The Mermaid Disease

4/Itching

 Gray eyes darted to the window, as if the bite-happy man would be standing there. Kelsea released a shaky breath when she saw no one out on the dock.

She drummed her fingers on her leg, trying to figure out what to do, where to go. She should have gone to school.

Now she couldn't help but think how much she didn't want to see her father when she returned home. It was somehow his fault for causing a maniac to bite her leg. Any other day she would have confronted him about whatever was happening. The last few days had emotionally drained her, and she anticipated forgiving her father in a day or two for whatever his involvement in this mess in order to move on with her life.

Assuming that jerk didn't have rabies or something, in which case she might be a dead girl walking. Kelsea hoped he wasn't carrying any other weird diseases for that matter, too.

Of course, when she drove home a couple hours later, her plan to avoid her dad was quickly foiled. As soon as she took a step into the house, her dad was there to greet her.

"Did you see the pictures?" he asked. Not "how was your day?" or something nice like that. Kelsea blinked. Eric waited eagerly for her response, evident only by the wild glint in his eyes. His face was otherwise calm and unwavering. "Well?" he prompted.

"Yes, I did. They were okay," the girl said with a shrug. She reached into her backpack and handed the camera's memory card to her dad.

She attempted to move past the man, but he blocked her path. "Did you look through all of them?"

"Yeah, dad, and if you are so interested in the pictures then look at them yourself. I'm going to do homework now," she stated, finally brushing past him.

Not even ten minutes later her dad came barging into her room and held his phone in her face. "Why didn't you tell me about this?" he huffed. On his phone was a photograph of a computer screen that had the face photo pulled up.

Kelsea was about to inform her dad that he could have put the picture on his phone instead of taking a picture of a screen, but he said, "Oh, never mind. Take a good look at the picture, Kelsea. I know it's blurry, but if you see something in the water that looks like this thing, stay away. The creature is dangerous."

The wild shine had gone out of his eyes and had been replaced with a seriousness Kelsea hardly ever saw from her dad. What game was he trying to play? Hoping she could force her dad to give some answers she said, "I met a guy wearing a fish tail down by the docks earlier." She gestured toward his phone. "I think he looked like that, but it's hard to tell."

His face became even more grim and he swore. "Did it say anything?"

Whoops. Did she just indulge in his weird delusion? She sighed. "Not much. He said something about your deal being completed." She omitted the part about him biting her after.

Any color that had been left in her dad's face drained away in a split second. The girl had no idea what to make of that sight. Her dad appeared too afraid to be pulling a prank. Maybe an elaborate hoax was being played on him. But who would go through all that trouble? Either the Glasses had gone crazy or some maniac puppeteer was trying to make them dance.

"Um, I am going to go back to my homework, now," Kelsea slowly repeated.

"Yes," Eric said softly as he turned away. "Go do your homework."

She wondered if her dad realized she did not have any school work to do.

Kelsea killed time for the rest of the afternoon by journaling her scrambled thoughts and reading. Then came dinner, which consisted of turkey burgers, steamed veggies, and small-talk with the family. The rest of her day was, in a word, uneventful.