#whumptember day eighteen: being watched

[whumble-beeee]

Whumptember 2023, Day 18

“You said I’d be safe here”

Ambushed | Paranoia | Being watched

The Bee's Whumptember Masterlist 

~1720 words

CW: “bad” caretaker (literally, you’ll see what I mean), mermaid whumpee, “it” as a pronoun, kidnapping, implied mermaid trafficking

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"Caretaker? Where, uh… where exactly are we?"

Caretaker looked back at the mermaid that haphazardly clung onto their shoulders.

“Almost home.” They grunted, hiking the mermaid resting on their back up so their tail wasn’t dragging on the ground again. Caretaker was decently strong, but lugging a mermaid from the docks where they had been captured all the way back to your house would have made anyone's body protest and ache after a while. Theirs was no exception.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Whumpee whispered. “You should have just let me go… Someone could have seen us. I think I saw someone following us!”

“Yeah, well I couldn’t just leave you there, and I couldn’t just let you go. They’ve got hunter ships covering half the gulf, you’d never make it.” Caretaker spotted their house in the distance, the single lit window a shining beacon through the oppressive darkness surrounding them. A second wind graced them with new energy. Almost there… Almost there. God, their back was killing them. “And if someone’s following us, then I’ll kick their ass and we’ll keep going.”

The mermaid sat silent for a moment, the day's events flipping through their mind like an ancient film reel. Their eyes flicked around the darkness pressing in on them, odd shapes morphing and charging in the blackness and making their imagination run wild. Goosebumps prickled up their arms and back. 

“How… How do I know I can trust you?”

“Does it really matter? Not like you could do anything about it one way or the other.”

The arms clutching around Caretaker’s neck grasped themselves tighter, and Whumpee went silent, leaving only the sound of gravel crunching under Caretaker’s feet as they continued their trudge to the cottage. Caretaker sucked in an extra deep breath and let out a small groan. Maybe that response wasn’t as reassuring as it should have been.

“... look, I promise you can trust me. You’ll be safe here. We’ll get you in a bathtub with some water, and figure out our next steps together, okay?”

Whumpee took in a raggedy breath near Caretaker’s ear, one that Caretaker knew was in a vain attempt to hide their dangerously dried-out state. “Yeah… thank you.”

A sudden beam of light cut through the night from down the path they had just trekked, swooping over their heads as it slowly came up over the hill.

“Shit…”

Caretaker ran the rest of the short distance to their house, much to the dismay of a very jostled Whumpee, and they quickly locked the door behind them, turning off the light and running to the bathroom to turn on the water before sloughing the now wide-eyed mermaid into the filling tub with a small yelp.

“What’s going on?” they whispered, as if the danger would be able to hear the conversation and snatch them away again with yet another net.

“You know how to work the spigot? Turn the knob to make it hotter and colder?”

“Uh, I do now… But–, but what’s happening, please?”

“I think you were right, someone followed us.” Caretaker held their hand under the water for a moment before adjusting the knob as the blood drained from Whumpee’s face. “I saw a light coming up the trail and my house is the only one up this way, so it couldn’t be for anyone but me. I’m gonna turn off the lights in here, and you’re gonna have to pretend you’re not here while I deal with… whoever.”

“They’re coming for me!” the mermaid squeaked, clutching at the sides of the tub.

“You don’t know that, it could just be someone on a late-night visit.”

“That’s not a thing that people do!” 

“Actually, my friends do sometimes–”

The mermaid grabbed Caretaker by the lapel and pulled them in close. “You said I’d be safe here,” they breathed, serious as the grave, practically shaking as they held themself up. “You just promised me.”

Caretaker cupped the mermaid's hands in their own and pulled them off their shirt, firmly setting them back down on the edge of the tub. “Sometimes people break promises. I’ll do my best to keep this one.”

A hard knock at the door echoed through the house, sounding out over even the noisy water hitting the porcelain of the bathtub. Caretaker jumped up to the door and quickly flicked off the lights.

“I’ll go deal with this then come back to get you as soon as we’re done. Don’t make a sound.”

“Wait!” Whumpee called. “Should I turn off the water?”

“No, you need it, I’ll just say I’m drawing a bath for insomnia or something. Don’t let it overflow.”

“Oh, uh–” The door slammed shut, plunging the mermaid into near-complete darkness with the click of a lock. They tensed up even more, if that was even possible, only kept company by the gushing sound of water and the sliver of light peeking under the door. Their head whipped around in the darkness, looking for any signs of someone watching them even though all logic said that was very much impossible, and they felt their eyes starting to burn. They weren’t even sure if it was because of held-back tears or their sorely dried-out face. Probably both. They could barely breathe. The bathtub wasn’t large enough for them to be able to dunk their face down, so they had to resort to splashing water onto their face and hoping a more sufficient solution would come along once Caretaker came back…

 If it was Caretaker who came back… 

Whumpee didn’t want to consider it might be the very hunters who had captured them who might be the next ones to grace the bathroom doorway.

