Maria Pianelli Blair

We caught a mermaid down by the pier. Her eyes were bright, like midsummer skies; her hair the shade of sugarplums. Until then, only the occasional shark sighting or whale carcass made headlines, folklore banished to the faded murals of selkies and sea dragons that lined Ocean Avenue. Until then, Harmony Grove’s biggest claim-to-fame was the Victorian style church in town square, complete with a gabled roof, ornamental spires, and a congregation 500 strong.

Those days, we spent weekends at the boardwalk, riding our longboards through throngs of tourists. There was usually some hubbub or another at the shore and, that Saturday, all eyes were on the new cross-shaped pier, funded by St. Luke’s. Stretching nearly 600 feet, and funded by $2 million in parishioner donations, the fiberglass monstrosity was deemed an “architecture marvel” by the county paper. Others called it “controversial,” spurring a year-long debate over whether religious symbols, especially ones the size of a football field, belonged on public beaches. But the Methodists won, as they often do, and Jack figured what better way to christen the pier than with his granddad’s old fishing rods?

“Mike Caldwell caught some fluke last summer,” he assured us. “We just need a few lucky casts for a fish fry.”

Instead, we caught a mermaid. It took the three of us to reel her in, heaving and hawing like a game of grade-school tug-of-war. I imagined a colossal sea bass leaping from frothy waves, the kind that smashes state records and lands you an interview in Field & Stream. But when the line burst from the swell, we were blinded by her iridescent tail, scales more resplendent than the sun. She landed at our feet with a thud, hook tangled in her coarse tresses.

We stood, breathless, Indie still white knuckling the fishing rod, until she threw her head back and screeched an ungodly screech. More grating than nails on a chalkboard. Visceral, like a mosquito humming in your ear. The sort of sound that sends a jolt down your spine, convulsing, writhing, ravaging your body until sweet relief rushes in. Relief that leaves you numb, stunned, and grateful, all the same. She screeched until the whole pier stared, stopping only to catch her ragged breath.

“They caught a mermaid,” a fellow fisherman whispered, with a hint of envy.

“They caught a mermaid!” a little girl squealed, tugging at her mother’s skirt.

“They caught a mermaid,” an old woman shuddered, crossing herself.

And then they rushed in like a tidal wave, swallowing us into their fervid depths. A sea of hands, desperate for a selfie, a TikTok, a handshake. They clawed at her braids, bestrew with shells and starfish. Caressed her tail. Groped her conch shell necklace, the color of a hurricane. One woman, offended by the mermaid’s breasts, forced her into a ratty t-shirt—“Harmony Grove Community Potluck,” and a garish cartoon of a fish in a chef’s hat now emblazoned across her bosom.

It was all too much for the mermaid, who barreled behind Indie. She sat there, curled up and quivering, but the crowd remained relentless.

“Stop!” Indie cried, smacking away a smartphone. “Can’t you see you’re scaring her?”

The old woman crossed herself again. “Can’t you see that this is a miracle?

“Reverend Paul blessed the pier this morning,” added another.

A low rumbling rushed over the crowd as they inched closer, debating their next move.

“Someone call St. Luke’s!”

“That’ll take too long. We should carry her over ourselves.”

“Forget church, this has TMZ written all over it.”

Indie picked at his cuticles, blood pooling around a gnawed-down nail. Even Jack had gone pale. “Dom,” he hissed, “what do we do?”

But there was no time to think. The mermaid pressed her conch-shell necklace to her lips and exhaled. A low melodic moan, like the whale calls we studied freshman year, resounded, reverberating through our bones. But unlike Songs of the Humpback Whale, her wails were haunting, conjuring images of Sirens and sailors destined for watery graves.

A sharp pang pierced my arm and I realized it was Indie’s nails, digging into my flesh. Petrified, his gaze had locked on a seismic wave that had erupted some 600 meters out. My stomach dropped as it rolled in like a thunderstorm, skies darkening above its rising crest. As the conch shell screeched, the wave tripled, growing wider and wider. An insurmountable wall, the wrath of Poseidon, the scourge of Triton, the ultimate damnation for our sins.

