»"The Mermaid Sushi Bar" by sleuthslayer«

The Mermaid Sushi Bar

by sleuthslayer

Everybody on the beach called them the Bitch Sisters. They were three girls who were always together, never speaking to anybody but each other. If they did speak to you, it was to tell you to get lost. They were gorgeous, and nobody had ever seen them with a guy, so it had gotten out among the local crowd that the Sisters preferred women. Still, the beach was their domain, if only because they had a quality of unattainability that grants power.
Molokani Beach was the last place a lifeguard wanted to be assigned to. It had seen five drownings in the past three years, even though it was a guarded beach. The Ocean Safety Division would have shut it down if it hadn’t been so popular with the tourists, but the Division couldn’t just shut down a beach. People were going to swim there, no matter what warnings they read, because Molokani was picturesque, a wide stretch of black, volcanic sand framed on either side by mountains. The water was clear and blue, and the shore was relatively free of the sharp lava-rocks common on Hawaiian shores. A concession stand stood next to the parking lot, decorated in a tiki-room style that irritated the locals. Native Hawaiians avoided Molokani because the waves were small and the water was always so packed with haoles, white people. There were three lifeguard towers.
The lifeguard in the central tower surveyed the beach. She noticed how beautiful the three Sisters looked, standing at the waterline and staring out at the horizon. In time, the girl in the center, a petite blonde, dove headfirst into the surf, followed by the other two, both taller brunettes. They gracefully swam over the waves and had swum out quite far - too far, thought the lifeguard - before the women turned back and the lifeguard stopped watching them. A few minutes later, somebody went under.
A woman twenty feet out in the water started to scream, “Larry! Larry! Oh my God, somebody help!” in a British accent. The lifeguard sprang up, grabbed her paddleboard, and ran into the surf, the water catching her legs until she couldn’t run and had to throw down the paddleboard. She landed on top of the board and started to paddle out to where the woman was treading water and screaming. When the lifeguard reached the woman, she dismounted the board and, filling her lungs with air, dove underwater to try to find Larry. She made her way down through the churning water with quick pumps of her arms and legs, keeping her eyes open despite the stinging of the salt water. Looking around, she saw nothing except the water that formed a cavern of blue around her. She came up once for air, and as she broke the surface she could hear that the woman was still screaming. The lifeguard dove again. This time, as she made her way down, she saw a dark blur in the blue wall. She swam toward it, and four figures emerged through the haze.
Suspended in the water was an overweight man, lifeless, his arms floating upward and a few bubbles escaping from his mouth. Beneath him were the Bitch Sisters, grasping Larry's legs and holding him underwater. The Sisters stood on the ocean floor as though their feet were in concrete, immobile, simply staring at the man as they drowned him. When the lifeguard came into view, all the Sisters’ eyes fixed on her with fierce, animalistic looks. They immediately released Larry’s legs and swam away seaward until they disappeared in the blue wall. The lifeguard grabbed Larry and swam upwards with her arms around his body. She reached air and the continuing sound of the woman screaming. Many people had gotten out of the water now, fearing a shark or a riptide. The lifeguard hauled Larry’s body onto her paddleboard and headed for the beach. When she reached sand, followed by the screaming woman, the other two lifeguards met her and the three started CPR. As they alternated chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth breathing, the police and ambulance arrived.
“Another floater for Molokani Beach. Ought to call this Floater Beach,” a cop said as the paramedics carried Larry’s body away.
“A shame. He and his wife came all the way from Britain. For this,” another cop said. The lifeguard was talking to a group of cops.
“Look, I already told you, I saw them down there! They killed that guy!” the lifeguard said.
“Saw who?” the cop said.
“Them!” the lifeguard said, pointing at the Sisters, who stood a few yards away, chatting casually. The blond Sister threw her head back and laughed.
“Okay, we’ll take that under advisement. What did you say your name was?” the cop asked.
“Kara Telford,” the lifeguard said in an exasperated tone, “You’re just going to let them go?”
The Sisters were walking away after a short conversation with another cop. When the blonde Sister heard the complaint, she turned around and stuck her tongue out at Kara.
“I don’t believe it,” Kara said.
“You’re free to go,” the cop said.
Kara looked at her watch. Her shift was over. She started toward the parking lot.
“Might I have a word with you, Miss Telford?”
A man emerged from the crowd wearing a short-sleeved blue shirt and khaki slacks, with a camera around his neck. He held out a business card. Kara accepted it and looked it over hopelessly. It said “Emil Murat, Paranormal,” and listed a Miami address.
“Para...normal, huh? Are you press?” Kara asked.
“No, I am an investigator of sorts. I have a few questions for you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Why don’t we meet for dinner? Do you like sushi?” Emil took a pad and pen from his shirt pocket, clicked the pen, and scribbled an address. He tore the page from the pad and offered it, and Kara took it from him. It said “The Mermaid Sushi Bar.” The address was in Waikiki.
