SEA FEVER
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
[NOTE: The evolutionary theory espoused in this story is quite legitimate. I personally think the evidence for it is pretty slim, but it is NOT something I made up.]
There is a primal fever that burns within when a man looks at the ocean. There is something that is--kindred--about the waves, the smell of the salty swells, the way the roaring of the waves and the whistle of the wind tell secrets directly to your innermost soul. You listen to the waves, you feel the spray on your cheeks, you walk upon decks that are moved by the water beneath you...and you are lost. Land can never again totally own you, your heart belongs to another medium, and it must share you, a joint-custody arrangement.
At the time this began, I was looking at the water, the way the blue waves were a slightly-darker shade of blue than the rest of the water, and the waves darkened more as they approached land, to suddenly blossom with white and jump down onto themselves. Every fourth or fifth wave was a bit larger than the others, I noticed; funny how it works that way, you'd think all the waves would be the same size. That's what I was doing, musing on the mystery of the waves.
Well, actually, I was getting a drink at the tavern near the dock. When, in response to a question from the bartender, I replied that I was planning to head my sailboat out to Tarbor Cove, it seemed to stir one old geezer's innards, for he sat up, stung, and said, "Tarbor Cove! Why in tarnation would you want to head out to Tarbor Cove?"
Tarbor Cove is a small, bay-shaped piece of land, but it has a barrier reef at its mouth and no decent place to land anywhere around it; it is a nearly landlocked (but not quite) piece of water where nobody ever goes, and for damned good reason. A boat smaller than mine usually doesn't have a sail (and it's too far from civilization to row there) and a boat much larger than mine wouldn't be able to make it through the barrier reef. So it was pretty much no-man's-land, and I was determined to seize it as a place to be alone for a time, just me and the water.
I shrugged. "I'm on vacation. It's private and quiet. Looks like a good place to put down anchor for a while, and just fish and swim and take it easy." Away from everybody, too, though I didn't say that.
"Fellow, you don't want to go out to Tarbor Cove!" the old man said.
"Aw, come on, Zeke, nobody here wants to hear about your mermaid."
"Merman!" Zeke snarled. "This one wasn't a girl, I keep telling you!"
I perked up, intrigued despite myself. As I said, there's something about the sea that gets into your blood. You want to be with it and live with it. Trouble is, if it gets too deep into your blood, you go bonkers like old Zeke seemed to be, and start seeing sea serpents and mermaids and Bermuda-Triangle-type stuff. "What's this about a merman?" I asked.
"Don't get him started." someone said.
"Too late, he's already going." another one said.
"There goes the next half hour, shot to shit!" a third bewailed. But nobody left, I noticed.
"It's just a story." the bartender said.
"It is not!" Zeke said. "I've seen it on one of those nature documentaries. The merpeople are real!"
"Barnum's fake monkey-fish doesn't count." scoffed someone.
"This wasn't Barnum, it's a real scientific fact. The merpeople are our ancestors. We crawled up on the land, they stayed behind in the sea."
"What's this?" I asked.
"Aw, don't encourage him!" that third guy said.
"Ever wondered why we're the hairless ape?" Zeke said.
I shrugged. "Because we're born without a lot of hair?" I ventured. That got a laugh.
"No, because our ancestors spent some time back in the ocean. However long ago it happened, our ape ancestors chose to get back into the ocean. First they were just swimming around in it, but after a while, they actually began to live in it, for oh, probably hundreds of thousands of years. During that time, we lost our hair, because hair soaks up water and weighs us down; slows us up. Our legs straightened out and got bigger and stronger, to help propel us through the water. Then we crawled back onto land again and used our legs to run instead of swim. We even still have vestigial webbing between the fingers of our hands."
I looked at my hand, spread my fingers. "I don't see it."
"That little flap between your fingers." Zeke insisted. "It's bigger between your index finger and thumb. Look at it!"
I stretched out my hand. "Well, I see a tiny ridge if I hold my thumb right."
"That's it!" Zeke crowed. "Used to be our fingers were connected with webs just like a duck's toes. We got back on land and it got in our way, so it went away. But we kept the wider hand and the opposable thumb. Helped us become intelligent, having a hand that can actually hold on to things well. If it wasn't that we used to need that web for swimming, our thumb would'a stayed up next to the other four fingers, the way a chimp's does."
"I guess so." I didn't feel like arguing with him.
"So you agree that mankind spent some time on land, went back to the ocean, and then came back onto the land and got intelligent?"
"If you say so."
