Hudson stared down at the creature lying motionless on the sand. Its corpse was not decomposed; clearly it had not been dead very long, perhaps a day or two at the most. It looked like a terrifying version of a mermaid: gnarled arms twisted in agony above its head; its mouth, which housed a row of sharp, uneven teeth, stayed open as if gasping for air even in death; and its long, greenish, fishy tail rested just at the edge of the sea, scales flaking off. On its head, two fins splayed open. It was bald, and its eyes were open and tinted sea-glass green, clouded and unseeing.

“Mark,” Hudson called over his shoulder, flicking ashes from his cigarette into the water, “I found The Little Mermaid.”

***

Eugene had been sleeping peacefully when the phone rang. It had taken weeks for him to finally get this vacation in the Bahamas, and now, only forty-eight hours after arriving, someone was calling him. That increasingly annoying Nokia melody filled the room, drowning out the peaceful white noise of the ocean. Beside him, Rosalia groaned in aggravation and shifted positions.

“Damn.” Eugene fumbled for the phone on the nightstand. Vader persisted, and Eugene’s hand unwittingly knocked the damn thing to the floor. Half-conscious, Eugene rolled out of the bed and onto the floor with a thump, crawling to find the phone. When at last he laid hands on it, he was still clinging desperately to sleep.

“What?”

The voice on the other end could only be Hudson. “You’ll never guess what I just found, Euge.”

“Hudson,” Eugene replied warily, “do you have any idea what time it is?” The unconcerned grunt in response could only mean that Hudson either knew and didn’t care, or that he had broken the expensive watch his latest girlfriend had just given him. “Or any idea where I am?”

“The Bahamas, right, but Euge-”

Eugene hoisted himself back onto the bed. The phone was slipping from his fingers; this bed was so comfy and warm, the ocean so relaxing, that he could feel himself falling asleep. “Call me back in the morning,” he said sleepily.

“Don’t hang up on me Eugene!” Hudson cried.

“Goodnight, Hudson.” With that, Eugene snapped the phone shut and returned it to the night stand, pulled the comforter over himself, and cozied up to Rosalia, who sighed and snuggled into him. He could feel the threads of consciousness slowly breaking, the curtains ripping to reveal blissful darkness, when the phone rang again. It was as if it were ten decibels louder. Nokia had once again interrupted the peace.

“For Christ’s sake, Eugene,” Rosalia mumbled. “I told you not to bring the phone.”

“And I told everyone not to call me on vacation,” Eugene replied, moving back over to the phone. He got out of bed and snagged the phone off the night stand, this time fully awake and pissed off. “What, Hudson?”

“Eugene, I swear you are going to wet your pants when you hear about this, okay?” Hudson promised. “Hear me out.”

“Get on with it, then.”

There was a dramatic pause, and then Hudson spoke: “I found a mermaid.”

“…What.”

“Now, I know it’s hard to believe,” Hudson explained, and Eugene could practically see him pacing across his living room floor, “but I swear, this thing isn’t like anything you’ve ever seen, Euge. It is a real life mermaid.”

Eugene sat down on the edge of the bed. “So, what, she’s like, strikingly beautiful with nice hair and a beautiful singing voice or something?” He could feel Rosalia glaring daggers at his back as she got up to make coffee. He’d have to explain after.

“Uh, actually, this thing is probably the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I see.”

“Eugene, I swear you’re gonna flip. You have to come back and see it!” Hudson’s excitement was almost childlike in its fascination. “It’s incredible!”

“Where is it now?”

“On my coffee table,” Hudson admitted.

“Hudson, is this an actual fish you’re talking about or a toy?”

“I swear on everything holy that this is a true-to-life fish I’m dealing with, Eugene, and you need to come home right away to, I don’t know, classify it or whatever. I need the closure to convince me it’s not a hoax.”

Eugene fumbled for words. “Wha- I- Hudson, this is my vacation!”

“And you’re the only marine biologist I know,” Hudson said hurriedly, “and if you don’t check this thing out some other scientist will have to look at it.”

“So let them.”

“Eugene,” replied Hudson seriously, “wouldn’t you like to be the person to identify a real mermaid? I’m extending this offer exclusively to you. Mark and I could’ve called any Tom, Dick or Harry with a science degree and they could’ve cased this out and told me it’s a legit sea monster before I even thought of asking you. But I didn’t call Tom, Dick or Harry. I called you, buddy. I called you.”

