It was an instant sensation.

From the moment it was completed, the artist knew he would never create anything that could compare to it. With nothing to look forward to, he promptly threw himself into the sea.

The mayor of Breckton had commissioned the statue from the artist, though he hadn’t had the foresight to ask what the artist planned to create. Had he known what he was spending taxpayer money on, he might have hired a different artist.

The whole town turned out to watch as the barricades were taken down and the tarp removed, revealing a twelve foot tall cream-colored marble mermaid rising from a cresting wave of polished bluestone, her long locks flying around her arms and shoulders. Her face was somehow both angelically innocent and seductively alluring at the same time. Her eyes were set with smooth obsidian, and her lips were slightly parted.

Most disturbing to Father Nod, however, was that the artist had used rose quartz to construct two perky, erect nipples on her ample bosom. The townspeople noticed these as well.

As the onlookers chatted excitedly to each other about the new addition to their town that would surely bring in some tourists, Father Nod skulked back to the church, already planning his sermon for that Sunday.

“It’s evil!” he shouted at Bana, the singular altar boy whose mother had grown sick of him one day and “donated” him to the church at age 12.

Bana wasn’t listening as Father Nod ranted about the sinful statue in the courtyard – the courtyard that could be seen from any south-facing window of the church. Bana was utilizing one of these windows to get a good look at the mermaid’s impressive hips.

The image was replaced by stars in his vision when Father Nod rapped him in the back of the head with a gold candlestick. “Do not let yourself fall into temptation, son,” Father Nod growled. “You and I are the sole champions of purity left in this town. I shall be in my study the rest of the night, cooking up a fiery sermon that will set this town on the righteous path!”

The routine of the town changed overnight. Cart traffic, once heavier on Pickle Street and Albatross Road, was now almost entirely diverted to Lemon Street, which went right past the statue.

Lazy adolescents were suddenly inspired to run errands for their parents at the drop of a hat, though the time they spend dawdling in the courtyard turned a short trip to the butcher for a jar of fat into a three hour journey.

The businesses that faced the courtyard, once in danger of closing down, were now at a loss for where to store the large amounts of money they had acquired. Despite the fact that they sold things like tiny glass fish statues and clothes for ducks and a rather nasty form of pork gelatin than no one actually liked to eat, people were coming by as much as they could.

And the church was no exception. Its south door burst open on Sunday, full of citizens who had not seen the inside of a holy place since they woke up with hangovers and their underwear on their heads. Father Nod would have been happy to see the church so full, had happiness not been a grave sin. He allowed himself to be slightly pleased.

It took him twenty minutes to calm the congregation down to a point where he could actually be heard. He stood at the pulpit at looked at the sea of faces. “Brothers and sisters,” he began, “I have the most disturbing news to share with you.” He paused for effect. “The Devil himself is infiltrating our town, worming his way into the hearts and minds of everyone here!”

The simultaneous gasp sucked in by two hundred people at once caused the curtains to flutter.

Father Nod nodded. “Yes, yes. He is coming, and he has sent his minions before him. Right outside these doors lies a succubus so powerful that none but the most holy can resist her!” He thrust his pointed finger theatrically in the direction of the courtyard.

“I knew it!” cried a man from the middle of the rows of pews. “Agatha Hornsby! She looked at me and filled me with the Devil’s lust. I were powerless against her. It weren’t my fault my wife found us in Jack Roberts’ haystack three days later! It were her evil powers!”

Agatha Hornsby, a mildly attractive young woman with ginger hair, was actually inside the church, sitting near the back. She pulled her head scarf down to cover her eyes.

Father Nod waved his hand. “No, no. Not Agatha Hornsby. Though we will discuss the evils of adultery and having red hair later.” He leaned over the pulpit. “No, I am speaking of the marble atrocity that was erected in the shadow of God’s house!” When faced with hundreds of blank stares, he added, “The mermaid!”

It took another ten minutes to calm the chattering back down again. “I have seen you, yes, all of you, staring at her. She was put here to tempt you! To distract you from wholesome thoughts. To lure you into the Devil’s lair. And you’re all going willingly into her trap!”

