Letter 18

Dear [adult swim],

It rained and rained.

Did I ever tell you about the time it rained so much that I thought my house was going to wash away? I wasn't where I am now. I was in a much smaller house, and the yard on all sides sloped slightly downhill to my house. So every time it rained my yard flooded.

Well, on time it rained and rained for a whole summer. The clouds never parted and the water never stopped flowing. I didn't know where it was coming from. It just kept coming; an unholy torrent of rivers and streams and tidal waves pouring into my yard. From May 1st to August 20th the rain poured down.

I never got to go outside that whole summer. I still had to go to work though. I can't exactly remember how I managed that, but I was always there.

After the rain stopped my yard remained flooded for a week. As it slowly drained I became aware of a thing or a fish swimming about in the shallow waters. By the fifth day there were no more deepish places to hide and the fish was in danger of beaching due to loss of water. Finally she had to reveal herself to me.

"Michael," she said, "Do not be afraid for I am a mermaid."

I was dumbfounded. You always expect that you will know what to say and how to act when you are confronted with the mythological, but you are totally wrong. You cannot prepare yourself.

"Does my beauty frighten you?" she asked.

"Oh, uh, sure. We'll go with that." I didn't know what to day. I had definitely grown up with some expectations of what a mermaid would look like. I saw Splash with Darryl Hannah. I expected a hot, voluptuous woman with a fin where her legs would be. And... I guess she was... most of that.

"During the summer's long rain I was washed into your yard. And now the waters recede, but I cannot get back to the ocean. If you will save my life I will be your love slave forever."

"Really?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "And to show my sincerity let us make lover here and now."

"Great!" I said, when suddenly the waters began to fill up with a brown lumpy muck. "Oh god," I said. "What is that? Are you defecating?"

"No. Those are my eggs. Now to complete the sexual union you must fertilize them."

"Holy crap. Are you kidding? How many eggs is that?"

"Usually around 2 or 3 hundred thousand."

"WHAT?" I shouted. "Who do I look like, Abraham?* I don't need all those children."

"You do not wish to make love to me?"

"Well... kind of. But can't you, like, dry off, clean the poop off, and turn into a woman?"

"No. If I dry off I will just die and the whole place will stink of fish. The only way for us to make love is for you to spread your seed into the brine."

Long story short - I've got some mouths to feed.

Flushing those eggs down the toilet, "by accident" did not get rid of all of them. Most survived. True, about one hundred fifty thousand were eaten by a blue whale, which, if anyone asks, I am deeply grieved by, and about sixty thousand do not appear to be sentient merfolk at all, but an odd fish-man hybrid of a totally unmagical nature, but that still leaves somewhere in the neighborhood of ninty thousand offspring that showed up on my doorstep this weekend.

And FYI - when they dry off their fins they do turn into fully functioning human legs. That merbitch lied to me.

Anyway, I could use a job.

Michael

March 12, 2007

* sorry for the religious allusion. I was only trying to remain true to the actual conversation.