Order and Chaos

We should do something about this kidnapping thing, though. All you have to do is get her onto land, and you'll have the upper hand!

I slipped out of my captor's grasp easily, because underwater everything's slippery, and also because she let go. But as I escaped one trap, I became more deeply ensnared in another, less physical trap — her treacherous lust spell!

"Ha, ha, ha, we do have fun around here," she laughed.

We should learn what this watery lady's deal is. Is she a bandit? A rebel? Free on Thursday for a date once we've worked out this whole kidnapping thing?

"EXPLAIN THYſELF! BE YE BANDIT? AſſAſſIN? TRAITOROUS REBEL!?" I shouted, drowning. Suddenly, I remembered my supposedly-useless training! I spit up the water and held my breath. I hadn't inhaled deeply before the plunge, which would mean I only had about 7 minutes, tops.

"I'm... we're the guards of the moat. I gotta bring you back to the castle. Do you not... do you not know that? You've lived here your whole life. You cook meals for us. I was just havin' a little joke."

I scoffed. A likely story. "A LIKELY ſTORY!"

"I mean, can you imagine Malcolm Vindictus letting some murdermermaids who'd gank his daughter and heiress just, hang out in his moat? Right outside his own castle? I mean, look at what he had built for us," she said, gesturing behind her to a wall. Best as I could tell, it was an exact duplicate of the castle above, but upside-down and underwater, halting where the ceiling became ground. It did seem to make sense... No! No! I must resist her Mindfreaking Criss Angel ways with all my will! "Why are you using all those weird Fs? Do you have a lisp?"

"I'M THE ONE AſKING THE QUESTIONS HERE!" I said, not breathing. "Queſtions, fuck!" I coughed. "RELEAſE MY HEART FROM YOUR CURſE OF CAPTIVITY SO I MAY EFFECT MY EſCAPE AT ONCE, O FOUL ſIRENOUS CREATURE OF THE DEEP!"

"Curse? The ſuck...?" She looked extremely confused while I looked at her, which I knew was not a wise move while under her spell, but I could not help myself. Then a realization swept over her, and her eyes became as large as dinner plates fit for my appetite. "Oh, oh, oh!" She nearly doubled over, redoubling her laughter. "You've... oh my gods... You've, you've never seen a shirtless woman before, have you? In all your 19 years of study..."

I shook my head. "No, but I ſee not what that has to do with your libidinal treachery, wench!"

"Oh, honey..." she said, snickering into her hand. "I mean, your majesty. You're not cursed, you just think I'm hot. (And thank you, by the by.) It's a classic case of the you're gay."

Oh. Huh. Hmm.

ASK HER TO MARRY YOU ON THE SPOT, BUT IN 60 DAYS

"Well, then, be my attraction natural," I said, slipping into a tone a little more sly and less-long-s-filled and sensuously doggy-paddling towards her. "Would you marry me in 60 days' time?"

"You turn 20 in 49 days. Are you... are you trying to trick me? Everything you do is so, so... weird."

"No! No, my aim is true. I am just bad at arithmetic. I have never laid eyes on someone as lovely as you."

"Well I'm... flattered, but no thank you. I mean, first of all, you've known me for about 2 minutes. We're altogether too deep under the surface to be that shallow here." She could pun too! Alas, what could have been. "Second of all, I'm only into dudes. Third of all, merdudes. Fourth and finally," she gestured to her lower body, "have you seen this? There's nothing down there. We reproduce by vomiting eggs and sperm into a huge pile."

My heart sank, to a depth even greater than the one I was at.

"Aw, now don't look so crestfallen!" she said, side-hugging. "There are other fish in the sea! I mean, not literally. Please don't try to fuck any more fish."

I nodded, but pouted. Someone above the water rung a bell that was high-pitched enough to penetrate the depths. "Ooh, just a second," she said, then she swam up, partially out of the water, and started clapping her hands and elbows and woofing, like a seal. She came back down having caught a turkey wing in her mouth — leftovers I recognized from dinner. Suddenly, she seemed a lot less attractive. "Anyway, you were saying?"

"I suppose you must be taking me back to my quarters now..."

"Right, right." She grabbed my forearm again, then hesitated. "No, no. I was, but I don't think I will... You're kinda pathetic. You're 19 and even though you're so damn educated, you didn't know literally the first thing about what lies outside of the castle's bricks, or that you liked boobs. I will help you escape.

She continued. "Instead of having to navigate your way through the forest while they search for you, I'll smuggle you through the spawning grounds, from which I can take you to almost any large, natural body of water in the world — I have one in mind. I will have to magically deprive you of your senses of sight, sound, and smell for the commute though, because the spawning grounds are sacred to us mermaids and not to be experienced by outsiders. Also, because it's really fucking gross, and I don't want your regular vomit mixing in with our sex vomit."

Finally, some good news! I consented to this arrangement and was led through the secret, sacred underground tunnels, blind, deaf, and anosmic, alone but for my thoughts, touch, and tongue — the three "t"s. So, in other words, I couldn't see how, once the entrance was sealed, the so-called mermaids would take off their fish halves, made from what appear to be the real bottom halves of really big fish hollowed out, stretching their regular, bloodied human legs and hanging their fish halves on meat hooks in lockers, including my guide. There was absolutely no way of me knowing that at all, nor where they got the fish bottom halves from, nor what the end game of this vast, baffling conspiracy was. (Certainly, that it was ultimately as simple as "people give mermaids a ton of free stuff," which would have had to have been a tremendous and implausible leap of intuition, based on evidence that I had no way of acquiring and no way of even knowing the existence of.)

Instead, I obsessively fixated on the fact that the blue paint on my nose had washed off in the water, and how I felt positively naked without it. Well, okay, not literally like that, it was just a little awkward and strange, you know? It's a turn of phrase that's common when you wear, like, glasses or a watch every day. It would probably help me not be recognized, at least. And I'm into chicks. How about that, huh?

Finally, I was let out of the so-called "spawning grounds" and floated unassisted to the surface of a large, natural body of water. As soon as my face met air once more, the sensory-deprivation "bubble" "popped." Now that I could see, hear, and smell again, where was I? Had it been a mistake to have trusted the mermaid?