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This is how you make a mermaid: You take a girl, you cut out her heart, and you replace it with sea glass.
*
You are an empty vessel, waiting for the man who bought you to finish filling you back up.
You know this now.
You’ve known this for years.
You used to think they’d crammed the emptiness inside you, shoved it down between your lungs and over your stomach, ruthlessly rearranging everything else you are to make space for the nothing they needed.
You understand now that they were actually carving you away, until there really is nothing left of you.
You think it’s better now. You cry a lot less these days. That’s probably a good sign. You can’t really remember what the point of crying was.
*
This is how you make a mermaid: You drown her every night. In the morning, you bring her back to life.
*
You don’t know why you stop to watch the boy. Nothing in your sea-glass heart should care about what the humans do.
Yet something— something—
You watch him get up, out of the dirt, wipe the sweat off his brow, and try again.
And something cracks.
*
This is how you make a mermaid: After the first month, she’ll stop losing consciousness when you drown her. Purchase a tank, fill it with water, and lock her inside it. Be sure the tank is sturdy and its hinges reinforced. She’ll try to get out.
*
The sight of his injured shoulder makes the crack in your sea-glass heart slide and scrape, and even though it hurts, at least it feels like something, feels like anything. It feels like waking up, like the first rush of real sensation after dreams on dreams on dreams.
Maybe it’s the resignation in his face, as if he never expected anything better.
Maybe it’s the way your brother sneers at him.
Maybe it’s some memory, something you haven’t quite locked away, a small thing, an adult handing you something off a shelf your child self could not reach, a woman helping you with the step onto the train when the gap between it and the platform still seemed as if it could swallow you whole, a man guiding you back to the main road the first time you were out on your own and took a wrong turn. Some minuscule human kindness, and the memory of the memory of the memory of how it made you feel.
You just—
—think someone should help him.
Well. You’re someone.
For a little while still, anyway.
*
This is how you make a mermaid: You must never pity her.
*
You shouldn’t go to the boy’s house. You know you shouldn’t go to the boy’s house. The man who owns you won’t be happy you went to the boy’s house.
And even the boy says, You shouldn’t come here.
And he says, You’re my friend’s little sister.
And he says, I can’t make you help me.
And you should leave, you should leave, you should leave. You should listen to him and you should leave.
But someone should help him.
So every day, again, you go.
*
This is how you make a mermaid: You stuff her ears with wax and her mouth with cotton. You wrap a blindfold around her head and leave her in the silence and the dark. Remind her she belongs at the bottom of the ocean.
*
You pick up his dirty dishes, his laundry, his trash. You wipe down his kitchen counters and his shower walls. You straighten out his bedding and his books.
And he says, You’re just going to keep coming by, aren’t you?
And you say,
And he says, Okay.
I guess I’ve kind of gotten used to it anyway.
And you say,
And he says, I’d be kind of sad now if one morning I made all this extra food for nothing!
So it’s okay, you know?
…I guess it makes me kind of happy to see you now.
Oh but if you get busy! It’s okay if you can’t come! Don’t worry about me, really, my arm’s seriously all better now!
But—I’m saying I don’t mind, you know? If you keep coming by.
So—so.
And quietly, quietly, quietly, you say, Yes.
And you keep coming by.
*
This is how you make a mermaid: You feed her nothing but human flesh.
*
You go to his house every day, and eat the food he makes, even though it all tastes like ash in your mouth. There’s only one thing you can eat now, that will actually sustain you. Even the flesh of other animals tastes horrible to you, wrong and sour and rotten.
He leans down to set your plate in front of you, his exposed neck so close to your teeth that your mouth waters uncontrollably.
And he says, lighthearted, teasing, It must smell good today! You’re almost drooling!
You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, mortified, horrified, cringing away from him until he mercifully leaves your space.
And you say, Mmhmm! It smells delicious!
After you leave that morning, you bite your tongue and swallow your own blood, over, and over, and over.
*
This is how you make a mermaid: Complete confinement is ultimately inadvisable, as the detrimental health effects tend to severely limit her magical growth. Strict regimens of punishment for any escape attempts are highly recommended.
*
You start to get nervous when, an hour after you arrived, the rain has not stopped lashing the windows with violent intent.
And you say, I have to get home.
And he says, You can’t go out in that!
You sit, and you wait, and the thunder doesn’t move, and the lightning keeps flashing, and your breaths come shallow in your chest. You don’t know what time sunset is, you can’t see through the impenetrable clouds, and you don’t know what explanation you’d offer if you tried to ask. You bite your cheek until you taste blood. The boy hasn’t noticed your distress; he’s distracted with his homework. You hold your book in front of your face, trying to hide your anxiety, but the words dance meaninglessly before your eyes.
And you say, I have to get home.
And he says, It looks like a nightmare out there.
And you sit and you stare blankly at your book as the minutes tick by, until your hands start to tremble, until he starts noticing that something is wrong, starts looking up from his own work, opening his mouth to speak.
And you say, I have to get home.
And you say, I can’t stay here.
I have to get home.
And he says, You can—um. You can actually. Just spend the night here. You know?
And you say,
And he says, At least wait a little longer.
You can’t walk home in that, it’s not safe.
And you say, teary, scrambling to your feet, I HAVE to get home!