"Well, the merpeople are the apes that didn't get back out of the water again. They stayed in there, got better at being swimmers. I met one at Tarbor's Cove over fifty years ago. He came up to me right at sunset. They like sunset, the sun doesn't dry out their skin so quickly. Somehow or other, he had learned English, spoke a real old version of it, like they would have spoken at Plymouth Rock, full of 'thee's' and 'thou's'. But I understood him, and we talked every day for the two weeks I was there. He helped chase fish into my fishing net and we became good friends. But they're shy around strangers."
"Then why did he come up and start jabbering to you?" someone asked.
Zeke flushed. "If you're all going to poke fun at me, I'm not going to say anything else."
"I have to go anyway." I said, getting up and dropping a five on the bar for my two drinks and not waiting for change. "I need to set sail if I'm going to catch the tide."
"Mind you keep away from Tarbor's Cove!" Zeke warned me.
I ignored him. He probably wanted to keep all the fish there for himself.
I scraped the hull of my boat getting inside Tarbor Cove, a bigger boat or one with a fragile keel would have been in real trouble. And it was too far for any kind of rowboat to get out to here. Which was the point, of course; this cove was unused because nobody could get into it unless they had a boat just my size. I got inside it and looked at the sun. Only about a half hour until setting. Enough time to do a bit of quick fishing; I could spear a fresh fish for supper and then settle in for the night.
I got on my scuba gear and my spear-gun and dove down. The water wasn't as clear underneath as I had thought; I had only seen Tarbor Cove from a distance. It wasn't dirty or murky, but I could only see about twenty feet ahead of me before it blurred out to blobs. Probably how old Zeke saw a merman, he had seen a dolphin (they look a lot like people in the water) or a manatee (the front-runner for the spark of the mermaid legends) in this murk and decided it was human.
Like that over there, some sort of seal, or dolphin or...I looked. Damn, I owed Zeke an apology. That looked just like a person! Before I could see anything else, though, it was gone into the blurred void beyond. I shook my head--shouldn't listen to the old salts, they're half crazy from all the sun hitting them while out on the water day after day, they spend too long at sea at a time, trying to catch fish, and get to imagining things. The sea is full of life; it's easy to let a piece of seaweed turn itself into a sea serpent, or a blob of coral become a sunken pirate ship.
I looked about, a sea bass wasn't very far away. Smaller than I preferred, but it would do, and I needed to get back above-water; I shot it clean and hauled it, still wiggling feebly, back to the boat. Yeah, this was going to be a good vacation. So long as I didn't start imagining things in the water.
I saw that whatever-it-was twice more the next morning while diving and exploring the area; never as clearly as I did that first day, but enough that I convinced myself it was a dolphin, playing around with me. I never saw it surface, but then wild dolphins aren't as chummy with people as everyone wants you to believe; they keep a safe distance.
About eleven o'clock in the morning, I decided to take in the combination of tide and rock at low tide to get in a little time on some dry land; the bob of a sailboat can wear on you after a time, and you yearn for solid earth. There was a small sort of wave-smoothed rock-shelf there, big enough to let me stretch out and lie comfortable. The rising water of high tide would come around sunset, so if I fell asleep, it would waken me in time to swim back to my ship. I'm a light sleeper; I didn't expect to get into trouble by trusting the tide to awaken me before drowning me.
I moved my ship over as close as I dared (the sea was quite shallow there, I had to stop nearly a hundred feet away from my chosen sunbathing place, and I swam over and stretched out on the level area as well as I could, wishing I'd thought to bring over a towel in a Baggie. But the rock was dry and washed smooth by the waves, I'd manage. I used the bottle of fresh water I'd brought with me to rinse the worst of the salt from my body, then lay down, and tried to get comfortable. I was fine, except that the wet swimsuit bugged me, and itched too. Too much salt water trapped in it.
I decided to say to hell with it, stripped it off and tossed it up on the highest point around. I'd count on a wave not washing it away before I woke up. It did feel better without the swimsuit on me. I squeezed a little water out of my drinking bottle which I'd also brought to rinse my groin and buttocks, and then lay back down. The sun dried me off and I felt good, warm, drowsy and pleasantly tired. As I expected, I fell asleep.
I awoke to the sound of laughter. One voice, a bit high-pitched, at first I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, and it was more like a giggle. I jerked awake and looked up. A man was in the water, looking at me, laughing. His hair was long and white, but he wasn't old. It didn't look dyed that color, either, too many subtle tones in it for a bleach job gone awry. My first thought was that he was an albino, except in that case he'd have very pale skin and avoid the sun like the plague, and his skin was as deep brown as my own. He was standing in the water near me (the water around this spot wasn't at all deep), visible from the waist up, and I saw a well-muscled body, totally hairless, his body glistening with the beads of water. How had he splashed over to me without me hearing him? I'm a light sleeper, as I said!
