WARNING: LAGOON IS DEEP. CREATURES LURK HERE. SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK.
I had been fascinated with mermaids ever since my first trip to the sea as a little boy. One of my mothers had slathered me in sunscreen before letting me out near the water. She had sat back and read a magazine while my other mother had held my hand as I kicked at the sand and ran through the waves.
Collecting shells in a bucket, I had waddled along the surf when I first saw her: the mermaid. She was a hideous thing: stringy, green, hair, with sallow skin and razor-sharp metal teeth. Her tail beat against a rock, brown and ugly. She noticed me and snarled before diving back into the sea.
I found Mermaid Lagoon after years and years of research, on some obscure marine biologist’s blog. Her posts on the lagoon had stopped after some fifteen or twenty with just one line: I am moving on. I was disappointed; why had no one gotten proof of the existence of mermaids yet?
And so I decided to get some proof myself. Armed with an underwater camera and a wetsuit, I was determined to take pictures of them. I was going to make these belle laide creatures, not to mention myself, famous.
I was the only one at Mermaid Lagoon. The sky was overcast, the threat of thunder and rain imminent, but I shrugged it off. I had driven all the way here, and only had one chance to do it right.
I found the mermaids immediately. So quickly, in fact, that I was disappointed by how easily I found them. The water was murky, but I still managed to take a few pictures. When I thought I had taken enough, I made the split-second decision to keep swimming. If mermaids were at the lagoon’s surface, I wondered, what was below it?
I tried to push past the mermaids, but they formed a barricade around me, biting and growling. One serrated nail scratched deep into my cheek. Instead of becoming frightened, I let it go. Mermaids were meant to be violent. But that didn’t mean I needed to give up. I broke through the blockade and kept going.
As I swam deeper still, something dark and looming caught the corner of my eye. I knew then that the mermaids weren’t trying to do me harm. They were trying to keep me out.
There was something infinitely more dangerous in these waters.
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source: by reddit user smiling-god via reddit.com/r/
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