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by Michael Ranfone
“That’s not real,” he says, not moving.
“She looks like Jane Greer,” the woman says. “In Out of the Past. The part when they’re playing roulette.”
The body is curled on her side along the shoulder of Route 441, scales dull and dappled with oil, seaweed knotted around her tail, twisted into something deliberate. It’s past midnight, late June. One of those Orlando nights where the air is pressing in, cloying, unreal.
The woman kneels beside the body. Her dress rides up, gravel biting at her knees. The mermaid’s hair fans into a slick crescent, tangling with a gray Walmart bag and a half-smoked cigarillo.
He says nothing. He’s staring at the right breast, half-covered in dried sea-foam. One nipple is scabbed. The mouth slack and sweet, maybe holding the shape of a lie told too well.
She hesitates. “SeaWorld?”
“Maybe.”
“They had that mermaid show when I was a kid. The girls in a tank with the dolphins. Could’ve been that.”
He shrugs, moves closer. There’s a silver ring on the girl’s index finger. A salt-ruined Cartier knockoff. Her hand open, fingers curled in habit, around nothing. Her wrist is marked with faint straps of something tight and recent, segmented and sunken. Something polished that held her until she wasn’t worth the trouble.
There’s a gold YouTube play button tattoo on the underside of her wrist. The lines are blown out. The gold is the wrong shade. Close enough to the plaque hanging in their bedroom. A million subscribers at least.
“Guess she had her moment,” the woman says noticing the tattoo.
“Everyone wants one.” His eyes move to her and stay there. He notices the mermaid has her hair color.
“But hers ended differently.”
They don’t touch her, but consider it. He doesn’t want to become evidence. She doesn’t want to get parasites.
The road is empty, the trees around them dark and buzzing. Moths hover, waiting for glass and light to batter against. From somewhere far off, maybe a subdivision, maybe a swamp, comes the sound of a dog going hoarse from howling.
“She’s got filler,” the woman says, pulling hand sanitizer from her purse. “Look at her mouth.”
He doesn’t answer. He’s staring past the girl now, at the way her tail curls slightly under itself, chipped enamel on the fin. There’s a crumpled Coors can poking from under it. There’s a used condom, an eyelash extension clinging to a fold in a Mickey Mouse sticker, leftover proof of someone who once wanted to be seen.
“Probably a stunt,” he says. “Some bullshit to go viral.”
She stands, squirts the sanitizer and air dries her palms. There’s sand in the corners of her eyes, but she doesn’t rub it out. The air is so thick it makes her skin itch. He walks a few yards back to the car without her, opens the door, then closes it again without getting in.
They don’t speak for a long time. A plane cuts through the dark.
“I think I’ve seen her before,” the woman says, barely audible.
“Where?” His eyes move between her tail, breasts and teeth, and then back again.
“TikTok or Insta maybe. Definitely a video.”
He studies the tail again, then he looks at her, the woman who cried once over a possum on I-75, the woman who hasn’t touched him in months without turning away after. She’s hugging herself. The wind has picked up and everything smells like Bombshell masking sour.
“Think we should call someone?” he says.
“Who would we call?” she asks. Her voice is flat. Leaving her is easier than explaining why they stopped at all.
A truck passes. Fast. Its lights throw the mermaid into clarity, pale belly, pubic bone smooth and scaleless, the faint suggestion of ribs. For a second she looks like she’s singing.
Then dark again.
“Let’s go. I need to film something for Patreon.” she says heading to the car.
They drive home without speaking. Neither of them looks back.
In the morning, he will go outside to smoke, moving her ring light from in front of the door. There will be a glitter scale stuck to his jeans, near the cuff. It will catch the sun just right, then stop moving.
She will watch him through the window. She’ll drink coffee from a chipped cup that used to belong to his mother. Later she will find the girl’s Instagram, the last post crowded with flame emojis. She will add a single praying hands emoji, then keep scrolling. She’ll imagine the girl’s last breath. If it came out in bubbles. If someone watched it leave.
They will never speak of it again.
Sometimes when they fuck, he’ll see her—wet and bent on the side of the road, sand stuck to her cheek. One hand open, fingers curled around something lost. He’ll finish too quickly. She’ll stare at the bottle of Bombshell on her vanity. He’ll tell himself it isn’t real.
Photo of Michael Ranfone
BIO: Michael Anthony Ranfone was born up north, raised in Florida, and writes now from South Carolina. His work appears or is forthcoming in Pithead Chapel, Maudlin House, Bending Genres, BULL, The Molotov Cocktail, Flash Fiction Magazine and elsewhere.