LITMIR.BIZ

      Melkie cruised the back roads, Rebel drooling and snorting by his side. He had no particular destination, but after hearing on the local television news that a second body had turned up on the beach, he’d been going increasingly mad at home. He kept waiting for a knock at the door, his paranoia growing with every second enclosed in the shotgun house.

      How had that body gotten to the shore? That woman—that thing—must have put it there. Melkie found himself on a road leading to Murrell’s Point. Rounding a bend, he spotted half a dozen police and sheriff’s vehicles gathered on one side of the road.

      Right there. That must be where they’d found it.

      He was suffocating, the truck’s interior closing in on him. The old truck’s dying AC was no match against the pepper-hot heat. Maybe the cops were here waiting for him to return to the crime scene. They already knew he was the one. His life was over. He’d rot at Holman prison on death row. His breath came in painful, jagged spasms and his body knotted with tension.

      The wet sensation of tongue on his right forearm broke through the paralysis. Rebel licked and whimpered, attuned to Melkie’s panic. The dog’s eyes, despite their disarming milky haze, pierced Melkie with pure love.

      He caught his breath and patted Rebel’s hairless flesh. What would happen to his dog if they took him away? He had no friends or family. And everyone found Rebel repulsive, even though he was worth more than the rest of that sorry-assed lot of humanity.

      Melkie turned his head from the cops and kept his eyes focused on the road ahead. The azure-blue of the sky met the gray-blue of ocean in a horizontal line. The moment passed, and he looked out the rearview mirror at the uniformed police scouring the area.

      Fucking pigs. Where were they when he was getting punched around as a kid?

      The familiar rage tamped down on the residual panic.

      “How about you and me getting a little treat?” he asked Rebel, who yipped in excitement.

      He pulled into the drive-through at the hamburger shack in town and ordered cheeseburgers and fries for both of them, plus a chocolate milkshake for himself. The fat-and-sugar rush sated his gnawing anxiety. Why had he been so freaked out? There was nothing that could tie him to the murders. He was safe.

      He was contentedly gulping the last of his shake when a purple-and-pink sign slammed into his consciousness.

      The Mermaid’s Hair Lair.

      What the hell?

      Mermaid. The word was a red neon light burning in his brain.

      He’d lived here all his life, been down this main street forever, but had never paid much attention to the beauty parlor or the large water fountain in the court square with a figure of a mermaid sculpted in copper.

      The image of the thing in the water arose. Melkie slammed on his brakes and parked at the first empty spot. Rebel gazed at him quizzically, panting onion breath.

      Wouldn’t hurt to look in the window. Melkie put a leash on Rebel and knelt down to whisper. “We’ll just walk real casual-like, okay?” He stood, took a deep breath and sauntered by the shop. The ever-present smell of bilge and shucked oysters assaulted his nose.

      In the salon window he saw old ladies in chairs, gray hair tightly bound in perm rollers, with bubble dryers over them, a few younger clientele getting bleach jobs. The interior was painted in shades of coral, with paintings of mermaids hung all over the walls.

      He knew just how it would smell, the stinky ammonia fumes and peroxide in the air so strong it would make your eyes water. His stomach rumbled and he was back in that dumpy house, Mom and her whore friends dyeing each other’s hair and preparing for the night’s work.

      “There’s little Melkie,” one of them would coo, beckoning him over with long red nails.

      His face aflame, he’d have to go into the gaggle of whores. Nine years old and the stupid bitches would pull down his shorts and giggle.

      “Let me feel that cute little pecker.” They’d grab him and fondle and laugh at the predictable response.

      Especially dear old Mom.

      She’d refused to allow him to cut his hair. She and her posse of bitches teased him about his thick, wavy hair and would put rollers in it and paint his face. A few years later he decided it was worth the ass whupping to disobey Mom and cut it short.

      Even now, the memories churned his stomach. That cheeseburger wasn’t such a hot idea, after all.

      The sight of a woman with long blond hair caught his attention. She stood behind a chair, wielding a pair of shears with grace and authority. Her hair was unusual, a thick honey-gold confection with streaks of the palest pink and lavender. On her, the highlights looked natural, not like on the phony Goth teenagers you saw in Mobile these days with bold colors against black hair.

      His mermaid that night had long hair, but impossible to make out the color other than it was light. It had hung down the front of her torso like a second skin.

      What if...what if this was her? Maybe she had the ability to be on land and sea. It wasn’t such a stretch to think the thing had some kind of mutation abilities. He recalled those eyes of swirling colors. Melkie peered intently at the woman’s reflection in the mirrored walls. The eyes were a perfectly human

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