by Dylan Hopper
She found Cali standing barefoot on the landing of the rusted billboard again. This was their spot, overlooking a pond to the north and tall enough to peek over the trees that lined the highway to the south. She was a vibrant oddity against the double-sided, sun-blanched advertisement for Mac’s BBQ Farm. The grinning pig logo appeared menacing, colorless as a skull, peeling from the bottom as if trying to reach out and caress her legs.
Cali was dressed in the baby pink, silk kimono she had stolen from a vintage shop down by the pier. It caught in the warm breeze and danced around her as she moved closer to the edge and waved. She kneeled near the top of the ladder, pink silk rising with the wind and spreading out behind her. Her floor-length skirt seemed an imitation of her mermaid’s iridescent fin, fitting tight over her hips and tapering in at the ankles. She exuded kindness in her careful movements, so deliberately fluid, it often seemed as if she was still moving through the water. In many ways, Cali never left the observation tank, and in many ways, neither did Mara.
When she reached the base of the billboard’s ladder, Mara climbed. Cali offered her hand to her on the last two steps. On the landing, they moved to the edge closest to the pond and sat side by side.
Cali stared into the water below. A cypress knee poked through the center of the pond; a white crane stood atop it on one leg. “Do you ever get that strange urge to jump?” she asked.
“L’appel du vide,” Mara said. “It usually only hits me when we start to climb down.”
Cali scoffed. “Okay, you know I didn’t have a Cajun granny, so you’re going to have to tell me what the hell that means.”
“Means the call of the void,” Mara said.
Cali laughed and said, “Trust the French to have a phrase for everything.”
A bloated shadow moved beneath the surface of the water. Mara thought of David, of his blank, fish-like eyes. The memory of his lingering gaze evoked a primal sense of dread and though it was well over ninety degrees and muggy, her skin pimpled with goosebumps. She knew Cali was thinking of him, too.
“I feel the call of the void all the time now. It’s as if the universe is begging me to do something reckless,” Cali said.
“Like punch David in the face?” Mara asked, grinning.
“I don’t know what I’ll do when I see him,” she said, pulling the sides of her kimono in around her. “Can’t we just mail our resignation letters?”
David had been particularly vicious with Cali lately. She had fallen from his good graces ever since her hair became algae-tinted from the motel pool’s acidic levels of chlorine. Whenever he spotted her, he called in a cruel, carnival-barker voice, Come one, come all! Witness Medusa underwater! She can make a man hard with a single look!
“We gotta finish this show,” Mara said. “Get our last paycheck from him. After that, I promise we’ll get on the road.”
Cali nodded. Below, an alligator bobbed and broke the pond’s surface. It opened its mouth wide, as if in a yawn. It paused, jaws agape. Mara imagined its teeth more menacing than its true nature, large and wicked sharp like pieces of glass.
Mara felt Cali’s eyes on her, watching her watch the alligator below. She thought of David’s sweaty palms and unabashed leering.
“How much longer do we have?” she asked.
“Not long. Show’s at two.”
“We should go,” Mara said.
Cali nodded and rolled her skirt up around her thighs before finding footing on the ladder and starting her descent.
Mara studied her, how easily her limbs acclimated to gravity’s pull and settled into that sinking feeling. The wind lifted and her kimono fanned out behind her like a siren’s wings. For a moment, she pictured an alternate reality, one where they covered their skin in feathers instead of silicone scales, where they floated on air and never held their breath. A sudden urge to jump called to her from somewhere below, the alligator or the shadow of a man reflected in the pond’s surface. She gripped the warm, iron slats of the ladder and followed her, uneasy all the way down.
The back window of Cali’s white VW bug was obscured by their duffle bags, stacked on top of one another.
The car puttered to life, and they pulled out of the parking lot. The engine light flickered on and off at the slightest rattle. In spite of the heat, December was a shell of a month, a reverberation of Myrtle Beach’s typical activity. As they ambled along Ocean Boulevard toward the aquarium in sparse traffic, Mara took in the strip malls of beach gear gift shops, seafood restaurants, pancake houses, and mini-golf fun parks along the way as if for the first time, knowing it would be the last. Though they only lived here for six months, Mara felt some fondness for the cheap and desolate star-spangled charm of this town. She committed to memory the amalgamation of stores with their American flags cradled in dark gravel parking lots like oysters in a marsh-bed. The Pearl: Surf Shop had wrapped Christmas lights around the lobster head mannequin in its display window. Even the local scammers seemed to be in the spirit, green and red spotlights illuminated an advertisement for $20 Helicopter Rides!
The aquarium was visible from the main road, the far left side of the building marked by a monstrous metal fin, the main entrance sheltered within the mouth of a reconstructed shark’s head. During the summer, kids loved to run between the pillars of teeth lining its bottom jaw, but today, the parking lot was almost empty. They pulled in their designated employee space and locked the car.
“Ready?” Mara asked.
Cali nodded, twisting the tails of her kimono in her fists. Mara slung her arm around her shoulders and squeezed. Together, they walked over the glimmering concrete and into the aquarium. The shark’s glass-door mouth swallowed them whole.
