Beneath The Waves (bxb)

2. Bringing A Surprise Home

Spitting out a mouthful of sand, I pushed myself up. The waves were nudging at my ankles as the tide began to come in, but aside from that little issue, I was all fuckin' smiles.

"Got it!"

Jumping up to my feet, I turned and splashed over to the mer, only to notice that he was missing his tail! He was lying on his belly in the surf, watching me like a hawk.

"Then the rumors were true. Your kind can somehow change into humans for camouflage."

I would have stared longer if the waves weren't seriously moving in. Guess it was time to go... with a merman.

Hmm, but how to get the darn thing into my truck without being bitten?

"Okay, I need to get you into a truck... that's in the parking lot. Without you biting my head off."

Considering he wasn't going anywhere, I decided to quickly run up the beach to get my truck. Thank god it was pretty useful in sand. I had some pretty nice tires that made driving on the beach a piece of cake.

The run back up to the parking lot killed my feet with the constant shifting sand beneath them, but as soon as I got there, I climbed into my truck and started carefully driving my way down toward the mer. There were only a few paths, which led back down to the waterline, that were safe to use, and if a driver didn't go along the sandy gravel roads, their car often got stuck and that was one towing nightmare I didn't want to have to deal with... for a third time.

What? I rush when something in the water catches my interest.

Well, this time I actually took the darn slow path so I was able to get within a few yards of the guy without getting stuck. With a slightly frustrated huff, I jumped down from my silver Durango and hurried to scoop the mer out of the encroaching waves. He thrashed a little and sank his teeth into my upper left arm, but I still managed to get him into the back of the truck, then slammed the back part into place before he could do a thing about it. Once he was in, I yanked the black tarp-like covering I used to seal up the bed and snapped it down so, hopefully, the mer didn't manage to get out. Just in case, though, I jumped back in the cab and drove as fast as I could after getting through the sand, speeding straight toward home.

When I was forced to stop at a light, I fished my phone from my back pocket and dialed my roommate's number. He was going to be the biggest hurdle to getting this guy back into the ocean once he was healed.

"Hnn... Park? You know I sleep during the day."

"It's almost eight o'clock."

"Fine. What do ya want?"

The light turned green, and I carefully eased my truck to accelerate. The whole drive I was trying to be sure that I didn't jar the mer too much since he was already injured badly enough as it was.

"I, uh. Well. I've got a um..."

"Spit it out. Three seconds."

"I-I'm bringing home something you can't tell anyone about."

"Well, that's descriptive."

"Dammit, just get the pool ready. You don't have anything in it right now, right?"

"Of course not. Just the fish I've been working on for the past month or two. Nothing important or anything."

The sarcasm in his voice had my eyes rolling.

"Listen, just... I need the pool, and I'm going to be back in like, ten minutes. So please, just, I don't know, have the back door open at least so I can get inside quickly?"