Nails of the Mermammals: A Tail of Origins and Transformations

I counted the days by how much my child's fingernails grew. Half an inch measured two days. One inch measured four days. I knew it would be one week if they became long enough to trim. I taught them this same technique for telling time and space. They had many questions, each of them answered repeatedly and always enthusiastically. I always enjoyed telling them our family's fingernail origin story and why our manicure rituals were so important to us.

My grandmother told this story to her children, who then told it to my brothers and me. It goes all the way back to prehistoric times, before humans had fingernails and manicuring was important. When the dinosaurs still roamed the earth and the sea creatures hadn't yet learned the tyranny of being caught and released. No functioning humans walked the earth yet. My mother always said that nature was better off without them.

There were pods of mermaid-like creatures that inhabited what we now know as the Red Sea. My grandmother named these creatures Mermammals. They had tails as long as football fields, long front talons that resemble a sloth's pointy claws, and hair as long as a horse's tail. Except, this wasn't long silky mermaid-like hair, this hair covered their entire torsos and was reportedly able to slice anything that might've swum too close. Sharp like a sword. It was the tail that was most important to my grandmother. Her voice would get very low and serious, 'They survived against all odds.” She still believed these creatures were out there hiding in the deepest parts of the ocean.

The dinosaurs had been vanquished now and men were starting to find their footing as conscious beings. As one would imagine, these men weren't particularly happy to discover the existence and survival of the Mermammal. For years they stayed away from the Red Sea out of inherited fear. There were rumors that it was named after the bloodshed caused by Mermammals. It kept the children from dipping their toes in much like they stray from eating watermelon seeds because elders tell them one will grow in their belly. For a while the villagers collected water from other sources, unknowingly letting their footprints wash down to the sea water. It was like they had already been to where they avoided. “Men refuse to be in awe of things they don't understand,” my grandmother warned us.

It wasn't until a severe drought that the men were forced to face this unholy water. Ronaldo Pascavits was the first to ever encounter such a creature. He recorded his time taking a bath in the deeper parts of the sea. He scrubbed his hands gently so as not to irritate the skin at the fingertips. See, people didn't have fingernails in the beginning. It was a humanities vulnerability. Where our nails sit now, were pudgy red skin nubs impossible to callous, then. He was finishing up his bath when he goes on to describe a sensation in his right thigh that sounds a lot like a searing blade slicing a frozen ham in half. He felt a sudden sting in his upper thigh and became thrown off balance. When he tried to regain his footing he realized the only foot touching the ground was his left foot. His right leg had been cleanly cut off. As his luck would have it, there was a bystander that day who not only heard his cries of agony but who bravely went in to drag him out. The bystander reported seeing a long scaly tail with no end in sight, slithering away close to the bottom of the sea.

The villagers began a witch hunt after seeing what had happened to Ronaldo. They were fearful for their children and wellbeing. “It's not like the logical thing to do would've been to find another water source,” my grandmother scoffs every time she retells it. “But anywho…” As more people became thirsty from the blazing heat of the summer, more and more sightings started being reported. Sketches were drawn in various shapes and details. Debates began around the dinner table on who had the most accurate image. There was one thing everyone could agree on though. It looked like something out of a nightmare.

One man, or to be more accurate, an unnamed woman, mustered up the courage to be curious instead of fearful. She created armor out of coconut shells, tied a rope around her waist that was tethered to a pole on shore, dagger in hand, and descended into the water. Her confidence in the homemade protection was weak. She recalls her fingertips burning from the salt of the sea. For the first two weeks nothing appeared to her. She tried calling out above the water. She tried splashing to seem like a fish. She even tried taking a boat out and watching beneath the surface from sunup to sundown. On her last trip out on the boat she brought a pig sliced up in segments in hopes to get this creature's attention. She tossed a leg in. Nothing appeared. She tossed a piece of the torso in. Still nothing. In frustration she dumped all the remaining pig parts into the water and let out a scream that sounded like a wild banshee. She was done wasting her time on a silly fantasy.