Eugene didn’t say anything for a moment. It was true that Hudson could’ve just as easily asked someone else to look at his creature when he was so desperate for answers. But he had taken the time to call him. And Eugene was morbidly curious. He wanted to know if Hudson had actually found a sea-human, and, if he had, what it looked like. It was an interesting prospect; Eugene would be a fool to turn it down.

“Tell you what,” Eugene said finally. “Take a picture and send it to my phone. If I’m interested, I’ll catch the first flight I can and let Rosalia have her own vacation. Okay?”

“You got it!” Hudson replied, and the line went dead. Five minutes later, Eugene’s phone buzzed. He opened the text message and almost dropped the phone in shock. He stared at the little screen, at that picture, at those sharp teeth and those wide eyes.

“Holy hell,” he murmured, awestruck and terrified all at once. “Rosalia,” he called, “come here. You’re not gonna believe this.”

***

The Hefty bag was rather a crass way to go about the whole business, Mark thought, but he wasn’t going to say anything to Hudson, who was busily shoving ice into the black plastic. If it were up to Mark, they would’ve bought a roomy cooler and filled it with chipped ice. In death, everyone deserves to be dignified, even a horrible fish creature. Hudson was just cheap and too excited to think clearly, hence the half-baked idea of transporting the carcass to Eugene’s workplace at noon.

“Mark, Mark, hey Mark, check it out!” Hudson was calling. Mark looked up, his handful of ice in mid-air. Hudson was holding the mermaid’s head, opening and closing its mouth as much as the rigor mortis would allow. “My name is Ariel!” Hudson chirped in a high-pitched voice. “I wanna be a human! Oh, Mark, you’re my lovely Prince Charming!”

“Very funny,” Mark replied, stuffing ice into the bag. “Get back to work.”

Hudson returned to the bag as well. He didn’t seem to mind that it was almost full of ice and there was not much room for the mermaid. He gleefully continued packing, humming to himself, while Mark agonized over the logistics of squeezing this creature into the tiny opening they’d left.

“Stop,” Mark said, and Hudson’s ice dripped from his hand as he moved it slowly from the opening of the bag and back into the freezer. “There’s no room for it.”

Hudson turned to look over at the mermaid. “You’re right,” he said soberly, putting the ice back. “Hmmm.” Then, without thinking, picked the mermaid up and began to stuff it unceremoniously into the bag.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Mark grabbed Hudson’s wrist with one hand and the bag with the other, effectively pulling them apart much the same way one would try to break up a fight. “We don’t wanna damage it, Hudson! Slow down and use your brain for once.” Hudson’s face fell. Gently, he set the mermaid back down onto the table and began to scoop ice out of the bag again, this time slower and more deliberately. Mark mimicked his movements and glanced up at one time to see Hudson’s face staring back at him worriedly.

“For Christ’s sake,” Mark muttered. “What is your problem, Hudson?”

Hudson looked down self-consciously. “Do you really think I don’t use my brain?” he asked, showing a brief vulnerability. Mark had seen this act before. Hudson was going to try and make him feel guilty for saying something in passing and try to milk it for all its worth in an attempt to get something stupid in return. He probably wanted Mark to apologize profusely and ask for a dumb favor in return. Mark didn’t care to find out what it was Hudson wanted. He wasn’t going to fall for it.

“Yes,” Mark answered simply, then returned to transferring ice from the bag to the freezer.

“Damn,” he could hear Hudson mutter, “I was sure that was going to work.”

***

The truck rumbled and sputtered. Hudson thought maybe he should get the oil changed, or at least take it in for service. But he figured that even though it was loud and emitted some kind of noxious black smoke from the exhaust pipe, as long as it still moved and got more than 5 miles to the gallon he was good to go. In the passenger seat, Mark hacked and coughed hard enough to throw up an organ.

“Y’alright there, buddy?” he asked, patting Mark on the shoulder. The truck wheezed as they pulled up to the stop light.

“I’m getting the Black Lung from your car,” Mark replied, his eyes watering, voice tight.

Hudson shrugged and turned back to the road. “Hm. I don’t feel anything.” The light turned green.

“It’s because your lungs are already coated with the crap coming out this rust-bucket,” his friend replied. “Get the damn thing fixed.”

With a smile, Hudson gently rubbed the dashboard, lovingly caressed the steering wheel. “She runs like a dream.”

