Little Mermaid

The big bed had been in a loft inside a refurbished industrial complex near the river. When she at last had found her gold clutch and her phone, she'd ordered an Uber that took her to the dorm in a way too long and too silent ride. The driver, no doubt a fellow student, had chuckled when she entered his car. "Quite a night?" he'd asked, but she'd pointedly looked away, just mumbling her destination.

Now she lay on her own bed after a hot shower, her body feverish, her head overflowing with images. So, she'd done it, or rather, she'd let them do it to her. Again.

The skinny therapist had been right, drunk boys would fuck any hole offered to them. But something was off. The images and sounds and smells that invaded her brain were like the replay of an indifferent machine. The prodding cocks, the detailed blowjobs, the grabbing hands and sloppy tongues should shock her, shouldn't they? They should at least touch her, make her feel something, anything, if not disgust, maybe arousal? Shouldn't they at the very least make her heart quicken? But they didn't. They felt like facts, they were as if projected on a distant screen, larger than life, impersonal, as if she'd been an onlooker. Well, just one gaze at her mangled body was enough to thoroughly contradict that. And yet, however deep she'd dig into her memories, there never was a feeling, neither of pain or indignation, nor of satisfaction. There were no echoes of ecstasy, no memories of orgasms, just... facts.

They say first times are never perfect. What they mean is sex between a scared virgin girl and an inept, fumbling boy. Ariel grimaced: those two had certainly not been there, not even the virgin girl. The orgy had just waltzed over her, lifting her up and freeing her of any sense of reality. Hadn't it? Of course, it must have. From the first step she'd taken into the club till the moment she woke up, nothing had needed her consent, not even her involvement. It had all seemed to just... happen. Remembering anything was like looking at a movie.

Then her phone rang. As she took the call, she had to distance her ear from the shrieking voice it produced.

"Eeeek! Girl!" it screamed. "Where did you go? Why leave so soon? We should totally see more of ya! What you doin' today?" It was Kimberley, Kimbo, as she'd heard someone call her. Ariel coughed as she replied. She didn't have to fake the hoarse edge to her voice as she said she had a cold. "Oooooh!" the girl cried out. "Such a pityyy! Tosh and Kerr and me, we'd soooo like to take you to the mall! Jus, you know, see what's goin' on." Ariel groaned. What the fuck had she gotten herself into?

"Too bad," she mumbled. "Another time." And she pushed away the connection, throwing the cell on the bed, only to hear it ring again. Carl's name was on the little screen. She groaned and pulled a pillow over her face and ears. So, she'd fucked the bimbo Carl had fucked. Was that it? Jealousy or whatever? But she'd upped it by having sex with her silly friends too, and by being fucked by every jock that hung about them like flies around a honey pot. Or wasps, rather? They sure had stung, their cocks had been everywhere, she'd really, finally been consciously fucked! So why wasn't she elated? She'd felt them fill her up, she'd come, and come again. But had she really felt anything? Maybe. But perhaps it'd only been the drugs she'd felt? What had she felt anyway?

Somehow the thought sobered her up. Covered in the pillow's hot darkness a wave of panic finally hit her. Cocks and more cocks, spewing. Fuck, she needed a morning after pill. Her womb must be swimming in sperm. Stupid, stupid, where to get one? Then her phone rang again.

"Hi, Carl."

"What the fuck, Ari! Have you lost your mind? I saw pictures, video even." Oh God, pictures. Of course, there would be.

"What is it to you?" she said. There was silence, then:

"Everything. I'm your friend!" Ariel chuckled.

"You may be, but I'm certainly not yours anymore, remember?" Another silence, then Carl went on:

"I'm sorry for that, I've told you. And if I'd known what you would do..." Ariel interrupted her.

"Can you get me a morning after pill?"

Carl could and she did; it only cost Ariel another bout of preaching. After taking the pill and the sermon, they sat down at her tiny table, Ariel wearing her bathrobe, Carl in a sweat suit and a baseball cap. Water for tea was sizzling in the cooker. It felt as if everything was like before. But had it ever been, Ariel wondered.

"So, you got fucked again, and this time wide awake, I guess," Carl said. "Any other girl would try a nice guy, but you had to have the whole fucking jock team. And a bunch of stupid bimbos on the side. Is this where you're heading? Did you at least enjoy it?" Ariel just stared at her for a while.

"Who's talking?" she then asked.

