It had been several weeks since Jackie had seen her friend Lauren. The two did everything together, so it was really quite a shock to everyone around her when she kept showing up to classes, work, and her usual romps around town without her favorite gal pal. Maybe they were going through a rough spot? No, that couldn't be it. The two rarely went a couple hours without texting each other, and there was a certain level of knowledge that the two girls had about each other. With all of this in mind, it seemed odd to everybody that Lauren hadn't been seen in such a while.

Jackie herself couldn't stop herself from believing something truly horrible had happened to Lauren. The minute she stopped answering her texts and phone calls, it was clear that the girl was not alright. Even after checking with Lauren's family, other friends, and people she might've known around town, Jackie turned up with nothing. As the search continued with no new information learned, her mind wandered to one of the last conversations the two had, which was about a beach trip they had taken a month or so ago.

Now you have to understand, this beach was not your usual tourist trap. This was not the home to ridiculously upscaled restaurants, rental condos, or gold cart rentals. This place was a true beach getaway. No homes, no cars, no visitors apart from the two of them. This was a truly isolated stretch of the beach surrounded by dense vegetation which, if Lauren's words were to have been believed, was one of the most beautiful places that they had ever seen, or would ever see in their lives. Jackie definitely thought it lived up to the hype. Even though they had lived in this middle-sized beach town their whole lives, she couldn't remember a time when she had been on the beach in the middle of the day with this much privacy. Armed with a few hours' worth of refreshments, a couple of chairs and some drinks, she and Lauren had one of their best girls outings either of them could remember. But while this was all fine and good, Jackie couldn't help but feel that there was something odd about it all. There was just something eerie about it all. While the ocean and their own conversation held back silence plenty well, there was just something about their special little hangout that creeped Jackie out. She wasn't sure if Lauren had felt the same way, but at the time it didn't seem important enough that she would potentially ruin their fun outing by calling attention to it.

"Maybe being the only two people on the beach alone is just creepy" she reasoned.

Unbeknownst to her at the time, this was the last time Jackie would see her friend before she disappeared. After she had gotten home, Lauren texted asking if she had also felt a little "creeped the hell out by that place". Jackie was relieved to hear that she wasn't being totally paranoid, and quickly explained her own feelings about their beach getaway. This was when Lauren revealed that she had scouted out the place a little while beforehand, and found a "weird looking pond" in the woods behind where they were set up. She explained that the water in the pond was blue. Well, more blue than usual. So blue, in fact, that it actually seemed to glow. The surrounding trees had a noticeable blue tint to them, she explained. All of this had left Jackie perplexed. How would such a pond exist and glow?? No development had ever occurred past the tree line they found to make such a glowing lake. And besides, a blue freshwater lake was just not something that happened by the ocean; it just didn't make sense. Lauren agreed completely, and mentioned to Jackie that she was thinking of going back to the beach a third time to get another look at the pond, and maybe see what the source of the glowing was. After all, she didn't want to turn an excuse to go back to the beach again. Jackie, being busy the next day, had declined to go along just this one time.

After this conversation, it was complete silence from Lauren. Apparently her family and some of her friends knew she was going to the beach again but not much beyond that. Jackie knew she had to go back to their beach spot and see this pond for herself. She wasn't sure if she'd find Lauren there with it, but it would be a good place to continue looking. Nothing else had worked so far.

Once Jackie finally arrived to their old hangout spot, she turned around and ventured into the tree line, following the eerie blue glow she could see in the distance. There was no doubt in her mind that was it: the strange blue pond that Lauren found.

But as she got closer, Jackie's heart sunk deeper and deeper. There was no Lauren to be found. No signs of her anywhere leading to this place; no clothes, no notes, nothing. Just this stupid glowing pool of water and the realization that she had no idea what happened to her friend. She felt weak in the knees, nearly collapsing to the ground as she wept over the millions of things that might have happened to her dear friend, who traveled out her alone to investigate this damn pond. Much like... she herself was doing...

A sudden fear overtook Jackie's mind as she recoiled from the blue pool. Too late. A gust of wind from out of seemingly nowhere, pushing her helplessly into the water, kicking and screaming along the way. The weather had been perfectly clear that night, no storms in sight, making it all the stranger that such an overwhelming force could push her in the water. These thoughts, the weird weather, the possible fate of her friend Lauren, and the fact that she was now completely submerged in this surprisingly deep pit of water, all circled through her mind as she broke the surface and began treading water. From this perspective, Jackie still hadn't seen any new evidence for Lauren's disappearance. In the brief moments she spent underwater, she hadn't seen anything in the surprisingly beautiful lake bottom.

That's when she felt it. A tingling sensation in her legs. Not painful, not pleasurable, just... odd? Not like any sensation she had felt before. She looked down past her waist, ducking her head underwater to see what was happening. To her utter shock, she found her legs slowly disappearing from view, being surrounded by a strange aura of some kind. It totally enveloped her legs and was spreading up her body. Her legs and now her waist were covered in a sparkling magical effect, giving her body the appearance and texture of water. Jackie was too stunned to scream as she watched the magical shroud accelerate and cover her entire body, obscuring her from view. If someone had been watching, they would have seen her body appear to transform into a being made entirely of water, accompanied by a sparkling sort of sound that wouldn't have been out of place in a cheap fantasy movie.