At that precise moment, they approached a stop sign. Hudson went for the brakes, which had chosen that point in time to give out. The truck sped past the stop sign and continued down the road. Mark gripped the truck’s door handle tightly, his only lifeline. It was going to be a long ride. Hudson merely continued as if he hadn’t noticed the stop sign, smirking at Mark’s desperation. In the bed of the truck, the garbage bag rustled with the shaking of the engine.

“Yep,” Hudson continued, “runs like a dream.”

***

Eugene tapped the edge of the key card on the metal lab table impatiently. He’d been here for an hour waiting for Hudson, Mark and their stupid fish. He had disinfected the tables twice and cleaned all the lab supplies in the sink. He’d fed all the octopuses already and even tried to read a trashy tabloid he found in the bathroom, but the time still ticked by agonizingly slow. He was beginning to go stir-crazy. Without research to be done, labs become sterile and completely uninteresting. He’d never noticed it before, but now, stuck in one in the middle of the night with absolutely nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs, he began to think that it was no wonder the world had so many mad scientists running around. Perhaps he could join their ranks.

As he was plotting how best to kick Hudson’s ass when he finally did show up, a rumbling noise came from outside. Moments later, there was heavy pounding on the door. Eugene rushed to it and threw it open. There stood Hudson and Mark with a large black garbage bag. Eugene raised an eyebrow.

“You brought it here in a garbage bag?”

“I know, right?” Mark answered, shooting a glare at Hudson, who smiled winningly and strolled into the lab with the bag swung over his shoulder. He held it above the table, preparing.

“I give you… Ariel,” he presented, before undoing the tie on the bag and turning it upside down, effectively dumping its contents onto the metal. The fish fell out of it with a fwump and lay splayed across the table, waiting.

“Holy Christ,” Eugene whispered, rushing over to the creature. Up close it was even better, gnarled and disgusting. It reeked of decay already and he found himself mesmerized by the creature’s face, as if it had been crawling without direction, trying to find its way back to the ocean, while death painfully took it. The agonized scream frozen on its face sweetened the deal, made it that much more of a mystery. Clearly, the creature lived long enough out of water to die a slow, painful death. “This is beautiful.” He reached forward to touch the creature’s skin. It was rubbery and dry and under the light it had a natural sheen to it, created by the multiple small raised bumps on the surface.

“Well,” he said finally, backing away from Ariel but not taking his eyes off it, “let’s start the examination.” He had laid out all the tools beforehand; they rested on a metal tray to his right, from which he picked up two Latex gloves. He pulled them on and reached for a scalpel. Mark and Hudson stood on the opposite side of the examination table, watching, eyes wide. Eugene glanced up. “Ready?”

Hudson’s face lit up. “Ready!” Mark blanched and gulped.

“Then let’s begin.” Eugene put the scalpel into the creature’s chest and pulled down, cleanly slicing through the skin. The incision stretched down to the tail, where he lifted the scalpel and laid it back on the tray. He picked up the retractors and stuck them into the cut, pulling it back and exposing the organs. Mark made a gagging noise and turned a bit green. Eugene looked up for a moment to look at him before returning to the autopsy. Hudson watched as if sickly fascinated, fixating on the glistening innards of the fish, unable to look away.

“Neat,” he murmured.

Eugene took a deep breath and then put his right hand into the creature’s insides. Mark made a gasping sound and turned away as Eugene felt his way through the organs, lifting each one up a bit into the light to examine it closer. He found all the organs he’d expected so far, nothing exciting. “Stomach,” he muttered before setting it down. “Intestines. Swim bladder. Gonads.” The examination was proving to be a little boring now; certainly if this creature was so different, so paranormal, there’d be something inside of it to prove it. Instead he was just finding all the organs he’d find in an ordinary fish. He was about to admit disappointment when he found something he’d never seen before.

“What the hell?” He reached further into the creature’s insides, reaching for the strange organ. He lifted it into the light, as far as the tissue surrounding it would allow, perplexed at this abnormality. The organ was translucent and tinted a blue hue. It appeared to be some kind of sac. He plucked the scalpel back up and sliced into it, pulling it apart with his fingers. A clear liquid oozed out.