As they drank tea, their conversation went from anywhere to nowhere. It was obvious that Carl wanted her back, at least wanted her to live at her apartment again. Ariel sighed and shook her head.

"I guess I'll drop out," she said. "After all that happened, the rape and the fuss and you and now this, I can't very well show my face in class again, can I? Not that I care, but well, there's no point anymore, really. Stupid study anyway. I'll go find myself a crappy job and a crappy room somewhere; a place where no one lies to me." Looking up from her tea mug she saw tears running down Carl's face. It silenced her.

"Why?" Carl said, her voice tiny, robbed of all her usual bravado. "Why do you keep doing this? Destroying yourself? You are so precious; why don't you know that?" Ariel laughed, harder and more bitter than she intended. Then she stopped, feeling inexplicable tears press against her eyeballs. Her fingers crawled to where Carl's hands lay on the table.

"You can be sweet if you want to, I guess, Carl," she said. "But you really don't need to lie just to sugar me. At least those stupid bimbos are so full of themselves that they don't even see me. I'm a nobody, an ugly, invisible nobody and you know it; everybody does. They just fucked me because they were pissed blind and I happened to be another hole in a sea of fat tits and asses. It doesn't count, you know. People... well, people love to punish me whenever I try to deny who I am, whenever I try to become... visible, you know? Ah, who am I telling this? You did it to me yourself." Ariel saw they were both crying now. "Great acting, Carl," she said between sobs. It made the girl jump up, screaming.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she yelled, walking around the table and pulling Ariel to her feet by tearing at her bathrobe's shoulders. "I am not acting! Can't you see that I love you?" Ariel felt her head wobble on her shoulders with every pull that accompanied each word. She pushed Carl away and backed off until she sat on her bed, trying to look anywhere but at the girl.

"Thanks for the pill, Carl, but will you leave now, please?" she mumbled, staring at her fumbling fingers until she heard the door close with a click.

***

With every bridge aflame and no way back, Ariel stuffed all she had into her backpack and suitcase. Then she dumped her keys at the college's administrator and stepped into the street to find a bus that might take her safely to the other side of town. As she waited at the stop, her phone rang. She saw her mother's name and wanted to push it away, like she had a few times before, this week, but her finger didn't obey. Her mother was crying, no, she sounded hysterical, pushing scrambled words through a curtain of tears. It took a few minutes and several restarts before Ariel understood that her father had died of a heart attack.

Surprisingly enough, the news shook her more profoundly than she'd thought possible. She didn't love the man, she never had, as far as she could remember. She'd feared him, and ever since she'd left for Portland, she'd despised him for what he did to her mother. Maybe the shock wasn't because of him at all, but because of her mother's desolation. She imagined her at the other side of the connection, all alone, even more alone than she'd been when he was still alive. Not knowing what to do, not knowing where to go, she'd drowned in a sea of misery.

"Please, oh, please," she repeated through sniffs and hick ups. "Please come over, for the funeral, for me, for everything! Oh, God, Ariel, help me, I am so, so..."

***

Soft rain fell out of a leaden sky; how appropriate, Ariel thought. They were at a cemetery just outside town, standing around a musky-smelling, freshly dug hole. Ariel was surprised by the number of people showing up. She was also surprised how many she'd never seen before, like the blond woman standing quite to the back, talking to no one. She was maybe forty and looked attractive in her short black skirt and toned legs in dark nylons.

"Do you know her?" she whispered to her mother, nodding her head to the woman. Her mother didn't say anything, but she blushed, cleared her throat and looked intently at the flower-strewn coffin, now sinking into the dark earth. When Ariel looked again, the woman was gone.

Afterwards, at the funeral reception, only half of the people who'd been at the cemetery showed up and most of them didn't stay long. In less than an hour the whole function was over. Ariel turned away from the small group that was left, entering a hallway to find the washrooms when she saw him. He leaned heavily on a crutch; his shoulders hunched. An awful scar ran from a blue eye down to the corner of a mouth that was lifted into a crooked smile or rather a grin, and a permanent one now, it seemed.

"Tim?" she asked. He didn't answer, he just nodded. She stepped closer before she knew, she touched his face before she realized. The face, the scar. Then her gaze darkened, and she stood back. "Tim," she repeated.

