Things Mermaid Tails Can't Do

"Thank you for that," said the green-haired mermaid, in a disorientingly normal voice.

She turned onto her back, staring with delight at her legs, human legs, as she propelled herself around him in a slow circle.

The other mermaids cheered and shouted congratulations to her, no longer interested in stroking Dylan's skin. Their voices were still musical, but he had no trouble understanding them now. Soon, they fell into a chant of what must have been the green-haired mermaid's name.

"Marissa! Marissa! Marissa!"

One of them handed her Dylan's swim trunks, like a trophy.

Dylan turned onto his back as well, running shaking hands over his completely transformed lower half. With much greater urgency than before, he retraced every fin of his tail, looking for any hidden features, anything familiar or deeper than it seemed.

After a great deal of searching, he managed to find two small holes hidden between his scales, but they were thinner than a pencil and felt like nothing to touch.

The nerves of his most sensitive human parts definitely still existed. He could still feel the after effects of the orgasm that had transformed him, and even a hint of fresh, involuntary arousal tied to his panic. He could flex the muscles that should have made his cock bounce, but the piece of him he could feel moving in response was tiny, smaller than his little finger, and buried deep beneath the hard outer surface of his new tail.

No matter how he moved or rubbed at the outside, he couldn't stimulate or sooth it, couldn't affect it in any way except for more of those faint, tiny, invisible, useless bounces.

"Aww, baby, that's not going to do you any good," said Marissa, taking his hand and tugging him back toward his rented boat. "Come on, I'll explain everything."

Dylan squirmed, less interested in breaking her grip than in finding some way of moving that would make him feel something.

Before he could think far enough to contemplate escape, the sharp-eyed mermaid caught his arms behind his back and bound them in what felt like fishing line.

"Send us back a good one, now!" she told Marissa, both affectionately and seriously, as she helped her lift Dylan out of the water.

#

"Believe me, I do know how you feel," Marissa told Dylan, once she'd gotten the hang of piloting the boat. "I've been cursed for so long I can barely remember what it's like to touch my own clit."

She reached experimentally between her new legs and gasped at even the softest contact with herself. She shook her head, apparently struggling to focus on controlling the boat.

"Can you imagine, all those years, being able to feel it in there somewhere, beneath the surface, but not being able to reach it? Of course, you don't have to imagine it now."

"Where are you taking me?" Dylan asked, hating the musical whine his voice had taken on. "I get it, you were cursed, you passed it on by blowing me, and now you're free, and I'm the merm— merperson. Respect, can't say I wouldn't have done the same. But doesn't that mean I belong in the ocean now? Swimming around, singing, looking for a tourist to seduce and pass it on?"

"Aw, look at you, rushing all the way to the bargaining phase," said Marissa. "No, not anymore. We used to do it that way, and that's why the curse is still going on, thousands of years later."

"Thousands... how old—"

"I'm twenty-nine," Marissa answered. "All right, maybe ten years under the curse isn't that long in the grand scheme of things, but it sure feels that way. I'll bet ten minutes already feels like forever to you."

Dylan knew the truth of this must be written plainly on his face.

"Mermaids were designed as slaves," she explained. "Perfect, alluring, virginal toys, with no capacity for pleasure of our own. Some king, I don't know his name, I wasn't there in the beginning, wanted to be able to sail anywhere in the world and find us waiting for him and his men, eternally eager to please. Thankfully, the witch who carried out the order used that last stipulation to work in an escape for us. She made escape the reason we're so eager."

"How... how have you not all swapped places with men by now?" Dylan demanded, as if finding a flaw in her story would somehow make its consequences disappear from his body. "I mean, in two thousand years, how hard could it be?"

"Men in ancient times quickly learned to fear us," Marissa said, with a smile that was both wicked and resentful. "They warned each other and stayed away, or came just close enough to watch and listen and touch themselves. The most reckless would use us until the last minute, then try to finish themselves alone to deny us the credit. We drowned most of those, but still had nothing to show for it."

"That was then," argued Dylan. "No one believes in mermaids anymore. No one would take the warnings seriously."

"No one takes us seriously, you mean. Mermaids are for girls, now." Marissa's lips twisted sardonically. "Give a place the reputation of Mermaid Island, and who shows up? College women who think it sounds cool, enjoying a brief speck of their lives in which no one can tell them not to take an adventure to a place they think sounds cool. And when one of them turns out to be sapphic, or questioning? They... we... we were too desperate not to take advantage."

"That's what happened to you," said Dylan, not needing to make it a question.

"Whenever a man did show up, sure, he was easy to take," Marissa went on. "But he passed it on just as fast. What straight woman in search of Mermaid Island could resist a magical, mythical man who gives head without even needing to be asked?"

Dylan's heart rose as he thought about it. He'd never had trouble getting laid as a human. He could still do it now. There were advantages to being an exotic merman that might help make up for his lack of legs, dick, and intelligible voice. It wouldn't be fun, but he only needed to make it happen once.

"No more," said Marissa, cutting off his barely started planning. "It took us long enough, but we've finally learned to work together. Sisters on land find selfish, soon-to-be-ex-fuckers the world could do without. Then, sisters in the ocean transfer the curse back onto them, onto the kind of man it came from all those years ago. And so help us, we're going to keep it there this time."

She lined the boat up with the dock.

"Help!" Dylan shouted to the dock worker, the same one he'd rented it from, who came out to meet them. "Please! Help me!"

