the house and closes the door behind her.
Jed rushes forward and covers her eyes with his hand, smiling. "You ready to see the surprise?"
"Jed-"
"Just walk forward. Trust me."
"What poor creature is it this time?"
They stop at the edge of the pool and he removes his hand from her eyes. Her mouth opens but no sound comes out.
"We saved her," her husband explains. "She was alone. Lost."
Marla covers her mouth with her hand.
YOU ARE READING
Beached
FantasyWhen a girl swims out to sea to rescue a figure in distress, she quickly realizes that the reason as to why he was in distress was quite different from the reason she had in mind. He wasn't drowning. Julia finds herself tethered to the mysterious st...
