La Mer est Rouge [GxG]

I guess mermaids are cool

[image is drawn by me but is not exactly what the mermaid character looks like]

A mermaid arrived at our zoo. I had never seen as many people at the underwater exhibit as there were when the shipment arrived. "Earl's Zany Zoo" was offered the world's first mermaid by a coastal fisherman (a family friend), but only the local news took the bait so far. We placed her in a huge whale tank because we didn't know what to do with her, but she seemed to like it. Milo and my parents watched her swim around for hours when we secured her over the weekend, but she didn't do much at all. Dad let me take care of her, saying my college funds were swimming in that tank, but she just acted like another fish. With school ending and finals coming up, the last thing I needed was a magical distraction, but at least it made Milo jealous. I guess the mermaid was cool, even though she bothered me.

The Monday after that first weekend, I had trouble getting that fish to eat. Feeding a mermaid is harder than you'd expect. We thought she'd like a vegetarian diet, but she refused most of the food we offered her, like seaweed.

"Try lobster or crab. If that doesn't work, I'll sneak you some more exotic options," Milo said. His meaty hand rested on my shoulder, making me flinch. My shoulders were sensitive. When I turned to face him, my eyes immediately noticed his employee nametag on his orange shirt. We all had to wear orange shirts and khakis (or beige pants).

"Thanks, bro, but she'll eat eventually," I replied, grabbing some cheap crab we usually fed to some other animals. It was chopped up into chunks, small enough for most animals to consume like candy and greasy enough to slip right down their throats.

Milo pushed me out of the way (being overweight has that unintentional effect) to get to his own food for his mammals. He specialized in large mammals, often taking care of the lions and bears, but he took care of all of the mammals because we couldn't afford much staff. He was the only employee to actually graduate from college. "Eh, if I was in a zoo, I'd just starve myself to death. These animals don't get to live, Tori."

I bit my lip as I stared at the back of his head, noticing that he just got another cute, expensive haircut. His hair was a light brown, nearly ginger, and shaved on the sides. Sometime he wore a ridiculous looking man bun, but we laughed about it together. He's pretty good looking, made obvious by his round and smooth features, but his game was with my family, not me, so I didn't meddle with him. "It's your job to give these guys a full, meaningful life, even if they don't get to live for it," I said.

He pushed his black glasses back up the bridge of his nose, wincing at my answer. "That's some pretty poetic shit right there, but I know what my job is!" I guess his job was to be an asshole, but he's usually not that serious. Everyone's on edge with this mermaid around. Once he grabbed a bucket full of his own food, which was a big mess of more cheap fish, he began leaving the storage room. Milo continued, "Oh, by the way, your Pa said something about needing to see you. Tell him I said hi!"

His hazel eyes glanced at me, giving me a wink, and he shoved himself past me again. The big baby ran off to his own corner of the zoo, probably the bears, leaving me to stare at the food and buckets. Most of the food in the room was fish, for the vegetarian food and living foods were at other corners of the zoo. The zoo was shaped like a three-year-old drew a triangle, so he had to run off to another point of the triangle.

Dad was probably leaving for another business trip, as usual. I didn't want to go say bye to him because he remained optimistic about the zoo after all of these years, but I was used to daily life with just Mom. We lived in a big house in a suburban neighborhood, one with an ice cream struck in the summer and Uggs in the winter, but Mom always said we didn't have much longer with that lifestyle if business kept going down.