"Hello!" he said. Yes, his voice was pretty high-pitched, like a boy whose voice hadn't changed. Just like his hair, it was something odd about him.
"Hello." I said.
"Asleep?" he asked.
"Uh, yeah." I said. "I was getting some sun." I noticed that the water was climbing; high tide was nearly upon us and the sun near to setting. "What are you doing out here?"
He made a nod of his head. "I live here."
"I didn't think anybody lived here." I said.
"I live here."
Some beach bum, I supposed, had built a shack on the rocks and I hadn't seen it. No matter.
He dove back into the water and I saw he had some kind of gear on his back, but I didn't get a good look at it. The rock had a rather steep drop-off at this point, he was still up to his knees in the water though only a few feet away now. And now I could see everything, like, that he was as naked as I was!
I smiled. Comrades in our pursuit of the natural lifestyle. "You decided to go naked, too, I see." I said.
"Yes." he smiled.
"Where are your clothes?" I asked him, curious.
He gave that funny nod again, and said, "I don't wear clothes."
"Oh." I said, smiled. "Well, they are a nuisance, aren't they?"
"I never wear clothes." he said firmly.
"No reason to." I agreed. I was checking out his cock, of course, who wouldn't in a situation like this? He had a nice piece of meat there, and it was rising up as he noticed my looking at it.
He was walking up to me all the time he was talking. I stayed where I was, noticing that his cock was beginning to become less a dangling blob of flesh and more of a waving pole in front of him, pointing and questing about as if sniffing for something to plug into.
So I wasn't surprised when he made it up next to me, reached out and simply grabbed my cock. I would have been more surprised if he hadn't!
"Nice." he said as he pumped it from semi-rigidity to full tumescence. "Feels good."
"Yeah, it sure does." I sighed. I'd wanted to be alone, but if you had to have someone with you, this was the kind of someone to have! I hunched up with my hips and threw my head back, showing this nature-boy that I appreciated his attentions.
His lips almost caught me off-guard, suddenly my cock, totally dried out by the sun and not even bearing the slight wetness it gains from being trapped in cotton underclothing, was engulfed in warm moisture, and a tight grip of velvet-soft lips were ringing it, sliding up and down upon it, sending thrills of joy through my body.
I groaned at this sudden influx of pleasure and rolled my head forward to watch this child of the beach at his work, and gasped.
The "gear" I had seen on his back, which I had taken for diving equipment of some kind at my first glance, was a part of his body, a dorsal fin! Rising up from, and a part of, the muscles on his back, it stood upright and rippled in its own independently muscled exhortation of happiness as this white-haired, sturdy, beautiful...creature nursed at my manhood and slobbered plentifully upon my cock, lubricating it, inciting it to waves of excitement.
"What...who?" I gasped out.
He looked up at me with mostly his eyes, his mouth still clamped onto my cock and continuing to bob up and down up on it, and my appellation of "creature" to him vanished. This was no monster; this was a human being, despite his odd-colored hair and his dorsal fin and...his hand came up to clasp my breast, and I saw the web between his fingers, his hand wider by far than mine as it stretched out, and the web slackened and fattened up again as he closed his fingers, and used them to rub the button of my left nipple. His skin was soft and supple though very damp with the ocean water.
What was he? Who was he? "Merman" was the only word I had, and it came to my lips unbidden. "Are you a merman?"
He released my pud only long enough to say, "Yes." and he went back to work on it, giggling as he did so. This was not a demented sound, it was more like the chuckles of dolphins laughing, a joy de vivre that exuded from every pore of his being.
He must have been out of the water too long, for he released me, dunked back under the water and stayed for about five seconds, long enough for me to begin to rise up, and then he burst back out of the water, which flung from his long hair with careless strings of white pearls as he tossed his head and his smile caught the setting sun which had not yet turned the world red with its departure, still showing him gleaming white, white from a thousand diamonds of beaded water upon his remoistened body.
He fastened once again upon my cock, and I felt again the sense of pervading warmth his mouth imparted to my cock, wrapping it up, warming it, loving it. I was now in a semi-sitting position, and my legs lowered down to splash into the water. It was like I was sitting in a bench that was up to just below the seat in water, for the tide was coming in rapidly now. I let my legs wrap around my cock's benefactor, and he chuckled without letting go of my cock, then reached out and tucked his arms in between my legs and then grabbed and lifted them out, and I was back prone again, this time with his arms holding my legs upwards, and I was dragged outwards and my buttocks impacted the water, cold, to touch his body, warm, so warm!