There were all kinds of questions in her head, simmering on a layer of sudden anger. Questions like: why are you here and why now? Aren't things awful enough without you? Why did you come at all, anyway? Questions like: what the fuck? But she didn't ask them. She didn't need to. He was here, wasn't he? What the fuck indeed. He rested on one foot, she saw, leaning on the crutch; the other foot hardly touched the ground. He was thinner, too, gaunt even, and pale. And most of all there was his face. Something moist shone under his wounded eye.

She looked and realized it wasn't hard to keep looking. Through the horror of the scars, she saw a boy's face, his face for sure, but so young, vulnerable. She damned herself for stumbling upon the word. He really wasn't vulnerable, was he? He had no right to be. He was mean, callous, an asshole. He had played her, mocked her, hurt and betrayed her. So why was he here now, looking vulnerable, with tears running down his cheek? She took another step back. "Why are you here?" she asked. He blinked.

"Why did you leave?" he responded. "Why just run and not tell me?" Ariel stared at him, overwhelmed by the stupidity of the question.

"Why did I leave?" she at last repeated, her voice high with indignity. "Are you insane?" His crumpled-up face smoothed out as his eyes widened as far as they could.

"I...," he said. "I was in hospital, in a bed, wounded, and you came by. I was so happy to see you; everything hurt, but I was happy because you were there. And then you ran off without a word. You left me just like that and when I finally came out of hospital, you were gone. No message, no address, nothing."

Ariel just stared. Hundreds of bitter words clogged her throat; not one finding its way out. It made her feel as if she might explode. How far did he want to take this? Did he really hobble and stumble over here, just to keep his stupid prank alive? She turned away. "Ariel, please," she heard behind her back. "Please don't do this to me again." The soft words wormed through the thick mist of her despair. They caused her to stop and turn, even if she didn't want to. He'd sunk down on a chair; crumbled down, more likely, staring at the floor.

"Are you mad?" she asked, almost hissing. She tried to flee his blue gaze but couldn't. "What I did to you? Me? Did you lose your memory or what? Or your entire mind?" His eyes got even wider.

"But...," he started, and that one word broke the dam inside Ariel, giving way to a flood of words, ever increasing from a hiss to a roar.

"I... I loved you, Tim Bradlee! I finally found the courage to believe you. At last, you made me forget how ugly I am; against all fucking odds you seemed to care for me, however unbelievingly grotesque that might be. You had me, Tim; I believed you, you fooled me! And then you fooled me again, as planned. It wasn't me who left you, asshole! You dumped me in the cruelest way possible. Are you still fucking her? Or did she dump the cripple you're now? I bet she did, the fat, fucking whore." She breathed hard, still trying to find new words, but a wave of tears blocked her throat. Tim Bradlee spread both hands, palms up, his face a crumpled sheet full of question marks.

"Ariel," he said, at last. "I... I don't know what you're talking about. Who do you mean? There was no one! If whomever told you whatever story, they lied! They lied, Ariel!" Ariel fought back her tears; why should she cry anyway? The asshole wasn't worth it, still plying his stupid lies.

"I didn't need any stories, asshole," she said. "She was right there, wasn't she? Fucking Allison McKeefe, mocking me with her giant tits and her puffed-up slut-grin. Did she blow you in the car, your cock in her filthy mouth when you crashed? Good for you, good for her! You still have your cock, or did she bite it off? You should have died, the both of you!" Ariel panted, reliving the images that had dominated her mind ever since she'd ran out of that hospital room, wrecking her nights, ruining her days. Now, at last, she'd put them into words; they gushed from her mouth like diarrhea. And suddenly she felt stupid. She didn't know where to look, it was all so... so unfair. Why should she be the one feeling stupid? She looked up, seeing a small group of people in the hallway, staring at her: her mother, an aunt, a few cousins. The floor beneath her opened. She turned and ran off, ducking into the ladies' room, hiding in a stall as her heart pummeled her throat. Nausea overwhelmed her. She pushed her brow against cool tiles, waiting till it passed.

"Ariel." It was Tim Bradlee's voice from outside the stall.

"Fuck off!" she cried. "This is the ladies."

"Ehm, well," he said. "Actually, it is the men's, but anyway, I think we should ehm, talk." Ariel groaned. "You see," he went on, clearing his throat, "ehm, Ally is my sister, didn't you know? Half-sister, actually, but anyway... she is. So...ehm..."

