Open Bar

The creature swam in a slow circle, her silver-gray tail rippling in a steady motion that reminded Darcy of the summer she learned the butterfly stroke. She’d expected the mermaid to be bigger, closer to human sized, instead of measuring barely four feet long, tail included. Darcy hadn't gotten a glimpse of her face yet, but the rest of her body was littered with barnacles and a film of grime that made her want to get the hose out, spray the creature down, see what she was really like under all that…ocean.

When she’d first heard the aquarium had acquired an injured mermaid and was planning to rehabilitate her, Darcy thought she’d gotten an easy win, especially so close to the holiday season. The social media campaign would practically write itself, and the “Think of us in your end-of-year-giving” letters would feature a prominent sidebar about the mermaid. She thought about talking to the gift shop about stocking up on wearable mermaid tails for the kids, and setting up a photo station for the families and kids in said mermaid tails in whatever section the mermaid tank would be.

After the dressing-down she’d gotten at the end of the summer for failing to reach the aquarium’s fundraising targets two quarters in a row, she desperately needed the win.

Darcy stared into the tank at the small muck-encrusted creature and felt her easy giving season slip away.

“What do you think?”

Darcy turned around. Camila, one of the lead rehabilitation specialists, was coming toward the tank wearing elbow-length rubber gloves and carrying a bucket of fish. “I was gonna name her Ariel, but that feels a little…”

“...too far?” Darcy answered. “Yeah. I get it. Is that her lunch?”

“We’ll see,” Camila replied, opening a hatch in the tank’s cover. “There’s only three or four records of mermaids in captivity. The Irish aquarium had some luck feeding theirs live smelt, the Costa Ricans said the only way to keep theirs alive was to let him go hunting under supervision, and the Australians were kind of tight-lipped on the subject.” She dropped a wriggling fish through the hatch. Darcy watched it take off. The mermaid didn’t seem to notice at first, but when the fish skirted the edge of the area she’d been exploring, she whirled around, giving Darcy her first clear look at the mermaid’s face.

Christ, those teeth were terrifying. Like the rest of the staff, Darcy had dutifully read all the species information Camila had sent out the day before, and she noticed the “thin, tine-like teeth that extend beyond the jaw during feeding and retract after” but that hadn’t prepared her for the sight of a barnacle-adorned face with a mouth full of harpoons speeding towards the fish. Darcy and Camila watched as the mermaid speared the little smelt and, with a horrible gnashing sound, decimated it into a cloud of ragged, bloody scraps before retracting her fangs and swimming back to the bottom of the tank like nothing had happened.

“Well,” Camila said. “That happened.”

“Did she even eat it?” Darcy asked.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Camila answered. “I think either she perceived it as an invasion, or that was the most definitive request to send something back to the kitchen I’ve ever seen.”

“Work to be done,” Darcy agreed dryly. “Is there a chance that eventually she might be more…”

“...pretty? Disneyfied? Less like the stuff of nightmares?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of ‘safe for children’ but, yeah,” Darcy admitted.

Camila shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. The mythical creatures expert is coming in from Montreal. She might have some more insight. Maybe she’s just hangry. If we can figure out what she actually eats, we might start getting somewhere.”

*

Over the next few days, Darcy kept in close touch with the rehab team. The expert from Montreal had tried and struck out. The mermaid refused to eat nine different breeds of fish, leaving them practically vaporized. The tank filters couldn’t keep up with the additional muck. The team was beginning to wonder if they’d run afoul of the maritime rehabilitation regulations that would prohibit them from keeping a creature fundamentally incompatible with enclosure or artificial environments.

It wasn’t until they tried to move the mermaid that they got their first truly useful piece of information. Darcy was observing safely from a plexiglass enclosure while the rehab team, led by Camila, lowered a wire enclosure into the tank and tried to corner the mermaid. A fight ensued almost immediately, most of which Darcy couldn’t see. When they raised the cage, Darcy saw that one of the mermaid’s more aggressive front teeth was trapped in the wires. Her screams sent shivers through Darcy’s whole body, like someone dragging a whole fleet of hardware across a chalkboard. Nevertheless, the transfer was going well, but when they lowered the cage into the temporary tank, Camila’s haz-mat suit got snagged on the errant tooth.

It didn’t seem like much blood - certainly not enough to stop Camila from finishing the task - but by the time they’d sealed the new tank and stepped back to breathe, everyone noticed how calm the mermaid had become. For the first time since she’d arrived, she’d shed a good bit of the muck, revealing iridescent, pearly skin. The barnacles seemed to have shrunk a bit, or at least looked less horrifying.

The team looked at each other in silence. Darcy saw one of them shake their heads, and then saw Camila shrug and raise her still-bleeding arm. The mermaid rushed the side of the tank so hard even Darcy heard the dull thud. Someone gave Camila a gauze pad, which she pressed to her arm for a few minutes, then quickly unlatched the tank and dropped it in.

Darcy felt sick to her stomach as the mermaid delicately took the bloodied gauze and put it in her mouth, sucking the blood from it with a rapturous expression. The barnacles faded almost entirely. Her skin began to shine. Her hair began to grow from the roots in rich purple waves. She took the gauze out of her mouth and let it fall to the floor of the tank.

It was perfectly white.

*

“I don’t know how to tell you this, Darcy,” said the chairman, “but the board has determined that if we don’t hit our fundraising targets this month, we’ll have to officially close, and use whatever remaining funds we have to move the animals to other facilities.”

