My name is Alice Cogsworth, and I'm going to die today.

Well, damn. That's a horrible way to start a story.

Let's try again.

My name is Alice Cogsworth.

My mother’s name is Lindiwe, last name was Roux, before I was born at least. She was brought over here in a rickety old boat that fell apart the moment Granny stepped her foot on the ramp to the pier. Mom went to a pretty rad college when she got older, although she immediately signed up for the army when she could. When Granny and Paw showed me pictures of her, you would’ve never known she was fated to be the fiercest drill sergeant this side of Philly. Afro style hair, bandanna wrapped around the bottom of it, bell-bottom jeans with a funny stringy top as she gave peace signs to whoever was taking the image.

Now she’s straight backed, short braided hair that’s hidden under a dark green cap. No more bellbottoms, but she wears fuzzy pajama pants at home when she’s off, so I guess that’s something.

My father’s name is Thomas Cogsworth. His father and his father before him and his father before him all worked on clocks. Cuckoo clocks, Grandfather clocks, novelty clocks, clocks that just shouldn’t work but man are they ticking away. Dad was the first one of his family to not take up wood working, and the first to go to college. His dad supported him-Gramps was always a silent kind of guy who gave you a thumbs up if he thought it’d work-and Gramma fretted over him every day.

Dad found his love in cooking, and then in botany, and then he decided to combine them, making pretty rad flowers from piping and fruit cut up into stars…all the neat stuff that would get more popular during my time, you know?

Anyway, they met in college, and rest is history, as they say. Got married secretly, then had a giant wedding when they could, had me, moved around as the government happily tugged Mom from here to yonder like a rook in a chess game.

Didn’t make a lot of friends, but it was what it was.

The ones that stuck with me, they were cool. Jenny and Mack and Gregory and Sandy. We keep in touch time to time. Jenny's got a kid with her wife. Gregory finally built his super computer. All that sweet stuff.

Got suspended from school a few a times. My ‘attitude’ was a problem.

Example of said attitude is yelling 'fuck you too' to a band director when he said I couldn't play the trumpet because my lips were 'too thin'. God, what does that even mean?

Anyway, I threw it at him. The trumpet, I mean.

Wasn't nice but here we are.

Mom’s got the same short fuse, Dad would say almost gleefully. I gotta agree. Ain’t nothing like watching recruits from a distance as she bites out orders and chews out the ones who like to test their new drill sergeant. Can’t test a brick wall, it’ll always break you first.

I'm 25 now, got my own home, do my own thing. But ah, yeah, I'm going to die.

You may be asking ‘Alice, what in the name of the seven circles of the underworld does this have to do with dying?!’. Nothing, just taking my mind off things.

Or maybe you’re asking ‘How???’. Easier answer!

See, I live in Brooklyn, near the best burger shop this side of the US. Junior's, I mean. But I go across the bridge to rifle through Midtown Comics and peruse the fantasy life. As one should.

Anyway me and the motorbike are hanging over the bridge's edge. My fault. It's late, a fog rolled in, etc. etc. Hope my baby forgives me. Her name is Sonya and I spent well over two years making her as sleek and beautiful as possible (while her rider wears a Mohawk helmet that's as neon pink as the law and physics permit). Rolling out through the first part of the bridge, feeling that wind ruffle my mohawk, the roar of my bike under me…B-E-A-utiful. I love my bike jacket, it’s red and black and zips up perfectly even after all these years (living on energy drinks and sugary treats has given the ol’ girl a bit of a pudge, but look. I’m nice to hug!).

A fog rolled in, real slow like, doesn’t do that usually, or maybe I’m just not around to witness it. Anyway, next thing I know, I run over something in the road and I jerk my bike to the side to get away from it. Unfortunately I smashed into the barrier and somehow my bike bumped harder, so bad the wheel jerked over the barrier keeping you from tossing your car out into the river, and over I went. I’m dangling by my handlebars with my arms wrapped around them as we speak.

So this is gonna suck when we eventually fall in.

No one can see me in this fog. I'm a goner.

Well, as my bike creaks slowly, and I tilt further over the looming ocean-they say it’s like smashing into plates of glass or concrete this far up, damn-lemme think about some things.

