My eyes snapped open, as they did every night, and I sat stared hard ahead of me as the beautiful song of the mermaids rattled in my ears. It was a hypnotic song, one that rang with a purity and a wonder so deep that I longed to find my way to its source more than a drowning man longs for the sweet kiss of sky. It was not a song sung in a language I did not speak, one made of almost nothing but vowels that moved as the ocean itself. I knew not its words, but I knew what the Mermaids were singing to me. “Come to us”, they sang. “Come to us, and be joyful.”

When I first heard the song as a small child, I was frightened. As beautiful as it was to me, it was, after all, a song coming seemingly from nowhere as if it were right there in my room. I curled up frightened beneath my covers until the deepest hours of night, when it finally ceased. It had continued every night hence, until grace and childish curiosity overcame fear and I stepped out to investigate. I walked for three miles to the sea where the mermaids waited for me, before my father stopped me, having been alerted by a concerned neighbour who witnessed my nighttime excursion. When he asked me what I was doing, and I told him about the mermaids, a frightened look befell his face and he dragged me home. Days later, I was moved into the hospital.

At first, I only slept in the hospital at night so that they could watch over me and keep me from going to the mermaids. They were concerned for my mental health, and they feared that I could drown myself during one of what they referred to as my “spells”. But as time went on, I grew more and more resentful that they were keeping me from the source of the song, and eventually I had to stay at the hospital full time, for my own safety.

For years I would stay confined to my room in the hospital, except for the occasional walk for exercise. My family’s visits declined, as I resented them deeply for keeping me from the mermaids and I let them know it. Violently. I told them that the guard’s presence made me uncomfortable, so they strapped me to my bed at night to keep me from escaping. I didn’t ask them to change it, however. The straps were worth it, so that I could at least listen to the song in peace. As much as it tormented me to hear its tantalizing notes when I could no more be closer to them than I could take wing and fly away, I needed it. The song pumped through my veins, and its ephemeral fingers wrapped around my soul and became one with it. It hurt more than anything, but when I heard the song was the only time I ever felt alive.

And then, as I listened to the song on this night, I detected a new undertone in the melody. A single, high-pitched and fluttering lovely voice saying that tonight was to be the last night I’d hear the song, and that if I did not visit the mermaids tonight, they would abandon me forever. The song still sang its gentle sweetness to me as it told me this horrible news, but the blow could not be cushioned. My entire world was to be snuffed out and replaced with an intolerable silence. I could not allow this.

Gritting my teeth, I flung the weight of my body forward against the straps of my bed, hoping that they’d snap. I strained and twisted harder than I ever had before, hoping that they’d give just enough to let me slip through. At first it did no good, but then the song turned into an encouraging march, pressing me forward. With newfound strength, I lurched forward and snapped the straps loose of their buckles.

Using a small piece of metal broken off of the buckles of my bed, I picked the lock to my door and quietly slipped into the hallway of the hospital. Creeping about, I managed to make it into the cool night air unseen. I took a deep breath as the smell and the feel of night washed over me, a sensation I’d not experienced in eons. I could have gladly basked in it, breathing in the moon and listening to the twinkle of the stars, had the song not been pressing me forward. Resolutely I marched on for miles, taking care not to be seen, before I arrived at the sea.

Before me was a tall, rocky cliff to the ocean. It was a long ocean, and I could have gone in it anywhere, but the song told me that this was where the mermaids were. It told me that this was where they wanted to meet me. I stepped towards the edge, the jagged rock hurting my tender, naïve feet, and I looked at the vast expanse of water before me, and the mermaids below that I had for ages longed to meet.

They swam serenely below, the song pouring from their wide mouths, and the water slipping over their scaly flesh. My insides shuddered as I looked upon them, however. As much as I loved and longed for them, and as thoroughly as I wanted to believe their song, one look at them told me that what I had done was a mistake.

The mermaids were not beautiful or wonderful as their song suggested, but monstrous and horrible. They measured 4 feet long, with spindly, pointy arms and strong, bony claws for fingers. Their mouths were gaping pits filled with millions of teeth as thin as hairs and as strong as iron, and yellow tongues snaked through them, producing the song that even now appealed to my ear. It was clear from the manic look in their wide, glistening pink eyes that they wanted me not so that I could live with them and be happy forever, but so that they could fill their aching bellies with my steaming flesh.

I took a step back, my every instinct screaming at me to run back to the hospital and be safe. It would be so wonderful to forget all about them, to live as if I’d never heard their damned song. Yet it could not be. Still the song begged at me to join them, and as the song sang so did my heart. I could not bring myself to face a world where that song, that which had become the very essence of my soul, would be muffled, continuing on only in the echoes of my yearning heart. Tears streaming down my cheeks, I pitched myself forward.

I let out a scream as my body crashed against the rocks on the way down, my every bone snapping and vast expanses of my flesh popping open like ripe fruit. I felt the mermaids dig their fingers into me, rending me into individual morsels. As they did, they sang, and a strange peace fell over me. I was with the song at last. My every following moment, as limited as they were, would be able to bask in it. And with that bittersweet thought, my own life faded, leaving only their music and their ravenous hunger.