The boy jerks back, startled by the sudden shout and movement. You can feel it, though, the scales starting to creep out of your skin, the scrape of your teeth elongating against your lips, the ripple of the skin on your neck opening for gills.
You were a fool, and missed sunset in the black dark of the thunderstorm, and now he’s going to know, he’s going to see—
And he says—
And you—
And—
The hand on your arm is gentle and warm. Your mouth waters. Your sea-glass heart is ice cold.
And he says, Are you all right?
Sorry that’s—you clearly aren’t all right, but—
Let me help.
Just stay.
Plea—
And you flee.
*
This is how you make a mermaid: In the tenth year, you should begin the transition to live prey. She may resist at first, but a few nights of starvation ought to render her desperate. If all else fails, simply bleed the prey until she can’t control herself.
*
You remember your nights like bad dreams: sometimes vividly, sometimes as nothing more than a vague impression of anguish and stress, until they drag you out of the water, coughing and choking, the floor rocking beneath you like you’ll never find solid ground again. Today, a girl’s face, not much older than you, waits behind your eyes every time you so much as blink. Her expression is twisted in horror and her blood is warm as you sink your teeth into her throat.
You can’t do it anymore, can’t bear just sitting in a classroom like everything is fine, like you belong there, like this isn’t a horrible twisted sickening joke. Your sea-glass heart is a cold, unyielding rock inside your chest, its cracks sharp and bright with pain where they scrape against each other. You stand up so fast your chair tips over. Every eye swivels to you, the girl who never causes a ruckus, never speaks out of turn, never so much as sneezes at an inappropriate moment.
For a second—two seconds, three seconds, five, each tick of the clock squeezing your lungs like a wrench trying to twist you back into into place—you only stand there. The class is quiet, staring, even the teacher shocked into a momentary silent stutter.
Then you turn on your heel and you run.
*
This is how you make a mermaid: You bind her legs together. Use long, thin strips of fabric, overlapping them all the way up from her ankles to her hips. The feet you may wish to arrange to mimic the fin. If you prefer to simply continue the leg bindings, press the soles of her feet together and bind them against one another. Depending on her flexibility, this may tear tendons the first few times. She must spend every hour between sunset and sunrise bound thus.
*
He finds you in the park, your eyes red, your hair tangled, everything about you unsightly in a stupidly human way. It shouldn’t bother you. It doesn’t deserve to bother you. How can you complain that your face is puffy in front of—
—
—
—when last night you bit someone until they stopped screaming.
It doesn’t matter anyway. He saw. He knows.
There’s something so much worse beneath your skin than puffy eyes.
But he says, Hey.
But he says, Are you alright?
But he says, I heard you ran out of class.
And you say,
And you say,
And you say,
But he says, It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.
But he says, But I didn’t want to leave you out here alone.
But he says, Will you come back to my place at least?
*
This is how you make a mermaid: Regular sexual stimulation is absolutely necessary.
*
And you say, I’m a monster.
But he says, You’re Sakura.
And you say, I might eat you.
But he says, Then eat me.
And you say,
And you say,
And you say,
And you say, I don’t want to.
And he says, just a little teasing, just a little scolding, just a little like you’re a person, like you’re an ordinary girl spiraling in the ordinary anxieties of school and life and love, Then you won’t eat me.
*
This is why you make a mermaid: Because no other creature is such a fount of magic. It will live in her scales, in her tears, in her hair, in her voice. It will thrum beneath her skin and seep between her gills. When she is complete, and you settle down for the feast, you will consume more magic with every bite than most humans ever touch.
*
What if you ate me?
The question has rolled around in your head for a while now. You find the courage to murmur it, finally, into his ear as you lie on top of him, both of you limp with sated pleasure. He goes stiff beneath you at the words, turning his head until he catches your eye, and when you look away again, catching your face with one hand, pulling it back.
And he says, What?
And you say, It’s what they’re making me for. You bury your face into the crook of his neck, drinking in the scent of him, feeling your teeth come out, feeling yourself drool, and you rest your mouth against his skin, and you ache, and you hunger, and he doesn’t so much as twitch in alarm, and you withdraw.
And you say, If I’m going to be eaten, I’d rather it be you.
I’d rather it be you than anyone in the whole world.
He’s very, very, very still beneath you.
And he says, I don’t want to eat you.
You don’t want to eat me.
How can you expect me to want to eat you?
And you say, Because I have to be eaten eventually.
And he says, No.
And you say, What?
And he says, No.
And you say, Yes.
And he says, No.
No I don’t accept that.
I’m not going to let that happen.
And you say,
And you say,
And you say,
And you say, You can’t save me.
No one can save me.
There’s no way to save me.
But he says, I’ll make one.
*
This is how you make a mermaid: Above all, in isolation.
*
You kill, and you eat, and you kill, and you eat, and you kill, and you eat, and you kill and you kill and you kill and you eat and you eat and you eat and you awaken to hands covered in blood, to a mouth dripping with blood, to scales spattered with blood, you awaken without legs, without lungs, without a way out, you awaken with your monstrous brother dead, with your once-beloved sister dead, with everyone you touch dead.
Yet someone— someone—
You watch him get up, out of the dirt, wipe the sweat off his brow, and try again.
And something shatters.
*
This is how you unmake a mermaid: You love her, you love her, you love her, you love her, you love her, you love her.
*
In the remains of your sea-glass heart, something small and human thumps, stutters, and begins once more to beat.