After only a few seconds of this, Jackie's body shed its watery texture, returning her to a normal state. Well, almost normal anyway. Jackie had been too frightened and focused on staying afloat to fully notice what had happened to her. As she regained her composure and began to look around, she quickly noticed something was clearly different with her body. Looking down, she gasped and nearly fainted. There, floating in the water, was a long, scaly orange fish tail. "Oh what the fuck!?" was all she could say; rather loudly actually. It began at her waist, where her human skin little-by-little gave way to little orange scales. It was nearly double the length of her actual legs, stretching just about to the bottom of the pool, where it ended with a wide, translucent fluke that seemed to sparkle in the water.

Jackie wanted desperately to stop looking at the horrible mutation she believed it have occurred with her legs. She wasn't some freak, some "mermaid" like in one of those Australian teen dramas she remembered watching years ago. Lauren always wanted to be like those girls but Jackie, well, she never really understood the appeal. As she looked around her body, more changes became apparent. For starters, well, she wasn't wearing the same outfit as before. Her clothes had seemingly disappeared completely. Her jeans and sweater were simply not there anymore, and there were no shreds of anything left in the water. That magical shroud had undressed her, leaving her topless and floating in the water. Her hair, which had been left up in a kind of messy bun, was now let down, floating freely in the water. More still, it seemed that it had become longer; where once her hair terminated just below her clavicle, she now possessed a mane of dark brown hair that, were she not floating in water, would certainly have reached the new line dividing her human and fish halves, just past her waist. Finally, heading off the new changes, there as just a certain ethereal quality to the girl now. Her fair skin now seemed to glow with a certain magical energy. Her skin seemed to shimmer and sparkle, beyond what the weird magic water could have possibly done on its own.

Whether or not she cared to admit it, Jackie had been turned from a normal human girl in her early 20-somethings to a full-blown mermaid. A creature that only existed in fiction, at least so she thought. While she knew she should be horrified that her body had just entirely changed before her eyes, all she could think about was how much she wished Lauren was here to see this with her. As she tried to move herself, she found it remarkably easy to control her new scaly appendage. She moved it back and forth, and felt it glide smoothly through the blue water. Moving it through the water was as easy as moving her arms and legs through dry air, feeling almost no resistance whatsoever. Jackie had never been skinny dipping before; this was as close as she'd ever been to it, but she imagined this is how it would feel. There was a certain serenity that flowed through her as she floated alone in this isolated pool, the only worry on her mind was that Lauren hadn't been with her to experience this.

Indeed, this water's properties were quite strange. Clearly they were enchanted enough to have resulted in Jackie's mermaid transformation, but there was something else about it. Her sense of worry, concern, awareness of what was around her seemed to ebb its way out of her mind. No longer did she particularly care that she was alone in the middle of the woods by the beach at night; she felt no concern that someone might be watching her, what might have happened to her friend Lauren, or about the nature of this pool of water. As she floated topless, her tail swaying back and forth, and her beautiful brown hair floated in the water, she closed her eyes in relaxation just long enough to miss the tentacles approaching her from the underwater walls of the pool.

Slowly they approached her, surrounding her before they quickly struck. They wrapped around Jackie's waist, chest, and the end of her new tail. She could barely muster a scream, not that it would have done her any good this deep in the woods. The tentacles wrapped around her tightly; not so tight that she couldn't breathe, but tight enough for her to know she wouldn't be getting out without some outside assistance. Thankfully, at least right now, the tentacles didn't seem to be dragging her underwater, so no drowning for her tonight. As she thrashed back and forth, trying to use the strength and dexterity of her mermaid tail to get away, she noticed a new tentacle emerge from an unseen hole in the wall of the pool. It crept towards her, aiming itself at her center, just below her waistline. Jackie didn't want to think about what this slimy appendage wanted from her, but her worries were confirmed as the tentacle found what it was looking for. Right in the middle of her tail, the tentacle brushed up against a rather sensitive set of scales. Scales that, when touched, slid aside to reveal the mermaid's womanhood. While it may have been surrounded by scales, there was no denying that on the inside it was just like the vagina Jackie had before, just with a few extra *decorations*.

Jackie squirmed briefly as the tentacle threatened to enter her before she once again felt a sense of bliss wash over her. As the tentacle toyed with the thought of penetrating her, it brushed up against her clitoris, teasing her just enough to elicit a reaction. Of course, this was helped by the aphrodisiacs that were seeping into her skin through the other tentacles. Jackie hardly resisted, instead curling her tail slightly back and forth in delight as the tentacle ventured within her. The mermaid cooed and blushed as the tentacle pleasured her, incidentally of course, while preparing for its task. To her disappointment, the tentacle stopped inside her and began squirting a thick, viscous liquid inside her womanhood. In her state of heightened arousal, Jackie felt as though every crevice in her body was being filled with its warm, nurturing seed.