His cock was the hottest part of his body, it felt wonderful as it slipped between the crevice of my buttocks, and his cockhead touching my anus was the meeting of warmth to warmth. I felt his arms become more insistent now, his body more aggressive, and now the back of my legs were pressed against his chest and I was folded in half like that, and I went into the water more, so that only a grab by me to the shelf of rock kept me from sliding all the way in, and I felt his cockhead push its way into my body in a rush of cold sea-water preceding it. Now only my head, shoulders and arms were out of the water, the rest of me was below the rising tidal waters.
The water lubricated my skin, only to have it stretched out by his cock; it seemed like a live thing worming its way into my body, he took advantage of a small swell that came our way and which washed up onto the shelf, and he plunged into my ass. The water crashed around me, a miniature tidal wave, splashing around the rocks, and I was impaled, and I lost my hold on the rock, and with my merman, I slid totally into the water.
Around and around in a tumult I swirled with him, our bodies locked together, joined at the hips, I clung to him as the only stationary object in a swirling, wet universe, and he laughed, there, under the water, he laughed and that laugh carried to my ears. Then he pressed his lips to mine, and blew into me.
Air! He breathed in water and breathed out air! A few of his life-bearing breaths into my lungs, and I was ready to hold my breath again, and he took advantage of that time to fuck me lustily, sending the water around us into a swirling maelstrom of bubbles that danced and clung all around us, his breaths out, and my own. Then he kissed me, and turned the sea water that entered his nostrils into air for me, and I breathed it out, the two of us in a chain of life from the water to him to me and back to the water again.
I couldn't conceive of how he did this; when he wasn't deliberately breathing for me, he exuded no bubbles of his own, the bubbles that swarmed around us once again were from my own flailing lungs. He somehow could choose how he breathed, air or water, and he used that talent to prolong my stay underwater with him.
With his aid, he kept me there for as long as he wanted to, he humped me frenetically but for a very long time, as if he could keep this up all day and night, and his thrusts into my body thrilled my prostate and send shudders into my brain, I was his love-slave from that moment on, he could fuck me as he would; I was willing.
Some unknown time later, with the waters darkening around us into an inky blackness--sunset--he threw some quick breaths into me, and then his body thrashed in my arms in abandon, and he grunted, and I felt a new warmth assault my bowels, his orgasm. Done, he sank down, and I had to reach for his lips to gain some air from him, which he gave me feebly. Then he pulled his flaccid cock from my body and his legs came out to wrap around my body; he was presenting himself to me.
A good thing, I was trembling with the need to blast my nuts clear; I reached for his lips and he fed me air once more, this time the passive recipient as I hunched into his body now nearly invisible in the dark waters around us, and I sent my cock, raging with heat and lust, into his bowels and there I shuddered, the heat around my prick was intense, and I fucked at him desperately, a few moments of rapid thrusts, and I was groaning my lust into his life-giving mouth, I sucked the air from his lungs and he let me, I needed it all, and he gave it to me, and I flooded his ass with my jism, let my joy-wracked body sag against his, and we two floated in the darkness, not touching anything but the cool water, a pool of sated lust within the larger pool of water around us.
Some time later, we broke the top of the water, and I emerged into air astride his body, looked around as the sky was now deep, deep blue, and stars glinted here and there like small fireflies of the night.
My boat, where was my boat? Way over there, a black oblong upon the water and a lance of bare mast for the sail was furled. I looked down at him, still submerged beneath the water, and I wanted to stay as I was, but it was like he saw me get my bearings and knew I was safe, for he suddenly and without warning gave a kick with his legs, he slipped from beneath me and was gone in a slight ridge of water that was just disturbed by his body moving just below the surface, and this ridge suddenly played out and was gone.
I swam back to my boat, for I had drifted a good ways away from it, and finally made it back onto the deck, clambered naked onto the deck, and lay there, sobbing out my weariness. What a hell of an experience! I'd never forget it! Nor be able to tell it and be believed!
I hadn't expected to see him again, but the very next day, when I was out again underwater, this time with tanks strapped to my back and goggles on my eyes and spear-gun in my hand, I saw again the form in the distance, but this time it turned and swam toward me, and I saw him again.
Hell, and I was beginning to think you were a dream! I thought to myself. He smiled at me broadly, and I smiled back around the mouthpiece, and he darted above me and I waited for him to reappear, but instead my swimtrunks were grasped and he was tugging them off from me.
A larger, baggier pair than the ones which I had left on the rock and which were now gone, washed away by the tide; he pulled these baggier trunks easily from my body, and I turned over only to have him swim up atop me and clasp me tightly, and his legs were between mine.
