Cold Water

When the soft purple of the overhead lights snap to a harsh white Knauss has already hidden himself away in the cave in the corner of his tank. Outside he can hear the morning staff bustling around, the heavy sound of feet as they climb their way up to the upper floor with a bucket of live fish to dump in.

They thrash and splash around until they forget what they’re upset about and then they swim circles around the tank. Knauss blinks slowly.

He watches with pale eyes as the brightly colored fish swarm around, they’re the kind he would never have hunted before, the meat is too sweet for his tastes, but he knows he’ll eat them tonight when the lights turn dark and the evening staff retire for the night.

Glancing around his cage his gaze lingers on the dying corals stuffed into the sand carelessly, then he turns his attention to the rocks that litter the ground. Plants that are meant to disguise streams of bubbles that trickle up through the man-made sea bed. Despite the oxygen, the water still tastes stale over his gills.

He blinks again, tired eyes moving to look at the narrow stretch of the room he’s been trapped in that he can see from this angle.

It’s not much to see, lots of straight lines and some places for humans to sit in front of a giant glass box, TV. Shelves of books he sometimes sees humans pick up and shuffle around. They’re filled with paper and ink but he doesn’t understand them.

English isn’t a language he has a complete grasp on, and he doesn’t have much interest in learning except for when he finds himself extraordinarily bored and unable to sleep during the day.
Or sometimes when nightmares keep sleep at bay English is a good distraction.

Rolling onto his back he turns away from the opening of his den to look at the roof of his cave. The rock is real, so he counts the divots until he falls asleep to the sound of humans bustling outside his cage. There’s really not much else to do except wait. It’s alright. He’s spent his whole life being patient. He can wait a little longer.

*

Every so often the human that purchased him known as the boss, a male human that is smaller than he is, will visit and he will yowl and screech in unhappy human words that Knauss cannot understand very well.

The small man always seems to be an unhealthy red in the face, chomping his harmless flat teeth and gesturing towards his tank and Knauss can only assume that he’s upset with something the mer is doing, but he can’t be bothered to understand more than that. He doesn’t care for the human and his too loud screeching so he stays in his den until he leaves.

After he goes the staff will sometimes step in, trying to coax him out of his den.

They play music that cuts into his ears, sometimes they toss strange objects into his tank, plastic and round in shape that the fish will pluck at for a while. Other times they will put glass squares, little TVs, to the sides of his tank that wailed in the same tone as the terrible music in their human tongue.

Knauss just endures their modified torture by curling in on himself harder, moving rocks to hide himself better until they leave him again. He falls asleep like that more often than not.

*

Sometimes, rarely, another human that looks like the red one will come visit.

He’s a bit smaller, but in comparison to the staff they both look to be average by human standards. They are brothers and Knauss wonders if they are not just underfed, but then this one opens its mouth and it’s even louder than the red one. For something so tiny it can make a lot of noise. Nothing that noisy can be that hungry, Knauss decides.

Usually it doesn’t sound upset, or if it does it never seems like it’s towards Knauss, or even directed at him at all. The brother will scream about a thing called time and sometimes fucker, but by the uncomfortable look of the staff Knauss can only assume there’s more that he doesn’t pick up on.

For the most part Knauss will ignore him until he leaves and the staff goes back to their regular routine, but sometimes, rarely, he will have to fight down hard on the urge to peek and get a good look at this human.

This brother has the most curious coloration across their face, little dots that Knauss can’t quite make out because his eyesight is poor from the dark, icy waters of his home.

And just like that his mind strays. He is back at home in the rocky, dark sea bed. He is tucked safely between his pod to keep warm at night against the frigid northern seas. It’s nothing like his cage where there is too much coral and the water is much too hot.

And suddenly he’s back, looking out at an empty room because the human had left while he had been lost in thought. Knauss frowns and rolls in his den. It’s cramped because he’s big, but he makes do because he’s not willing to remove the rocks he piled in the bottom. They take up a lot of space, but when he sleeps on them they remind him of home.

He drifts off thinking about a tan face covered in speckles.

*

Since the ocean was new there has always been mermaids. They roamed the seas and rolled in the sunlight, singing their beautiful songs. When the first humans stepped onto their ocean with unsteady legs they became curious. Watching these strange beings from afar, and when they approached they guided lost sailors home with gentle melodies.

What they hadn’t known was with that single song they had doomed their entire race.

More and more humans set sail on their homes, sending ripples across the surface and the mermaids were curious.

In no time rumors spread of a jewel, rare and beautiful, tucked beneath the dark waves. Sailors lost at sea would return with stories of storms sending them off course, only to be led home with soft songs. They brought home a curiosity.

Humans, who are not born simple and beautiful, but dangerous with greed infecting their veins, could not simply watch the beauty from afar.

In the beginning, the hunting was disapproved of. The first mermaid to ever be captured had agonized in front of a crowd that had gathered to gawp at her beauty, displayed like a prize. With her last, gasping breaths she had sang the crowd to a watery death as agonizing as hers had been in the dry air.

The second mermaid to ever be caught died in the sun on a hot deck. Her skin had cracked and her gills were pale and dry. She never even made it to land.

The third mermaid to ever be caught took her life before the humans could bring her on deck, strangled in the net. She had heard the stories of her sisters who had dried up in the burning heat and a quick death had been the obvious choice. There are of course, countless stories of brothers and sisters who died in the sun, strangled in the same net humanity weaved, so they became careful.

