The Lonely Mermaid

Upon One Summer's Morning

Rain's POV

     "Upon one summer's morning,

I carefully did stray,

Down by the Walls of Wapping,

Where I met a sailor gay,

     Conversing with a young lass,

Who seemed to be in pain,

Saying William when you go,

     I fear you'll ne'er return again,

My heart is pierced by Cupid,

I disdain all glittering gold,

There is nothing can console me,

But my jolly sailor bold," I sang with all of my heart, the song of the mermaids.

     I wasn't like everyone else. I had a secret. I was a mermaid. I was alone with this fact.

     On my sixteenth birthday, I was soaking in the tub after a long day of running and training. The water had started to glow and swirl. Pretty soon I had one tail instead of two legs.

     Following this unexpected transformation, I began to discover powers. I could control the water. I could freeze it. Heat it. Make it grow. Make it shrink. I could do anything with the water. I could even become the water.

     There was only one catch. If I touched water for a minute or more, I would involuntarily grow my tail. This meant that I had to give up swimming. When doing things like the dishes or spilling water on accident, I just used my powers to hide my secret. But with swimming, I could never pull that off.

     My parents thought that I was drinking or doing drugs. They were swimmers in high school and were so pissed off that I stopped swimming. They were living vicariously through me.

     They started to make me do home drug tests every week and smelled my breath for alcohol after I came home from anywhere. Even when nothing came up positive, they still didn't believe me. I think they just wanted a way to explain my behavior away as irrational and try to make me swim again.

     After I graduated from high school, I went to a college far away from them without a swim team. Once I graduated from there as well, I decided that I would use my degree somewhere far away from my livid parents.

     They had wanted me to go to the Olympics, but when I refused, they tried to use my lack of money against me. Little did they know that I had multiple jobs all throughout college, so that money wouldn't hold me back.

     I called around and found out that there were some good houses right on the beach where I could hide away from my parents and use my degree at the same time. I was now 24 and headed to Florida. I had a degree in biochemical engineering and I got a job at a firm that was looking into making vaccines more effective and enhancing sedatives to be less harmful, but still effective.

     The lady I called said that my neighbors were very private, but if I showed them that I was trustworthy, they might warm up to me. I don't know if I wanted them to warm up to me. We lived on a beach. They might want me to go swimming with them. It would be doable if I just stayed on the sand. But the lure of water was too tempting for a mermaid like me.

     I drove for about 13 hours from North Carolina, the place I went to college, to Florida. During that time, I decided that trying to become friends with my neighbors would come in handy eventually if I needed to borrow something or if I needed help watering my plants if I left on a business trip. I was thinking long term right now. I already had a contingency plan, but I hoped that I didn't have to use it.