You're ready to go again, I see! I thought to myself, but now with the air supply strapped to my back and the mouthpiece firmly in my lips, there was no hurry, I let him take his time, for he seemed to understand that this time he did not need to hurry, and he played my body with his warm, stroking hands, feeling me over and over again as if he would never tire of the touch of my body, and I did the same to him, marveling at how alike our bodies were, his skin was a good deal thicker than my own, probably to conserve heat in the cold water of the ocean, but it was just as soft and pliable as my own. Even that dorsal fin, save for the spines that held it erect, was soft, and even the spines were more like the cartilage in the ear than actual scales or bony protrusions.
So while the mouthpiece kept us from kissing, we enjoyed all the other games of slow lovemaking, until at last his body reached toward mine and he pressed his manhood into my body, and I sighed, arced backwards into his holding hands at the small of my back, and he again slid in to possess me utterly.
Now the urgency of the night before was gone, he fucked me languidly, for so long that my air began to play out, until at last, driven on partly by my urging to his body in those small ways you let your lover know to speed things up--come on, faster, faster!--he groaned a verbal sound into the water--he could talk underwater! What lungs he must have!--and his eyes flung open maniacally wide and his jism was a spear of hotness into my very self, and I clung to him, and then reluctantly, flippered my way back up to the surface, for my air was practically gone.
And he took my cock beneath the water, me bobbing with my head and shoulders above water, and his lips nursed my cock below, so that I clung to my boat's ladder and just hung there, dangling down into the water, the water that held his warm mouth and his talented lips, clutching and kissing the rough rope of the ladder while my passion built within me and I shot my wad into his milking mouth.
He didn't leave me all the time I was there, he was always nearby. I would nap on the deck of my own boat, to find him venturing onto the alien craft, walking awkwardly but walking upright, his hips leaning him somewhat forward so that he moved almost like a gorilla or chimpanzee would, and he would take me there on my blanket, soaking the cloth and myself with his ocean water, hunching at me rapidly, reaching his climax, and then diving back into the water. He couldn't stay long out of the water, he could breathe air for quite some time, but it seemed to lack some ultimate nutrient he needed, he had to return to the water once more and I noticed during one such period his eyes glazing and I interrupted our lovemaking to force him back into the water, and I joined him there, holding with one hand onto the end of the ladder to return to the surface for quick breaths, but remaining the rest of the time underwater so he could finish his lust-driven plunges into my ass.
The days of course moved by too quickly, as they always do when a vacation is shared in this way, so soon I had to leave him, realizing that I knew little about him despite the long times we had spent together. I never saw him using the smallest or crudest tool or wearing anything upon his body at all; I had no idea what or how he ate; I knew little more than that he was a horny cock attached to a beautiful body, and that he craved me at every opportunity.
But I made shift to spend a moment talking with him, insisting upon it, and made it clear that I was leaving him now but would return. He understood, but it seemed to matter very little to him, or perhaps I misread our friendship as something deeper or, which I think is most likely, he was not from a gregarious race like our own, he was quite content to be alone beneath the waves except for when he needed sex, then he would seek me out and if I wasn't around, well, so be it.
So his heart seemed untroubled, but mine was heavy as I wended my way back to the wharf, docked and ventured once again into the tavern. I found the old guy again and I approached him, made it clear I wanted to speak privately. We found a table away from the others and I leaned over.
"Zeke, I just want to say that I met up with your merman at Tarbor Cove." I said.
He smiled almost sadly. "Yes, I figured he'd still be there. I think he's lived there a very long time."
"Will he still be there when I come back next year? Or maybe sooner?" I couldn't keep the eagerness out of my voice, and Zeke smiled, kindly but also somehow sadly.
"He'll be there, like he always is." Zeke said. "He always was there, from the time I was young, your age or even younger. He stays there, never changing. I don't know how old he is, but when he started talking to me, he spoke a very old form of English. I think he learned it from the first white explorers to this land."
He reached out and took my arm with a surprisingly firm grip. "He'll be there, but he won't always welcome you. You see, he doesn't understand about growing old. To him, you just get uglier and uglier with the years. He'll reject you one day, turn away from you, just like he did me."
"Next time you see him." He clenched my arm for emphasis. "Tell him...tell him that Zeke remembers."
And wiping away a tear from the corner of his age-lined face, he stumbled to his feet and back to the bar, ordered a drink with a loud, harsh voice. I turned and looked out at the waves, rolling in an azure splendor, looking the same as they had before, and always had, and always would.
There is a fever that gets into your blood when you first become acquainted with the sea. It's like the sea knows your very soul, that it's a part of you awakened once again.
And now, I knew why.
THE END
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