A Mermaid by John William Waterhouse. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
As a government sponsored monster hunter or as they prefer to call me a, “Crypto-biological containment agent”, I have never really believed Monsters could love anything. From most of my experiences “Cryptos” just wanted o gnaw on bones or suck away our souls. I now know I was wrong.
I had only nabbed a few mermaids before, two in the Mediterranean and one off the coast of Japan which had taken a decent chunk out of my forearm. Trust me, any ideas you might have about mermaids based on some Disney movie or Peter Pan tale is way off. They lure seafarers and fishermen to very bloody deaths, sometimes causing entire ships to wreck and enjoy picking the bones of every single crew member clean. This case was different.
Me and J72, my extremely anthropomorphized and highly intelligent robot partner, arrived at the scene of the crime in our secret jet that I am not supposed to tell you about [Details censored]. Oddly enough, none of the entranced sailors had been eaten, although their faces where slimy, like fish scales had pressed against their face. I had J72 check their soul statuses with his soul-o-meter, its scientific, not religious. Their souls were intact.
When we got down to the lower deck of the fishing liner I wasn’t surprised it smelled like tuna but I could tell something even fishier lingered about. I instructed J72 to do a thermal scan of the area, but we were Suddenly distracted by a large body bursting out of a room at the end of the hall and booking it towards us. It was a man.
“That slimy thing touched me!” He pointed behind h his pants undone and dragging on the floor behind him, “Is that a Mermaid, I don’t understand I don’t. . .” I ended his raving with a low grade amnesia dart and set him on the staircase. I know it doesn’t sound ethical but Judging by the state of him and the other crew he would thank me if he knew what he would have remembered. There was a hum that began to grow louder from the end of the hall.
Mermaid songs, like other siren type crypto’s, consist of various pitches that when put in the right order can subdue humans into a trance or drive them into a fervor of some kind. I was relieved that my special ear plugs were working and that this mermaid had only incapacitated her victims.
We entered the room and the sight I saw was more or less depressing, a very humanlike mermaid crying salty tears into it’s scaly webbed hands. Continuing its lulling song between hiccups and sobs.
“Love?” It shouted t me as it rushed toward me faster than any sea creature has moved on land, I remember its grotesque raw tuna lips pressed against mine, then blackness.
I woke up to the odd sight of J72 making out with the very same crypto that had somehow knocked me out. It had completely forgotten I existed. I checked my field-guide ad discovered I had overlooked a rare form of mermaid that had a lips that secreted a knockout poison.
Other than sexual harassment of fishermen on occasion this species of mermaid had saved more humans then they had killed. Their population had declined drastically due to Japanese fishing boats, and it so happened this one was lonely. J72 was a ladies’ man, or well robot, I just never thought he would return the love of a hideous mermaid.
So I found out that monsters could love, also that J72 will make out with any humanoid life form, must be something wrong with his programming. I had to flip J72’s off-switch before I bagged and tagged the mermaid for delivery. Probably was bought by Queen Elizabeth to be chopped into exotic sushi, it wouldn’t be the first time.
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