At the scream, Calvin nearly toppled into the water; it sputtered as a fizzle of sound that erupted as a frothing swarm of bubbles from the chlorinated depths of the pool.
His horror grew as he attempted to lift the vacuum. Something clogged the hose, a dark mass he could see writhing beneath the surface, distorted and eerie. What was it? A hefty weight dragged on the hose, too heavy for any animal he could think of, but what else could it be? The head of the vacuum finally rose above the water, trailing a thick length of dripping dark hair.
Several scenarios scrolled through Calvin's mind. He wondered if he was hallucinating off possibly spoiled fish tacos from lunch. He pondered if perhaps, he'd somehow offended his ancestors with his semi selfish summer activities and they sent a spirit to haunt him. Mostly he wondered if he'd make it to the edge of the woods before the fish tacos made their reappearance and splattered the freshly mowed grass. It was about then Calvin realized that not only was his pool vacuum clogged with a sickening amount of hair, the hair was still attached to its owner.
A delicate hand broke the surface, grasping for the hose. He guessed by the slim fingers and bright hot pink nail polish it belonged to a girl. It was also bright green. An eye smarting shade of green like the algae blooms that clogged the river every July. Bemused, he thought skin that color should clash with hot pink nails but the colors were strangely harmonious.
An arm followed the hand and seconds later, a furious female burst from the deep end of Calvin's in-ground pool, spitting curses as she tried to wrestle her long brackish brown hair from the grips of the villainous vacuum.
Her attention wasn't on him yet, not until he made the mistake of nudging the off switch with his foot. The suction stopped as a luminous pair of eyes glared at him. A deeper green than the rest of her, cool and dark, like a pool of water deep in a summer forest.
Calvin might have continued to stare into them if she wasn't so angry. She continued to emerge from the water, yanking and shrieking as she clawed at her head. Her tails broke the surface. Tails, two of them, green as her skin with a silver sheen over the big flat scales. He dropped the hose with a thud on the deck, gaping at her.
The creature sneered through the tangled curtain of her hair.
"Free me, you fiend," she snapped. It was enough to break him out of the slack jawed stupor he'd fallen in. He should be scared of some fish woman snarling at him but she didn't seem so fierce with her hair caught in the vacuum cleaner. It was not the most dignified position. The softest snort escaped his lips. The fish woman froze, a range of emotions flickering across her bright green face. Her eye twitched. "Did you dare just laugh at my predicament, human?"
Calvin was a C average student. He had zero social skills. He wasn't all that attractive either. In all areas of his life but one, he was absurdly average. The one thing he had a knack for was reading people, and he knew with one look at the green-skinned fish woman any answer would not help the situation.
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