“Look, a lot of people have a thing for lifeguards. I get hit on all the time,” Kara said.
“No, I assure you, it’s nothing like that. If nothing else, you get a free meal. I can tell you that what you saw down there is nothing new to me.”
“Really?”
“Yes, and Darby, Shannon, and Erin all work at the Mermaid.”
“Who are they?”
“They’re those girls you just accused of murder. Let’s meet tonight at six.”
“Don’t count on it, but I may be able to stop in.”
In the car on the way home, Kara found a familiar station on the radio. She kept replaying the day’s events over and over in her mind, asking the question, known to all lifeguards who have presided over a drowning, “Could I have stopped it?” But today’s drowning had the added aspect of having been a murder. Kara knew it was a murder, and no one would believe her. Tomorrow morning the drowning would be in the papers and everyone would know about it, but who would know about the Sisters? Maybe, she thought, she could find some answers in the person of this man who called himself a “paranormal”, whatever that was. And, since she didn’t have a boyfriend, she was rarely taken out for dinner, especially to an expensive place like the one Emil had arranged.
Kara pulled in to the parking lot of the Mermaid Sushi Bar in her white S.U.V. at just past six, fashionably late because she thought she was dealing with a lunatic. The sign in the parking lot was a blinking neon representation of a mermaid whose tail appeared to move up and down with each alternating blink. A poster framed outside the front door said “Live Mermaid Show!” and depicted women with mermaid-tails swimming in a school of tropical fish. Kara had heard of this place, but she had never been inside. It was supposed to be quite spectacular.
The hostess in the foyer was an elderly Japanese woman. A sign written in chalk said “Special Tonight: Mermaid Roll!”
“I’m here to meet somebody named Emil Murat,” Kara said.
“Ah yes. In the Mermaid Room,” the hostess said, “Follow me, please.”
They edged through some door-curtains into a vast enclosure, with at least eighty tables and twenty feet from floor to ceiling. The space was dimly lit, but an entire wall of the semicircular room was plexiglass reinforced with steel frames, through which shone stage lighting that cast an eerie glow. The plexiglass wall was curved, and beyond it could be seen an expanse of water in which swam the mermaids. They wore bra-tops and mermaid-tails of various colors and with flowing rear fins of some length. The mermaids floated in a tank full of the most spectacular stock of fish Kara had ever seen in an aquarium. Fish of every color could be seen, and the mermaids fed them from their hands as a pattern of ripples from the surface of the tank moved over their skins. Some of the mermaids swam in synchronized routines, forming circles and spirals with each other, swimming in unison through swirls of fish as their tails flowed behind them in an enchanting display. But this was no kid’s show: the mermaids also did stripper moves and poses for the audience. The music was an atmospheric sort of electronic rhythm, pulsating just on the edge of the conscious mind, almost hypnotic. In the center of the tank, Kara recognized the two brunette Sisters among the mermaids, but she did not see the little blonde.
Emil waved at her from a table in a corner, next to the plexiglass wall. Kara wound her way through the tables and appeared in front of Emil. Though she knew she looked every inch the hot wahine, the restaurant was more upscale than she had imagined, and she felt underdressed. Emil greeted her with a smile.
“Thanks for showing up. Have a seat.”
Kara pulled out the chair and sat down without a word. There was a silence of thirty seconds before Emil cleared his throat and began.
“Welcome to the Mermaid Sushi Bar. It’s one of a kind, you know.”
Kara looked at her water glass. Emil pulled a pencil out of the container on the table and laid the pencil on the sushi order card.
“You may order anything you wish, but avoid the Mermaid Roll.”
Kara glared at him. She would not be told what to order, but it gave her a thrill to be watched out for. She had not felt such warmth since her breakup with Zack, a fellow lifeguard, two years ago. She took up the pencil, wrote “Mermaid Roll” on the order card, and marked a four in the box next to it. Emil’s face sank.
“Please don’t do this,” he pleaded.
“What? It’s just sushi,” Kara said, speaking for the first time since she sat down. A waitress came and picked up their card. Emil had ordered tuna, salmon, and yellowtail sashimi.
“Let me explain. This is not an ordinary restaurant. It exists, in a way, between worlds. The owners are a shadowy sort. And the Mermaid Roll is, well, you don’t want to know. I would point one thing out to you. Look in the tank,” Emil said.
Kara glanced to her right at the plexiglass wall, behind which a pair of mermaids were swimming loops, grasping each other’s tails.
“In most mermaid shows of this kind, the mermaids breathe through air hoses. I ask you: do you see any air hoses in this tank?” Emil asked.
“I guess not.”
“Now, remember what you saw today. You told the officer you saw the girls drown that man. Am I wrong, or is it difficult to hold someone underwater without getting on top of him and forcing him down? Those girls were pulling from beneath, weren’t they?”
Kara nodded once.