But before the tsunami could break, swallowing the pier and everything in its wake, a shriek rang out from the far side of the cross: “My god! He’s caught a Kraken!”

The crowd couldn’t resist one final brush with the fantastical, a miracle, a mirage, or simply distraction from their own mortality. Those who hadn’t run screaming for the shore stampeded towards the new spectacle, dismissing the mermaid like a sideshow attraction.

The mermaid’s eyes jutted back and forth. Her jaw unclenched, her shoulders softened.

Indie crouched to meet her. “Look!” he pleaded. “You’re safe! They’re gone now. Call it off. Please call it off!”

And so, the conch shell ceased. A brisk sea breeze rushed in, flooding our nostrils with briny whiffs of salt and seaweed. The wave receded into the abyss, drenching us in mist and nothing more.

The mermaid blinked at us, languidly. I exchanged glances with Jack and Indie. They nodded in silent agreement.

We used the Kraken to our advantage, snagging a rowboat from the unoccupied lifeguard stand. Wordlessly, we paddled offshore. The mermaid, huddled in her too-big t-shirt, peered at the gentle waves bobbing our boat. Her fingertips grazed passing ripples. At her touch, a stream of fish leapt into the air. We rowed and rowed until our arms ached, eyes strained, and the colossal pier was the size of the cross that Reverend Paul wore around his neck. Only then, did we look toward the mermaid, and she peered back before swan diving into the undertow.

We sat there, silently, until she disappeared into the turquoise tide. Jack reached for the fishing rods, stowed by our feet, and snapped them in half. They sank like stones into the murky sea.

By summer’s end, the pier would be condemned, deemed structurally unsound by the city council, or perhaps a malevolent god, ocean-bound or otherwise, who understood that some marvels aren’t meant to be.

 

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MARIA PIANELLI BLAIR is an artist and writer based in New Jersey. Her fiction has appeared in Gypsophila Magazine, swim press, two-headed press, Pile Press, Prosetrics Literary Magazine, Blood+Honey, and Querencia Press. Follow her on Instagram at @strange_sunsets or visit her at mpianelliblair.com.

Kate Maxlow

“I’m afraid you’re disappearing,” the doctor says. He is about 50 years old with distinguished gray sideburns that I ache to scrub off with a pumice stone. But that would require me to get a pumice stone. I add it to the mental list: get a pumice stone. 

He smiles sadly and waves his perfectly visible arm toward the door, indicating that his allotted three minutes for me have also disappeared. “There are lollipops at the front desk,” he whispers and then winks.

I ask if they are medicinal lollipops.

“Heavens, no,” he responds. “They’re not even good for you. But that shouldn’t matter for you. Much. Anymore.” He clicks his pen six times and I try to decrypt his message, but remember I never learned Morse Code. I steal his pen and write down on my arm: Learn Morse Code. He shrieks, because my right arm was the first thing to disappear, so to him, his pen is just floating of its own accord. He has already forgotten that I am in the room with him.

I tell him he shrieks like a little girl. Then I sweep out of the small exam room as regally as possible for someone missing a right hand, a left cheekbone, and both buttocks.

As I glide past the young receptionist, she calls out, “Do you need a follow-up…?”

Without looking back, I yell at her to learn Morse Code before it’s too late.

Several crepe myrtle trees loiter outside the doctor’s office, each with blossoms the deep burgundy of the first scraped knee. Two of the smaller crepe myrtles snigger at me, but the larger simply holds out her branches. I crawl into them and hug her tightly. She tells me how every season, men come and prune her down to nubs, and then she grows back bigger and fuller and more burgundy than anyone thought possible.

I tell her that’s a nice story, but I am not being pruned to nubs because someone wants me to be more than my current self—I am disappearing, one body part a day, and per the medical establishment, there is nothing to be done. She calls the wind to come brush my hair, which it does while cooing gently as my tears fall past my missing left cheekbone.

Several people walk past. The wind and I catalogue them: a twenty-something young man wearing earbuds and chanting, “Bruh, bruh, bruh.” A pregnant woman in her thirties whose hands cradle her belly. A harried mother in her forties, clutching the hand of a wiggling, pigtailed preschooler. The only one who sees me is the preschooler.