They leaned back, biting their lip as they death-gripped the sides of the tub. Someone was going to find them, they knew it. If not now, then soon. It was impossible to smuggle a mermaid across land, especially such a ‘prize’ like Whumpee, so they’d been told. So many people would be searching for them. It was only a matter of time. 

They’d never be able to feel the water rush against their face again, the briefest moments of euphoria when they jumped out of the water and felt gravity take hold, pulling them back down into the water’s cool embrace. They’d never see the vibrant colors of the coral again, the fish all around them, darting this way and that without a care in the world, before becoming one unified entity and moving as one away from some predator. They wouldn’t even see any more of those stupid eels that they hated when they were a child, the eels that still creeped them out to this day. Their heart hurt for the eels.

Tears sprang to their eyes, which just alarmed them more because they’d never cried above water before, and then they started crying harder. They just wanted to go home. Just one more time. Just one more time, that’s all they asked.

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Caretaker gently closed the bathroom door and clicked the outside lock into place just as another knock echoed through the house, making their heart nearly seize out of their chest.

They stormed over to their front door, slamming it open to the sight of a person leaning against the doorframe, one foot pressed up under them, arms crossed and head tilted down in a vague caricature of a… mobster? Hardened detective? Caretaker narrowed their eyes, aggressively unamused.

“Ya got the goods?” they grunted in a very bad approximation of an accent. They looked up at Caretaker through eyebrows and half-lidded eyes.

“What the fuck are you doing, Partner?”

Partner straightened up. “Uh… you said to meet you here at midnight?”

Caretaker clapped their hands together as they stared at Partner with dinner plate-sized eyes and gritted teeth, in a vague attempt to not throttle them. “First of all, it's almost two, and second of all, no I did not.”

“Right, whatever.” Partner cooly walked past Caretaker into the house, flicking the light switch and bathing the living room in a warm glow. “You got the mermaid though?”

“You were supposed to wait for my call, which I said would probably come tomorrow morning and then you’d come over and I’d introduce you. No one ever said anything about meeting at midnight, and especially not at 2 a.m. in the middle of the heist.”

“Right, yeah, but did you get the mermaid?”

Caretaker slammed the door and growled. “No thanks to you.”

“Then I don’t see what the problem is. You got the mermaid, and no one’s following you, ‘cept for me, of course, because I was looking out for you and trying to make sure you weren’t being followed.” Partner lied halfheartedly. “Everything’s going great. We already got the hard part done, now we just need to smuggle it across the border and sell the damn thing.” 

Partner flopped down on the couch and patted the seat beside them, an invitation which Caretaker ignored in favor of standing directly in front of them, seething.

“The problem, Partner,” Caretaker growled. “Is that we saw your light coming up the road, and now it thinks the hunters are onto us. I mean, hell, I did too, I was fully ready to cave your face in. It's probably having a panic attack in the bathroom now, and it’s gonna be a nightmare to calm down. We need it to trust us.”

“Who cares if it trusts us?” Partner groaned. “Not like it can run. And even then, there's two of us and one of it, we can just knock it out and be done.”

Caretaker snatched the back of Partner’s jacket and dragged them off the couch toward the bathroom.

“Right, I’m gonna tell the thing that it was just my friend after all, then you’re gonna introduce yourself and be so nice and believable and you’re gonna help calm it down. And it’s going to trust us.” Caretaker hissed in Partner’s ear, the sound of the still running faucet growing louder with each step. “Got it?”

Partner rolled their eyes with a sigh. “Got it.”

“Good. You better pray to whatever god you believe in you haven’t ruined this.”

“So dramatic, Caretaker. We’ll be fine.” Partner jumped in front of Caretaker and unlocked the bathroom door, slamming it open with little care.

“What could go wrong?”

Whumpee let out a terrified scream.

@whumptember

#whumptember2023 #whumptember day 18 #day eighteen: you said i'd be safe here #whumptember day eighteen: paranoia #whumptember day eighteen: being watched #whump #whump writing #whumpee #writeblr #mermaid #merfolk #whump scenario #caretaker #sorry this one is late lol #its been a rough couple days #things keep happnin #the ending to this one cracks me up so hard tho lmao #fun one to write for sure #also little editting bc its late and i gotta wake up tomorrow