I’m pretty sure my phone is in my zipped pocket still, but I think if I move, I’ll go splatter splat. But…if I had to call anyone...I guess my parents. Tell 'em I'm sorry for being such a rough kid and makin' trouble when there was no need. Maybe tell my dad where his birthday present is at my house (I got him a pass to the upcoming Rose Parade, he and Mom always talk about how when they were kids, or I guess teens, they'd sneak peeks behind apartment buildings and trees. They were pretty cheap actually, but back then, twenty bucks was like...a hundred.).

Ask 'em to make sure my comics are put up.

Tell my landlord to go screw himself for not fixing my A/C this summer.

Tell 'em to take the ficus I got to Old Man Larry, he had one once outside but a bunch of punks took it and smashed it on the ground.

(If I live, that's the first thing I'm doing)

I hear a car roar by on the other side, and my breath catches for a moment. Please, please, can’t anyone see me?! At all?! It’s gotta be a giant hole in the side of the fucking bridge, are you BLIND?!

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

My heart hurts from beatin’ so fast. I take a breath but my visor fogs up. Shit. I tilt my head back in the dense fog…wait…wait I see something. I see a large shadow…I see-

A creak, a sudden movement, and down I go.

I scream, trying to claw my arms away from the handles as the bike jerks my arms hard, nearly yanking them from their sockets. We tumble over each other, a race to see who can die in the ocean first, a race where the winner wins nothing and the loser gets the same ending.

I hit the water…and I pass out from pure pain.

----------------------------------------

With a shocked gasp and water rushing into my mouth, I choke and try to struggle. It’s not enough. My leather outfit-jacket and pants, gotta dress up for a nice night out you know?-is cold cold cold, tight against my skin. My helmet was shot off my head from the water, nearly popping my head off like a cork. I can’t get any traction, and I have no idea what’s up and what’s down, and my stupid fucking hair has decided ‘oh water? We’re going out? PARTY!’ and is trying to curl itself into the springy locks that Granny loves to compliment me on, but I can’t see through them and I’m trying to fight them out of my face but my hands keep smacking me in my nose and-

I let out a scared warble when a hand-a hand-reaches into my personal space bubble and gently grips my hand in theirs. Their hand has claws that dig into the leather of my gloves, and it has a piece of seaweed wrapped around it, and it looks like a bloated corpse, but the other hand reaches through the forest that is my hair and gently sweeps it away from my eyes.

I was wrong. Not a corpse. A person. A…terrifying person.

She-oh they’re a she alright-stares at me as I stare back, her disgustingly slimy hand gripping mine. Her face could be called ‘cute’ if not for the teal tint to it, and the slitted green eyes looking back at me. Like a fucking cat’s eye, goddamn. Her mouth is open, revealing sharp teeth that I hope she doesn’t dig into my neck with. Her hair isn’t hair, it’s tangling seaweed, green and curling with a shell here and there wrapped up.

She’s covered in teal scales, from her wrist, down to her shoulder, down her chest…and onto her tail.

Yup. Tail.

I can feel it as it sways, bumping into my legs but I’m too horrified to look down as I stare back at her. My eye sight starts to dim, bubbles exiting my mouth and nose as I struggle again, trying to free myself from her grip.

She tilts her head, the seaweed hair spreading out behind her in a mesmerizing way but look, I am dying here. No time to focus on cute chicks right now. I cup my free hand over my mouth, as if that would help, but she grabs that one too, tugging it away. She’s going to kill me, that’s what this is, she’s going to kill me-

Nope. She. She’s kissing me. I can feel my nose press against hers-it’s definitely broken judging by the blood coming up-and weirdly smooth…lips? I guess? Pressing against mine.

I gasp, and she breathes into me, providing precious, beautiful oxygen. Oh oxygen I’ll never take you for granted again, I swear it.

But this is super weird, making out with…a…mermaid in the nastiest river/ocean place ever. I mean, we just met! Wait, no, shut up brain.

I push against her, now that I have my breath back, but instead of letting me go, we launch off away from the slowly sinking carnage that was once my beautiful bike, and she dragged me up and up and up until we broke the surface near a small patch of land with a staircase carved in. Probably meant for fishers.

She pauses, staring at me for a moment before letting me go. Gee. Thanks.

I scramble to pull myself up onto the land, panting as I roll onto my back. My nose isn’t the only thing broken. I have a strain in my neck, and I’m pretty sure I fractured my arm or ankle. Everything hurts, and nothing is good right now, at all. I tilt my head, trying to draw in deeper breaths as I stare at the mermaid.