Suddenly, the water around her boat was splashing around like a school of fish had decided to gather for a feeding frenzy. When she looked over the side of the boat she was mesmerized by the view. She couldn't count how many tails there were for they were all tangled into one mass. They shone through the water like the sun sparkles through a cathedral window. She claims to have been so hypnotized that she felt no fear as she slowly slid her hand underneath the sea top and touched one of the tails. As soon as her fingers met the flesh of the Mermammal, a single scale fell from it, causing the creature to whip its black, sunken eyes towards her. The creature moved so swiftly and agile she didn't notice until its face was right in front of hers. She logged a putrid stench coming from its gaping mouth. It nearly knocked her over.

The scale still in her hand, she grabbed the dagger as fear set in. The Mermammal surprised her by sniffing the dagger as if it were a dog saying hello to another dog. The creature was shockingly gentle in its investigation of her. Outside of the water, the creature's hair lay flat against their sickly pale torso, pieces of it shedding off into the water. She recalls wondering if they were looking for their scale. She gingerly grips the scale between her fingertips and holds it up. The creature let out a horrid screech as if someone had stolen its child. Hand shaking, she extended it out, offering it back to the creature. A scream got caught in her throat as the creature snapped it out of her grasp with its teeth, swallowing the scale. Her eyes widened as she noticed new scales growing on the creature's tail where the scale had fallen from. She was too in shock to notice the tips of her fingers were bleeding.

“This is where it gets good!” My grandma was always excited about this part. The woman returned to shore, not telling a single soul about what she discovered. For months she would return to that exact spot with offerings for the creatures. Chicken heads, honey, cow tongue. The creature's favorite was the pig's head though. Each offering she gave seemed to be returned to her in the form of getting a closer look at all these creatures could do. She witnessed their speed, accuracy, hunting abilities, birth rituals, and on one occasion, a mating ceremony. She had been recording all this down on parchment paper, keeping it hidden beneath her mattress.

One evening on her trip out to the creatures it was them that brought her an offering. The most amazing thing she had ever seen. The same creature she had returned a scale to weeks before, came onboard the boat. As it slithered into the sunlight, a human form took shape. Not your average Little Mermaid though. Their legs were still so long they had to straddle each one on either side of her to fit. Their hair was flowing behind them, dangling into the water, no longer covering their torso. Their skin was still pasty, but soft and smooth to the touch. They investigated each other in awe-filled silence. She noticed their hands were now human hands, except there were scales at their fingertips. Unconsciously she reached out and lightly touched one. The creature stared, with a blank face, at her bare fingertips, mouth still gaping open. They reached out to touch the soft squishy part on the tips of her finger. She winced, pulling her hand away in pain. The creature's head cocked to the side. After moments of what seemed like the creature contemplating a life decision, they let out a series of clicking sounds and slid from the boat, transforming back into their hellish form.

She took a big gasp of air. She had been holding her breath the whole time without her knowledge. The creatures seemed to be done for the day, so she turned the boat around and started for the shore. Halfway there she felt a bump underneath her. Like a wave was coming, but there were no waves in the Red Sea. She stopped paddling to look down. Beneath the moss, there were 20 of the creatures floating in place, all looking up with their black holes right at her. Her heart sank, and she began paddling again, scared they were finally going to follow her to shore and slaughter her own village. Had she let them study her too much?

But, something even more shocking happened than the mere fact that these creatures existed. One by one, they swam gently to the edge of the boat, plucking a scale from their tails and dropping them by her feet. She sat confused as the parade of Mermammals kept coming. The last one to appear with a scale was the one who had transformed just moments before. It hoisted itself back on deck. It waited as its body and hands transformed once again. Then, took the scales one by one and placed them over the squishy skin on her fingertips. She writhed in pain as the creature placed them now on the tips of her feet. She recalls being too fearful and curious to fight what was happening.

The creature finished placing the scales into her vulnerable skin, then dipped her hands and feet into the sea, fusing the scales with her body. “And that's how humans came to have nails.” My grandmother ended the story so proudly. Once, my child asked me, “But, if we all have fingernails doesn’t that mean everyone else took them from the Mermammals? That’s not very good is it?” And I had no answer, because they were right.