“Mark, quick,” Eugene called desperately, “grab a test tube from that drawer on your right.” Mark whimpered and remained stationary. “Quickly, Mark!” Mark hurriedly fumbled to find a test tube, which he then gave to Eugene before scrunching his eyes shut, still a sickly shade of green. Eugene held the tube beneath the sac and watched the clear liquid drip in. It was viscous and thick, and Eugene collected a small sample before giving the tube back to Mark, who gagged and dropped it into the rack. Eugene fumbled about with the sac, noticing something else glistening inside. He reached two fingers in to pick up one of the shining objects and pulled out a gelatinous sphere. It was translucent, squishy but firm, and was just a little bigger than the size of a pea. The center was a deep blue, just like the sac it had been held in. Eugene gently rolled it between his fingers.

“Hud, grab that.” He indicated a shallow metal bowl on the counter next to Hudson, who picked it up and leaned across the lab table to hand it to Eugene. Eugene put the ball into the bowl and took it to the dissection microscope across the room. Under the microscope and up close, it bore a striking similarity to a fish egg. Eugene rolled the ball over and that’s when he saw it, a tell-tale black dot. This wasn’t just an egg; it was a fertilized egg.

“No way…” he whispered, fascinated.

“What is it?” Hudson asked, rushing to the microscope. “What’d you find?”

Eugene looked up at Hudson. “I… it’s an egg.”

Hudson’s eyes went wide. “Are there… babies…?” he murmured.

Slowly, Eugene nodded. “This one’s been fertilized already.” He removed the egg from the microscope and went looking for the tube of liquid taken from the sac. Mark dashed out of the way and stood by the door, breathing deeply to clear his head. Eugene poured the tube into a beaker; there wasn’t a lot but he dropped the egg in anyway and submerged it completely in the liquid.

“Will it hatch?” Hudson was trailing him like a puppy, just as excited as Eugene was. “Will we get a baby?”

Eugene shrugged and held the beaker into the light. The liquid wasn’t as clear as he’d thought. He could now see it was cloudy, filled with particles, and thick. “I don’t know,” he said, “and I don’t know what this is either. But from the looks of the eggs, this creature”—he pointed at Ariel with the beaker—“is an ovoviviparous animal, which means the eggs are developed and fertilized inside her body, and will eventually hatch shortly after leaving her system.” He swirled the liquid. “So, we could either be out of luck here, or, if this is really a cryptozoological oddity, the egg could hatch outside.” He put the beaker down on the table and put the rest of the eggs into the liquid. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Hudson frowned. “How long will that be?”

“About sixty days.”

“Sixty days?! What are we supposed to do with this thing for sixty days?” Hudson stared disbelievingly at Eugene, who shrugged.

“We could always continue an autopsy,” he replied, “although by the looks of it, I would say the thing suffocated. It may look vaguely half human but in the end it’s still a fish. It’s got gills.”

“I can’t wait sixty days!” Hudson lamented.

Eugene smiled down at the beaker of eggs. “Yes you can. Now get over here and help me clean all this up, will you?”

***

The drive back to Mark’s apartment was almost silent. This was unusual for Hudson, but he was trying hard to process what exactly had happened in the lab. In truth he didn’t really know. For the first time that he could recall, he had been left completely speechless, unable to explain to even himself what he had seen.

Eggs. The mermaid was, in the most basic of terms, pregnant. That meant there were more of those mermaids to be born, or at least he hoped would be born. He was elated, but nervous. What if the eggs didn’t hatch? What if the body decomposed before they could get it to the public? What if people thought it was a hoax? They’d found what they thought had been Bigfoot not too long ago. What had raised so many spirits turned out to be a gorilla suit filled with meat. What if people’s trust in the paranormal, in the world’s cryptids, had waned so much that no one believed them? Hudson drummed his fingers nervously on the wheel. He hated when people didn’t believe him. He hated when he couldn’t get his way, when he didn’t have control over the situations at hand. Only nature would hatch these eggs.

When they had left, Eugene had said he’d continue researching in private and would keep Hudson and Mark updated, which set Hudson on edge. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Eugene with the creature, it was the fact that Hudson would only have to hear the information from his friend as opposed to actually being there to see it. He didn’t want to wait by the phone. He wasn’t going to ever be able to focus again.

“Hey, Mark,” he said. Mark looked over at him.

“Yeah?”

“What’d you think of tonight?” Hudson was curious. What was Mark making of the strange events? Of the entire day? What was his opinion?

Mark groaned. “What I think is that I’ll never become any kind of biologist. Ick.”

