Chapter Seven

A/N: Aaaaaah! Thank you Sandra for drawing our attention back to this project. The next chapter and a half have been written for a while. O.o We're so sorry, hope our readers haven't deserted!

Dunking his head under the faucet cleared Surf's thoughts. The cold water felt good as it slipped through locks to drip down his face. He stood there for a few moments, before turning his head and catching water in his mouth. He drank his fill of the metallic water, and shut the faucet off. Shaking his head sent water flying everywhere, while some still dripped from his hair and trickled down his neck and back, a feeling he liked.

He stretched his legs, and smiled when they seemed almost back to normal – just a bit tender. “Okay then…How about we start getting my life back to some sort of order?" he addressed himself, moving for the telephone. He leaned against the wall and slid down it to the floor as he dialed Ryan's. Surf sat through the annoyingly sharp ring, rubbing his legs.

The ringing stopped with a tired voice speaking, "Down below where it's a thousand above. Satan speaking."

A smile cracked across Surf's face. "Good morning Ryan."

"Heya Surf. We still hitting the water today?"

Surf grinned into the phone, before realizing his friends knew nothing of him getting in trouble yesterday or meeting his mom. The grin faltered, and he bit his bottom lip, toying with the decision of telling his friends about his mother.

"Surf?" Ryan's concerned, and now awake, voice brought him back.

"Yeah?"

"You spacing out on me?"

"Sorry. But yeah. Let's go to the beach today."

"Okay. I'll tell Casey and Tim. Meet at your place?”

Surf nodded as he replied, "Yeah. Sounds good."

"Great. Next time, don’t call before noon.”

Surf laughed, and added, "Sorry," before hanging up with a restored grin. He looked at the electronic in his hands for a moment, his mind rather blank. He didn’t really know what to think about – his mother, his father, his friends, or his own…situation. All of this was blanketed with the depression of being deprived of his favorite activity for the rest of his life. Then there was the accident itself, and the fact that no one in the town would look at him the same again. Finally, Casey’s ugly scars came to mind, and guilt made a fine topping to his emotional pile.

Things are just getting more and more complicated. He sighed and leaned his head back against the wall, a few more drops escaping from his wet hair to drip onto his bare back. The sensation was strange – like someone was poking him with something that was cool and soothing to a burn. But the burn didn’t exist until the drop fell there, and disappeared just as quickly afterwards.

Surf ran a hand through his wet hair, flinging some more drops about, and looked at his palm. He watched, amazed, as the water seemed to be absorbed into his skin.

He stood up and went to the sink, the forgotten phone clattering to the floor. He turned on the faucet again and stuck his hand under. The same soothing feeling trickled into his arm and up to his shoulder, but the water splashed off. He could feel a little being soaked up in his skin, as if it were dehydrated.

“Weird!”

For the next fifteen minutes, Surf entertained himself by experimenting with the water and his skin. His hand felt great, so he got a washcloth and soaked his legs for a few minutes. The tender soreness faded, and his legs soon felt better than ever.

Surf laughed at the simplicity of it all.

He would have continued playing in the sink, but something changed. He wasn’t sure what, because he didn’t hear anything above the faucet as quiet as it was. It caused a drop in his gut, like when climbing the stairs and expecting the next one, but nothing’s there.

Surf moved to turn the water off just as something fell across his head.

Fingers dug into his face as another hand wrapped around Surf’s waist and pinned one arm to his side. Surf tried to yell, but the hand was blocking his mouth and nose and he couldn’t breathe. His free hand clawed at the fingers, huge and awkward. His feet weren’t on the tile anymore, desperately kicking in the air. One foot caught the counter and Surf shoved backwards, bowling both himself and his attacked into the kitchen table.

Surf’s knees and hands collided with the cold tile of the floor, and immediately his fingers flew to the cloth bag over his head. He heard the table moving behind him and falling over with a crack, as something tightened and bit into his neck, dragging him backwards until he couldn’t breathe and was on his back.

His legs had a mind of their own, frantically trying to find purchase on the slick floor. His blood was pounding in his ears, and he could only hear the water running and his desperate gasps for air. Only when he kicked upwards and caught something rough but soft – it took a moment to realize it was a face – did Surf earn a shriek of pain.

Again hauled from the floor, Surf could feel someone’s clothed chest against his bare back. His hands reached for anything, knocking things from the counter and they fell to the ground with clatters and splats. Something warm dripped onto Surf’s shoulder, as his fingers found the tie on the cloth bag around his neck and yanked.

