Free Song of the Sirens by Kaylie Austen

floated around his face. His glowing green eyes
illuminated the gills in his neck. He didn’t wear an oxygen tank and
mouthpiece, much less a mask. His naked torso tucked neatly into a glittering
green tail, which tapered off into a fan-like fin.
    I placed my palms against the window.
Riley was majestic, handsome, and glimmered with the splendor of a dream. His
magnetic presence hypnotized.
    He waved and gave the thumbs up sign.
    I broke away from the captivation and
remembered the situation. Oh, yeah, I was moments away from dying, and my
father moments away from unleashing the terrors from my dreams.
     Giving the thumbs down, I frantically
shook my head. Tears pooled in my eyes.
    “Help us,” I said, though he couldn’t
hear me through the wall.
    Riley placed his palms against the
window, cushioning the window between our hands. He mouthed, “Don’t worry.”
    He pushed away. His glittering tail
sparkled from the lights as he dashed one way and then another, studying the
submarine before planning.
    I turned away. What was I thinking? The
lack of oxygen and the stress from recent events played tricks on my mind.
Riley couldn’t be a merman. Mermaids, or humanoids, couldn’t have survived in
caves and lured us here through telepathic song.
    I sat down. I had to control these
thoughts. My body became oxygen deprived over the past half hour, and my mind
hallucinated because of it. I stared at the controls, my vision blurred by
tears.
    This was it, our inevitable end. No one
could get to us in time, not before we died in shock. Waste gases built up as
oxygen deteriorated in our veins. Fatigue and hallucinations marked the
beginning of a series of unwanted, disastrous symptoms.
    Heck, I might as well get comfy and wait
for death, because it lurked around the corner. Even with scuba gear on our
backs, we couldn’t exit the sub without the pressure crushing us. If we somehow
survived that, we couldn’t possibly have enough oxygen to safely swim to the
surface. Even if we did, sharks laid in wait. Hypothermia could set it. The
murky darkness could turn us around, and we could swim sideways or eventually
back toward the ocean floor.
    I heaved and suppressed a whimper. We
could sit and face death in a slow descent, or open the doors to make a swim
for it and face a rather brutal but quick death. Choices, choices, huh?
    My shoulders dropped when my chest
collapsed. My posture and mentality couldn’t seem more defeated. I shook my
head and wandered back to the observation window.
    Riley returned. His hands moved along
the side of the sub as if pulling himself along. Flashes of movement and
glowing colors caught my attention through the corner of my eye. I turned my
head left and looked out the main window.
    Ahead of us, at least a dozen more of
these humanoids I knew only as mermen darted back and forth around the pincers.
With narrowed eyes, I couldn’t make out where one merman ended and another
began in the ball of dashing tails and trails of glowing color. They tried to
distract the arms, as if they didn’t realize it was a machine and my father
controlled it.
    At another glance, I realized the mermen
were far too quick to get caught in the arms. While the metal pincers and arms
moved at a sluggish weight in the water, the humanoids dashed with speed faster
than dolphins. Most appeared as glowing green and silver blurs.
    While Dad attempted to destroy the rock
gate and move the granite boulder, the mermen hurried to replace everything
before those menacing talons escaped.
    I concluded these men were on the right
side, at least at this point. They seemed to desire keeping my nightmares at
bay as much as I did.
    I glanced at Dad. Sweat beaded down his
temples. The last thing I wanted was my father to kill an innocent merman for
helping us.
    Dad grabbed a merman, who busied himself
by pushing the boulder back. He squirmed in the grasp as other mermen
surrounded the pincers.
    “Dad!” I cried, racing to him and
shoving