David was absent when they arrived in the lobby, but the sharp alcoholic scent of his cologne lingered in the staff-only hallways and in their dressing room, a mist that promised a full-bodied apparition.
They sat at their vanities and applied their waterproof makeup. A ritual in transformation, they fulfilled David’s vision for mermaids and became little Marilyn Monroes with fins. Cali painted a beauty mark in the top right corner of her cheek. Mara stained her mouth bright red.
On the observation deck, they sat and rubbed Vaseline on their legs. With skin slippery against the grated, metal runway, they wriggled into their mermaid tails. The tank beneath them was a perfect oval and reminded Mara of a great monocled eye peering up at them, as expectant as the audience below. The void called to her here, too. The water smacked against the confines of the tank, rippling in an eternal simulation of current and tugging at that reckless urge inside her chest. She heard in the whining trill of the industrial water filtration system, in the hiss of the exposed pipes, in the buzz of the overhead spotlights, an irresistible harmony calling, Dive, dive!
With their legs bound in silicone, they slithered toward the water and lowered their bodies into the overhang net.
David’s voice boomed, omniscient from the intercoms above and from the speakers below deck, “Please put your hands together and welcome our two real life mermaids!” Submerging was as simple as walking through a door, now. The water, a warm and uterine-like fluid, cradled their bodies, soothing them into a space between reality and void. The fish, a haze of color, brushed across their armpits and exposed abdomens. They embodied myth, suppressing the natural instinct to breathe, feigning serenity. With a practiced motion of their poised fins, they shaped hearts out of bubbles, and with twin winks, pushed their hearts toward the blurred image of a woman behind the glass. Mara imagined she was like them, in love with the idea of being in a different world.
In the dark of the observation room, the barrier between them seemed like a mirror. Floating and posing together, their faces overlapped the woman’s in turn and perceptions mingled. Without knowing who she was, they identified how she occupied the inside of her body. They undulated their torsos, fluttered their tails. She knew what it meant to act in accordance with the theatrics of living as a beautiful creature. They performed ease— low on oxygen, behind passing sharks, even when the spectators could not see them.
They knew she executed transformative rituals to resemble fantasy, too.
Unable to speak, they fashioned their lips to the pre-recording and sang through David’s loud speakers, gesturing to her, “Oh, we wish we could be like you!”
Breaking through the water’s surface and into the glare of the overhead lights ruptured the illusion. They skinned the silicone fins from their legs, squeezed their hair free of salt water, wrapped towels around their torsos, headed back to their dressing room. Whether it was due to placebo effect or lack of oxygen, Mara couldn’t say, but stripping free of the fantasy always left an ache. The joy they portrayed underwater was never real, and yet, a sense of loss lingered whenever they returned to their bipedal bodies.
Cali stared at her reflection in the dressing room mirror, adjusting and readjusting her kimono.
“Hey,” Mara said. “Listen, why don’t you wait in the car? I’ll get our paychecks, give David our letters.”
“No way, Mara,” she said, eyes wide. “I can’t leave you with him.”
“I’ll be okay,” Mara said, not knowing if it was true. “He’s been on your case more than mine.”
She fisted the tails of her kimono, massaged over the thinning, silk fabric. “Are you sure?” she said.
Mara fished the keys out of her tote bag and handed them to her. “If I’m not out in twenty, come in and get me?”
Cali pulled her into a hug and squeezed tight before letting go.
It was customary at the end of two weeks to stop by David’s office and retrieve their paychecks, but Mara had never done so alone. The hallway seemed longer than usual. The barebones nature of the linoleum tile and exposed pipes, the hissing and grumbling sounds of the water filtration systems reminded her of the phrase in the belly of the beast. If the aquarium was the shark, David was its stomach acid. Corrosive is an understatement, one of the scuba divers once told Mara. A shark’s stomach acid is strong enough to dissolve metal. At the door labeled, MANAGER, she stopped and knocked.
“Come in!” David called.
She took a deep breath, as if preparing to submerge, and opened the door.
“Ah,” he said, his mouth twitched as if repressing a frown. He rose from behind his desk and gestured to the chair in front of him. “Just you today, honey? Where’s Medusa?”
“She’s not feeling well,” Mara said. She remained standing and used the chair as a barrier between them. She was hyperaware of her limbs, of the tension coiled in her trembling hands.
“Seemed just fine to me when you gals were swimmin’ out there,” he said, opening a drawer and sorting through papers.
“We’re paid to seem fine, aren’t we?” she asked.
He chuckled. “Speaking of pay,” he said, retrieving their checks and handing them to her.
She took their paychecks from his outstretched hand and shoved them into the bottom of her bag. “David, I’ve got something for you, too,” she said. “Here are our letters of resignation,” she said, placing the letters on the chair in front of her.
As if she hadn’t spoken, he stepped around his desk and said, “My first love, she was a lot like you. She was a good girl, never wanted to say no to me.” With one foot, he nudged the chair to the side. “Do you find it difficult to say no?”