“That woman has no butt!” the child yells, pointing at me with her one free arm, flapping it as if she might fly up into the tree with me, where she will learn the secrets to not having a butt. Alas, her mother drags her along without even acknowledging the preschooler’s cries, and I choke back a sob that this poor young girl will never know the secrets to disappearing, at least, not until her own doctor’s appointment when she is 51.

In a sudden flurry of inspiration, I call my own child, a son who had never worn pigtails but did scream about strangers’ butts in his youth. At 34, he now designs eco-friendly packaging for mass-produced products and sometimes remembers to answer his phone. I taught him all the geometry, but he taught himself the benefits of cardboard versus plastic.

Today is one of those lottery-winning days. When he answers, I tell him that I am disappearing.

“Mom? What?” he asks. “I can barely hear you!”

I repeat, louder, that I am disappearing, that the doctor says there’s nothing to be done about it, that his father hasn’t even noticed and doesn’t think I need a cheekbone implant because he doesn’t want to dip into our retirement savings, which I swear he measures in asymptotes because we can never quite reach whatever mythical goal he has set for us—

“What?” my son yells again. “Are you in a wind tunnel?”

I hang up. The crepe myrtle sighs in understanding. She starts to tell me about her own reproductive issues and the difficulty with root suckers.

I climb down from the tree, carefully. I’m already missing one hand and can’t hold anyone else’s problems, not today. The wind tousles my hair and reassures me that I can forgo trying to figure out how to style it curly because it will also disappear soon.

The next day, I wake up and find every other toenail missing. In confirmation, I wander into a nail salon and sit in a chair, but no one sees me. I eventually get up and steal a lollipop from the front desk on my way out.

The next day: Earlobes.

One thigh.

Left ankle.

I try to do my own research on the mysterious ailment of disappearing one body part at a time, but discover that no research exists. All I find are copious ads for pills to combat disappearing erections.

Single nostril.

My friends go to Cabo, where they laugh when the waiters flirt with them. I stay home; I know anyone who flirts with a woman missing a thigh and a nostril is only in it for the tips, and I have a retirement fund to think about. 

I think about the crepe myrtle being pruned, and I learn Morse Code in defiance. I list this new skill at my yearly evaluation meeting, but my boss forgets to come. I ask myself some questions, pretend to think about the answers, and award myself an Exceeds Expectations in Existential Despair. Then I set a goal for myself: get a pumice stone. 

One day in June, my husband compliments my dress. He says it’s his favorite, even though it is brand new and droops oddly because I am missing a shoulder. When I lament the shoulder, he nods and says, “I see,” but he doesn’t. I buy him reading glasses so he can stop holding his menus at an arm’s length and therefore not risk hyper-extending his working shoulders.

I plant crepe myrtle seeds but they don’t grow. Should have gone with the root suckers. 

My son comes over for dinner every Sunday, wolfs down rotisserie chicken, and shows me a picture of his yoga instructor. I raise the one eyebrow I have left.

They get married.

I sew some sequins on a burlap sack and dip my head in red wine for that effortlessly flushed look.

As we dance the mother-son dance, my son looks at his new husband, which means he does not see my tears spell out, in dots and dashes: I was once your everything.

I suck on a lollipop at the reception while my husband does the chicken dance. His toast, the one that I wrote, earns a standing ovation.

I pay the caterer, who doesn’t question a check simply floating his way.

When everyone goes outside to wave goodbye to my son and his new husband, I stand near the back of the crowd, next to a crepe myrtle tree. I fiddle with and stare at the sequins on my burlap sack, so it comes as a shock when the wind rushes from my one remaining lung and giant arms encircle me. Then he runs back to the limo and drives off to his new life.

On the ground, at the foot of the crepe myrtle tree, I see a rock and pick it up. It looks just like a pumice stone.

Tomorrow, I will plant root suckers.

 

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KATE MAXLOW is a recovering school district administrator who writes across multiple genres because she is easily bored. Her work appears in or is forthcoming from Maudlin House, BULL, Bright Flash Literary Review, and more. She lives in Virginia with her family and writes curriculum by day and fiction by night. She can be found at https://katemaxlowauthor.com/kate-maxlow or on BlueSky at @katemaxlow.bsky.social.