The Nereid and the Seachild - Day One

This is the story of the Fey of the Waters, told in five parts.

Day One

In the back of the bar, tucked away in a corner of the employee break room, covered in years of dust and mildew, there was an old vending machine. Nobody knew how long it had been there, and nobody had ever seen anyone come to restock it, and as such, nobody ever touched the thing. It sat there, soaking up the flickering power through the socket in the wall, the glass sometimes bumping with the bass from the heavy music that came from the main floor, shifting through the very walls and making the machine jump like it was dancing and didn’t care who watched.

 

Some of the employees talked about it on their breaks, passing jokes about how it was haunted, how it contained the ghost of a mermaid who’d washed up on shore half a century ago and died, her lost spirit settling here, where lost spirits always seemed to find themselves.

 

The boy liked the stories the men and women told. He liked the rough way they spoke, coloring their tales with a spattering of foul language and vulgar hand movements. He watched them from the broken metal chair in the corner opposite the mysterious vending machine. Nobody ever occupied that chair; nobody would sit on it, afraid it might break beneath them. The boy didn’t like standing too much, though, and his bones always needed a break after the first seven hours of cleaning the floor, the bathrooms, and the abandoned tables, so he’d sink his weary frame onto the metal surface carefully so as to not dislodge the weakened legs too much.

 

He preferred it when he was given a break with another employee or two. He liked the company, though he never spoke, and he liked the tales they told.

 

But sometimes, the floor was too busy to let too many people go at once, and the boy found himself alone in the break room, with nothing but the soft buzz of electricity from the vending machine and the beat of the bass thumping through the room.

 

He hated those times, hated those breaks. He always found himself staring at the looming machine at the far back of the room, locked eye-to-eye in a staring contest with something he wasn’t quite convinced was truly inanimate. In those times, the boy felt a deep, stirring need to reach out, to touch the cracked plastic and grungy glass. He wondered what the chocolate bars inside were like. Had they disintegrated to dust? Or did the ghost of the mermaid keep them in some magical stasis?

 

Often, he wouldn’t even make it to his chair in the corner. If he was alone, he might spend the entire break facing the machine, wide-eyed, as the bulky object called to him like a siren. Come, it whispered. Come to me, child of the sea.

 

“No,” he would mouth, his rusty voice never cracking enough for sound to attach itself to the words. He hadn’t spoken, really spoken, in years. Sometimes, he wondered if he still could. Even the morning he was given this job hadn’t pulled any words from his mouth; the owner had simply taken pity on him, on his starving form sleeping in the alley near the employee entrance, and offered him a little bit of pay for a little bit of work.

 

The boy always knew that one day, he would give in. He would cross the room to that haunted box, and he would answer its siren call. He hadn’t expected today to be that day.

 

He was alone, staring up at the vending machine, his empty stomach churning in pain, his buzzing head faint and dizzy, a single coin weighing down his pocket, teasing him, for what could he buy with a single coin? Nothing, but a chocolate bar from the vending machine in the back of the employee break room.

 

Years later, he would blame the state of his mind for his actions that night.

 

He took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out, his feet shuffling slowly toward the looming object. He kept peeking over his shoulder, waiting for someone to come down the hallway and interrupt him, saving him from himself. But nobody came. The boy was alone, and quickly, his hand darted out, the single coin held tightly between his white fingers. He heard the clink as it fell through the slot, and he licked his dry lips and swallowed hard.

 

He couldn’t see what choices lied within through the thick caking of dust from years of disuse, but he could see that every row and every column was filled with some shape, so he threw caution to the wind and pressed a number at random.

 

The machine whirred to life, creaking and groaning as it performed actions it hadn’t been asked to perform in longer than anyone could remember. At first, the boy wasn’t sure if it would move at all, but then he could see the subtle shifting somewhere in the middle row, just to the left. It edged closer, a rectangular shape, and fell, with a thud, to the bottom of the machine.

 

The boy took a deep breath, knelt down, and pulled the bar of chocolate from the slot.

 

Nereus, it said, in large, white letters, twisted into the shape of seafoam, cresting over blue-green background. The chocolate inside was firm, solid, but not rock hard. Perhaps, beyond all miracles, it was still good. The boy had never heard a Nereus Bar before, but it didn’t matter, as long as he could eat it.

 

He held the bar close to his heart, pressed between his hands, and he opened his cracked lips to mouth a silent prayer. Please, he almost-whispered. Please. I need something good to come into my life. I’m drowning, and I don’t know if I can keep treading this water. Please, let something good happen.

