Making a Splash

Replacements

It had been a LONG weekend for Lily.

With the current deal she and her friends had with Grimlur, they were spending each night in his lair having their bodies toyed with. They weren't allowed to leave until almost the crack of dawn. By the time Lily snuck back into her house after the first night, she had barely been able to get an hour of sleep before morning came. Thankfully it was Sunday so she had been able to rest during the day, or at least rest as much as she could with the memories of what Grimlur had done to her haunting her every time she closed her eyes.

But after the second night, it was Monday. And Monday meant school.

Lily yawned as she came up to the school gate. Not having the option of sleeping in, she was completely exhausted, both mentally and physically. No doubt that her three fellow mermaid friends would be in a similar state.

It was utter hell. All of them were playthings to the horrible cecaelia known as Grimlur. And as if the time he spent toying with her body wasn't bad enough, she was forced to wait in one of the cells of Grimlur's dungeon while he took turns with each of her friends, their screams all too audible. The only consolation they had was the mermaid in the cell next to them who did her best to console them. Natalie. If anything, she was in a far worse position than them, having been one of Grimlur's slaves for almost a year.

This couldn't continue. Lily knew that much. They only had until Saturday night to find three mermaids to replace them. If they couldn't, then they would all belong to Grimlur forever and what they had gone through these past two nights would be all they knew for the rest of their lives. Until he sold them off to traffickers or mersharks like Natalie said was all too common when he grew bored of a slave.

As Lily walked to the front door of the school, she felt someone knock past her. Lily stumbled to the side, but kept herself from falling over as she saw who had just brushed shoulders with her.

"Move it, loser." Veronica told her as she walked along.

Lily groaned. As if her current predicament wasn't already hellish enough, her luck just had to worsen by dealing with the biggest jerk in her entire school first thing in the morning. Lily didn't even have the energy to argue and just let Veronica go as she made her way to homeroom.

The school day went by slowly for Lily. She found herself barely able to pay any attention in class due to how tired she was. The same was true for both Marie and Emma as well. Despite being one of the top students in her grade, Emma was struggling to follow along with the lessons. Grimlur had done the same things to each of them, but Emma was taking it the worst by far. All she could do as Grimlur and his slimy tentacles did as they pleased with her was cry and beg for him to stop. But her pleas were never answered. Emma hadn't fully realized that such evil existed in the world until now.

When the final bell rang, Lily met up with Marie and Emma in the cafeteria. Rather than the study sessions they had been doing for the past couple of weeks in preparation for finals however, they had a different topic of discussion. What they were going to do about Grimlur.

"Are we really going to subject three total strangers to that for the rest of their lives?" Marie asked.

"We don't exactly have a lot of options." Lily pointed out. "Those contracts we signed were magically binding, right?"

Marie reluctantly nodded her head. "It was my first time seeing one, but I've heard a bit about them from my mother. You can't disobey it even if you wanted to. If we tried to run away, the second our time limit expires we'd find ourselves swimming right back to him whether we wanted to or not."

Emma had her hands covering her face. "Why? Why did this have to happen?"

Marie kept her gaze low. "I know this is hell. But putting other people through something like that just for our own benefit... it feels wrong."