Five mermaid princesses – all sisters – pleading for the life of their youngest, despite the fact that she turned her back on her family and gave up so much for a chance to win the love of a mortal.

Their baby sister failed. She will die at sunrise unless they intervene.

Hair does not amount to very much in my line of work. You cannot use it as an ingredient in any potion, but it does make a great conversation piece. No, I took their hair to humiliate them. Long hair is the pride of all mermaids. How could a bitter old sea witch turn down the opportunity to take it away from a bunch of royal brats?

I cut it all off with my sharpest knife. Three of them took it without batting an eyelash, their pretty little jaws set in determination. How noble.

The fourth refused to meet my eyes as I relieved her of her pride and joy. The fifth, to my delight, burst into tears. She had been lurking in the back and quivering with terror ever since she and her sisters arrived.

I gave them the knife I used on their hair and a message to relay to their little sister. If she kills her Prince, she will resume her original form and return to the ocean.

A detail that I found too irrelevant to mention was the matter of her voice. I can’t reattach her tongue and make her sing again. A payment is a payment. Her voice was an exchange for the potion that made her mortal and gave her human legs. If all her womanly wiles didn’t win the man’s love, it wasn’t my problem.

My visitors left with great haste. Time was running out. At sunrise, I will know whether or not the child took my suggestion.

The denizens of the underwater kingdom call me the Sea Witch. I once had a name, but no one remembers it anymore. I am feared, but I play a necessary role in the kingdom. There has always been a Sea Witch. Our questionable services are in demand whether respectable merfolk will admit it or not. When it is time for me to go, there will be another to take my place.

Merfolk are not immortal; they live much longer than humans but they will die eventually. I’ve lived longer than most of them, long enough for them not to remember the mermaid I once was.

I was the one who killed the Queen for the love of the King.

You see, he promised to leave her for me but like all men above and below the water, he broke his promise. So I poisoned the Queen with venom I bought for the price of my hair. There was no need for them to punish me; I sealed my own fate with that deed.

Now I wait for sunrise, waiting as five princesses raced upwards to the surface. I wait for another lovelorn female to murder for love, for only then, can I finally rest.

Kill the Prince, my little mermaid. Kill the mortal Prince. The sun is rising.

Out of rock and sand
Is my resting place deep
A stone waits where I
Can lay my head down to sleep

Roads were travelled
And promises kept
Not all were well worth
The tears that I wept

I’ll sleep on my sins
Under a blanket of peace
I’ll dream of tomorrows
That for me won’t exist

Consider this… where ever you go, you’ll always have a place to rest your head. Pillows will naturally come with pillow cases, which are extremely useful for bagging snakes and substituting as the revered towel. It even does a great job flagging down passing spaceships.

You should never underestimate the power of a pillow. That braggart knight sure did, until I beat the.. uh… stuffings out of him with my pillow. I proceeded to suffocate him with it, then rob him blind and bagged everything in the trusty pillow case. The pillow suffered in the skirmish and was leaking goose down when I set up camp that night.

But that’s all right. When I get to the next village, I will buy myself another pillow (and pillow cases too) before I set off on another adventure. I hear that the prospects are good over in the next planet. I’ll flag down a spaceship.

(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis – 2/23/2003 12:44:09 AM)

Ever since that dream, my birthdays were extra special… in a morbid way. Perhaps I’ll be run over by a bus while trying to cross the road. Maybe I’ll die of food poisoning. Maybe I’ll fall off a cliff or drown in the pool. I hated it when my birthday came around.

Oh, and I hated dreams too.

Hallie and Ursula – my best friends in the world – wanted to treat me to a birthday dinner at Earth/Spirit. It’s a cosy Chinese café hidden somewhere in town and one of our favourite haunts.

After spending the day avoiding anything that could kill me, I reluctantly (and very carefully) drove to town to meet them. More accidents happen at night; more so if it was raining.

It was raining, of course.

There was a moment of panic when I tried to remember if I was supposed to pick them up along the way, but the feeling only lasted a few minutes. I was already running late, which is normal if I was on my own. Anyway, they would have called.

By the time I arrived at the café, I’ve had two frights involving a car that cut too close and a pedestrian who apparently never saw me coming, not even after I skidded and almost ran into a lamp post.

If an accident didn’t kill me, the shock of it probably would have. I was only happy to enter the small eatery and see the girls at our usual table in the back.

“You’re looking peaky. Are you feeling all right?” Ursula asked.

I scowled as I slipped off my shoes and joined them at the Japanese-style table. “I spent the entire day waiting to die.”

They stared at me. Ursula spoke first. “Y’know, that sounds kinda funny coming from someone who’s already dead.”

It only made me scowl harder. “That is not funny.”

“Well, no. But there you have it. You are dead.” Hallie said. “You died in a car crash exactly five year ago, on your birthday.”

Silence.

I bit my tongue to make sure it was still there. “So why are you…” I groped for words. “Why are you sitting here… with…”

Ursula had already gone back to her menu. “Oh, we’re dead too.” She said, a little too casually. “Same car crash.”

“Don’t you remember?” Hallie burst out. “You picked us up. We were heading here for dinner. And it started to rain.”

Her words hung heavy over the low table. A stone sat in the pit of my stomach. My mind swirled as I tried to make some sense out of it.

“Yes. Yes, I remember now.” I answered, closing my eyes. It wasn’t enough to block out the sudden crash of memories. “The four wheeler coming from the other direction…”

“Dying on your birthday must have addled your brain. You’re the only one who has trouble remembering this every year.” Ursula said, being her usual blunt and unsympathetic self. “Nonetheless, the show must go on. Order your food.”

I leafed through the menu without really seeing anything. “I think I’ve lost my appetite.”

“Order something anyway. It’ll be a year before we can eat again.”

“What happened to those huge spreads they have in honour of the dead?”

Hallie leaned forward. “There’s a reason why they call this place Earth/Spirit.” She said. “Why fight with the other ghosts when you can sit down and order at leisure? We’ve always appreciated good food and service.” She paused for effect. “Sitting in here is better than being out there where they are showing that same old Chinese wayang again. I didn’t even like them when I was alive.”

“Aren’t you guys mad because I took you with me?”

The girls exchanged looks. Ursula rolled her eyes in a manner that said, “Kathy doesn’t remember that either.”

“We got over it.” Hallie shrugged. “Anyway, it was an accident.”

“Could have been worse.” added Ursula.

I gave her an incredulous glare. “How could it be worse than this?”

“It could have been just one of us.” Came the reply. “Then we won’t be able to get this three-in-one Spirit special.”

There was another silence before we dissolved into laughter.

“Let’s order then.” I said, settling down properly for the first time since I arrived. “I’m hungry.”