As with most things, I thought nothing of it until it got in the way. By then, I had already learned to move it about, flip it up when it began to inconveniently drag, smooth it back when I needed a clear angle to sit. But, eventually, it began to get ungainly in a standard pair of trousers, and so I had to take stock of it.
It was not uncute, given the way that it connected. The whole of it seemed remarkably willing to fit in, at least for a fluke, and I could hardly blame it for its bulk. It would have to be an awful bother to any sort of uneventful clothing that might be caught expecting only two legs.
The simple thing was to cut a hole for it. The trouble is that the end connecting to flesh, and the end that was meant to pound water, are of different sizes; and once I cut a hole big enough for the fin itself, the hole gapped miserably loose at the connecting in, and I might as well not be trying to wear pants at all.
The solution was to clothe myself in only those baggy but elastic half pants that proved so popular a season or so ago with kids that wanted to look ghetto. You could almost stuff a small fishing vessel into the legs of one of those pairs of shorts; so, accepting an oversized fit, I could put both a leg and the tail through one shorts leg, hike the clothing leg up a bit, and, while it was a little awkward, I was covered.
As my new merman’s tail grew, I could do more things with it. It had its own set of muscles, its own commitments to symmetry. I could amuse myself for hours seeing how far away from its main axis I could spin it; how much of a spiral I could curl it in; how much force against the air could I stretch into the fin and then, with a sickening flick of my rattling spine, hurl teasingly forward.
This was a symbiosis. As the tail grew, I used it ever more eloquently, and for my ever closer-to-continual use the tail grew stronger. And a stronger tail I would use more often, find new uses for, strengthen. The tail would curl around the leg it had been mated to by the expedience of my shorts, trying to stay out of the way as I walked, and even with this effort growing thicker, more tendon and less scale, more tendon and less flesh, more tendon and less fickleness.
I took it one day to the beach, and it uncoiled radiantly from my leg, large enough now to lay its fluke flat on the sand. I guessed enough not to go too close to the water: but there was a boy, who had never seen a man with a merman’s tail before, who brought a sand pail of ocean water inland to me and poured it slowly over the relaxed fluke. The leather webbing oscillated in self-luxuriance. The boy ever so slightly ran his elfin fingers along the fluke’s supporting spines and I could feel the alien density of his touch: fiercely, dutifully in the thought bubbles of my mid-brain.
The tail now is large enough to support me; and some mornings, before I can get balanced again on my petty legs, it will bound with me around the house; and more than once, without me consciously opening the door, it has slipped into the front yard. I tell it to wait, wait until I get my pants, but it will stop only to wick the dew left in the grass and then off we will go. Once, we made it to the fence before I could rock into a two footed stability and lift the tail out of its preferred balance, shaming it into curling for emotional comfort again about my leg.
I know what is coming. Even I stare longingly down the length of my street, imagining the left turn, then right, that puts me on the path to the ocean. I feel a mounting greed deep in my heart as the four chambers begin ever so slyly to reorient themselves and my scaly skin dries unwillingly in the suddenly thick air. I will not be able to stop the tail forever. This last week I have been eating fish, fish and crabs and shrimp, and I am ready, oh I am ready. But I have my legs, and I can run. I can run! I can still run to the ocean. In great, land-gravity shattering steps, the tail but a rudder behind me, I can run! I can run with the smell of the ocean reeling me in, the sound of feet dimming in sand, in water becoming indistinguishable from the sound of a fluke, a fluke taking its aim and turning to its brother legs: my turn! It is my turn!
Ken Poyner has lately been seen in “Analog”, “Café Irreal”, “Cream City Review”, “Blue Collar Review”, and many wonderful places. His latest book of short fiction, “Constant Animals’, is available from his web, www.kpoyner.com, and from www.amazon.com. He is married to Karen Poyner, one of the world’s premier power lifters, and holder of more than a dozen current world power lifting records. They are the parents of four rescue cats, and any number of energetic fish.
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