Centuries passed and mermaids became wary. Their numbers dwindled until they were labeled an endangered species. Organizations were created in hopes of saving the remaining few, while hefty fines and jail time was the threat for anyone who hunted their precious scales.

The threat for anyone that didn’t know the right people, that is.

And so a mermaid became a status symbol of wealth and power. They were put in expensive homes, in large tanks displayed like pet fish. The market for mermaids went underground, and thus so did the mermaids themselves.

No longer did they roam the seas and roll in the sunlight, but rather they hid away so deep that no one could ever find them, and humans caught every soul that didn’t swim deep enough. Unknowing of those that had sacrificed light for life.

There are stories of mermaids who had never seen sunlight. They had hidden so deep that no light had ever kissed their pale skin and kept them sane, their minds becoming slow like still water. They grew sharp teeth too big for their mouths, and milky eyes that couldn’t see anything save the light they themselves produced to catch their prey. They were the old ones that had lived too long and had endured too much.

There are also stories of mermaids who had wanted to see the sunlight so badly that they had forgotten the rules. They had strayed too close to the surface and had paid the price.

Of course, stories are just stories, and Knauss had heard them all. He had been told to avoid the alluring kiss of sunlight and the dangers lurking above the surface. It was just too bad he hadn’t listened well enough.

*

It hits him in the middle of the night, when he’s halfway between reaching out to grab his second fish of the evening, and he freezes when he realizes that he doesn’t know how long he’s been here.
Knauss hangs in the middle of his tank, the brightly colored fishes swarming around the edges of the glass to keep away from the predator in their midst, and he has another realization. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he last spoke.

Knauss looks out at his outreached hand, drawing it back to his chest tentatively. They cut down his claws and he can hardly stomach looking at them anymore without a pang of longing. In his mouth he runs his tongue across his sharp teeth. The humans couldn’t take those away from him. Not for lack of trying.

But this begs the question, what else had they taken from him?

Knauss swims and thinks. And then he swims harder and stops thinking. He does laps around the tank until his lungs hurt and he has to stop. Breathing hard, he looks around. From above there’s soothing purple light filtering through the water.

He looks down at himself, at his inky grey tail. What should have been inky grey, streaks of oil black making a subtle pattern up his hips. He couldn’t see any of it. Just a flat, matte grey. He swallows hard and looks up at the room, eyes unseeing. Something has to change.

*

When the humans first brought him in from the auction Knauss had thrashed hard enough to knock the temporary tank over and crawled halfway across the room before they had managed to pin him, all the while screaming in their harsh, tone-deaf human tongue to be “careful! He’s valuable!”

When he awoke he found himself tied tightly in nets, the tank he had been trapped in was covered in a sheet. Whenever he tried to move he realized belatedly that they must have put something heavy on top because he didn’t budge.

The place was so tiny and dark that he could almost believe that he was back at home, tucked into some unknown part of his pod’s cave. It was difficult to breathe.

At some point he must have passed out again because when he woke the second time he was dazed but breathing. This time the top of his cage was open, but he was still tied too tightly to move much other than breathe and look to see that the sheet was still on. Outside the thick glass he could hear screaming.

“-trying to kill him - you have any idea how much he’s worth?! - kill your -”

He couldn’t understand any of it but the human outside sounded upset. After that there was the sound of stomping feet and then, a door slamming as that human left the room.

Knauss blinked wearily, half-heartedly checking the ropes binding him. Before he could do much, however, the sheet was ripped away to reveal a room full of more humans. He winced and squinted and suddenly they were lifting him and moving him towards what looked like a giant glass room.
With dawning horror he realized that this was to be his new home.

He tried to writhe and escape again but the next thing he knew he was being dumped in, net and all. Floating suspended he thrashed hard, trapped, until the house staff took pity on him and tried to help freeing him.

He swiped viciously at the first dim soul that got too close with his pathetic, dull nails. The humans all wailed and yelped so his final raised in warning until he finally managed to get free. Immediately he darted for the biggest rock he could hide behind. It was no where near big enough for a mermaid of his size, but he could make do with covering as much as he could. Outside he could hear the humans speaking again.

“Why are there rocks? Someone get rid of the rocks.” A voice.

“What? You want me to go in there? Do I look like I have a death wish?” Another voice.

“The boss isn’t going to be happy about this. You’re going to be the one to tell him you didn’t want to get your feet wet because of some caged mermaid.”

“Did you see the size of that thing? I don’t care how beautiful it is, I saw those teeth.” A third voice.
Knauss’ head was swarming the more they spoke, overhead the blinding LED burned into his pale eyes and it was nothing like the cold sunlight that he bathed in back in the caves. It was harsh and poorly filtered and he has to focus on cycling water through his gills to keep himself calm.

“You idiots, don’t you know an unhappy mermaid will lose it’s shine? Do you want to explain to the boss about that?” A fourth and final voice snaps, cruel like the rest, “Wanna explain to him when we got a dead mermaid stinking up the place? They can die if they’re too upset.”

So the humans left him be with little more than chastised grumbles and embarrassed shuffling before a bucket of live fish was dumped into the top of his tank. Knauss watched them drift down with wide eyes, throat tight with anxiety.

How could this have happened to someone like him?