Last Orders

I motioned for the barmaid to put another whiskey in my glass. It was a foul night and most of the sailors had been adding to my profits since the afternoon. Heavy wind always makes for a certain restless, wild behaviour and I could see an argument brewing between two of my regulars over their games of cards. Greek Paulie had lost the last four hands and the set of his jaw became more aggressive with every card that seemed to be taking his opponent to another victory.

'Trouble's gonna happen over there, Sam' I said to the guy sitting next to me at the bar. Sam's the equivalent of a human Rottweiler, for a bit of leeway with his tab he enforces an unruly kind of peace when a fight breaks out over money, a girl or who had away someone's last bit of tobacco.

'They say Paulie's still got a beef against Vince for recommending that girl from the house down the round.'

'Yeah, how long was he visiting the doctors for? Poor bastard. Enough to piss off anyone that, recommending a girl with the clap.'

'She's new, seen her before? Just come in.'

'No, but she's gonna have the boys queuing up, and no mistake' She was very pretty, beautiful even, but utterly drenched, her flimsy green dress plastered against her skin. Her bare feet had left a trail of water on the floor.

'Would you believe the silly bitch isn't even wearing any shoes¦on a night like this!'

'Yeah, but have you seen her eyes, look at them.'

Sam was right they were an oddly compelling greeney-blue, and most of the drinkers had noticed the newcomer. Greek Paulie and Vince had even laid down their cards, and Vince was waving a note at her. A couple of guys followed suit, not wanting to be outdone by Vince, then more joined in, waving their money and shouting at this girl. Tarts came in quite a lot looking for trade, but tonight was so awful that there had only been a couple in earlier and none since the early evening. This girl though, just stood there mutely as the guys shouted and beckoned. I wondered which she would choose, and for how much ' the prices the men were offering were creeping higher and higher.

I got the barmaid to pour me and Sam another round of drinks.

Vince pushed back his chair and went up to her, putting his arm around her waist and trying to kiss her. She tried to push him away, gesturing with her hands, and his barely suppressed anger stated to surface. He thrust the notes into her face and she brushed them away. The bar looked on. Vince then shoved her backwards towards the door. He was muttering intensely into her ear, but I couldn't catch what he was saying, and after no-one could remember.

She struggled feebly against him, and then gave into his caresses, then pushed him away.

'What are you, a fucking mermaid? Or is my money not good enough for you?

Vince raised his hand back and slapped her, hard. She reeled and fell, then got to her feet again, still without saying a word. Reaching towards her, he wrenched at the neck of her dress and tore it all the way down.

'There, is that whats so fucking precious, what you've been trying so hard to avoid showing me.'

Her body was a strange, almost pearly white and completely hairless. He lunged to grab her again, but Greek Paulie sprang up and pushed him aside.

'She don't want you Vince, any cunt can see that. Why should you hog her to yourself?'

This was echoed by cries of 'yeah selfish fucker' and 'why shouldn't we all get a chance'. And in less time than I could have credited, the bar had turned into a brawl. Men punched, kicked and bit their friends and brothers as well as their enemies. Occasionally a guy would try and grab the girl, who just stood there as the chaos whirled about her, and would immediately be smacked down by the other men. Even Sam, instead of stopping the mess was involved in it, attacking viciously and being attacked as viciously in return. Some men were lying unconscious on the floor, and there were cries and blood pooling as the knives were brought out and slipped between ribs or gouged into bodies and faces. The barmaid, terrified, had already fled, and I followed her, locking all the doors on the way upstairs, and wincing at the smashing of my furniture. We would probably not be open for business tomorrow.

It went on like this for another ten minutes, and then there was a sudden stillness. I had taken my gun from beside my bed, and egded downstairs into the bar with it, ready to shoot at any moment. Bewildered, bloody men lent over their dead and injured friends. Glass and knives lay abandoned, teeth lay in blood. Blood everywhere, all over the men, the walls, the ceilings, the bar was soaked with the stuff.

The girl was nowhere to be seen.

In the aftermath of the fight, the girl was asked for everywhere. None of the other girls had seen or heard of her, and she hadn't been in any of the other waterfront bars. It remained a strange mystery that the community tried to forget as soon as possible. At first I thought Vince had been killed, like Greek Paulie who died with a blade through his neck and his cards in his pocket, but his body wasn't there. He wasn't around the area either. Sam and some of the others said they saw him knife Paulie, his friend since they both started working the docks as boys, and we all thought the guilt had driven him away, to another bar in another port where he was probably busy drinking himself to death.

Three years afterward, when the fight was only occasionally referred to in underhand whispers by curious, half-informed newcomers and the new paint had yellowed and started to peel, I got talking to an old guy propping up the bar. He'd come in earlier, and told me he was a ships cook. Being doing it since he was old enough to persuade a captain to let him on board, like his father before him, which was nigh on fifty years now. He said one of the younger men had a friend who was killed in a bar brawl around here. It was a slow night, and I was drunker than I should have been, so I told him about what happened here. He was intrigued and quizzed me again about the girl, and when I told him about Vince's disappearance he went quiet for a while. Then he told me about a legend he'd heard as a young man in the Pacific Islands, of a female sea spirit that would bewitch men, leading them into a frenzy, about bloody ship mutinies and vicious fights amongst fishermen that the survivors blamed on this girl. But always he said, you could tell of her presence because always, always one man would disappear, chosen by her, to go god knows where. I though of what Vince had said that night,

"You mean like a bloody mermaid?

"You could call it that I suppose, a deadlier version.

I remembered Vince's face, hardened by the harsh weather and harsher life, but familiar, a friend, and felt a chill at the thought of him magicked away to some sort of supernatural watery fate, far more horrifying than even the crazed violence of that night.

Of all the fucking bars in all the world, a bloody mermaid had to walk into mine.