Mermaids are Real

The sea was a vast blue expanse broken only by wavering shafts of sunlight dappling the gleaming coral below. Through it moved a lone scuba diver, kicking steadily with long, practiced strokes, streams of bubbles curling lazily from his regulator and floating upward toward a surface he could no longer see.

He crested the edge of a reef, one gloved hand brushing lightly along the stone as he pulled himself forward. He gasped, sending out a puff of bubbles into the water. There, hovering just beyond the ridge, was a girl. Not another diver…A mermaid!

Her long blonde hair fanned out around her like liquid gold, her tail flicking gently to keep her suspended in place. She had seen him at the same time he’d seen her, her wide blue eyes locked onto him with similar awe.

“Oh my god!” said the scuba diver, his voice muffled and warbling through his mask, “a mermaid!!!”

“Oh my god!” said the mermaid, clasping her hands to her cheeks in delighted astonishment, “a sea balloon!!!”

“Huh?” said the scuba diver.

The mermaid reached out an arm and smacked the top of his scuba equipment with her hand. With a thunk and a clank, a roaring HISSSSS erupted from his equipment, and suddenly the controlled flow of air turned into a roaring torrent, as pressurized air blasted down the hose with wild, unstoppable force.

His body jolted as the first surge hit, his chest swelling abruptly as if he’d taken the deepest breath of his life, and then some. The air poured into him in a powerful, continuous stream, inflating him like a balloon on a party store helium tank.

“Gotcha!” giggled the mermaid with delight. “Oh boy, my own sea balloon! They’re really real after all!”

The diver’s arms stuck out from his sides as his body puffed outward, his body rounding, his wetsuit stretching tight with a smooth, growing curve as the relentless airflow filled him more and more. Before he began to shoot upwards from the enormous buoyancy, the mermaid zipped downward, grabbing his ankle with surprising strength and wedged his flipper firmly between two jutting rocks in the reef, securing him in place.

“There!” she said brightly, clapping her hands. “Now you can’t escape!”

“MMPH!!”

He tried to protest, but his cheeks were puffed out uselessly from the onslaught of pressure. The mermaid swam in a slow circle around him, eyes sparkling. “You’re so cute!” she cooed, poking his side lightly.

“Hey, what’s going- oh my god is that a sea balloon!?” A second mermaid, her flowing red hair floating around her like a sunset, swam up. “No way! They’re real?” she exclaimed, rushing closer in amazement.

“I know, right!?” the blonde beamed, practically vibrating with excitement. “And he’s inflating just like everyone says they do!”

The redhead circled closer, hands hovering uncertainly before she finally reached out and gave his rounded side a gentle poke. The diver wobbled, his inflated body bobbing slightly against the restraint of his trapped fin.

Her eyes lit up. “Oh my gosh! He’s so tight!”

“Mmm-hmm!” the blonde nodded enthusiastically. “And look, he’s still filling up!”

The constant hiss of escaping tank pressure continued unabated, and with every passing moment, his body grew more swollen, more spherical, his wetsuit stretched smooth and glossy over his expanding form.

The redhead giggled, drifting closer. “Hi, sea balloon,” she said sweetly, tapping his cheek. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

“Mmmph!”

“That means yes,” the blonde said confidently. “They love blowing up, you know.” She swam up in front of him, hands clasped behind her back as she leaned in, studying him with delighted fascination.

“You’re getting sooo big!” she sang. “I wonder how big they get?”

The redhead drifted alongside him, running her fingers lightly along the curve of his swollen belly, tracing the stretched surface. “Yeah! Hey,” she asked, “Do they pop? Like they must eventually, right?”

The blonde nodded knowledgably. “Only if you let them float away after inflating them. They shoot up super fast and then go BANG.”

The redhead covered her mouth, giggling. “That sounds so fun! Let’s do it!”

“Hey!” the blonde mermaid punched her friend in the arm, “nuh-uh, he’s mine! These guys are super rare I’m not letting him go until I’m done playing first!”

“Okay okay you’re so right.”

The hissing faded out into silence as the air tank on the diver’s back ran empty.

“Did he stop getting bigger?”

“Uh-huh,” explained the blonde, “sea balloons only get to a certain size by themselves. But they get bigger when they float up after inflating, which is why you have to really make sure they’re held down or else they float up and go pop!”

“Cool! I wonder why they’re like that. It doesn’t seem very practical, popping so easily.”

“Maybe that’s why there aren’t very many of them?”

The two mermaids hovered on either side of their catch, eyes sparkling with curiosity as the diver bobbed gently between them, his body round and buoyant, swaying in the current where he was wedged just above the seafloor. 