Not wanting to sound like gullible sheep, excuses were created and shared with one another:

“Well, I was just taking my pig for a walk. Nothing wrong with that. I weren’t even lookin’ at her tits.”

“I can’t help it the small glass goldfish statue shop is right across from it. I need lots of small glass goldfish statues. ”

“We have a statue? What statue? Oh, that thing? I hadn’t even noticed it there.”

“So you see,” preached Father Nod, “you must find another path to the baker’s, and avert your eyes when you pass by the courtyard on your way to church every Sunday. Ignore the statue. Pay the Devil no mind.”

Many overenthusiastic cries of agreement resounded through the air while Father Nod went to fetch Bana to pass out the communion. The boy was nowhere to be found. He had slipped out the back door and was sitting on a rock in the empty courtyard, staring at the statue’s curves and stuffing himself with wafers.

Lily’s needlepoint work had taken a new turn recently. Pictures of flowers, birds, and horses had given way to buxom young women with fish tails swimming through sapphire seas, playfully touching each other’s shoulders… arms… breasts. Work was slow, her stitching impeded by several dozen paranoid looks over her shoulder every minute to see if her mother was watching.

She sang quietly to herself as she paid careful attention to the fine hourglass figure of a flaxen-haired siren. Jimmy Haskins had carried her basket home from the market that day. He had been thought of as the town dreamboat for three years now, and any girl would be delighted to have him carry something for her. But ever since the statue went up, Jimmy had become less and less attractive to Lily with each passing day.

Lily put her current project, three fish-tailed women in a rather graphic (but very artistically done) ménage à trois in the bottom of the wooden chest where she kept all her needlework projects. She brushed the ebony hair from her eyes and stared out the window into the courtyard. What a nice view of the… moon. That’s right – she was only looking at the moon. No curvaceous marble sea-woman with rose quartz nipples. The moon, with its pale, silvery surface, its round fullness, its seductive lips… Lily wasn’t actually looking at the moon for that last bit, her eyes having dropped down like they always did, to rest on the object of her obsession.

It seemed silly to be so infatuated with someone and not even know their name, so Lily gave one to the mermaid statue. Meranda.

“Lily! Dinner is ready!” her mother called. With one last wistful glance, Lily tore herself from the window to eat with her family.

The mayor was having a bit of a difficult time lately, if being thrown in jail can be called “a bit difficult.” Nobody came to visit him. Not even his wife, who’d left Breckton to live with her sister, wondering how she could have ever loved such a man.

Despite the fact that the taxpayers had vehemently requested something be built in the courtyard in place of the dead cat pile that had previously occupied the space, and despite the fact that they were the ones who thought up the idea of a giant statue, and despite the fact that it was his assistant who had hired the artist who constructed the statue, it was somehow all his fault for corrupting the town.

He was found to be guilty of moral ineptitude, and sentenced to be drawn and quartered.

He rather wished he was elsewhere.

Lily slept, having the most wonderful dream. She was a mermaid, gliding through the ocean water, her long, beautiful hair braided with pearls streaming out behind her as she swam. Best of all, she didn’t have to wear any clothes. No, best of all, none of the other mermaids had to wear any clothes!

They swam around her, singing songs in languages she had never heard before, high-pitched and lasting longer than the opera singer she had heard once. They held hands and danced, their colorful hair swirling around their faces.

And then, there was Meranda amid them all, in full color. Her hair was blue, almost green. Her tail was brown and gold. And her nipples, like the statue’s, were the perfect shade of pink. She swam to Lily, and reached out to her with webbed hands. She took hold of Lily’s face and drew her closer, closer, their faces nearly touching. And then—

The curtain flew open, letting the daylight in. “I called you three times,” Maisie the servant girl said. “Church starts in less than an hour.” Maisie left the room; Lily hadn’t felt comfortable having the girl dress her lately.

Lily reached under her pillow where she kept a special piece of needlework: a close up of Meranda’s face. She held it up, and after making sure Maisie had truly left the room, kissed the cloth lips.

Father Nod’s fiery sermons had changed the town quite a bit, particularly where it concerned the youth. After several months of hammering into parents’ heads the evils of the mermaid statue, they began to keep their kids indoors. The “bad apples” of the town hung out near the courtyard, while the good little girls and boys stayed inside and never went out except for church. They were freakishly pale, but their parents just took it to be a reflection of the new pure whiteness of their souls.

