The Mermaid's Wishing Well

Everyone knew that I would face the mermaid tonight.
Even though for the past 18 years they had laughed at the idea and told me that there was no mermaid in the wishing well.
Trent came up to me, and kissed my forehead. "I've had a crush on you since...forever." He told me.
And I frowned, because this might've been nice to know a while ago because I had a crush on him ever 'since...forever', too. What use was this knowledge to me now, when I was eighteen and going to see the mermaid?
"Thanks, Trent." I said sarcastically. "But I already have a date for tonight."
He winced as if I had slapped him.
"Mercy." Harvey appeared at my side, but didn't touch me. He couldn't even look at me. He just stood there, as if suddenly conscious that his best friend had a curse. He must've thought it was contagious. "I'll miss you."
I snarled at him, angry that he stood three feet away when I needed someone to hold me. "It's not like I'm dying, Harv. Only seeing a mermaid who lives inside a wishing well."
He backed ever farther away from me, cowering. "I-I brought your drawings. Maybe...because you want them? Look at them?" His fingers shook as he held out the papers, and when I reached for them he threw them so that he couldn't touch me.
Coward.
"Thanks." I said, picking them off the ground. "But now that I'm going to see a real mermaid, it's not like I'll need the drawings anymore." I glared at him, and he scurried off with Trent, looking back at me in fear.
Idiot.
My mom was the last one to come up to me. "Honey, I just wanted to say..."
I rolled my eyes. "I love you, too-"
"That if you get a wish, don't come back." Her voice was strong, cutting me off. "I loved you, Mercy, but I don't want to risk it. You're not allowed back here. I will not allow you back inside my house."
Heartless.
My eyes stung. "Gee, thanks Mom. I always knew that you'd support me."
My mother stared back at me. "I don't want mermaid-touched scum near my china."

Oh. My. God.
I lifted my head up high. "If I do get a wish, I'm wishing for you to slip in the shower."
"If your father had just told me that my firstborn child would have to go to the wishing well, this wouldn't be happening." She snorted to herself. "I knew that I should have married John Shumate instead."
I couldn't believe this. "Well, I'm not too happy about going to a mermaid tonight, either. Just try not to have any more kids, Mom. You'll disappoint them, too."
As I crossed the bridge to get to the wishing well, I heard Mr. Gottem, my old English teacher whisper. "She was such a brave, smart girl. One of the brightest I've ever had."
I snorted.
He gave me an F last semester. And yelled at me.
When I reached the swamp, I looked back and saw all the candles in the distance, all the people hugging and sobbing each other. All because I had to see the mermaid in the wishing well.
Worst. Birthday. Ever.
It would almost be a relief if the fish did kill me.
Everyone knew that I would face a mermaid tonight.
Even though they knew that I might not make it out alive.
I saw the wishing well up ahead, and sighed.
I used to come here every week once I learned of my curse - my fate. I'd come, and look down the well into its dark waters, and call for the mermaid.
She never called back.
I never saw her.
The idea was idiotic - how on earth could a mermaid even fit in there? And if she did live there, wouldn't our water be contaminated or something?
Why did I have to be the one with the curse?
What did she look like?
Could she even speak English?
I finally reached the crumbling stones of the wishing well, and sat on its edge, dangling my feet over the edge with a sigh.
"Can we just get this over with?" I asked the air. "I'm having a really bad day, and I'd just like to finish this. Why'd you have to wait eighteen years, anyway? Why not have this all happen when I was two?"
The wishing well was still empty and silent.
"You're a real selfish fish - you know that, right?" I shouted after a minute of silence. "My feet hurt from walking all this way. You owe me a new pair of shoes."
No answer. The water didn't even ripple.
I officially hate mermaids.
Everyone knew that I would face a mermaid tonight.
Even though they knew that my tongue and lips would lash out to hurt anyone, and that mermaids were dangerous when they got angry.
"Why a wishing well?" I asked. "Couldn't you be just as happy in a swimming pool? Or a bathtub?"
"Because this way, I get you all to myself." The voice was a whisper in the wind, soft and feminine.
I looked down into the water. "I don't see you, fishy. And way to keep it non-creepy, by the way? All to yourself? You sound like some sort of psycho-kidnapper."
"What's your name, feisty one?" She reminded me of wind chimes - that's what she sounded like.
"Feisty? What is this - a bad horror movie? And it's Mercy. Mercy Wilde. Awful name, I know. It sounds like some stripper from Vegas."
"I don't have a name anymore."
For some reason, that made me sad. "Well, what should I call you, then?" I asked the mermaid with a friendly smirk. "Fishy? Water-breath? Wet?"
And then, with a laugh that was a whispering bird song, she appeared on the other side of the well, looking at me.
Small little petals were caught in her hair - which didn't have a color anymore, after years of damp and dark water - covered her small bare chest. Her eyes were the wide and sad, the color of abandoned cabins in the woods. Her skin was pale, and seemed to sparkle slightly under the moonlight. But at her waist, the skin tightened and twisted. I realized that mermaids don't have scales or shark tails.
No. That's not how mermaids looked.
Her body had warped, twisted and blending flesh that looked like someone had spun her around too many times and never unwound her. They had cut her legs open and knotted them together.
It looked painful, but beautiful in its simplicity.
Someone - or something - had done this to her. They had wrapped her own legs and flesh together so that she could never walk again, and thrown her into a wishing well.
I noticed that she had scratched herself to try to release her legs from each other to the point of scars and bleeding.
She stared at me with those silent watery eyes, and I realized that she was just barely holding back tears.
This poor girl had been away from humans for so long that she had forgotten her own name.
"How old are you?" I asked her.
"Too old." She shook her head, and part of her hair swished. "Too young."
"Yeah." I knew exactly what she meant. "Me, too."
She glanced up at me, "Please, Mercy, give me a name."
My heart broke. I swung my feet as far as I could, and they nearly touched her mutilated legs. "You'll hate it." I told her. "But you're a Wish."
Tears poured down her face, and they shimmered like oil in water. "Wish."
I smiled. "It's better than Fish-face."
We laughed together, sounding like the saddest song in the world.
"No one thinks that I'll make it out of here alive." I admitted to her. "They all think that the mermaid in the wishing well is going to kill me. They don't even think I'll make it to the wish."
"No one thinks I'm real." Wish told me. "And the ones that do, want to kill me."
I had nothing to say to that. I suddenly felt the knife I had brought with me against my skin.
I was going to kill her.
That was my plan to survive tonight. Kill the mermaid before it could kill me.
And, of course, demand my wish - whatever I chose.
Because everyone knew that mermaids were monsters.
Everyone knew that I would face a mermaid tonight.
Even though I wasn't very good at facing my fears.
"So." I said, "How's this supposed to go?"
Wish's lips cracked into a sad smile. "I say three reasons why you want to live, and you have to answer them truthfully - yes or no. They could be questions, riddles, suggestions, or possibilities. If you lie, you die. If you answer correctly, I give you one wish and then you'll try to kill me."
I whistled. "It sounds like you've been doing this for a while."
"Everyone tries to kill me at the end." She sighs, and a rainbow-like tear falls down her face. "I have to save myself."
"How many people have done this with you?"
"38."
I smiled. "Well, you know what they say: 39 times the charm."
She smiled back. "Do you want to start?"
I nodded, my throat suddenly dying on me. "Uh-huh."
"You want to live because you have family and friends that you don't want to leave."
I thought of all those days when I'd come to this very wishing well, and sit down on the mossy stones, drawing mermaids in as many ways as there are stars.
Every mermaid was different, but none of them were the real thing.
The mermaid was nice, beautiful, kind, playful; the mermaid was mean, ferocious, hideous, and screaming for revenge.
She had perfect teeth; she had fangs used to ripping open flesh.
She was bald; she had long wet hair.
But she was never real.
Because I had never imagined that the real mermaid would be a sad, broken human.
I was always alone when I came to the wishing well - no one from school (Harvey) - came with me. I spent a full day out here, dawn until dusk., with just me, a pencil, paper, and a wishing well.
"No," I told her. "Not because of family and friends."
Wish nodded her head, looking sad. "Do you want to stay because you haven't found success and fame?"
I closed my eyes, remembering the days when I would come to my mermaid I never saw in the wishing well, and tell her all my secrets and dreams.
How I wanted to go to college and kiss Trent. How I wanted to become a famous artist so that everyone could see what my mermaids looked like.