She stares back, the slitted eyes now round. It’s kind of cute, if it wasn’t for the weird bone wrapped in her seaweed hair near her ear, and the starfish suckered on the back of her head.

“…hey.”

She blinks. “Hello.”

Well shit. Didn’t expect that. “…thanks for uh, not like, letting me die and stuff. That’s cool of you.” I lay my head back staring at the night sky. The fog’s gone, but I only recognize that faintly. “…name’s Alice. Guess we should do the meet and greet after the whole…”

“Inhalation exchange.” Her voice is odd, I notice. Like a hissing noise under it, but also a little airy, like how you think a spider would sound, not a mermaid.

“…yeah that, sure. Kiss, inhalation exchange-hey how the fuck are you up here?” Mermaids need water, right?

A splash and I look over. She’s dragged herself up like someone would from a pool, using their weight to lean over and swing their legs up. Except she leans forward, and in a way that makes me cringe, slits open slowly in her sides. “I breathe here. In water.” She slips back down, arms crossed on the ground, watching me again.

“…radical. Wish I could do that.” I slowly sit up and groan, pressing a hand to my side. “Broke rib, broke bike, broke everything. Broke phone. Hey I gave you my name, what’s yours?”

She blinked, and then a noise like the snapping of many branches and a whistling noise came from her mouth.

I blink. “…don’t uh, think I can say that. Sorry.”

She shrugs, not looking offended. Her hands do have claws, but they’re short. Just as deadly, but not as long as I had imagined. “Humans cannot.”

I frown, then shook my head. Too much for one night, too much in general. I try to stand, my knee protesting as I rolled over and held a hand on the dirt wall, dragging myself up slowly. “Thanks. Again.” I pause for a moment, staring at her. We get in a staring match for a while. This was…kinda cool…and maybe it’s the whole ‘falling into a river that usually killed people’ incident, or maybe my brains got all shook up, but all I can think of is ‘I wanna meet her again.’

“Yes.” She said, grinning brightly. Yup. Piercing teeth that could totally eat me up in a second.

…wait I said that out loud. You know what, you try thinking straight after the entire thing that I went through, okay? And you know what? Fuck it, this night went to crap so if I get to make friends with a damn mermaid, I’m making friends with the mermaid, got it?

“Cool. Gimme like…man, I don’t know. Three days? Here?”

She nodded, slipping a hand up to tuck a strand of seaweed behind her ear-weirdly normal-and she smiled at me. Her tail behind her splashed in the water. “Yes. Three days. Meet again.”

“Awesome. See ya…um…” I make a click noise, but by the wriggle of her nose, I guess I didn’t get it right. Either way, she nodded again, and off she slid back into the depths of the water.

I sigh roughly, wincing at the ache in both my sides as I limp towards the stairs, a few cigarette butts scattered, someone put a graffiti of a little flower on the top step.

Maybe I hallucinated. You know? Wasn’t there a guy that like, he fell down Niagra Falls or some shit and lived when no one else did? Maybe that’s me, surviving despite the odds…having swam nearly an entire three blocks away from the bridge…while dressed in leather…and injured.

…sounds plausible, I dig it. None of the nurses at the ER I stumble into do, giving me strange looks and offering blankets and such, talks of ‘shock’ and ‘fractured ribs’ just zooming over my head as I lay down in the hospital bed they had led me to.

When they release me with a new little cast on my arm-this’ll put a dent in the art, for sure-a binding around my ribs and medication to probably bring down an elephant if taken all at once, I’m tired and shaken and happy to find my wallet is still in my pocket but my phone is completely waterlogged.

I called a taxi from the inside of the hospital, rocking on my feet lightly with a yawn. It was…was it late? Early? It was something, for sure.

Around the corner, one of those vans that had been haunting around lately turned onto the street. It had a funky symbol on it, a triskelion if I recall, drawn on in red against the white van. Kinda gaudy. It drives by me where I’m at the corner, and starts to slow, but I scowl at whoever’s in it.

Nuh-uh buddy, I ain’t that type of gal. Even if I was, van’s are sketchy as hell, absolutely not.

The van speeds up, racing off down the street. Cool. My taxi comes, I get in, rattle off my address as I lay down in the backseat…

..and try not to think of rushing water, slimy but powerful hands gripping mine, and a kiss that left me breathless.

…damn it.