Two men came to me with an audacious script titled, ‘The mermaid’s love.’ It was preposterous to say the least. A story involving a man who falls in love with a mermaid and proceeds to abandon his humanity to dwell with the mermaid beneath the ocean.

  It was a disaster movie waiting to happen but one of the men, a ruddy man one might even mistake for a child because of his ravishing youth, proceeded to introduce himself as Alcopolo. “The script is livid” Alcopolo said. “Angry and demanding. It calls to one’s artistic nature, forcing and prodding to exist within the hearts of men. That’s why we thought of you Director Stephano. You’re the only one who can pull off this movie.”.

  It was a challenge. That’s what it was. They wanted to test my supremacy as a director. They wanted to comb through my career in search of failure and upon failing to find anything, create a failure of their own with this movie. I was about to reprimand Alcopolo when his companion spoke up. A burly man of middle ages who introduced himself as Loco.

  “Your film, The dying sun. Many would have thought of it as a herculean task to get said movie into production. But you did it, above the odds you did it and now you’re immortalized in the hearts of every movie viewer.” He had a way with words that was unlike his appearance.” You can make this film a miracle.”

  “It’s about a man falling in love with a fish. A woman who is half fish and half woman. And I’ve read the script, the mermaid is half a fish from the waist going up and half a woman from the waist down. What the fuck is that?” I wondered aloud.

  “It is art.” The burly man said, his friend nodding him on. “This is what separates the great from the mediocre.”

  I ruffled through the manuscript, thick as it was. The mermaid never talks because she can’t, her mouth is that of a fish but the man falls in love with her despite this. “Why did this man fall in love with the woman fish?”

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  “It’s a mermaid.” Alcopolo said.

  I looked at him as if he were daft in the head. “A mermaid? Have you ever seen a mermaid you dolt?”

  “That’s the beauty of it.” Alcopolo said. “In every movie that has ever been created, what’s the one key thing all mermaids have in common? Simple, they are fish from the waist down. But here, we create something different. Instead it’s someone with the upper body of a fish and the lower half of a woman.”

  “Think about the sex.” Loco intoned. “There’s absolutely no film depicting mermaid sex. But thanks to this unique story, the male main character will be able to have sex with the mermaid because her lower half is that of a woman.”

  “How the fuck will that look!” I exclaimed. “He’ll be fucking a fish, everybody will see it as it is. There’s no way it can be depicted any other way.”

  “But they will have sex underwater.” Alcopolo pointed out with joy. As if that solved everything. “Imagine the movement of the Water and the fish woman, both in tandem. It would be poetic in a way. Not a sensual lovemaking as is usually the case between humans, with the fish woman and the man, it would be as if the ocean itself had directed the film.”

  “That’s what they’ll call you.” Loco said. “The ocean director, for you captured the sensuality of romance beneath the sea.” They were contradicting themselves the bastards. They were out to ruin me! The cunts!

  Alcopolo saw the look on my face and he hastily grabbed the manuscript from my hands and flipped the pages to a certain part then he gave it back to me with a finger on where I should read.

  I obliged him and read. “He now watched her swim away, her lower naked half rising above the waves, the legs and buttocks of a woman who’d swam into his life and changed him forever. Changed him in that he would not only never eat fish, but he would always swim naked too. Just to mirror her—”

  I abruptly closed the manuscript and handed it to them. “Thank you for your time. Gentlemen.” I said.” But this movie is absolute garbage and it will never sell anywhere.” And with that I chased them out of the office.

  I later learnt that they’d approached a pornographic company who’d purchased the rights to the film and produced it. It amassed a large cult following and today I wonder whether I’d made a mistake, for I had failed to see just how much people desire to watch people have sex with fish.

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