Mermaid’s Purse
M.S. Gardner
John wore great big waterproof boots, which left waffle-patterned impressions in the firm, damp sand as he walked along the beach. He didn’t mind his feet getting wet, or sand sticking between his toes. He did mind jellyfish stings, and the waterproof boots, which hit his legs mid-calf, protected his feet and ankles from the tiny jellyfish that washed up on the shore, their translucent bodies difficult to see until it was too late.
It was late October, well past tourist season, the beach no longer overrun with pasty people risking sunburns who stretched out on kaleidoscope-patterned towels and basted themselves with coconut oil to hasten the frying process, and drank beer while their children waded in the water, tempting the sharks that lurked just past the shadow of the shore.
An October evening, in early twilight before the sun fully set and the moon showed his face in the night sky, was the best time for a beach walk, and John strolled for the pleasure of it, his hands deep in the pockets of his windbreaker, a plastic shopping bag dangling from his wrist, his boots flapping and slapping against his hairy calves. He scanned the shoreline with an idle eye. At ebb tide, once the Gulf of Mexico pulled back her waters like a skirt with trails of foam as delicate as the lace edge of a woman’s slip, all sorts of items might be found: driftwood, sea-glass, shark teeth, sand dollars, or seashells.
Sandpipers rushed along the shore to feast on small clams, invading the clam holes with their slender bills, advancing and retreating with the rhythm of the Gulf’s retreat and advance. Tiny crabs dined on even tinier fish trapped in tide pools too shallow to breath in, the fish drowning in air.
Further down the beach, two blue crabs faced off on either side of a deeper pool, battling; they smacked and clacked their pinchers, scuttling around the pool’s edge, each trying to gain the advantage, oblivious to John’s approach. The crabs were legal size, so he scooped them up and plopped them into the bag where they continued their fight. John glanced down.
In the bottom of the pool lay a mermaid’s purse.
He’d only ever seen pictures of a mermaid’s purse—an oval with two long protrusions at both ends that curved towards each other, almost touching. In photos, these purses were brown or black, dried out by the sun, and only about four to five inches long.
The purse submerged in the pool was nothing like any photos he’d seen. It was the same shape, but much larger. He dropped his plastic shopping bag. The crabs called a truce, escaped, and scuttled off.
John squatted low, pushed up the sleeves of his windbreaker, plunged his hands into the pool, and pulled up the purse, hefting it in his hands. Heavy and plump, the purse shimmered with swirls of teal, turquoise, and aquamarine, the colors shifting and glimmering in the fading light. Tiny scallop, clam, and conch shells festooned the purse.
A voice called out. “Excuse me!”
John whirled around, clutching his prize close to his chest. He scanned the beach and strained his eyes in the gathering dusk. Only a heron fished further up the shore. The first faint stars of the evening sprinkled the sky like grains of salt on a tablecloth. High above, a gull shrieked. The wind picked up. The empty plastic bag blew past him.
“Excuse me!” The voice rang out again, more insistent.
He turned towards the Gulf. In the distance, a form bobbed on the waves.
“Hello?” he shouted, uncertain, as the dusk and the wind often fooled the senses.
The form dipped, disappeared. It swam closer to the shore, a dark silhouette speeding just under the water until, at the edge of the shelf sea, it broke the surface.
It was a woman, her hair fanning out like kelp, the waning sunlight grazing her pale shoulders. John crept to the very edge of the water, the foam-laced waves lapped up to his ankles as his great big waterproof boots sank into the saturated sand. She swam closer, but didn’t come ashore.
Naked from the waist up, rivulets of saltwater streamed down her shoulders and over her breasts where it collected and dripped from her nipples that glistened like peachy-rose pearls. Her eyes were the deep purple of the open sea at midnight, and her lips were quite blue.
John found his voice. “You should get out of the water,” he said. “You’ll get hypothermia. And there’s sharks.”
She raised her hand, pointed at him, her fingernails mother-of-pearl. “That’s mine.”
He grasped his treasure tighter, the tiny shells poking and scratching through his t-shirt. “This? Are you sure it’s yours?” The wind kicked up, his windbreaker whipped around his body, and fine sand stung his face. Waves swelled, the Gulf roared, breaking against the shore, striking his knees, soaking his cargo shorts, and dumping sandy saltwater into his waterproof boots.
She glided closer, bobbing on the retreating waves, raised herself up. Water skimmed off her torso, her navel the perfect spiral of a snail’s shell. Iridescent scales covered her hips, dazzling like thousands of mirrors reflecting the water and sky.
He gulped. “Maybe it’s yours. How’d it get here?”
“I threw it at a nasty seagull and the ocean swept it away.” She smiled, a smile terrifying in its beauty, as bright and as dangerous as a bolt of lightning. She held out her hand, beckoning. “Return it and I’ll reward you.”
A fever of possession seized him. “And if I don’t?” He tried to inch back from the water’s edge, but his boots sank deeper into the sand.
The sky deepened into indigo. The moon crept upward.
“Tonight’s a full moon…I’ll be able to walk on the land.” She snared him with her gaze. “Then I’ll drag you to the drowning depths and feast on your flesh with the sharks.”
He tossed the purse to her, throwing it high into the air. She shot up like a dolphin, caught it, and plunged into the watery darkness, disappearing from his sight. For several minutes he stood, stuck in the sand, squinting, scanning, searching the horizon, but she was gone.
He struggled to get his boots out of the sand, but it was no use. He surrendered his great big waterproof boots to the Gulf. He’d lost his prize, the two big crabs, his plastic shopping bag, and now his boots.
“With my luck,” he said, “I’ll step on a jellyfish.” He turned away.
“Wait!”
He turned back.
She bobbed on the waves, the moonlight pale and shimmery across her shoulders, clutching her purse to her breast. She reached inside.
“Catch!” She threw something.
It landed at his feet—a plump black oval with two protrusions curling out from both ends. It fit in the palm of his hand.
“What’s this?” he called out.
“My coin purse,” she said and dove down. Her tail slapped the water, and she swam away.
He slipped the mermaid’s coin purse into the pocket of his windbreaker and went home.
M.S. Gardner
M.S. Gardner moves between the worlds of fabulism and realism and draws inspiration from the curious, bizarre, and absurd nature of life. She’s perfected her impersonation of a normal human being well enough to hold a job at a local library. While her physical body resides on the Alabama Gulf Coast, she mostly lives in her head.
She is the 2024 Moon Meridian Novella Award Winner. Her novella Wolf’s Bane will be published by April Gloaming Publishing in May 2025.
Her work has also appeared in That Is TOO Wrong! An Anthology of Offbeat Horror Vol. 2, The Dead Mule School for Southern Literature, Psychopomp, Terror House Magazine, Coastal Shelf, Running Wild Story Anthology Vol. 5, Page & Spine, Hypnopomp, Altarworks, and Strangelet Journal.