Peter Pan and the Mermaids

Love, Death, and Mermaids

"I'm sorry for this, Miss Tiger Lily," Mr. Smee said as he closed the shackles around her wrists, "I really am."

"If you were sorry you wouldn't be doing it."

"I..." She had a point.

"But it doesn't matter. I'm not going to tell you where Peter's hideout is no matter how much you threaten me and no matter how sorry you are for it."

She was right. Smee couldn't do this to her. He knew Hook would never actually drown her. It was a bluff to scare the location out of the girl. They would come back for her before high tide could rise over her head. It wouldn't be good form to drown her like this. But even shackling her like this seemed far outside the bounds of "good form" to Smee. Everything he'd already done, kidnapping the princess, tying her up, and now chaining her to a rock. None of it sounded like "good form" to him. And so Smee relented.

He unlocked the shackles and helped her up onto the rock.

"Go," Smee said, "And don't tell anyone I helped you."

Now, how am I going to explain this to the Captain , Smee thought.

She escaped when he wasn't looking. The locks on the shackles were rusted and broke. Something like that. He'd have to make it convincing. He smashed the iron shackles with the butt of his pistol. There. That ought to do it.

He'd give Tiger Lily a head start. He knew she could swim—they'd caught her climbing aboard the ship with a dagger in her mouth—so she wouldn't need the dinghy to get away.

The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. An atmosphere of foreboding hung in the air like a storm crouched on the horizon. As if something was there, lurking in the darkness.

A loud splash, and sounds of a struggle came from the other side of the rock. "Captain?"

Smee's voice echoed through the cavernous hollow of Skull Rock, and was met with silence. He shuffled and climbed across the labyrinthian mass of rocks that jutted from the water, looking for his captain.

"T-t-this isn't funny, C-c-captain."

What if the crocodile had gotten him? Though, if Hook had encountered the beast he probably would have rowed away, and the longboat was nowhere to be seen. Smee was certain he would come back for him, though. Right?

A song echoed through the cavern, haunting and beautiful. It swirled through the air and surrounded him like a spell weaving itself around his mind. He felt lighter, happier.

Smee burst out to see a mermaid kissing his Captain, her long fluorescent hair swirling in the water all around them as she pulled him down. The glow of her hair slowly dimmed as the two faded into the deep.

xxx

Euphoria coursed through Hook's veins as Anaurora tore into him. Her hair and his blood swirled around them until he wasn't sure which was which. He moved with her body like a marionette on its strings, his body obeying the slow, deliberate thrusts of her hips into his. He was helpless to resist her, his mind numb and lost to the sheer bliss of her love, his legs trapped by the coil of her tail, and his arms tangled in the silky billowing waves of her beautiful, fluorescent hair.

She was all he wanted, all he needed, all he could ever need. And yet, even as she made love to him, more mermaids joined her. They emerged from the darkness with dazzling locks that swayed and swirled around them in the current like fluorescent halos. Their angelic beauty was at once mesmerizing and sinister in the haunting light, casting long shadows and glittering sparkles through the dark water of the deep. Each of them was every bit as beautiful as Anaurora, their form as comely and as hypnotizing, every flick of the tail and sway of their bodies a movement in a sensual dance that brought them nearer and stoked his desire.