The tentacles quickly unwrapped from the brunette mermaid and retreated into their hidden crevices in the water. Jackie was still reeling from the experience of having her mermaid sex explored by a slimy tentacle. As the clouds wavered from her mind, she felt a pang of discomfort emerging from her abdomen.

The thought occurred to her that this pond had quite a few fish in it. How could such an isolated body of water be home to so many fish? This thought coincided with a large wave of discomfort as she began to feel a certain weakness in her core. She hadn't remembered Lauren talking about any fish here. Come to think of it, if Lauren had really made it away from here, wouldn't she have let her know? Jackie couldn't shake the feeling - the knowledge that Lauren must have fallen in this pool too, and experienced just the same transformation as Jackie had. She couldn't tell why, but she knew this to be the case. But if Lauren had fallen and been transformed just like Jackie had, where had she gone? If she would have crawled out, there would have been clear signs, and Jackie hadn't seen any unusual marks heading away from the pond or out on the beach that would indicate a woman had been dragging a massive fish tail behind her out of here. And there didn't seem to be any underwater paths out of this lake other than the tiny ones that moments ago housed the tentacles. And what about the tentacles? Had Lauren experienced a similar treatment from those slimy things? Jackie shuddered at the thought.

Yet another wave of discomfort swept over the mermaid as she felt herself growing weaker. As she looked down at herself, nothing appeared different at first. But as she flicked her tail back and forth, it just seemed sort of off. It wasn't nearly as colorful as before. Indeed, her once beautiful fluke was losing its texture. Second by second it looked as though the water was sucking the very essence out of her tail. Worse, the end of her tail seemed to be SHRINKING!

The feeling of dread seemed to stab Jackie straight through the chest. She watched as, almost exactly like how she had transformed, her beautiful mermaid tail began to gain a shimmery, watery texture. It was just like how it had been when she transformed, but there was no definition to properly see it like before. An attempt to move her tail confirmed it: she was dissolving into the water!

Jackie again mustered a futile scream; there was nobody around for miles who could hear her. And even if they could, there was no way anybody would know what to do to save her from the creeping changes, which had now all but consumed her new mermaid tail. She watched as her mermaid tail and her vagina, which moments ago had played host to a strange appendage's pleasure, disappeared into the blue water of this magical lake. Jackie's breathing became frantic as she tried to think of what to do, how to stop herself from dissolving like this. She wished she hadn't ever come out here. She wished she and Lauren hadn't ever come out to this damn beach. She just wanted to be back home with her best friend, and never have had to experience this awful nightmare.

Oh, Lauren. Jackie burst into tears as she began to understand the scope of the situation she was in. Like her, Lauren must have ventured into these woods and been compelled to enter this magical pool of water. Then, like her, Lauren's legs were replaced by a fishy mermaid tail. Her clothes would have disappeared and her hair lengthened beyond her usual cut. Jackie only wished she could have seen it. She always imagined Lauren would have had a blue mermaid tail; it would have contrasted so well with her own orange one. She wondered if maybe this could have gone differently. The two could have been unstoppable together. Somehow they would have escaped this pool and made it out into the ocean, where they would have explored the waters together like they had always wanted to do since they were kids. In her desperate mind, Jackie could picture Lauren smiling at her in the water as she peaked her head around a bank of coral, her light brown hair floating beautifully in a cloud around her face. The wishful thoughts, the dreams about what this magical experience could have been, were the only comfort Jackie found as she slowly melted away.

By now, the curse had consumed up to her waist. From her abdomen, as she lost composure, emerged something odd. Little by little, schools of small fish - minnows - swam from within her body into the water. The realization nearly made her faint: the fish in the water must have come from the dissolution of some other unfortunate passersby, including her dear friend Lauren. The thought sickened Jackie more than anything she had ever imagined. As the realization of Lauren's and her own fates overtook her mind, Jackie quietly wept and accepted the truth of her situation.

The water had now consumed both of Jackie's ethereally glowing arms. She watched as she was reduced to little more than her breasts and her head, the former of which were rapidly dissolving now. The water crept up ever closer, as Jackie shed her final tears. In nearly an instant the water overtook her head. Her mouth, once the progenitor of some of the most beautiful laugh anyone had ever heard was wiped from the Earth. Her eyes, which were the most beautiful shade of blue anyone had ever seen, fell away as they joined the eerie blue of the magical blue water. At last, her beautiful brown mane, now longer than it had ever been in her life, fell apart little by little into the accursed water. As the final remains of the young Jackie faded from existence, a final surge of fish emerged from where her body once floated.

This marked an end for the young woman, who moments ago had experienced the childhood dream of so many: to become a mermaid. Surely, if she had been in any other circumstance she and her dear friend Lauren might not have met such an awful end, but such was not their luck. They had been perfectly lured into this trap by a millennia-old force beyond either of their comprehensions. For centuries, unfortunate beach visitors had fallen victim to this horrible sequence of events. Transformed into a mermaid, undoubtedly a joyous experience for many, only to be reduced to a few extra gallons of water for the pond. And with word of this isolated beach slowly spreading through the two girls' friend groups, the pond would certainly see a few more victims in the near future.