 

He took the candy bar over to the trashcan in the corner and slowly peeled back the paper and foil, tucking the wrapper deep into his pocket. The chocolate had a strong, enticing scent, rushing to his head, but before he could lean down and take that first bite, it fell to dust in his fingers and sprinkled the top of the trash with chocolate dust.

 

The boy’s heart sank in his chest, his hopes of one small meal fallen. He dragged himself over to the broken, metal chair and sank slowly into it, defeated, his stomach growling in protest. He had nothing to offer it, and would have nothing for another two days as he waited for his paycheck to arrive.

 

When his twenty minutes was up, he slowly dragged himself back to the main floor, leaving his coat on the chair, and taking his broom with him as he went.

 

~*~

 

The music thumped through the bar, the rowdy patrons arguing loudly with each other just to be heard over the thick bass, and every jostle and sound got to the boy. His stomach was sick now with hunger, ready to heave its emptiness onto the floor in front of him, and his head was spinning. He tried swallowing to gain a little of his senses back, but his dry mouth would have none of it, and he only succeeded in choking on his throat. The owner had offered him the rest of the night off twice now, but each time the boy had shaken his head and doubled down in his work.

 

Every hour he lasted was another few dollars in his paycheck, and he needed that money. He needed it desperately.

 

When the owner finally left for home, well before the bar would close, he offered the boy the rest of the night off one last time, but when the boy yet again shook his head, he gave up, shrugged on his thick coat, and left through the back entrance. The boy breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t have to worry about being thrown out any longer; he just had to worry about staying upright and making it through the next five hours. 

 

He didn’t notice when the doors opened and a tall, svelte figure sauntered down the stairs into the cramped enclosure. He didn’t notice this figure sidle up to the bar and order a drink. He didn’t notice the way she eyed him, sipping slowly at her whiskey and coke as she examined his drooping form with the careful precision of one who had an important choice to make. The boy didn’t notice any of this; his whole attention was focused on surviving as he mopped the same space of floor over and over, having already forgotten what spilled in the first place.

 

~*~

 

Somehow, the boy managed to survive those last five hours. At the end, once all of the patrons had been ushered out onto the streets and the boy had only to clean the tables, put up the stools, sweep up the debris, and be on his way, he finally felt a pair of hands descend onto his shoulders. He jumped, his foggy mind grasping at some logical explanation for the interruption, but it was just the bartender, a young man with red hair and a bright curly beard. He smiled gently at the boy, and motioned with his head toward a seat at the bar.

 

“Come have a seat,” he said, an accent to his voice that the boy took great solace in. “You can get back to this in a minute,” he said.

 

Without waiting for a response, the bartender gently nudged the boy forward, leading his wobbly frame to a stool and helping him sit before jogging around to the other side of the bar and filling a clean glass with ice and coke with a deftness that comes from knowing your job well. The bartender had been here the second longest of anybody, aside from the owner himself. While most employees left after a month or two, moving on to bigger and better things, or at least moving as far away from the bar as they could, the bartender himself had managed almost six months. It was unheard of, but the boy had grown accustomed to his smiling face.

 

The boy himself, of course, had been there longer than all of them, almost two years, listening as the stories of the vending machine and its mermaid spirit were passed down to each new group of hirelings, twisted with each tongue that spun the yarns.

 

The boy swooned for a moment as a wave of nausea overtook him, and he grabbed onto the bar to keep from falling over. Without hesitation, the bartender reached over and put a hand on the boy’s upper arm to help steady him, the other palm going to the boy’s forehead to check for a temperature.

 

“Why are you out there working like this if you’re clearly not feeling well?” he asked, but the boy pulled away from the hand and rested his chin on the bar, looking around. He caught a whiff of something nearby, something tantalizing, and he perked up a little, looking around with desperation. Beside him, about an arm’s length away, was a paper take-home box. Steam wafted from the crack in the square clamshell, and when the bartender shook his head and turned back to the glass of coke the boy jerked his hand out and dragged the box closer.

 

The bartender laughed, depositing the drink on the wooden surface and passing it over to the boy. “Go ahead,” he said, even as the boy yanked his hand back, hiding it in his lap and looking away from the unoffered meal. The bartender opened the clamshell. “It’s for you. One of the patrons tonight came back when I was closing up and asked me to pass that along to you. It’s all yours.”

 

The boy looked, hardly believing, but there was no trick in the bartender’s eyes. He pulled the box of food toward him and eyed the thick, juicy burger and abundancy of golden fries, before reaching in and stuffing the food into his eager mouth, stopping only long enough to wash it down with a large swallow of coke now and again.