“How do they do it?” Emil said.
Kara shrugged.
“They achieve neutral buoyancy like a submarine, by filling ballast tanks with water. In this case, they fill their lungs.”
“That’s how you drown.”
“Exactly. But they don’t drown. How do they do it?”
Kara shrugged again.
“They breathe through their skins, Miss Telford. Cutaneous respiration, as seen in some salamanders. They don’t just play mermaids in the evenings; they live the life. They are mermaids,” Emil said, gesturing at the tank.
Kara laughed. The waitress arrived with their sushi, spread out on wooden trays for maximum aesthetic impact. Emil poured himself a dish of soy sauce, then took a huge lump of wasabi and mixed it in the sauce by tapping his chopsticks in the dish.
“I warn you again, don’t eat that Mermaid Roll,” he said as Kara popped one in her mouth. The effect was immediate. It was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted. The taste of fish was delicate and fragile, but so pleasant it was almost erotic. Emil grimaced.
“I don’t know if you noticed, but Darby, the girl who taunted you at the beach today, is not performing tonight.”
Kara was gobbling her second Mermaid Roll. Emil grabbed her arm to prevent her from eating another. She instinctively jerked back and pulled her arm from his clenched fist.
“Don’t touch me, asshole,” she hissed, and stood up to go.
“Please stay,” Emil said.
Kara picked up her purse and stalked off past the waitress, who grinned knowingly. Emil made no attempt to stop Kara. She rushed out of the restaurant past a group of Japanese men. As she passed, she saw one of them detach from the group and follow her to her car. With a fearful glance at the man tailing her, Kara fumbled for her keys, opened the door, and got in. The man tailing her moved out of sight. Kara started the car. When the radio came on, she noticed that the sound seemed to be phasing in and out, as though somebody were putting their hands over her ears. As she drove home, the faces next to her in traffic looked like the twisted visages of demons. Panic set in. What was happening? Why had Emil objected so strongly to the Mermaid Roll? She had tried smoking pot in high school and remembered well the feeling of paranoia it sparked, but nothing like this had ever happened. She reached her apartment just as evening fell, but getting inside did not help her state. The walls began to pulsate and shrink as though she were in the stomach of some great beast. She would have to call Emil. She dug through her purse and found the business card. What had she gotten herself into? She dialed the cell-phone number on the card.
“Emil Murat speaking. Hello, Miss Telford.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“Caller ID. I also know what’s happening to you. Do you have any tranquilizers in the house?”
“No. What’s happening? Was it the sushi?”
“Yes. It contains a potent hallucinogen. When I see you, I’ll tell you more. Lie down in a quiet room and try to rest.”
“Will you come here?”
“Where do you live?”
Kara got on her bed and tried to relax, but, when Emil arrived at her apartment, she was falling apart. The tough lifeguard demeanor had given way to a vulnerability she rarely exposed to anyone, but Emil got to see it because he had warned her and she had not listened. She locked and chained the door behind him and led him into the living room.
“What do I do?” she asked him.
“Nothing. I have something I have to tell you. The Japanese word for mermaid is ningyo. Person-fish. The Japanese are the world’s greatest fish-eaters. They have all kinds of legends about what happens to someone who eats flesh from a ningyo…”
They heard a crash in the front hallway. A Japanese man – the same one who had followed Kara to her car - careened into the room, looking desperate and holding a pistol. When he saw Kara, he took aim at her.
“She’s coming with me, Murat. She’s a witness!” he said.
Emil reached up and placed the palms of both hands against his temples. There was a crackling sound and an arc of blue light shot from his forehead across the room and connected with the gunman’s forehead. The gunman dropped the pistol and fell backwards against the wall, stunned. Wisps of smoke floated out of his ears. There was a smell of singed hair and ozone in the air.
“What was that?” Kara gasped.
“Telepathic assault. There’s a lot you don’t know about me. Help me get him out of here.”
The gunman lay unconscious, sprawled in a sitting position against the wall. Kara and Emil each grabbed one of the gunman’s legs and dragged him out of the front door, which the gunman had kicked in, splintering it and ripping the chain from the wall. Back inside, they pushed a couch against the door to barricade themselves against any further forced entry. They sat down on the couch together, their thighs just touching.
“How did you do that?” Kara gasped.
“As I was saying - before I was so rudely interrupted – some Japanese believe that eating mermaid flesh changes a person, makes them powerful. After you left, I did some checking, greased a few palms, and found out the truth,” Emil explained, “I tried the Mermaid Roll the first time I ate at the Mermaid Sushi Bar. Your life is going to be different from now on. Now you’re like me, a paranormal. There are lots of us who have tried the Mermaid Roll, but the authorities are afraid to lock us up because of what we might do to them from afar. ” Emil said.
“What’s in that stuff?”
“As I’d previously suspected, the Mermaid Roll is made from the corpses of mermaids. Darby wasn’t performing tonight because she’s dead. That sushi you ate was her flesh!”

