Joy

It rained on the day I found love. They say that you can fall in love many times over, to different people throughout your life. Not me. For me, love happened one time only; a singular experience never to be repeated, and a luxury I now only possess in memory.

It had, in fact, been raining heavily for some time, the sky persistently grey, like the moods of people on the street, who were just as sick as I was with the whole umbrella routine and the leaden puddles that stretched across the pavement, soaking your legs, umbrella or not.

I tend to live the simple life, for the simple reason that I’m too frightened to do anything else. Visits to pubs are a rarity for me, and foreign holidays are nothing but a pipedream that I’ll ponder on for a couple of minutes, before realising that I don’t have a passport, and it would be a big step leaving home for a week. You know where you are at home. You know what to expect. There’s no one else around to make you nervous.

As I whiled away the days watching the rain stream down my front room window in a way that made the glass seem to melt, I became all too aware of my self-imposed isolation.

I’d spend hours slumped inside my armchair, watching television or reading a book, my pet cat draped across my lap like a warm pillow. This was the life of a bachelor, and the reality of a loner.
One day I looked out of my kitchen window and saw something tangled in the branches of the tree in my back garden. Arming myself with a broom, I braved the doom-laden rain, and proceeded to prod the disconcertingly large object. It was almost entirely covered in seaweed; strings of the vegetation hung beneath it like the tentacles of a jellyfish. It reminded me of stories I’d heard recently, of people waking up to discover fresh falls of small fish in their gardens. Apparently, it wasn’t just water being sucked up from the Atlantic.

The thing in the tree started to give. I prodded it a bit more with the broom; and then gravity got the better of it, and it suddenly plummeted to earth. I let go of the broom and it fell into my arms. Much of the seaweed had slid off. At one end of the object, a pale face, feminine and beautiful, looked up at me, blinking. And at the other end, a silvery, iridescent tail flapped weakly.

I carried the creature into my house and placed her on my sofa. I cleaned most of the vegetation clinging to her body with a towel. Her mouth moved slightly; it looked as though she were miming something. Unsure of what to do, I fetched a glass of water, which she downed in one go. “Thank you,” she croaked.

“You can speak?” I asked, amazed.

She turned her head on the cushion; a strand of auburn hair fell across her eye. “Why, of course. I’m a mermaid.”

“But how did you get here?”

The mermaid looked away then, her gaze wandering. “I was at home,” she murmured. “In the sea, and then I became happy and floated up into the clouds.”

I shook my head in bewilderment, and was about to ask her for clarification when she took my hand and placed it onto her soft belly. She looked into my eyes. “I’m hungry,” she told me. So I cooked some fish fingers. I sat on the floor, and we ate them from the same plate with our hands.

My cat then padded into the front room, his face screwing up into a furry scowl when he sensed the presence of the newcomer. But he instantly warmed to her, and took a keen interest in the lower half of her body, while I appreciated all of it, so I banished him from the house and into the back garden, where he darted for the cover of the bushes, sulking.

Her name was Joy. She took my hand again, holding it in hers. We smiled at each other.

Days passed. Due to her being half fish and all, she took up residence in my bath. I’d stay with her, sitting on the edge of the bath, looking into her eyes. “Are you happy here,” I asked her one time.

She smiled. “Yes, my love. I’m with you.”

My love. Words I thought I’d never hear spoken to me. Joy invited me into her watery bed, and we embraced for what seemed a lifetime. I fell asleep in her arms.

I awoke some time later, aroused by the sensation of my head sinking into something soft and light, like jelly. I pushed myself up. Something was wrong. Joy was smiling, and was gazing up towards the bathroom ceiling, as though she were in a daze. In the middle of her chest was a smooth indentation about the size of my head. I jumped out of the bath, panicking. Her body quivered in the cold bath water; it seemed to deliquesce. In horror, I ran from the bathroom, grabbing an armful of towels, dropping them on the floor, picking them up again, and then wondering what the hell I was going to do with them, anyway.

The ominous sound of gurgling came from the bathroom. I rushed to the aid of my mermaid lover. Evidently, my foot had caught the plug on my way out of the bath: I watched, devastated, as her watery form spilled down the plughole. The last I saw of her was her hand receding along with the last of the bath water, as if she were waving goodbye.

Joy was happy, I realised; she was in love (with me!) and quite literally turned to mush. For just a short moment, we had become one.

I imagined her rushing through the pipes, into the sewers. In time she’d be back in the sea, hopefully sad enough to become whole again. If I was made of the right stuff, and had an adventurous heart, I’d probably roam the coast, adrift in a rubber dinghy and crying her name, as any real bare-chested hero would. But I’m not.

So here I am, back in my armchair, underneath the reassuring weight of my cat, who has forgiven my treachery. I am in my place. I watch the television. I read a book.
And I pray for rain.