Mershark Boyfriend: Dorain (special preview)

Blackforte Cove used to not be on anyone’s radar. It was a small blip between main coastal attractions. A spot to stop and find a restroom is what the local had affectionately referred it to. That changed sometime ago, during your childhood. What had once been a nice quiet, perhaps boring, little seaside town, had become a popular tourist attraction overnight. Thanks in part to some magazine articles about the local eatery and views. But the main reason was that the town’s namesake, Captain Blackforte’s ship had been discovered offshore by oceanographers who had been studying the mershark population.

The sensational news of the pirate ship’s discovery was a wealth of history and education. But along with it came the tourists and curious. Once regular spots in town now all had stories about Captain Blackforte. Signs were posted everywhere about the history of the village that never existed before. Homes and businesses were marked historic. And the beach was now regularly filled by sunbathers, metal detectors, and the occasional ghost hunters. Now that you were grown you were growing annoyed with it.

Your family operated a boat tour during the summer. This included a gift shop and snack food style eatery on land. The boat tours took people out onto the ocean, over the nefarious spot where Captain Blackforte’s ship sunk. People also got to see the infamou mersharks who were supposedly the cause of the ship’s sinking.

The mersharks enjoyed scaring people, and were very much in on the gag. The rumor that they were the cause of the shipwreck was hilarious to them, all because there were some large bite marks along the hull of the ship. Internet gossip had been the main enforcer on this myth, but it brought business to the mersharks just as much as it did the town. They sold handmade crafts, bottled pieces of the ‘wreckage’, but had used the money with the help of the town to put towards cleaning the ocean and keeping the beach pristine, rather than let it fall to the usual destruction of tourism.

During fall and winter, the town reverted to its usual quietness. While it wasn’t exactly what it was when you were a kid, it was something of its old self. Although, it was during this off season you got more of the ghost hunters who, through another widespread internet rumor, had become assured the town was haunted by long dead pirates, maybe even Blackforte himself. They often rented out your family’s boat so they could inspect the waters around the sunken ship.

It was often you who took the boats out during the winter as you were the only one willing to do it. You didn’t care about the ghost hunters, most were obnoxious, but the money was good, and the mersharks were bored. The mersharks loved to fuck around with the tourists as it was, but these supernatural investigators were so much more fun. They got excited over the littlest things they perceived to be a haunting, and they seemed so much more ready to be terrified.

One such jokester mershark had been a friend of yours since youth. Dorian knew when he saw your boat he was about to have a lot of fun. Even back when your family used the boats for fishing and crab hunting, he would come swimming up to hang out.

That cold evening, he came upon the boat while the ghost hunters were inside with their equipment. You are bundled up and sitting with your phone. He slid over the edge, plopping down beside you.

“What have we got tonight, eh?” He asks with that raspy voice of his. “What’s their lot like?” He waved his big webbed hand towards the light of the cabin.

You shrug. “They actually seem kind of nice compared to the others. Well, most of them anyways. This guy is some youtuber who ghost hunts alone, but he has a whole crew.” You’ve not been able to talk to this guy without wanting to roll your eyeballs out of your head.

“A solo act?” Dorian turns and grins at you, revealing the sharp, serrated rows of teeth in his big mouth.

“The rest of the crew is nice though,” you shrug.

“Well, I suppose that’s good.” Dorian’s tail curls around your feet. He’s quite large, but he didn’t always used to be. In his youth he was quite puny and had always been the runt of his family. He had gone through a growth spurt though and was now one of the biggest around Blackforte.

“What are you going to do?” You tuck your phone into your heavy coat. “Rock the boat again? Throw things?”