Anatomy of a Mermaid

"Welcome everyone to another episode of Lagos Na Wah! We have an exciting show for you tonight. Here with me in the studio is Mr Kwesi Owusu. Folks, you may have heard of him." 

The host smiled and paused to look at the audience. Some of them had been whispering amongst themselves, guessing the identity of the guest on the stage, arguing 'it is him'; 'it is not him.' They erupted into claps and laughter; the reaction the host wanted. 

"For the sake of those who are not familiar with Mr Owusu," the host said, bringing the rancour down, "he is the marine biologist who was rescued by mermaids here in Lagos." 

He paused again and the audience laughed louder than they clapped. 

Kwesi shifted in his chair. He had watched the last episode of the show when the invitation came. Nana asked him to turn them down, just like she asked him not to tell anyone the story he told her when he woke up in a hospital bed and she was by his side. But he had made an amazing discovery, something that would change the textbooks; to allow fear of ridicule prevent him from talking was selfish and unbecoming of a scientist. She did not believe him, but she didn't laugh at him like many others had. Even his fellow lecturers at the Lagos Marine school thought he had gone mad; they who should know better. But Nana allowed him to talk late into the night about the water bubbling like it was boiling under his boat, just before the boat capsized. 

It was on the shore that she had found him. The TV station invited her too, but she already told her story to the police, and she told them she had not seeing any mermaids. She was returning home to Snake Island from work that night. She and four others had paid for a canoe to take them across the lagoon. On the other side they saw a body sprawled face up on the bank. They thought he was dead. The other women crossed their bodies and wouldn't go near it. The canoe man advised her to just go home and not tell the police. "They will arrest you," he said. "They have to arrest someone. If somebody killed that man, they will say it is you." 

They left her alone with the body; alone in the dark with a man who could be a criminal or the victim of criminals. Perhaps the people who killed him were still around, perhaps they would return to kill her too. But she couldn't leave him there, she told the police. Something drew her to the body. When she leaned over his face, his eyes opened and she ran to get help.

The host held up his hands to shush the audience. "Mr Kwesi," he said, "I must confess, when I read about you in the Guardian, I thought the journalists were making up stories as usual. But they weren't, were they?" 

"No, they weren't," Kwesi said, glancing briefly at the audience and catching himself staring into the lens of a video camera.  

"You really saw mermaids?" 

"Yes. Yes I did." Kwesi glanced at the audience again. The beams of the lights facing him made it impossible to catch who laughed. 

"And they rescued you?" 

"Yes, they did." 

The audience exploded in laughter and the host let them be while checking the notes in his hands. 

"Mr Kwesi, can you please narrate how it happened?" 

The audience quietened but Kwesi searched the darkness beyond the glare of the spotlights, suspicious of the silence of the people watching him.  

"I was alone on my boat. I was collecting some experiments off Tarkwa Bay. I first noticed that the..." 

"What time was this?" the host cut in. 

"It was about eight in the evening." 

"Please, do carry on." 

"It was about eight and I was collecting some experiments. The water began to bubble like stew. Like oxygen from a scuba diver's mouthpiece. It was all around the boat."