The blonde drifted closer again, her long hair trailing behind her in soft, shimmering waves. She reached out with both hands and pressed them lightly against his inflated side. His body yielded just a little under her touch, resisting her palms before easing inward a fraction and then pushing back, eager to return to its perfectly rounded shape. “Ooooh,” she giggled, pressing a little more firmly. “He’s really tight now.”

The redhead circled to the opposite side, her tail flicking as she leaned in with equal fascination. “Let me try,” she said, placing both hands against him as well. The two girls pressed against him from opposite sides, and the diver’s body compressed slightly between them, his perfectly rounded shape dimpling inward where their hands met him, the pressure shifting through him so that his sides bulged outward in other places. As they eased off he sprang back into a sphere with a BOING, wobbling in place.

They both burst into laughter.

“That was great!” the redhead said, delighted

“He’s so bouncy!” the blonde replied. “Hey hey I have an idea! No hands!” She leaned forward, pressing her bare and enormous chest against his rounded form. “You do it too, let’s see how much we can squish him!”

“Yeah!”

She mirrored the movement from the other side, swimming in until her similarly generous bosom was firmly pressed into his opposite side.

“Okay, ready?” the blonde said.

“Ready!”

Tails began sweeping back and forth as the two mermaids pressed as hard as they could, squeezing their new toy. The diver’s inflated body compressed between them again, more noticeably this time, his round shape squishing where their breasts pressed in, the pressure forcing his opposite sides to bulge outward in smooth, rounded curves around his two assailants.

“Ooooh!” the redhead laughed, pressing harder. “He’s so full!”

“C’mon, more!”

His body dipped inward between them, then pushed back again, air pressure fighting against their determined giggling efforts. The mermaids lost the battle with a laugh, bouncing off of their sea balloon with a sproing from his tight surface.

“That was great!” The two mermaids swam back and draped themselves over their fun orb. 

“He’s like perfectly round,” the redhead said, patting his side.

“And so smooth!” the blonde added.

They couldn’t keep their hands off of him as they talked. Little pokes, soft squeezes, pressing their hands into his sides just to watch the way his taut surface held and shifted under their touch.

The blonde mermaid pushed and poked him downward, his buoyancy stubbornly resisting. “He really wants to float away,” she giggled.

The redhead followed her gaze downward, noticing how the wedged flipper bent slightly under the constant upward pull.

“Yeah!” she laughed. “I bet he’d shoot up suuuper fast!”

“Wanna do it?”

“Duh!”

They drifted down together toward his trapped foot. “Okay,” the blonde said, reaching for the wedged flipper. “Ready?”

“Ready!”

With a quick tug, she pulled the fin free from the rocks.

The diver shot upward like a rocket, his wake blasting the two mermaids in a whirlpool of currents.

“WHOA!!” the redhead squealed.

As he blasted upwards, the pressure around him quickly dropped and the gas inside his already taut body began to expand further, his perfectly rounded shape swelling outward in a rapid surge.

“Look, look!” the blonde pointed upward unnecessarily, both girls’ eyes glued to their rapidly expanding balloon.

“He’s huge! They can get that big!?”

“I guess so!”

They watched as he streaked higher and higher, a rapidly ascending sphere, his body expanding as he went, the tight surface stretching smoother and wider as the decreasing pressure let the air inside him push outward, larger, fuller.

“He’s HUGE!” the redhead gasped. “I thought he’d have popped by now!”

Higher and higher he went, shrinking into the distance but growing in size, a strange and mesmerizing combination as his silhouette became a larger, rounder shape even as it drifted farther toward the bright shimmer of the surface above.

BANG!

The sea balloon vanished into a huge rush of bubbles, billowing outwards in all directions and spreading upwards to the surface.

“Wooooow…” the redhead stared. The bubbles faded. Silence returned.

The two mermaids floated there for a moment, staring upward at the empty space where he had been.

“That was AWESOME,” the redhead cheered.

The blonde mermaid laughed until she flipped upside down. “Yeah!! I totally get what the stories are all about now!”

“I kinda wish we could’ve followed him,” the redhead admitted. “He got so far away so fast…”

“Yeah,” the blonde said, pouting slightly. “We only got to see it from down here. Hey, what if, if we ever find another sea balloon, we don’t just let him go all at once.” She mimed holding something in her hands. “We tie something to him. Like a rope!”

The redhead’s eyes widened. “Ohhhh!”

“Then we can let him go slowly,” the blonde continued, practically buzzing with excitement. “And swim up with him and watch him get bigger up close the whole time!”

The redhead clasped her hands together. “That would be sooo cool! I wonder how they feel RIGHT before they pop?”

They both looked up again, imagining it.

“We definitely need to find another one,” the redhead said.

“Duh!”