Suicide Diving

Dawn of the First Day – Damaged People

            Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, in a land far away, there was a little monster.

            The little monster had no legs or feet. The little monster had a tail that moved up and down. She had long gills along her neck and on the sides of each shoulder. Her hair was black and long and curly. And her eyes were a deep brown.

            Now, the fact that the little monster had a tail was not what made her a monster. For, in fact, all mermaids have tails. All mermaids have gills and webbed hands. All mermaids have scales and ears like spiky fins and features that change colors. The little monster had all of these.

Some monsters are misshapen and horrible—with inflated or lopsided heads or with no arms. Some monsters have two tails or mouths where mouths should not be. But these monsters are nothing to be feared and these monsters are the fault of no one. Even if their heads were hard to support or their tails were slow to move, monsters were never outcasts.

Just as there are physical monsters, there are mental or psychic monsters. The body, the face, and the limbs of the monster may be perfect. But a twisted gene within the skin or a warped egg within the womb can produce physical monsters. And so, they may also produce malformed souls.

But monsters are only variations from what is thought to be normal. Monsters are just a variation. And surely, to a monster the normal is monstrous. And surely, to a monster of the mind the normal is even more upsetting, for there is no physical comparison—only a feeling of the unknown.

            There was once a mermaid within the tropical seas called Lilian. Who was thought to be a monster. Lilian’s skin was the smoothest of all the mermaids, like a manta ray or dolphin’s. Lilian had skin the color of sand. Even after she grew, she stayed very small. And she smelled like a faint, distant sea.

            It became apparent to her parents that her skin would not change color. While most mermaids were pale at the front and dark at the back, just like the shark, she was an even middle color all over. There are handfuls of mermaids who are born all one color but with spots. These spots fade and the dual color sets in. But Lilian had no spots. And Lilian never changed color.

            Mermaids who were born with an even coloring, mermaids who did not lose their spots and adopt the dark and the light, were destined for the life of a Siren.

            But Lilian’s eyes were gentle and Lilian’s eyes were sweet. They did not hold murder or cruelty, as the Sirens surely did. So Lilian’s parents retained faith and hoped for their daughter.

Lilian almost seemed as if she was trying. She would swim around and stare at octopuses and cuttlefish, watching them change their colors by expanding and contracting cells of color on their skin. She would follow them to their little hide aways, watching as they changed color in anger and in fear.

Some say it was to get away from her family, while others say she never had any trouble with them.  But for reasons we may never know, Lilian left her warm waters for colder seas. As she went farther and farther north it became colder and colder. And it became harder and harder for her to find food. Until one day, Lilian began to hear a peculiar sound. It was a song. It was the Sirens’ Song.

            Lilian drew closer to the Sirens, hidden by fog. She swam to a group of rocks, and listened to the Siren’s songs. The song was of foreign words Lilian could not understand. But she could not help but feel drawn to the Sirens. Lilian could not help but inch closer and closer without caution.

            As she drew near, she was amazed to see the Siren’s glowing skin. They were all of one color. And it was then that Lilian was discovered by a single Siren. And the Siren stopped her song. The other Sirens stopped abruptly and looked to the silent Siren. The Siren’s deep brown eyes did not leave Lilian. But Lilian could not continue staring, for her eyes began to burn.

Lilian joined the Sirens, living among them and doing the things customary of Sirens. Sirens never spoke. But each Siren had her own song, in the language of her respective sea. The Sirens travelled and larked about. But no matter how much singing they did, Lilian did not feel at home. Lilian loved to sing, but she hated the outcome of her singing. Ships would crash and men would sink to their deaths. Sometimes men drawn by her song would try to meet her. But Sirens are not meant to meet men of land.

            Lilian began to drift away from the other Sirens. She spent more time underwater, simply swimming and conversing with the sea life. She learned their languages and she learned their ways. She never adopted them, but she understood them. The octopus and the cuttlefish do not only use their colors to express their emotions, or as a warning to other creatures. They use their colors to hide, she heard from a friendly sea snake. They use them to camouflage themselves in the sand, to avoid hungry neighbors. Lilian looked at her own body, watching as it changed colors to suit her needs. But maybe she merely liked to watch them change.

            Having learned languages from the sharks and the fish and the plankton who had come from miles and miles away, she began to comprehend the other Siren’s songs. So she decided to stay with them.

            But then one day, Lilian saw the Siren that first saw her. She was floating upright in the water. Lilian swam to her, looking across to her eyes. Her face and shoulders were dappled with freckles. And was framed by short blonde curls. The delicate Siren had milky skin and big, round brown eyes whose lids barely enclosed but fluttered with elegant lashes. The two sirens were as different as could be, aside from their length and their tails which were both variations of blue.

The blonde Siren looked at Lilian for a short time. She smiled very slightly. And swam away, as if she had been doing so all along. Then she climbed up the sand as if it were stairs. Lilian swam to the surface to see. And the blonde Siren stood barefoot on the beach. Legs barely spaced apart. White dress fluttering about her ankles and trailing in the sand.

Lilian watched her run into the forest. As the sun rose over the runway.