The Mermaid of Marquadt

De Lombard set her down on the empty table, strapping her down with ropes that seemed to be tightly corded water plants. She was near choking in panic, naked and helpless. "I don't understand! What are you doing?"

Mayor Charlois lit a cigarette. Gilberte frowned, but the immense woman exhaled smoke heartily. "We need a mermaid, and that's going to be you. For real. Costumes and even tattoos won't fool tourists nowadays. We've got to compete with hollywood movies and video games and all their special effects. Plus you signed the contracts and agreed to everything, even that part about us turning you into a mermaid."

"But I thought you meant just the tattoos, maybe a costume! You can't do this!"

Gilberte leaned over and kissed Scylla very sensually on the lips. De Lombard clucked and turned away in a huff. The tattoo artist ignored him. "Do not worry, ma coeur. After you are changed, we will have much fun together for years to come, like we had in my shop earlier. I am the one who chose you from all our resumes. You were by far the prettiest to my eyes. I am the one who takes care of the town's mermaid, you see, and in return--" she ran her fingertips suggestively down Scylla's stomach, and further "--I get to have a very unique toy to play with. Oui?"

"But even if what you're saying is true, I'll tell someone! Someone will help me! You can't..."

De Lombard stuffed a fresh linen cloth in her mouth and taped it over. The mayor took a long drag on her cigarette then crushed it under her shoe. "Gilberte's spells will make sure you don't remember your life before, I'm afraid. Your life as a human will be a dim dream. You won't be able to tell anyone anything. You'll be a fresh innocent."

Gilberte chuckled. "Or perhaps not so innocent after a while, oui?"

The three of them began chanting, Gilberte spreading the dead man's blood over Scylla's naked form in odd, geometrically complex patterns. The tattooed scales glowed brightly as they shimmied up from her skin with bright sparks of magic, becoming the real thing.

The blood began burning, and she saw acrid smoke rise from her own skin. She watched in fascinated horror as her legs elongated and merged together into a single fin. She could feel the bone and muscle inside stretch and shift and fuse, but the process was thankfully painless. Her feet flattened and spread out, twisting and twirling together to form a large broad gossamer tail the same color as her golden scales.

She felt other changes deep within her body, the purpose of which she couldn't even guess at. Twin wounds opened up along her neck, cloying and sticky. Something was happening to her eyes, a gummy kind of blue-green haze slid over them. A membrane?

Scylla suddenly felt her thoughts fragment, turning slippery in her head. She couldn't quite understand what was going on, who these people were. Who she was herself was quickly becoming a mystery.

All she knew, suddenly, was that she desperately wanted to be in some water, to swim endlessly...

- - -

Two months later Mayor Charlois was enjoying a cup of espresso outside the town's new Starbucks overlooking Marquadt's broad lake. Gilberte sauntered up to her table and sat, ordering chai tea with honey.

Tourist business was booming, thanks in part to new sightings of the town's legendary mermaid. Of course Mayor Charlois had taken great care to milk the sightings for all the publicity she could with the local press and tabloids.

"So how's our new mermaid coming along?" Charlois asked.

"Oh, exquisitely!" Gilberte teased. "You would not believe the things she can do with that transformed tongue."

Gilberte giggled at the mayor's stern expression. "Seriously, she is adjusting very well. It did take her a while to learn to catch her own fish, but she is in no danger of undereating now. She is also quickly learning how to tease the tourists without actually being openly seen." She tossed her hair. "We picked a good one, this time. Smart as well as pretty."

Charlois sighed. "Good. But there's still the problem of the contract. You know Triton's conditions, the spell on her will only be good as long as the contract is. And you know what he does to oath breakers." The large woman tried, and failed, to suppress a shiver.

"Oui, but we could have hardly expected to get her to sign a lifetime contract, could we? Besides, if we cannot get her to renew on her own, we can always do to her what we did to the last one."

The mayor set her thick lips in a grim line. The last mermaid's contract had come up only a few days before Scylla had arrived, and had demanded to be transformed back and set free. The mayor had taken the money of that pig they had ended up sacrificing, and let him have his murderous way with her. Triton had been so angry he readily wiped out all traces of the man's physical existence so they could sacrifice him without raising suspicions. "I don't know," she said. "If Triton ever finds out..."

Gilbert sipped her cup and waved dismissively at the mayor. "Do not worry. Did Triton find out about the last one, or the one before that? He still thinks we are paying tribute to him, instead of using his 'daughters' to make us rich." She smiled at her partner. "One does not have to be a genius to be a god, non?"

The mayor just smiled, sipped her coffee, and stared in contemplation at the lake. She thought she saw, in a newly-born ripple, the flick of a broad golden fin just below the water.