Nora and the Mermaid |ONC 2021|

Chapter Eight (1st Draft)

Down By The Docks

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After passing through parts of town where Seraphim's gilded touch crumbled, and the newness of the city gave way to antiquity, where buildings sank into their foundations and subway tunnels collapsed in on themselves, they came to a dock in some forgotten warehouse district.

Abandoned factories jutted like bad teeth along the water's edge, broken windows glinting in the afternoon sun. Weeds shot up between the cracks in the concrete, nature seeding its dominion wherever it could. The skeletons of rusted machinery laid unceremoniously in heaps, half-covered by tarps.

A set of concrete steps led into the murky bay, its water a sickly brownish-green. Seagulls screamed their heads off the second Nora and Marina arrived, angered at the invasion on their terf.

Despite the beady black eyes honed in on her like laser pointers, Nora could see why Marina liked this place. There was beauty to it; in the way the rust lit up under the light, setting the entire world ablaze. The way steam curled off the waves and slunk toward the sky. The way the silence wasn't a preamble to a conversation no one wanted.

"I come here to read," Marina said, bringing to an end the comfortable silence. With their hands intertwined, Marina led them over to a bench. It sat forlornly underneath an old, knotted oak, its leaves already undergoing the transition from summer to fall.

Nora sat, back straight, too nervous to replicate a more relaxed position, while Marina stretched out like she owned the place, legs all the way out, sandals dug into the concrete, her back arched, arms waving overhead. Something mermaids had in common with fat, furry squatters.

"I feed the fish too," she added, resting both arms along the bench's back after giving them a final stretch. Her fingers grazed Nora's shoulder, immediately flooding Nora's brain with questions over whether it was intentional.

"What about them?" Nora thrust her chin toward the gulls.

"Ugh," Marina's nose wrinkled as the skin between her eyebrows pinched together, "Them? Those air hacks?" She shook her head, hair tumbling down her back. "No way. Not me. They can get tangled in seaweed and rot for all I care."

"Whoa." Nora leaned away, pretending to be struck by Marina's rage. She'd never seen her so angry, and at birds no less. She'd come close though whenever she talked about pollution and a sea turtle she knew personally who died because of someone's Starbuck's straw. "What'd they ever do to you?"

"Aside from poop freely without giving a second thought as to who might be getting pooped on?" Marina whipped her head around, her mouth split wide enough for Nora to make out all her teeth. "They're never satisfied."

"That's how I feel with shrimp ramen," Nora said. Marina rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth upturned slightly. "Open one cup, end up having three."

"Not like that," Marina said. "They take advantage of you. Give them grapes and they like it for a while but then they grow restless, demanding even more grapes. And if you don't give them their grapes, they peck at you, and flap their wings close to your head." She gritted her teeth, reaching up as if to defend herself from a harrowing memory. Bird attack, maybe. "You know how many grapes it takes to satisfy a flock of seagulls?" Nora shook her head. Marina exhaled. "A lot. Like a grocery cart full. And what's worse, everyone looks at you like you've lost your mind when you go to the checkout lane with your grape cart, and you end up branded for life at that store as 'grape girl.'" Her eyes were wet, pleading, bottom lip trembling. "It's awful."

While Marina looked thoroughly ruffled, Nora couldn't help but laugh. She could envision Marina perfectly, at the end of the dock, offering grapes to the gulls, all smiles and giggles, then everything taking a Hitchcockian turn and the birds swooping and pecking and scratching her.