I wrote this little story several months ago. I shared with some people but I figured I'd put here too.
Prompt: Someone to write a book where mermaids are the women thrown off ships when the sailors got afraid because having a woman on the boat is bad luck. And as they sink to the bottom legs tied together they change slowly until they can breath, until they can use their tied up legs to swim. And they drown sailors in revenge, luring them in by singing in their husky voices still stinging from the salt water they breathed.
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My name is Charlene.
I fell in love with a boy who was a sailor. One day he went off to sea and never returned. I was devastated. I knew where he went. He went to the new world in search of riches. Why he didn’t take me I have no idea. So I did the only thing a poor girl could do. I stowed away on a ship intending to join my love. I see him in the birds in the sky. I see him in the grey, rolling clouds of fall storms. I see him in the blue calm sea that he loved so much. I can’t bear to be apart from my love.
They caught me hiding behind the rum barrels. The men flung me onto the deck roughly. They were scared. I was scared. The captain came and stood before me. He ordered me thrown overboard. I looked at him in shock. Throw a helpless woman overboard. Was he mad? I was naive. No one told me that sailors were superstitious.
I tried to breathe in air. All that I got was lungs filled with salt water. I tried to free my hands and feet from their rope bindings. I needed air. I was scared. So very scared. I didn’t want to die.
"Child, be calm. We will help you." A singsong chorus of voices echoed all around me.
Women were in the water with me. Their long hair was swirling about their pretty faces. I almost missed there fins. Mermaids. I was surrounded by mermaids. They told me they were woman who had been thrown overboard by scared, superstitious sailors.
My brain screamed at me to get free and breathe air.
Everyone thinks that mermaids are goblins or faeries. Well, I’m here to tell you differently.
My name is Charlene. Once I was a human, now I am a mermaid.
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