One of his meaty hands circled her wrist, the other curled under her shirt and caressed her bare stomach. David’s mouth spread into an ugly and open maw, emitting muffled phrases. She felt as though she was underwater again, the pull of the artificial current pressing incessant around her, her heartbeat a steady drum dissolving his words into void. Beneath the surface, a hum like the hissing of the water filtration system, a call from deep inside her body to do something reckless.
“No!” she screamed, shoving him with all her strength and tearing away from his grasp. His pot-bellied body wobbled and stumbled backward into his desk. Her legs carried her down the hallway, the buzzing luminescence blurring the scene, her breath steady reverberations of no, no, no. His heavy-footed gait echoed behind her.
She broke out of the shark’s glass-door mouth and ran through the parking lot. It was dark out, but she spotted Cali under one of lights, leaning against the trunk, mermaid tails clasped in her hands. When Cali spotted Mara, she raised her arms and waved the tails. “Mara!” she called, grinning. “Look! Look!”
“Cali!” Mara said, panicked. “Get in the car!”
Mara looked over her shoulder at the aquarium’s entrance. The figure of a large man strode out from between the shark’s teeth.
Mara grabbed the tails from Cali’s hands, yanked open the passenger-side door, and shoved the tails into the backseat.
“Theft! Theft!” David’s voice boomed across the lot.
“We have to get out of here!” Mara said, climbing into the passenger seat and slamming the door shut.
“Fuck!” Cali said, closing the driver’s side door and cranking the ignition. Mara turned to look over her shoulder. One of the lot’s lights illuminated David as he unlocked his Ford truck and climbed inside. Cali shifted the car into drive. The tires squealed as their car sped out of the parking lot and pulled onto the main road.
“What the hell happened?” Cali asked. “Did he touch you?”
“Why did you take the fins?” Mara asked, then stared at the reflection of his murky truck headlights in her sideview mirror. “Cali— He’s following us.”
“I know, I know,” she said, making a sudden right turn without using her blinker.
Mara’s breath shuddered between her teeth. Her body was still shivering.
Cali made a sudden sharp left turn, narrowly escaping collision with oncoming traffic. “Sorry,” she muttered, glancing again in her sideview mirror.
“I took the fins because they’re part of us, a part of our lives I didn’t want David to keep.”
Mara nodded. She wanted to tell Cali she understood, but before she could, a pair of truck headlights appeared in their rearview mirrors, murky and unmistakably David’s. The truck revved its engine, speeding up and riding so close to their bumper he nearly made impact. Cali hissed and turned down another street before accelerating. Mara looked out the window. They were on the highway along the marsh. Cali turned on her left blinker. He slowed. His truck’s left turn signal blinked back at them.
“We can’t risk him colliding with us,” Cali said, staring straight ahead. “We can’t afford another car, and it’s too dangerous to wait around on the bus when he’s looking for us.” Her voice was unlike anything Mara ever heard, deep and tranquil as a monk’s. Illuminated by the moon, the billboard rose from the marsh as tall and ominous as the cross. “Get ready to climb,” she said.
A few feet from the base of the billboard, she yanked the car into park, ripped the keys out of the ignition. Mara was the first to mount the ladder. She climbed, her limbs rising and falling in a familiar mechanical motion. She stared and envisioned standing upon the platform until she lifted her body onto it. She turned and peered down. Mara was right behind her, but the unmistakable figure of David lumbered up after her. She reached out to her, and together, they muscled Cali up onto the landing beside her.
“Come on,” Cali whispered. Holding hands, they rounded the billboard and thinned their bodies against the pond-facing side. She leaned over and whispered in Mara’s ear, “L’appel du vide.”
“Cali, no—”
The platform shook, and Cali drew her hand over Mara’s mouth. His steps reverberated beneath their feet. His panting gave his position away. They heard him amble along, coming up on their left. Cali let go of her hand and moved closer to his side. He stepped around the corner. His gaze swept along the landing. She raised her arms, her kimono spreading out behind her like a pair of deadly and beautiful wings, and dove upon him. Her fingers curved into talons and clawed at his face. David’s mouth emitted a breathless sputter, and he stepped backward on instinct. His foot slipped into open air. His arms flailed. His hands clenched wildly and closed around a piece of Cali’s kimono. He rocked back against the void before succumbing to its call and falling.
The thin silk stretched, and like the threads of a powerful current, pulled Cali toward the edge. Time slowed, as if doused in buoyancy, the scene seemed to float around them. Mara wrapped Cali in her arms and plunged them down onto the platform. She heard fabric tear free from Cali’s body, an animalistic shriek. They peered through the spaces in the metal grates.
David’s body twitched and convulsed, punctured upon the cypress knee. In a stain of moonlight nearly as bright as the aquarium’s industrial lamps, the feathered remains of Cali’s kimono pooled around him, mimicking the blood seeping from his body. Mara and Cali squeezed each other. An unmistakable splash rippled across the marsh, a scaled creature submerged into the water below.
A queer writer and poet, Dylan Hopper (she/her) received her MFA from the University of Arkansas’ Program in Creative Writing and Translation in Fayetteville. Her poems are forthcoming in Querencia Press’ Scavengers. She once pretended to play bass in a punk band.