Darryl stared me straight in the eye. “He swam off with a mermaid on Christmas Day.”
I jotted two words on my pad — Deluded? Denial? — and drew a circle around them both. “Wasn’t it rather cold?”
“His heart was frozen anyway. No job. Mum didn’t want him anymore.”
“So what did the mermaid have to offer?”
“A new life.”
If that’s what you want to call “suicide”, I thought.
Darryl slid a photograph across the table. It was of some clothes neatly folded at the end of a jetty and a silver tailfin sticking up out of the water nearby.
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Friday Fictioneers: 100 word stories
Photo prompt: image (c) Lucy Fridkin
Sarah Potter Writes 