I had told her about the time I thought of running away from home, and asked for her to give me some sign not to go.
I never got an answer from the mermaid in the wishing well.

I never heard her speak to me and tell me that Trent liked me.
I never heard her tell me that I'd become the best artist since Picasso.
"No," I shook my head at Wish. "I don't want to live because of success and fame I don't have."
And she blushed. "Riddle me this:
What thing is that, not felt nor seene
Till it bee given? a present for a Queene:
A fine conceite to give and take the like:
The giver yet is farther for to seeke;
The taker doth possesse nothing the more,
The giver hee hath nothing lesse in store:
And given once that nature hath it still,
You cannot keepe or leave it if you will:
The workmanshippe is counted very small,
The labour is esteemed naught at all:
But to conclude, this gift is such indeede,
That, if some see't 'twill make theyr hearts to bleede."
She looked up at me, "Is that why you wish to stay: a kiss from a boy?"
I remembered climbing into the well when I was little, to find my mermaid.
I remembered falling, and someone that sparkled breathing life into me and throwing me back onto land.
I remembered crying, and a soft hand brushing the hair out of my face. Shh, it's okay. You'll be safe, little feisty one.
I remembered coming back home, wet and shivering and terrified.
My mom glanced at me and frowned. "Change into warm clothes, Mercy."
I remembered Harvey laughing when he saw me walking by. "What'd you do, cry yourself to sleep?"
Trent, the boy I liked, barely glanced at me.
I remembered feeling a soft, wet hand on my shoulder, keeping me upright as I walked home.
I laughed, and Wish's eyes widened. "No, it's not because of a kiss from a boy I liked."
Wish looked sad. "You answered truthfully. Three reasons - that was all I had to give." She closed her eyes. "You can try to kill me, now. Mercy."
I clambered next to her, a knife in my hand as I sat down next to her. "I want my wish first." I said with a smirk.
My leg shot out, and wrapped itself around the mermaid's damaged legs.
She gasped, staring at me in shock and fear. She eyed the knife in my hand as it came closer.
I glanced at it, too, and felt the skin on my legs crack and erupt as I mangled my flesh together into a painful twisting knot.
I grabbed Wish by the shoulders, kissed her, and threw us both into the wishing well.
Everyone knew that I was going to face a mermaid tonight.