It wasn’t a surprise, but Darcy’s heart was pounding anyway. She nodded at the chairman, and quietly scooped up her reports, stacking them neatly on the table in front of her.

“That being said,” the chairman continued, his voice brightening, “we’ve got a special treat today, and one that is sure to help Darcy’s fundraising efforts. The rehab team has finally invited us to come see the mermaid! Let’s go, everyone.”

Darcy walked silently among the board members, feeling her pulse get louder and louder in her ears. She and Camila hadn’t spoken in four days. Darcy, hadn’t breathed a word of what she’d seen to anyone - and from the sounds of it, neither had the rehab team. She had no idea what they’d see when they walked in.

“Ooooh!” Darcy heard the board member’s delighted squeal and felt her heart sink. As the tank came into view, Darcy wanted to scream.

The water was perfectly clear, highlighting a small, colorful coral reef on which the mermaid lounged. She sparkled under the artificial tank lights, her skin so luminous she seemed to glow from within. Her long purple tresses swirled gently in the water. When she saw the board members come in, she swam to the edge of the tank, her eyes glowing an inhumanly bright sea-green.

“She’s beautiful,” said the board chairman. Murmurs of agreement rippled through the group. Some stepped closer to the glass, kneeling down to wave at the mermaid, who simply stared back. Darcy looked around and saw Camila at the edge of the room, looking pale. She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt.

“Darcy,” said one of the board members, “I can’t imagine why you didn’t include this in your report. We could do an entire campaign around this - the money would raise itself.”

“I wasn’t sure she would be ready for prime time,” Darcy answered, having already prepared this excuse. “She was pretty…rough around the edges when she came in. The rehab team,” she continued, throwing Camila a halfway worried glance, “has done an amazing job.”

“So we can expect to see a campaign rolled out by…next week?” the chairman asked.

Darcy swallowed. “Yeah, next week works,” she said.

*

“I can’t put out a fundraising campaign next week.” Darcy slumped on a stool next to the mermaid tank and stared dejectedly at the creature, who had begun adorning herself with brightly colored shells.

“Yeah,” Camila agreed from across the room. She held up a bag of deep red blood and hooked it up to an IV pole, which attached to a hose that fed into the tank. The mermaid, they’d discovered, liked an open bar. “Unless you want to combine it with a blood drive or something.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Darcy groaned, scrubbing at her forehead with the heel of her hand. “How much do you guys have left?”

“This is the last bag. Given how fast she ripped through the last few, we’ve got a day or two at most before we need another round.”

“How on earth are you getting people to do this? This is a liability nightmare.”

Camila shrugged. “Don’t underestimate the devotion of kids who wanted to save the dolphins and then grew up to be marine wildlife rehabbers?”

“I guess.”

“Seriously though. We make sure we rotate and no one gives too often. With the size of our team, we could keep this up indef - oh, crap.”

Darcy looked up. “Oh, crap.”

The mermaid was gleefully sucking down the blood supply. Shimmery waves of light rippled through her hair. The scales of her tail were almost blinding. The bag of blood was half gone.

*

The photo started circulating two days later. Darcy woke up to thousands of notifications. Those stupid board members. That idiot chairman. She checked the aquarium’s donation platform and threw her head back against the pillow.

There was no getting out of this now.

Darcy staggered out of her apartment and drove to the aquarium on autopilot. A throng of reporters had gathered around the aquarium’s entrance, though it wasn’t scheduled to open for another half an hour. Darcy got out of the car and didn’t even try to sneak in. She was surrounded by microphones before she was halfway to the door.

“Can you tell us anything about the mermaid rehabilitation program?” “When will the public be allowed to visit?” “Does she have a name?” “How long has she been at the aquarium?”

Darcy held up a hand and summoned a grimace that would read as a smile on camera. “I’m so glad you’re all here today,” she said. “Yes, the mermaid program has been up and running, though we were hoping for a little more time to get everything ready. It’s understandable that some of our board members were so excited to share her presence with you all, but we wanted to make sure she was healthy enough to withstand the kind of overstimulation that comes with being part of a public exhibit…”

She talked until the reporters’ faces started to fall, running a smooth patter with almost no real information in it. Thank the stars for a decade of PR training and an endless pile of aquarium trivia in the back of her mind.

By the time she extricated herself from the swarm of reporters, her head was pounding. The museum would be open in ten minutes. Darcy hustled down the corridors, took the stairs two at a time, and bounced impatiently on the balls of her feet as the security system took three tries to verify her ID card. By the time she burst into the rehab center, a rising sense of dread had filled her throat with bile.

The first thing she saw was Camila’s body, pale and lifeless, her arm hanging limply over the side of the tank. Darcy scanned the room in a panic and saw two other members of the rehab team, their throats slashed and licked clean.

She knew she needed to run. She needed to shut it down, call the National Guard or the Department of Damage Control, or whatever government agency was responsible for homicidal mythical creatures. She needed to figure out how to tell the public that they would never see the mermaid.

But she had to see her first.

Darcy shakily walked over to the tank. The mermaid’s skin and scales seemed to emanate their own light, watery beams illuminating the tank and half the room. There was a hole gouged out of the tank cover. The mermaid looked up at Darcy serenely and swam toward the surface, opening her mouth wide, spearheaded teeth inching out of her gums.

She knew I’d be back, Darcy thought. She was waiting for me.

When she felt the bite, she didn’t even fight.