Nod had noticed that Bana was beginning to get a tan, but that was the least of his worries. They hadn’t had any communion last Sunday… How odd. He’d looked everywhere for it, and still, no bread. No wine. No… Bana. Where was that boy?

“Bana?” he called out, his voice echoing down the lonely, empty church hall. “Bana?”

Bana, as it turned out, had discovered that the steeple tower had an excellent view of the courtyard, and he and several of the tanner boys in town had stolen up there, sacred wine in hand, to sit by the bells, getting drunk and staring at the statue as if hypnotized.

Father Nod gave up searching for Bana after half an hour, and locked himself in his study to work on a proposal to have the statue torn down, as well as several speeches on the evils of red stockings and milk with too much cream in it.

Lily’s mother had decided that Lily was to be one of the pale children, and had a boy board up all but one of the windows. The one window that wasn’t boarded up was in her father’s study, and he kept the curtains drawn.

“It won’t be for long,” Lily’s mother assured her daughter. “I hear they’re tearing that damned thing down next week.” This made Lily depressed and mopey beyond normal, teenaged mopiness.

“You don’t ever do needlepoint anymore,” her mother noticed. “You should work on something for Harry Avesson. I saw him looking at you when we were leaving church. You make him something impressive enough, he might ask you to marry him. Won’t that be nice?”

But Lily didn’t want to make anything for the gap-toothed neighbor boy. And she certainly didn’t want to marry him. In fact, Lily blushed, she really wanted to marry a mermaid. She knew that Meranda wasn’t real, and it broke her heart, but what about other mermaids? Were they entirely fictional, the creations of drunken sailors’ dreams, or did beautiful women with fish tails actually live beneath the ocean water?

She had to find out for herself.

Once night fell, and her parents were loudly snoring in their bed, Lily put on her prettiest dress, grabbed a lantern, and stole out into the night.

One hundred youths stood in the courtyard that night: Lily in her pretty dress, Bana in his brown robe, pockets stuffed with flat round wafers, and dozens of others. They stood barefoot in the grass, looking up at the mermaid, their lantern light glowing on the shiny surface of the smooth white marble, getting lost in her deep black eyes.

One by one, each person climbed up the statue, wrapped their arms around her neck, and kissed her cold, stone lips. One by one, they dropped down, and walked down Lemon street to the dock. One by one, they threw themselves into the foamy water.

None of them knew that Father Nod had convinced the town council to tear down the statue the next morning. Something in the air just said it was time, and they all migrated to the sea.

Many families woke the next morning to find their children missing, the dock littered with discarded clothes and shoes and lanterns. Mothers fell to their knees wailing, and fathers hid their tears behind shaking hands.

“Good riddance,” said Father Nod when he was summoned for an impromptu mass funeral service by the seaside. “Our town can return now to the paragon of purity it once was.”

It wasn’t the best eulogy. In fact, it was rather an awful thing to say in the presence of hundreds of grieving parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends. Hundreds of eyes turned to glare at Father Nod. He swallowed hard.

The mermaid statue was not torn down, but it was buried in a deep hole in Hunter’s Field. Not because it was evil. With Father Nod run out of town, nobody gave much thought to that kind of thing. But it was horribly painful to look at it now that so many young men and women had drowned themselves over it.

At least, this was what the people of Breckton thought had happened.

Ninety-nine of the hormone-filled youths lived full, happy lives under the sea. Bana found himself a wild, voluptuous mer-girl with a shark tail and bright red hair. Lily married a pretty mermaid named Algonia, and they raised several adopted shrimps together.

Eric Clemson, the one who did not live a full, happy life, unfortunately ate some bad blowfish, and was found floating in the water three weeks later.

But statistically, this is as close to a happy ending as things ever get.

About the Author

Megan Rose Gedris is a comic artist and writer from Michigan. She wrote the first draft of this story when she was 17. She has a cat named Scrambles the Death Dealer. She loves The BBC.

Read her comics YU+ME: Dream and I Was Kidnapped By Lesbian Pirates From Outer Space! at her website rosalarian.com.