 

The boy ate quickly, and he ate everything, his extended stomach aching now with the fullness it wasn’t accustomed to. When he was done, he sat back and frowned at the empty container. If he’d just bothered to save some, he could have eaten tomorrow too, but saving food never seemed to go over with him. As soon as it was in his hands, he swallowed it, barely stopping long enough to chew.

 

Finally, he looked around. His head was beginning to clear up, and he wanted to take stock of how much work there really was left to do. But when he turned on the barstool to face the main floor, his stomach cramped in guilt and inadequacy. The bartender had finished bussing the tables and was sweeping the last of the debris into a dustpan on the far side of the main floor. The boy ducked his head, shameful over his inability to simply tend to the tasks of his job. 

 

The bartender came back, smiling brightly, and looked over the boy’s shoulder. “You done?” he asked, taking away the empty container of food and tossing it in a trashcan as he swept around the bar and quickly wiped it down. “Listen, don’t worry about tonight. I’ll let the boss know you stayed the full time and finished up. You look ready to keel over. You should go home and get some rest, alright?”

 

The boy winced lightly, but nodded, standing and slipping into the employee room to collect his coat. He was too deeply caught in his thoughts to look at the vending machine, to notice that some of the dust had begun to clear away, the mildew pulling back into the corners and disappearing. He wrapped himself up, oblivious to the whirring machine in the corner, and took the back exit out of the bar, avoiding the bartender as he slipped deeper and deeper into depression. He disappeared into the cold fall night, into the wind, the darkness, and the light smattering of rain that was just beginning to drizzle from the sky.

 

~*~

 

That night, for the first time, the boy saw the woman who had been eyeing him at the bar, the woman who had bought him food and handed it to the bartender outside as he’d been locking up. She was standing across the street, just outside of a used bookstore, her still form holding strong in the heavy winds even as the lampposts themselves shook in their encasements.

 

The boy was hunkered down behind a set of crates, against a dumpster, in his usual alley. He pulled his coat over him like a blanket, his arms through the sleeves to hold it in place, and watched her with intense curiosity. Her hair blew about, whipping around her face, and her clothes seemed to want to fly away with the spare newspapers and other trash debris, but she stood still, her eyes meeting his directly.

 

He was too exhausted to be concerned by her strange and sudden appearance in his life, and he didn’t know something was wrong around him until the expression on her face changed and twisted, her attention drawn up.

 

He looked in time to brace himself against a blow. His coat was yanked from him, held in place only by his arms, and a surge of panic rushed through his nerve endings. His muscles jumped and twitched as he struggled to understand what was happening, but he had enough sense to hold tight to the coat even as the stranger yanked on it, kicking at the boy’s side to force him to let go. “C’mon…c’mon,” the stranger grunted, desperately. “Just give it to me!” But the boy held tight, shielding his face as best as he could and crossing his arms.

 

The wind picked up, blowing in a different direction now, and the icy rain hit the boy’s face with a ferocity he hadn’t expected. His attacker was blown off balance, falling to the ground, and when the boy pushed himself back against the brick wall between the dumpster and the wooden crates and looked up, he saw the woman standing over the man, staring at him intently. There was a dark shape on her arm, a half-horse-half-fish creature that seemed to rear up in indignation as her muscles clenched and unclenched.

 

The man spooked, his eyes going wide, and he stood up and ran in the other direction. The boy’s heart pounded in his chest, a tight ache rivaled only by the sharp pains in his side from the man’s thick boot.

 

The woman turned her gaze on the boy again, and the boy’s body tightened, his breath catching in his throat. There was something about her eyes - something that terrified him. They contained a storm, capable of blowing him away as easily as she’d blown away his attacker, and when she took a step toward him, the boy leapt to his feet and jumped the crates, falling hard on his ankle on the other side. He ignored the sudden jab of pain, ignored his side, ignored his heart’s panicked thumping, and ran down the street.

 

The boy didn’t stop running until he’d lost himself in the maze of the city, and he breathed heavily and knelt down, holding the coat tightly to his chest - his victory prize. He huddled into a ball, wrapping the coat around himself once more, and fell asleep in an unfamiliar gutter, dreaming his usual nightmares of wild seas and sharp cliffs. But this time, a figure stood in the distance, crouched on a rock far out in the sea, her hair whipping around her, her intense eyes flashing with lighting as thunder crashed all around them.

Author's Note

There is a distinct possibility that, because I copy and pasted this from MS Word, some of the formatting may get screwed up. It's happened in the past. If it happens again, let me know and I'll try my best to fix it!