The silence was long and profound. Ariel didn't know what to say or even make a sound at all. What do you say when you suddenly realize that every move, every tear and every sleepless night of the last half year has been based on... what? A silly misunderstanding? A cruel mistake? A godawful joke? At last, a long moan escaped her throat. She stared at the inside of the stall's door, glad that it hid her from him, and god knew how many others. She felt sick. Turning around quickly, she sent an explosion of vomit straight from her heaving stomach into the porcelain bowl. There were splatters, there was stench and an awful, sour taste in her mouth. But there was also a new lightness in her head, dizzy and clear all at once. And a sudden irrepressible need to laugh, starting as a chuckle, then growing into a body-wrecking roar of hysteric laughter, slowly turning into chest-heaving sobs. Someone fumbled at the door's handle, then shook the entire panel.

"Are you all right?" he asked from the other side. It only sent new hysterics to her crying. Was she all right? What the fuck... "Open up, Ariel, please open up," he went on. She didn't want to; she didn't want to see him, to see anyone, or anyone to see her. Everything was just too awful, too silly. His sister... Who could ever be so stupid? Even her righteous anger had been a joke, hadn't it? Silly Ariel. Not just ugly, stupid too. Everybody else knew, of course. Was he laughing, out there? He must be. Such a joke. Let's do the sister trick.

***

When Ariel at last opened the door, Tim wasn't alone. Behind him she saw her mother and a few relatives. Of course, they would be there, if only to make her humiliation even more profound. At least, she had cleaned up the toilet and herself, although the stench still seemed to cling to her.

"Please, go away," she said, her gaze solidly to the floor. "I want to be alone." But of course, her mother came forward and put her arms around her, mumbling words of comfort that were no comfort at all. She shook her off and turned to walk away, only to bump into Tim Bradlee.

"Get out of my way," she groaned, never looking up. He didn't. Leaning on his crutch, he used his free hand to reach for her chin, trying to lift her face up and force her to see him, his eyes, his slashed skin, his permanent grin. Ah, whatever, she thought, staring straight at him. Let's get it over with, once and for all.

"Nice try, Tim Bradlee," she said, her voice gravelly. "A sister, a fucking sister. Now, let's finally put an end to this. You had your fun, now pleeeeease allow me to get a life of myself by leaving me alone!" His hand didn't let go, even after she shook her head.

"I love you, Ariel," he said. "I have always loved you, even before we dated. There has never been someone else. Never." Ariel wondered why the skin under his eyes was gleaming with wetness. Voices murmured behind her, bloody cousins. What a fucking show this must be for them. "Let's get out of here, let's go outside," he went on. At last, he said something she could agree to, except the 'us.' She got past him and walked into the hallway and out through the exit doors until she stood alone on the rain-drenched parking lot. A click sounded from behind her; darkness spread over her head as a black umbrella unfolded.

"Well," she said, turning to Tim Bradlee who held the umbrella. "Finally, something useful." His grin became more profound. She cursed herself for the feeling it caused; still that fucking feeling. She looked away. "At least, I shook off my bloody relatives," she went on. "What do I have to do to get rid of you too?" His grin dissolved, as far as it could.

"She really is my half-sister," he said, standing too close because of the umbrella. "I thought you knew. My father had an eh... accident with a girl before he met mum. He always kept in contact, helping out financially and things, so I grew up with her, more or less; she often stayed over. She is family, I would never..." Ariel interrupted him, standing back, feeling the rain.

"Why don't I know, why did I never hear this?" she asked. "Everybody must have known. Barb and Von surely would have, they knew everything, but I never heard them mentioning it. To the contrary, they called her a slut, fucking everyone, including you!" He raised his shoulders.

"You mean those friends of yours?" he said. "And you say I'm a liar? They hated any girl with bigger tits than theirs..." His voice petered out. "Sorry," he added, "I didn't mean..." Ariel pushed him away, making him stumble.

"You better scratch Diplomat from you career goals, Tim Bradlee," she said, wondering why she joked.

"I asked Ally to tell you," he went on, "I did. But you didn't give her a chance." Ariel tried to remember what the girl had said, after that day at the hospital.

"She only told me to go see you," she said, walking away. "That you wanted to speak to me, never why. And she called me a crazy bitch." Tim spread his arms, the umbrella had fallen to the ground, the rain was pouring.

"Well, Ally isn't a nice person, I guess," he said. "Not very... diplomatic. Must run in the family. But maybe you could have been a bit more, let's say, patient with her? She might have told you more." His words stung her.