
We love a good cryptid story here at Weird Lit. A successful linguistic wield of a mythological creature, however, involves a sharp pen and careful voice, especially in compressed forms like flash or short fiction. Most readers know by heart the details and typical descriptions of zombies, vampires, werewolves, and mermaids. All these have been plentiful in all kinds of art and media, from the Twilight series to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to The Little Mermaid. We regularly encounter cryptids in Weird Lit submissions, but long for surprises and interpretations that go beyond all-too-established tropes and imagery.
In the fantastic example of Steven Millhauser’s short story “Mermaid Fever,” the established image of the mermaid isn't really modified at all. Instead, Millhauser uses the mermaid to delve deeper into considerations of social structure, human desire, and unexpected longing. His mermaid is exactly the one you imagine: half-woman, half-fish, with long, flowing blonde hair covering her feminine bust. She never speaks (in fact, she’s dead), and it would appear she has no agency. What’s far more intriguing is what happens to the people around her, who are swept up into wild trends of fashion, intense watches on the sea, strange alterations of behavior, and societal desires—all instigated by the appearance of a single deceased mermaid found on the beach and put on public display at the local museum.
Cryptids and mythic creatures continue to fascinate us because they’re facets of human reality—our hopes, and our fears— packaged into an almost but not totally believable presentation. The mermaid ultimately isn’t important in Millhauser’s story, but the reaction of the people in the town around her is. The ease at which they morph into a new way of existence. Their repeated, unpleasant gaze upon a freak of nature, even in death, that they wish to embody in life. Is the mermaid an artifact or an art piece? A mislaid piece of our inner selves we wish to be?
I invite you to read “Mermaid Fever” and consider how we can investigate other well-known tropes with a new level of imagination. Like Millhauser’s mermaid, the cryptid can be an author’s tool to reach a more questioning depth within both fiction and reality.
— Fawn, Senior Editor