Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #12 March 2015 | Page 7

The moon glinted off the ocean as I sat on the jetty.
My own personal hideaway from everything. And did
I need it!
I had just started working as a counsellor in the small
seaside town, and the amount of problems that people
thought that they had was almost overwhelming.

My thoughts were interrupted by one of the heads
leaning down to look at me.
“One of the mer-people told me you were a counsellor?”
“Mer-people?” I said with a squeak.

My one place of solace, of peace, was the little-known
jetty that stuck out into the bay.

“Yes, you know, shifters who can become half-human,
half-fish, then go back to being human in a flash.”

The tide was high, and the water lapped soothingly
against the old, wooden, barnacle-covered supports.
I looked out to the calm ocean and sighed. It was so
peaceful, tranquil, and I dozed off sitting up.

“They are tastier in their mer-form,” piped up one of
the heads.

When I opened my eyes, I was confronted with several serpent heads staring at me. Seven sets of glowing
yellow eyes regarded me. I scrambled back from their
piercing stares.
“Holy crap!” I screamed, as I backpedalled to my feet.
“Hey! Wait!” it cried, as the creature’s tail rose out of
the water and I was instantly soaked. It used its large
tail to block the way by smashing through the old
boards of the jetty.
“Oops…” one of the heads said, sheepishly.
“You numbskull, now she’s not going to help us!”
“She looks terrified… can we eat her now?”
“No, you stupid-head, we are not going to eat her. We
need her to help us!”
“Oh, so she helps us then we eat her?”
By this time, I was convinced I was going mad. I was
desperately trying to figure out the name of the creature that stood before me. Medusa? No, that’s a lady
with snakes for hair, Cerberus? Nope, three-headed
doggie… Cthulu? Surely I wasn’t that drunk at last
weekend’s party that I summoned the Lovecraftian
deity?

“Seriously, do you think of nothing but eating?” another said snappishly.
Then it hit me—Hydra, I was facing a Hydra.
“Ok… This is intense,” I said, racking my brain for
information on the Greek mythological creature.
One of the male heads lowered to smile at me. Wait,
could that thing actually smile?
“My dear counsellor,” he said, his glowing eyes twinkling slightly in the moonlight, “as you can see, we
have a problem getting along. It’s a big problem as we
can’t decide on which ships to destroy, what villages
to attack, or even whom to eat. It’s causing a lot of
strife between us, and as you can imagine, sharing a
body with six other heads can be quite trying. I swear
we have multiple personality disorder!” The creature
seemed to be exasperated, for lack of a better word,
with its… What would one call them? Friends, brothers and sisters? Co-inhabitors of one body?
“You all appear to be quite a diverse and varied group
of individuals,” I said. My knees were shaking incredibly hard so I lowered myself to the ground.
“Can you help us to get along better?”
“Yeah! Work out our issues!” piped up another.
“Or we’ll eat you!” Mr. Perpetually-Hungry said, turning his head to regard me with ravenous eyes.

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