posted by sleuthslayer

in-my-opinion.org -> Entertainment & Sports -> My own pic, my own art, my short story -> "The Mermaid Sushi Bar" by sleuthslayer

Good story!

I like it. Very creatively written.

When Emil started telling Kara not to eat the sushi, I had already sensed that it was mermaid flesh...I'm smart, go me. White laugh

I would have liked to know what kind of paranormal Kara became though...if you have time, please continue it! Yes, oh yes.. keep going

posted by nocturnal_anonymous

Re: Good story!

nocturnal_anonymous:

I like it. Very creatively written.

When Emil started telling Kara not to eat the sushi, I had already sensed that it was mermaid flesh...I'm smart, go me. White laugh

I would have liked to know what kind of paranormal Kara became though...if you have time, please continue it! Yes, oh yes.. keep going

Thank you! I'm very glad you like it. I am going to finish it, and when I do, I'll post it here:

home.comcast.net…

posted by Guest

yep, kept my attention the whole time. kind of annoyed with kara though, don't mind me. she's all tough guy, independent, typical woman. just a pet peeve.

posted by sangu

Yeah, I don't really like this story that much. My new idea is much better.
If you want a laugh, sangu, I posted some stories I wrote mostly when I was younger than you are now. Follow the link if you want to read them...

home.comcast.net…

posted by holy_of_holies

the cave of the idol was a bit weird, funny, but weird. events happened really quickly, but hey, it's a short story.

the zsa zsa or sadaam one was funnier White laugh

posted by sangu

You're a fast reader...

posted by holy_of_holies

holy_of_holies:

You're a fast reader...

always loved reading ever since i was around 2-3 years old.

but then again, reading fast isn't always a good thing.

posted by sangu

Is there maybe a chance you're pulling my leg on this one...that you had already followed that link earlier?

posted by holy_of_holies

nope. not joking.
i read...around an average speed of 20-30 sec per page (average book). i guess it's kind of fast.

posted by sangu

Did you read "Victor and the Werewolf"?

posted by holy_of_holies

no i didn't. ok, here's what:

i'll read it, and time myself.

2min 25 sec.

posted by sangu

What did you think of that one?

posted by holy_of_holies

at first when i read the beginning, i was like...oh no, he's going to drearily describe the whole scary situation and i don't really care...
then i found out it was a story, so I was like, "cool. i like that."

the transition between falling and getting on his bike was a bit confusing.

the part "the peasant's name was van helsing..." yeah, that gave away the whole story.

and how did he all of a sudden "forget to do" his grave-rubbing project? if it was because he was spooked, why even do it at all if you're scared of the place? just a bit iffy...

instead of using "very" a lot, use a stronger verb. like instead of very old, use ancient or something. thesaurus. that was one of my weaknesses in 8th grade.

I didn't get the whole "of a man and not a wolf". can you explain that?

i liked the (really!). Thumb Up

good job overalll.

posted by sangu

Thanks, sangu. I just reread it and thought it was pretty good too.
I don't remember what the "man and not a wolf" thing was about. The story is a decade and a half old, at least, so I seem to have forgotten that part.

posted by holy_of_holies

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