Surf didn’t remember what he screamed, nor digging his fingers into the doorframe until they were bleeding. He did recall hitting the ground and hearing heavy footsteps retreating, but everything was a daze after that.

Someone pulled the bag from his head, and Surf’s chest heaved as it struggled to get enough air back into his lungs. Three concerned faces were looking down at him, and a voice was somewhere on the phone.

“Surf! Answer me!” a female voice demanded, near hysterical.

Everything finally clicked again and Surf blinked a few times. “Casey?” He moved to sit up, but all three of their hands pressed against his shoulders to hold him down.

“Don’t move,” Tim ordered. “You hit your head hard.”

“What…” He started to ask, but was figuring it out on his own. “Somebody was here. They…”

Then the pain struck, throbbing in his skull straight down his spine.

“Surf? Don’t black out again!” Ryan’s order centered Surf’s brain a bit through the pain. “Your neighbor heard you yelling – she’s calling the police right now.”

“Better call an ambulance too,” Casey added.

“No,” Surf struggled out. “No more hospital.”

“You’re fading in and out of conciousness!”

“Am not,” Surf mumbled, more for the sake of arguing. He didn’t know if he was or not. “They might…find out.” It came out lamely, but the three understood. Ryan instructed the neighbor not to call the hospital.

“What happened?” Casey demanded, and Surf focused on her for a minute. He saw the scars standing out like highlights across her arms.

“Case…’msorry…”

Somebody started talking, but Surf was too far gone. Hands reached up for him from the water, and he sank in gratefully.

“Young man!”

What a stupid thing to call someone, Surf thought to himself. It just sounded weird.

Surf opened his eyes again, and found himself lying on the couch in his living room. He blinked a few times to look at the man in front of him, dressed in dark blue. It took a moment to register that an officer sat in front of him, with his friends and neighbor hovering behind.

“Can you hear me?” the officer asked, his eyes burrowing into Surf’s.

“Yeah.” Surf’s mouth felt dry, like he had swallowed a sponge.

“Follow my finger with your eyes, okay?” He held up his index finger and passed it back and forth across Surf’s range of vision. For a moment, Surf felt as if he were a third party watching and thought the whole thing was ridiculous. This was what they did in bad movies. But the pain in his head recalled him to his own body and he obeyed. The officer frowned.

Not a good sign.

“You’ve had some physically trauma to the head,” the officer explained slowly. “But your friends say you don’t want to go to the hospital.”

Surf discovered nodding hurt, so he had to settle for moving his sluggish mouth. “Hate hospitals.”

The officer kept on frowning. “Is your head bleeding?” he asked, pointing to Surf’s shoulder. It hurt to move his neck to look, and he could only vaguely see the red stain. His fingers moved to touch it, his arm feeling alien as if his blood were surging underneath his skin.

Surf started to recall more details of the attack. He remembered something had dripped on his shoulder, and had felt weird. “No,” he finally replied, but his hand went to the back of his head to check.

The officer stopped him before he could touch the lump straining against his scalp. “I wouldn’t touch that, kid.”

A second officer entered the room. “Looks like you put up a good fight,” he commented casually to Surf. Surf almost laughed – of course he had. Some psycho had broke into his house and tried to kidnap him!

It struck Surf at that moment. Someone tried to kidnap him.

“Hey, kid! You have to stay with me, okay? Or we’re calling that ambulance.”

“What’s going on?” Casey demanded.

“He’s going into shock.”

Their voices sounded hollow, metallic, and far-away. Someone tried to kidnap him. They might have succeeded too, if he hadn’t started screaming. Surf realized he was staring at his fingers lying in his lap, his nails cracked and dark purplish-red under them. They hurt, his head hurt, everything just hurt. He couldn’t even move to try and relieve the pain.

Why would someone want to kidnap me? Surf tried to think, but it hurt too much. His throat felt thick and dry, constricted so tight he could barely move his jaw muscles.

“Water,” he made out. Immediately, Ryan went to the kitchen and returned with a glass. Surf noticed some sort of food smeared on his sneaker, and remembered that all the Tupperware of food had been stack on the counter still. He didn’t know his hands were shaking until he tried to take the glass from Ryan.

