"Mermaid´s Cry or The Last Mermaid" by Maria Masterson

Mermaid's Cry or The Last Mermaid

Is it possible that anything could go wrong underneath the sea? That paradise of brightly colored fish swimming and seaweed waving around. The mer people who lived there in their palaces of coral with their hair flowing around their shoulders and their bright blue or green eyes sparkling like gems. You wouldn't think so would you? You would never think that the wonders of the deep sea could be disrupted. But it could. And it would.

A bright day; the rays of the sun, oh so high up, shining down on the hair of a young mermaid sitting with her pet catfish resting lightly on her knees. She never imagined that in five minutes her whole life would be ruined; her whole family dead. She was in a blissful state of peace. It was just luck when she went swimming up to the surface to see the pretty clouds drift about the sky. It was instinct that caused her to suddenly dive back down and swim as fast as she could back the way she came.

It was too late. The sharks had already come. The bodies of her relatives, friends and enemies were lying on the sea floor. Blood was everywhere, floating in and out of the doors and windows. Pieces of dead coral from the houses were slowly sinking. It was a scene of death and destruction.

The mermaid cried for her loved ones. She cried and cried, but she knew it was no use. They would never come back. She swam away, still crying. Far away so that she would not be reminded of the tragedy. She was only ten years old.

Nine years later found the same mermaid lying on a beach amidst children's sandcastles and forgotten toys. She was crying. In fact she had never stopped crying. In all those years there was only one time when she wouldn't cry. That was at midnight. She would rise from the depths of the sea. Her head would break the surface. She would rise her head to the moon that shone so brightly on her golden hair and her pale, pale skin. It illuminated her pain and she knew it. She felt the pain in the deepest part of her heart. At this time she would not shed a tear. Instead she gave a long shriek that sounded all of the loneliness, all of the longing, all of the anger, and all of the hurt that was in her. It would rise through her and she let it all out.

She had grown into a beautiful mermaid, but in a sad way. Her eyes were full of sadness that never went away. Fair skin, almost translucent, covered her. Emerald tail, shiny and smooth, glinted in the water. But she had no pride in her looks. She felt nothing anymore, except numbness. She cried because it seemed the right thing to do. Numbness, coldness; except during the moonlit hours when she felt something real.

The days slowly slipped away. The poor mermaid swam all day, crying all the while. Soon she had reached the cold waters of the Arctic, but she did not feel the ice cutting her tail, or the wind chapping her face. She would lie on icebergs when tired , and sleep but she dreading having to sleep. She could never get the blood and the bodies out of her mind. She could never stop dreaming of the sharks.

Every night was the same. Rise to the moon and give a great cry. To any animal who heard her, it sounded like a thousand knives piercing the heart. To the mermaid, it was heart-wrenching, but she could not stop. She would not stop. She could not bottle up what needed to get out.

The days turned into months, months into years and the mermaid grew old. She never stopped swimming and crying. You would think that by the time she turned eighty, she would have realized that there was no point, but it was not so. To the last mermaid, to be all alone; it was not right. There is no way to stop feeling, but she found a way. Even at one-hundred, the routine stayed.

It was midnight. She was rising to cry her cry to the moon. A great shark spotted her. A hungry shark, with an empty belly and babies to feed. The shark swam towards her and struck. Her blood flowed into the ocean. Her limp body was torn to shreds by the family of sharks. Even thought it was a brutal death, it was the way her species had died, and it was the one way she would have picked to go. The last mermaid was finally at peace. She would never cry again.