She grunted as she hauled her last suitcase onto her bed for the day. Jennifer had spent the better part of her afternoon moving her things back into her room. For all she’d moaned about it, a part of her felt conflicted. It was, after all, the last time she’d be moving in. It was the opening of spring semester, and she was a senior. She couldn’t wait to be done with it, to be done with her capstone project, her less than engaging professors, her frankly useless advisor, and the terrible commissary food. But then, she had a roommate she actually liked, friends, clubs, and some great professors too. It was hardly an unusual story for an American college student, until she would go missing today, and Jennifer Dean would become one of the great unsolved cases in Pennsylvania history.
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Jenn reached over her bed and scotch taped her old poster over her bed. It had presided over her mantle in every dorm she’d had since she was a freshman. It depicted a vibrant sunny blue Caribbean island, halfway down the pearly white sand it dropped into the crystal clear ocean. Down in the water swam a woman with golden spun hair that cascaded down her shoulders, and pointed elfen ears. Though nude, her extremities were covered by sparkling metallic scales, all of which transitioned at the waist into a sinuous gilded piscine tail with a silvery fluke and extra fins sprouting at the hips. Kitschy is what many would call it, not least her teasing roommate Kelly, but she kept it up anyway. It depicted she’s loved since her youth depicted in a more adult context, and where she was in her life, it spoke to her in a way she had trouble conceiving words for.
Jenn glanced to the right where the mirror on her side of the dorm room hanged. She looked a mess, move in day always did that to you though. Her curly red hair was fighting her to keep out sight from her dark blue eyes, her glasses were fogged up as she took them off her nose to wipe them down. She wore one of her workout shirts over a jacket for frequent trips out to her car and back to the dorm hall. Her jeans were dusty from frequently getting down on her knees to navigate cables and extension cords, and the same could be said for her running shoes, which were sturdy but long past their service.
That was, until something else reflected back in the mirror. It was still recognizably her, if her appearance went through several photoshop filters at the hands of a professional digital artist. Her cheekbones accentuated her features just a bit more sharply, her nose curved just slightly more cutely, her lips rested with a coquettish smile. She was floating effortlessly in a familiar aquamarine sea, it was clear she was a similar genotype of her own poster mermaid, if those terms applied to such magical creatures. She too sported the signature curved and pointed ears, more obviously than that, azure scales swirled spectacularly up her sides, and across her chest, which she didn’t fail to notice the shifted proportions of. The scales glinted on her shoulders as well and down her arms, where she sported fins at her forearms. She couldn’t see her reflection from the waist down, but it took little imagination to envision what had become of her legs. She put her glasses back on, expecting, hoping even that it was just her imagination getting away from her.
It was not. She walked over to the mirror, equally entranced and baffled. As she raised her hand to the glass, its webbed twin rose to meet it. Before she realized it, the cold glass suddenly was warm, pliable, as if it would give at any moment. All she had to do was push.