“Let me,” Ryan offered, and pressed the mouth to Surf’s lips. The first swallow stang all the way down, and Surf could feel it trickling into his stomach. Surf shivered, then one hand raised to grab the glass and drain it. Ryan looked surprised.

“Thirsty much?” Ryan asked, but went back to the kitchen.

“You with us again?” the first officer asked, doubt in his eyes.

“No hospitals,” Surf stated. “I just…didn’t realize.”

“That’s typical of traumatic events,” the second officer reassured.

A second and third glass of water helped, and soon Surf felt as close to normal as he could get – minus the pounding headache. The officers talked to him for a while, making sure they didn’t really need to call an ambulance and stressing that he had to ‘take it easy’. One went and took photographs of the kitchen while the second asked some questions. Did you see your attacker? Could you tell if it was a man or a woman? Do you remember anything strange? Can you guess how tall he was?

Surf found himself answering no to most of the questions – except for one. He was pretty certain it was a man, because the hands were huge.

“My guess is somebody saw you on the news or in the paper,” the officer explained. “Thought they could get money or something.”

Surf was almost shaking again by the end, but all three of his friends stood close at hand. He wondered what this all was like for them – watching him be reduced to an almost-victim. He drank two more glasses of water that Ryan offered, and felt like he was still thirsty.

His neighbor left at some point, feeling that her job was done. One of the officers wiped up the blood on his neck, saying they wanted to test it for an identity. They instructed him to lock the doors from then on and avoid being alone before departing.

His three friends waited in silence for a while. “Does this…have anything to do with you being half mermaid?” Casey asked.

“Merman,” Surf found himself correcting automatically. “I don’t know.”

Casey nodded vaguely, and Surf reached for the glass of water again. “That’s your sixth one,” Ryan warned. “Your bladder is going to explode.”

He won the laugh he had been searching for. Surf almost dropped the glass and his head throbbed, but laughing felt good. He didn’t realize how much he missed the simple action.

“Man, it wasn’t that funny,” Ryan mumbled as Tim rescued the glass.

“I think the beach is out of today’s plans,” Casey announced. “Instead, we’re cleaning the kitchen, and you-” she poked a finger in Surf’s direction, “Are staying right there on the couch.”

Tim and Ryan groaned at her announcement, but didn’t complain. Surf felt sheepish and bad, he didn’t want them cleaning up the mess he had made. Albeit, on accident.

“Can I take a bath?” Surf found himself asking. The three looked at him, perplexed.

“You think that’s a good idea?” Tim questioned. “Won’t you…change?”

Surf knew he would. But at the moment, it didn’t seem like a bad thing. He thought about his experimenting – alright, playing – with the water in the kitchen. “I think…it’ll help,” he explained vaguely.

“Alright, then one of us is standing outside the bathroom,” Casey rearranged her plans. “And you are going to reassure us you’re alright and still conscious every minute or so, or else we are to assume you passed out and take appropriate action.”

Surf felt a hint of embarrassment for a moment, both at the thought of needing a guard and the possibility of them entering while he was in the tub. Although they had seen him plenty in his other form, the bathroom was much too intimate a place to advertise himself.

“Fine,” he finally agreed.

With some help and a slight bout with a dizzy spell, Tim and Ryan got Surf into the bathroom and on the edge of the tub. Taking a shower was out of the question for the rest of his life – standing now an impossibility with a tail. Surf cranked the handle all the way to cold and let the water pour over his arm. It felt better already.

His entourage finally left the bathroom, and he struggled for a moment with standing up and taking the pants he had slept in off. But after lowering himself into the tub, he decided the hassle was worth it. He didn’t even take notice of the cold as tan skin turned into aqua scales, two legs into one tail, and gills start to protrude from his neck. That was the weirdest part. He put his hand on his neck and felt the skin splitting. He made a mental note to watch himself change in the mirror one day as he focused on breathing through his mouth into his lungs rather than through the gills. His tail was longer than his legs and didn’t quite fit in the tub, so his fin hung over the edge and twitched every now and then.

He was watching his fins start to grow out of the side of his arms when he noticed his hand. He stared at the fingernails in amazement. They were red, not that strange purplish color, and whole. They weren’t broken and bleeding anymore. He checked his other hand, and noticed the same thing. Even as he watched, they slowly faded to pink. The pain in his head had reduced to an ache, and he tenderly sent a hand questing though his hair. The bump was more of a bruise now.

“Surf? You okay?” Tim called through the door.

Surf didn’t respond, he just started laughing again.