The Mermaid's Treasure -1- (Patreon)

“We’d better hurry, it’s beginning to rain,” Edgar called to me as we pedaled along the path by the beach road north of St. Augustine. In fact, it had already been misting for several minutes but now rain came down in torrents so heavy the pavement almost disappeared in the wet grayness. To the east, the falling water made a hissing roar as it fell on the brush and swampland.

“You mean it’s beginning to rain harder,” I shouted, not wasting any energy looking back. We had left our houses to pedal down to the convenient store half an hour before and were on the way back. “Wow, look at those waves!” There were houses on our left and a berm beside the bike path separated us from the beach which was being lashed with some enormous waves. The sea itself was much more interesting than my seventh grade buddy following behind me.

“Fra-ank!” he complained. Then, “Frank!” a shout, a scream?

I did start to look back to see what had him so disturbed when I realized that the roadway ahead of me had opened up, the asphalt and concrete falling away as a wave burst up through the pavement. The beach, the berm and the road itself were just gone!

The gap had filled with green water, gray foam and black asphalt. I tried to stop but the maw of the pit raced toward me and then I and my bike were in the torrent with slabs of rock and pieces of broken rebar slapping at me. The noise was louder than a jet plane and seemed to hit me with just as much force as the foaming flood.

“God forgive me for my sins, “ I thought as a wave took me down, down and out to sea. Holding my breath or trying to swim were useless but I made the attempts until something hit me in the forehead just above my eyes and the world blinked out.

* * *

You don’t live in Florida without knowing about sinkholes, some of them large enough to swallow a car or a house. They can open up almost anywhere since Florida is basically sitting on top of a big chunk of rotten limestone which can be dissolved or worn away by water. It’s a danger you don’t pay much attention to because there is so little you can do to avoid it. Some areas are more risky than others but it can happen almost anywhere in the state.

I wasn’t thinking of sinkholes when I woke up on the beach but I got around to it eventually. Not that a sinkhole could explain everything that happened to me. Far from it.

I became aware of being wet, lying on sand and feeling a cold wind all over. Shivering, I tried to roll over and sit up but I didn’t seem to have the strength. I didn’t remember being washed off the beach road at first but nothing made sense anyway.

I opened my eyes and quickly closed them again, it was painfully bright out there.

I heard shouting. “Someone’s alive.” The accent sounded odd, but tourists are everywhere in Florida. “It’s a mermaid!” the voice added.

I tried to shout back but all that came out was gagging and choking as I realized I had a mouthful of sand. Don’t throw up, don’t throw up, I kept telling myself as I felt hands grab me.

“Godamighty,” said the rough voice in my ear. “She’s nekkid!” Asking ‘she who’ occurred to me but I was too busy coughing and pushing hair out of my face.

“And cold as ice,” said a new, smoother, voice, making ‘ice’ come out almost as ‘oiss’ like someone exaggerating a Brooklyn sound. “But not a mermaid unless mermaids have legs.”

Some sort of rags were quickly wrapped around me and someone lifted me off the cold sand with a grunt. I put one hand around the neck of whoever it was and again pulled hair out of my face with the other. I pried my eyes open to look but it was black hair so I knew it wasn’t mine.

“We gonna take her back to the ship, O’Reilly?” the rough voice asked with a note of unbelief.

“Roight,” said the voice whose name seemed to be O’Reilly. “What else?” He began walking and I realized that I was cradled in his arms. I felt an arm behind my knees and another under my neck and shoulders.

I managed to keep my eyes open long enough to look up into a face framed with red-blond hair and beard and featuring some of the bluest eyes I had ever seen. “Ye’re all right, miss,” said O’Reilly smiling at me and showing dimples in the fur.

I wanted to look around but he was definitely talking to me. “I’m, I’m, I’m….” I stammered.

He broke into a trot. “We need to get her somewhere warm,” he told his companion.

“We could take her to the bushes between those rocks,” the second man suggested.

Her? She? Miss? They were talking about me, weren’t they? I felt confused and even more confused when I located the jiggling sensation I was feeling as coming from my chest. I looked down my body and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I grabbed a wad of hair and tried to throw it behind me to get a better look.

“And light a fire?” asked O’Reilly. “I think taking her to the ship will be quicker, Babbitt.” His trotting across the sand picked up speed and I felt more jiggling.

Under the wrapping that appeared to be a coat or some such, I thought I saw two large white globes. Breasts? I didn’t only see them, I felt them bouncing a bit with each step. What the heck?

Babbitt, if that was the other man’s name, agreed with O’Reilly’s suggestion, “We could light a fire. But I meant we could take turns, ye could go first, Davey. I don’t mind taking seconds.”

Groggy and confused as I was, that suggestion penetrated. If they thought I was a girl….

I flinched and struggled in O’Reilly’s grasp. “No! NO!” I cried out.

“Goddam you, Amos Babbitt! She heard that!” O’Reilly stopped trotting and tried to keep hold of me.

“Of c-course I heard it! I’m r-right here!” I had one arm around his neck, having put it there automatically, apparently. With the other hand, I tried to check what I seemed to see under the coat.

Yikes!

They were real.

“No one’s going to hurt you…” O’Reilly was saying.

While Babbitt protested, “If we take her to the Adeline, we’ll have to share her with all the men!”

And I was screaming, “Put me down, let me go, put me down!” I kicked and squirmed for all I was worth and even tried to punch O’Reilly in the face but I didn’t have the angle… or the strength to do more than push at him feebly. I opened my hand, determined to try to claw him in the face while with the other hand tangled in his hair, I yanked and pulled and kept screaming.

O’Reilly did what I asked, more or less—he dropped me.

I landed, unhurt, on my butt in the sand and experienced the most amazing sensation that totally distracted me from what else was going on. Have you ever had sand in the crack of your ass? Have you ever had sand get into some other crevice that you had not known you possessed?

I sat there making fish faces for several seconds, trying to figure out what exactly had just happened. O’Reilly dropped both coats over me while continuing an argument with Babbitt. I pulled the larger coat across my body and sort of scooted so I was sitting on the other. The coats were more or less filthy with tar and maybe fish guts but it was better than sitting on the sand, believe me.

I felt around inside the coat wrapped around me and confirmed that I had two large globular masses hanging from my chest, each bigger than two hands could hold, softer than pillows and with nubbly protrusions at the front. Nipples. From there my waist got narrower then my hips and ass flared out into a big round bottom, wider than my shoulders. I checked and found nothing between my legs except some hair and sand and nearer the back than I expected, a damp and sandy crevice with fleshy feeling, uh, lips. 

I really had no idea what a woman or girl felt like down there but I knew that I shouldn’t feel like that, I was a boy!