I Heard The Mermaid Singing
(Names partially ripped off from the movie "Overboard")
Stacy Carter tugged a medium-length blond strand away from her ticklish pug nose before leaning in closer to the screen.
"Fanfic. What the hey is fanfic?"
She skipped through a few sites..most of them pornographic (one of them containing a story involving her and Pumpkin that made her gag). Finally, she settled down to one site, and found a story that didn't offend her.
"I've heard the Mermaid Singing," She whispered to herself. "By MM." Her eyes scanned the page as she read the summary.
In this world, she was Katerina, a bubble-headed mermaid. A fisherman named Arturo had found her floundering on the coastline, washed up by a high tide. As the story became longer, her emotions became more foccused on the story. ..She read as He had brought her home, and taught her to sing. But she was unhappy in her cage, and had escaped to the ocean. In this chapter, she was swallowed by a wale and Arturo, hearing her singing, had jumped down the mammal's blowhole to rescue her.
"I'll build a fire!", Arturo gasped, "A fire will build smoke and make the whale sneeze!"
Katerina sat up, watching Atruto as he gathered pieces of strewn, wrecked ships. She reached around her neck and untied the shell-and-mirror necklace Arturo had made for her, "Use these! The shells, if stricken against the mirror, will produce sparks to light the fire!"
He glanced up at the brave girl; damp-hared, grimly determined, and felt the depths of his love. "We shall survive this, Katerina!"
And struck the rock against the mirror.
Blue sparks shone, lighting up their dark cave. One landed on the dried debris and starting a roaring fire in the pile of wood. Gray smoke billowed up to the roof of the whale's mouth. Suddenly, the monstrous creature of the deep reared up and, with the force of a 100 mile gale, blew a clinging Katerina and Arturo out and into the air, separating them and sending them crashing to the ocean!
"Darnit!" Stacy cried, noticing that the story came to a rather abrupt end. She would just have to come back the next day.
And so she did. Every day for the next month, she would return to her favorite cyber café and read the story. Finally, on the day of the final chapter's release, a raging storm hit her hometown, and she couldn't leave the apartment building.
For some reason she felt mopey. She walked down the hallway from the laundry room to her apartment, the power suddenly went out.
"Darnit!" A familiar voice cried from a nearby apartment.
Stacy turned on her heels and walked back to apartment 38.
"The last chapter, gone! Now no one will find out what happens to Arturo and Katerina..."
Stacy's eyes became saucers. The mysterious MM! She tried the doorknob and was shocked to find it ajar.
A streak of lightening illuminated the room, revealing a familiar head and sad, doe eyes.
"Stevie?" She gaped?
He looked up at her in alarm, and flung himself back from his keyboard. The very person he didn't want to know had exposed his secret.
"It's OK.."
"I feel foolish."
She reached out to cup his chin, "Why didn't you tell me you felt this way about me?"
"No one was supposed to know that I felt this way. It was just..something that I do to relieve stress."
"You could have come to me...Arturo.."
He flushed, "Ah..Kat..."
She reached up and kissed the very tip of his chin. "I'll sing for you every night..if you'll tell me how the story ends," She kicked the door shut with her left heel.
"The way they all do, dear," He said, with a bold smile, "And they all lived happily ever after."