“Pearls used to be treasure. Now, they’re all plastic. What good are they to me?” Blondie stretched back inside her underwater castle, let her tail fin luxuriate in turquoise currents, her thick tail undulating, scales of holographic rainbows, hips like weapons of destruction. And her breasts. Well, like two pearls, real ones, the bright peaks of which were hidden by her gold hair.
“You can’t even lust after treasure like a normal…mermaid?” Toucan Sam said, wearing Kahuna shorts, scuba fins, and a bulbous brass diving helmet over his head.
“No need for a pause when you say ‘mermaid,’ Toucan.”
“Well, you don’t look like any mermaid I ever seen. It’s down here somewhere, damn it. A chest of gold. Real gold. Real pearls. Start looking, Blondie. Like I said, we’ll split the treasure.”
“Why should I trust you? Besides, you can’t move.”
“Keep floating on your back, Blondie, they’ll think you have bloat. Then I take the gold for myself.” His eyes glowered through the round window in his diving helmet. He was probably crazy. She’d read that happened, stuck in the tank for too long, like being sentenced to solitary at San Quentin. It made you nuts. But Toucan was harmless enough. Sunk into the gravel, he was just a plastic decoration to hide the air vent.
“How can I do anything with that dreadful music playing?” Blondie sighed as the water vibrated with the soundwaves of twangs and whistles, some spaghetti western playing on the television in the living room beyond the tank.
“Look who’s here,” Toucan said.
Where the water hit the glass, Blondie saw faces. The older man. And then the doughy man-child, with those innocent, angelic eyes, running back and forth in that ridiculous red cowboy hat, holding up a plastic revolver, shouting, “Pew pew!” He smiled his sadistic smile and tapped the glass with the tip of that revolver.
“Don’t count him out.” Toucan laughed. “He’s a fast shot.”
“It’s a plastic gun, Toucan.”
“So? You live in a plastic castle.”
“I’m not scared of him.”
“Never turn your back on a ten-year-old. How do you think I lost my arm?”
“The day I take advice from a one-armed deep-sea diver, is the day I hang up my fins.” Blondie swished in a slow circle around Toucan, let her rounded cheeks and long tail, the arch of her jewel-strung lower back, the river of hair, and her soulful, deep lapis eyes take him in entirely.
“What is this?” he asked, suspicious.
“I’m the only treasure in this tank. Too bad your feet are stuck.”
Bubbles drifted up in a sudden burst from his shorts.
“That must be embarrassing when that happens.” Blondie meandered to the glass and continued her seduction for a wider audience. She ducked and bobbed, winked and flirted. The man and his son pointed, excited now. Of course they were. A one-inch tall sex dream was living in their freshwater gulag.
The man-child gestured with both hands. Blondie realized she was tilting and straightened herself, turned with a dismissive flick of her tail and meandered behind the plastic algae plants. But then the kid made a dirty move. A dirty, sneaky little move. Fish flakes. On the surface of the water, a tsunami of them. That rotting bloom of stench drifting down. Her nostrils quivered.
“It’s sick, if you ask me,” Toucan said. “Feeding fish to other…mermaids.”
Blondie gulped greedily.
“Hey, Blondie!” Toucan shouted. “Bring me some, would you? I’m starving! They never feed me.”
“That’s ‘cause you’re strictly decorative. Get your own.” Blondie’s lips suctioned the surface, searching out every last drop, even when her mer guts started to ache. At the last second, she saw a shadow on the water as the tip of the plastic gun broke the surface. She ducked down, tried to dive, and barely outswam the pistol. Toucan was right, the kid was fast.
“You’re tilting to the side,” Toucan crowed. “Too greedy. Shouldn’t have stuffed yourself, Blondie.”
“Screw you,” Blondie muttered, her stomach bulging.
“I wish you would.”
“You’re too ugly.” Blondie decided not to tell him about the chest of treasure, just out of his peripheral vision, sitting amidst the plastic plants. “I’m too good for you. And you’re molded into that suit anyway.”
“I haven’t peed in two years,” Toucan sighed. “Oh, to get back to the open seas.”
“The only way you get there is the big flush.” Blondie turned on her back, stretched out, her slender fingers drifting through water.
“You better not float,” Toucan warned. “They’ll think you have fin rot.”
“Fin rot is for fishes,” Blondie said.
“Blondie, have you looked in the mirror lately?” Toucan let off another stream of bubbles. “There’s no such thing as mermaids.”
Blondie dove, but something was wrong. She wasn’t descending. And as hard as she flipped her tail, up she went, stomach skyward. She saw in the reflection of glass, a lumpy goldish, belly up. Not a mermaid. A plain fish. Impossible. Some kind of a mirage, like those western gunslingers on T.V., lost in the desert, saw delusions on the horizon. But the reflection just stared back at her. Fish. No such thing as mermaids.
Then the kid with angelic eyes locked his gaze on her. Blondie struggle downward, in circles, latched a fin on her little plastic castle.
Angelic eyes stared at her fish eyes, and her fish eyes stared at Toucan Sam’s eyes, and Toucan Sam’s eyes stared at angelic eyes. A circle of deadly tension.
The kid held up a stick with orange netting on the end. And smiled.
“Help me,” Blondie hissed at Toucan. “I know where the treasure is. I’ll show you.”
“Toucan is no fool! The next fish might be more reasonable, might help me out. The next fish might not turn her nose up at pearls!” “Toucan, you son of a—” Blondie’s last words died as the orange net swept down on her.
Silver Webb is the editrix of the Santa Barbara Literary Journal, which spotlights work from Santa Barbara and beyond. When she is not inviting eye strain at the computer, she drinks hurricanes, contemplates ill-advised tattoos, indulges in yarn art, and blasphemes the art of cooking. www.silverwebb.com