Even if she could no longer understand him, his distress must have been clear. That, and the fact that he was tied up, and a merman, either of which should have raised at least a few questions.

She glanced at him, nodded to Marissa, and made a check mark on her clipboard.

"Nice catch," she said. "Need a wagon for that?"

"And a gag and cover, please," said Marissa. "Don't want to startle the rest of the fish."

#

Dylan yelled and thrashed in the dark under the tarp, feeling every grain of sand under the wagon's wheels as Marissa dragged him along the winding concrete paths across the beach. If anyone heard him, they didn't care, or didn't recognize the sound he made through his gag as one that could come from a person.

When the wheels thumped up a few shallow steps, and Marissa pulled the tarp off of him, he was back in the same little beachside cottage where he'd first heard the cursed words, "Mermaid Island."

"That was quick!" the woman from the bar squeaked approvingly, embracing Marissa.

"He was perfect, Pearl, thank you!" Marissa squeaked back.

Pearl. How could he have forgotten that?

"Here, help me lift him," said Pearl. "He can share with my little angelfish for now, until we get you your own setup."

The two women, still apparently endowed with the lingering strength of densely muscled sea creatures, lifted Dylan easily out of the wagon between them.

Until now, Dylan had been too preoccupied with the change to his genitals to notice, but he was pretty sure he was smaller as a merman than he had been as a human, and not only below the waist. His still-humanoid upper body felt like a nine-tenths scale model of itself. Were male fish smaller than female fish? He felt like he'd learned that somewhere.

Pearl and Marissa tossed him easily over their heads into the massive, mirrored aquarium.

When the bubbles of the splash faded, he was able to see Pearl's "angelfish" sitting in the corner of the tank, arms wrapped morosely around his tail, head resting where his knees should have been.

Even in his shrunken, dickless form, this other merman had traces of the extra-sculpted kind of handsomeness that had always been able to put a dent in Dylan's otherwise rock-solid confidence.

The other merman reached out automatically to unfasten Dylan's bonds and gag, but didn't seem interested in conversation. He gave Dylan an "I tried" shrug, and returned to his curled-up position.

"I'd like to get started paying it forward as soon as possible," Marissa was telling Pearl.

"We'll go over all my best fishing tips in the morning," Pearl assured her. "Don't worry, you're not going to have any trouble."

Marissa nodded to herself, deep in thought.

"Hey," Pearl summoned her attention back to the present. "You're free."

"I'm free," Marissa repeated, disbelieving.

"You're free!" Pearl repeated, shaking her gently by the shoulders. "Yes, you're going to be fishing for future mermen to contain the curse. You're going to be grading their sexual empathy, and parading them in front of the tank to make sure they're arrogant enough to ignore any warning signs that might make the smart ones turn back at an inconvenient moment. But in the process, you are going to fuck. You're going to fuck your fill."

Marissa squealed and sighed with anticipation.

"For tonight, you're welcome to use my toy chest." Pearl nodded to a covered wicker basket near the couch. "Remember to give the fishies a little snack before bed, but only if they beg nicely."

"Thank you so much, for everything," said Marissa, holding on to Pearl's hand for a moment, as Pearl stepped away toward the bedroom.

"Of course," said Pearl. "We've all been in the same place."

Once Pearl had closed the bedroom door, Marissa dug excitedly through the wicker basket and selected a pink rabbit vibrator. She looked like she might cum from pure excitement when she pushed the button to find it charged and ready.

Marissa lay back on the couch, the same one where Dylan had taken Pearl from behind less than twenty-four hours ago, and pushed the vibrator in. She was already so wet that there was no resistance at all.

The other merman began to moan, undulating hopelessly against the glass as he watched Marissa, drowning any spark of hope Dylan might have been carrying that he might learn to cope with his situation with some kind of dignity.

Dylan watched Marissa fuck herself, unable to look away. It was impossible not to imagine his old anatomy in place of that toy, sliding into that delightfully slick-looking pussy. What was left of his dick was hard and pulsing, deep in some internal cavity. He rubbed at the front of his tail, but might as well have been trying to pleasure the back of a fingernail.

He managed to close his eyes, briefly, but something drove him to open them again. Calming himself down, losing that frustrating hardness trapped inside him, would be like losing the knowledge that he still had any kind of dick at all.

Marissa's first orgasm — first in ten years — was over in less than a minute, but she left the toy in, lightly vibrating, while she luxuriated in the aftermath. A few minutes later, she was back to thrusting it in, slower than before, moaning happily to herself with each motion that formed her leisurely climb back to the peak.

"I could make you feel like that," Dylan whispered, his voice a gurgling melody. "Both of you, I could have. I could have. I still could!"

He found himself craving a chance to try again, and he didn't think it was only because he knew how the curse could be transferred. Even if there had been no way to get his human dick back at all, he would have done almost anything to make this body he was stuck in feel less useless, less sexless.

He watched for what felt like hours, ineffectively humping the glass and pebbles of the tank, avoiding eye contact with his new roommate who was doing the same.

At last, Marissa finally seemed to decide that she had made up for as much lost time as she could in one night. She got to her feet and stumbled, bow-legged, over to the tank.

The other merman took on a posture that looked like it had been learned over the course of months or years, hands clasped together, mouth sucking imploringly at the surface of the water.

When Marissa got the lid off the cannister and sprinkled the pellets into the other merman's mouth, Dylan suddenly realized how starving he was.

With a deep breath of water, he clasped his hands and brought his mouth to the surface.

***

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