Modern Monsters

Dorian the Mershark

Female Reader x Male Monster (both cis)

Blackforte Cove used to not be on anyone's radar, just a spot to stop and find a restroom. That changed some during your childhood. What had once been a quiet, perhaps boring, little seaside town became a popular tourist attraction overnight when the town's namesake, Captain Blackforte's ship, was discovered offshore by oceanographers studying the mershark population.

The pirate ship's discovery provided a wealth of historical knowledge, but along with it came curious tourists. Once-regular spots in town now all had stories about Captain Blackforte. Signs were posted everywhere about the history of the village that never existed before. Homes and businesses were marked historic. And the beach became filled with sunbathers, metal detectors, and occasional ghost hunters. Now that you're grown, you're getting annoyed with it.

Your family operates a boat tour during the summer, including a gift shop and snack food eatery on land. The boat tours take people out onto the ocean, over the notorious spot where Captain Blackforte's ship sunk, and also allow them to glimpse the infamous mersharks who were supposedly the cause of the ship's sinking. The mersharks enjoy scaring people, and are very much in on the joke. Some bite marks on the ship's hull and internet gossip are the main sources of this myth, but it brings business to the mersharks just as much as it does the town. They sell handmade crafts and bottled pieces of the 'wreckage', and put the money towards cleaning the ocean and keeping the beach pristine, rather than letting it fall to the usual destruction of tourism.

During fall and winter, the town reverts to its usual quiet. During this off-season you get more of the ghost hunters, looking for the long-dead Blackforte himself. They often rent your family's boat so they can inspect the waters around the sunken ship. Often you're the one who takes the boat out during the winter, as you're the only one willing to do it. The ghost hunters can be obnoxious, but the money is good, and the mersharks are bored. The mersharks loved to fuck around with the tourists as it was, but these investigators are so much more fun. They got excited over the littlest things they perceive to be a haunting, and they seem so much more ready to be terrified.

One jokester mershark has been a friend of yours since youth. Dorian knows when he sees your boat that he's about to have a lot of fun. Even back when your family used the boats for fishing and crab hunting, he would come swimming up to hang out. This cold evening, he approaches the boat while the ghost hunters are inside with their equipment, and you're bundled up on the deck with your phone. He slides over the edge, plopping down beside you.

"What have we got tonight, eh? What's their lot like?" he asks in his raspy voice, waving his webbed hand towards the light of the cabin.

You shrug. "They actually seem kind of nice. Well, most of them anyway. This guy is some YouTuber who ghost hunts alone, but he has a whole crew." You've not been able to talk to him without wanting to roll your eyeballs out of your head.

"A solo act?" Dorian turns and grins at you, revealing the serrated rows of teeth in his big mouth.

"The rest of the crew is nice though," you shrug.

"Well, I suppose that's good." Dorian's tail curls around your feet. He's quite large, but in his youth he was quite puny and had always been the runt of his family. Then he went through a growth super, and is now one of the biggest around Blackforte.

"What are you going to do?" You tuck your phone into your heavy coat. "Rock the boat again? Throw things?"

Dorian scratches at his jaw while he thinks. "Never had a solo act before. Always been groups of them." His black eyes turn to you. "What would you like to see?"