Hudson rolled his eyes. “I mean, what do you think of the mysterious creature? Isn’t it odd?”

His friend shrugged. “Yeah. It is pretty cool, I suppose.”

Hudson waited for more of a response. When he didn’t get one, he simply sighed and fixed his eyes on the road. Mark was so boring sometimes. It was a wonder Hudson even liked to talk to him.

***

The phone call came in at 3 AM. Mark had been awake, unable to sleep and working on his latest painting. When the phone rang, he set his brush and palette down, wiped his paint-covered hands on his apron and picked up the phone, an old clunky eighties set covered in colorful paint smudges.

“Hello.”

The desperately excited voice on the other end almost blew out an ear drum. “Mark! Holy hell!”

Mark yanked the phone from his ear. “Jesus! Hudson, what the hell?”

“The eggs!” Hudson said breathlessly.

Mark didn’t need any more information. He didn’t care so much about the mermaid anymore, but the idea of those eggs was too exciting to pass up. “I’ll need a ride!” he told Hudson.

Outside a honk resonated. “I’m outside. Hurry!”

Mark tore off his apron and, just as he headed out the door, flicked the light off in his apartment and scuttled down the stairs.

***

“I’m a mother.”

Eugene looked up at Hudson, who was staring into the tank with wide eyes. He was poking the glass, watching the tiny creatures swim around in the salt water. At twenty-eight, Hudson still had the air of an excited child. Eugene dried his hands and joined his friends at the tank, observing. The mermaid’s young looked fairly scary up close, translucent and veiny, with itty-bitty heads and arms so tiny they could fit through the eye of a needle. Attached to their bodies were their yolk sacs, comically large so that they all looked like fat sea monkeys. Eugene had grown quite fond of caring for the eggs, making sure they were progressing nicely, and when they hatched he had been watching, unable to call Hudson until after the last one had hatched.

“I’m going to call the BBC,” Eugene said, drying his hands and leaning on the table next to Hudson. “This is big news for the science world.”

Mark looked over Hudson’s head at him. “It was big news the minute we found the mother on the beach.” He paused. “What do you think it is?”

Eugene shrugged one shoulder. “Just an animal we never noticed before, I guess. It’s possible it was an elusive creature, you know? Intelligent. Knew what to avoid. Our Ariel just got unlucky, I suppose. Or it could be living in a part of the ocean not well investigated yet. There’s a lot we don’t know about the world still. Our mermaid just got overlooked somewhere.”

Mark nodded, looking back at the little mermaids. “What are we going to do with these guys?”

“Release them into the wild. Or keep them. We have a small population now, so we can sustain it. I’m still trying to decide.” Eugene twiddled his thumbs idly. “Either way, I’m going to report this to the media. The public deserves to know that some of their myths are based on truth.”

Hudson looked up from the mermaids. “Can we be in the photo with you and Ariel?”

Eugene smiled fondly at the freezer, where Ariel’s corpse was being kept. “Why would I say no?”

***

AMATEUR SCIENTISTS FIND MERMAID

DETAILED EXAMINATION REVEALS THAT MERMAID IS NOT A HOAX.

The article was framed on Hudson’s wall. He had read it over and over again, back to front, delighting in how the paper praised their hard work and detailed the hatching of the eggs. The New York Times had published the first article, followed by TIME magazine and then the scientific journals and of course the regional papers. The world had been swept up for some time.

He was sorting through his mail. The three of them, in the end, had gotten a lot of money and Hudson had used his to get a beautiful penthouse apartment overlooking the river. Mark lived across town in a modest brick house on a tree-lined street. Eugene had moved to California to work in a seaside lab at a high-paying position. Hudson had been glad for him. He knew how much Eugene liked the sun and vacations.

The mermaid population, eventually, was divided in half: one half was delivered back to the wild, the other half kept in captivity for studying. The mermaids acted more like fish than anything else, their blue eggs and human-like appearance was the most interesting part. Eugene was helping solve those mysteries. Every now and then Hudson would get a long letter explaining everything: how the nutrients in the eggs went through a pH change that changed their color, for example, and the detailed and unwanted letter about the mermaids’ mating habits.

Hudson smiled at that framed article, touched the glass gently. As he left his apartment, heading to work, he couldn’t help but wonder if Disney was going to chase this new version of the mermaid and revamp The Little Mermaid. The thought of it made him laugh.