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The picture needed a story so here it is:

“Mermaids are just so amazing,” he burbled over his drink. You and he had met at the bar and had spent several hours chatting about this and that.  

“So lithe and sexy,” you had to agree.  

You’d been a bit mermaid crazy since you were a child. Your mom made you several mermaid Halloween costumes over the years. Once you learned to sew, you even created one to swim in until the pool decided that they were ‘too dangerous’.

 “I’d just love to have my own little mermaid,” he burbled.

You, for your part, felt dizzy. You’d had several drinks over the course of the evening and, though you were sure you’d stayed within your limits, realized you’d maybe had just a touch too much.  He noticed your dizziness.

“Are you okay?” he asked solicitously.

“Uh,” was all you managed. “I think so. I need to get to the …” was all you managed before the world greyed out.

You awoke, head banging from way too much alcohol the night before.

“I couldn’t just leave you collapsed at the bar,” he announced. “And you and I both love mermaids so much, I thought you’d not mind us taking it to the next step once you awoke.”

“Uh. Oh,” was all you managed around the air mask strapped to your face.

You were floating underwater in a tank. You panicked. A natural enough reaction. Your body didn’t respond. Nothing seemed to be working or at least not at normal speed. It was as if you were trapped in clear jelly even though it looked like water.

“You love mermaids,” he stated. “So do I.”

You felt odd. Floating in jelly wasn’t the only thing that felt weird. Your body felt like it was being twisted slowly from inside. Turning your head, you noticed something shiny and white hanging between your strangely small legs. The air hose made it hard to this your head but the thing, whatever it was, felt as if it were part of you. With a shock, you realized what it was. You were growing a mermaid tail!

Slowly, you brought your arms up through the jelly. Your fingers were strangely long and thin and there were far too many of them. The extra ones were long and thin with nary a knuckle in them. There was a bridge of white skin of some sort connecting them. Fins. Fish fins.

You tried to kick out with your legs only to discover they were unresponsive. Twisting about, you got a better look at them. They ended just both the knees and had developed long flowing white fish fins as well. The skin on your thighs was being replaced by white scales. As was the skin on your forearms.

Over the next few hours, he appeared several times outside the tank, his image distorted by the strange jelly around you. Each time he took measurements of some sort and would return some time later, make an adjustment and leave. Each time, you could taste a strange metallic or chemical taint. Each time, it faded over a few minutes. You struggled, of course. But the jelly made it increasingly difficult.

After several hours, your hands were completely gone. Your forearms now ended in long white fins. A colleague at work kept a blue betta on her desk so you recognized the shape of the fins. Your legs had vanished entirely, shrinking into your belly. They’d slowly changed into the long flowing pectoral fins of a betta as well. Your body ended at the waist attached to the body of a platinum white betta. You were still pretty much human coloured above the waist with only a few whitish scales colouring your tummy.

“You’re a bit too large for the desktop,” he stated on his penultimate visit. “I guess we’ll need to do something about that.”

For the next few hours, you felt dizzy. One of the first changes was that the jelly liquified. You found yourself literally hanging by the face mask, afraid to do anything lest you drown. Shortly afterwards, you noticed the mask loosening. Dribbles of the water (if it was water), were leaking inside. You realized that somehow, you were shrinking. Eventually, the seal broke and you found yourself with a mouthful of strange tasting water. You quickly held your breath but soon realized the folly of that. You couldn’t hold your breath forever. You loved mermaids but never really wanted to be one permanently. They were imagination, for costuming, not for life.

You soon found yourself running out of breath and, involuntary, gulped the water into your lungs. Instead of the expected coughing fit, you could feel the water escaping from slits in your sides. He’d given you gills! You were more fish than person now. Releasing your death grip on the now useless mask, you allowed yourself to float in the tank. The world around you seemed to slowly grow but it wasn’t hard to figure out that you were shrinking.

A loud scratching noise announced the removal of the top of the tank. A huge net deftly scooped her from the tank. Her new gills burned from the dry air but it was only for a few moments. You were now barely a meter in length including your flowing fins. Cradled in the net (wielded, you discovered, not by human hands but by more powerful robotic arms), you were transported across what was clearly a lab and dumped unceremoniously in a large tank beside a cluttered work desk. It was furnished with what looked like corals and seaweed but, when you swam over to them, you discovered they were just plastic. The floor was mostly bare glass.

“Don’t worry,” his voice distorted through the walls of your aquarium. “We’ll get you some proper furnishings soon, my little mermaid.”

Photo Credits:
Woman: https://www.deviantart.com/wildplaces
Fish: https://www.deviantart.com/KyannaChan