#4

(In honor of Halloween, here is a creepy installment to my story :))

Isla was 16 when she kissed a boy for the first time. Immediately after, she had pulled him beneath the murky water, ripped out his heart, and eaten it as the water around her turned thick with dark red blood.

A harsh reality: mermaids eat hearts because they don’t have their own. Isla, for example, was a particularly stunning specimen of a mermaid, with streaming green-tinged hair and huge, doe-like eyes fringed with long dark lashes, and a particularly impressive track record for killing men. She had killed twenty-seven since the first, three years before, more than any of her sisters.

Technically Isla and the others could survive on the tiny, stuttering rabbit hearts that they stumbled across drinking from the lake (or even on nothing at all for months at a time), but it was no where near as satisfying- or fun- as seducing a larger mammal, like a centaur or an Invel, into the water. The very best hearts were the human ones, but they were rare in this realm.

Isla glided through the water near the shore, keeping her eyes open for movement on the banks of the lake. Her sisters, Etain and Cessair, were searching the northern side of the lake, so Isla had the entire southern end all to herself. She had a good feeling about today; the mists had cleared over the forest and sunlight sparkled off the face of the lake. The forest hugged this side of the lake’s edge, and creatures that didn’t know any better sometimes approached the lake to bathe or drink, especially on days like this one. Isla swam back and forth through the glittering, icy water, staying close to the surface where the sun allowed her to see clearly.
              Finally, Isla saw a disturbance in the water near the bank. She stopped immediately and allowed her head to break the surface of the water, staying submerged except for her dark eyes.

It was a man. Isla surged with triumph- he had dark hair and a powerful build. She swiftly swam near to where the man was bent over the water, filling a leather pouch. She watched him for a few moments, head fully out of the water, until he looked up and blinked, recoiling a bit in shock. She stared back at him and then gave him a sparkling smile, which he returned with a look of pleasant surprise. “Hello there. Are you bathing? I’m sorry, I’ll look away.”

Isla laughed softly. Her English was imperfect and scratchy, but she often found it necessary to speak to her prey.

“No, just swimming. Join me,” she said, smiling invitingly and motioning to him with her hand. He stared deep into her eyes and dropped his leather pouch. “Maybe for a bit,” he said, sloshing deeper into the lake but leaving his shirt and jacket on. Isla suspected he was human and could barely contain her excitement, swimming closer to him and grabbing his gloved hands.

“Come swim,” she whispered, listening closely for the sound of his heart pounding deep and wet in his chest. She couldn’t hear anything, which was unusual- she hoped she hadn’t come across a man with a defective heart. He looked strong and healthy, with broad shoulders and flushed cheeks.

When the man was up to his sternum in the water Isla wrapped an arm around his neck and pulled herself up until she was pressed against him, face to face. They grinned at each other for a moment before Isla used her free arm to punch into his chest cavity.

Usually, this required immense force, and once Isla was inside she could wrap her hand around the still-beating heart before tearing it out. However this time, her hand broke no flesh, but went completely through the man and out the other side.

She looked up at the man in shock, and his face was no longer grinning but staring down with dark intensity at the young mermaid. She growled and pulled her hand out, ripping his shirt off to find a skeleton body, made only of bone and sinew, with no organs inside at all.

“Who are you?” She demanded, still using him to pull herself up out of the water. “A man you can’t kill,” he told her simply. She tried to pull away but suddenly his arm was crushing her to him. “And I need your help,” he added darkly as she squirmed.