The Whore of Babylon

Our Sunday School assistant was a mermaid. Or a siren or a gorgon. Her Lady Stetson had a bottom note of saltwater.
She was seventeen and wore hair in a high chignon; two strategically placed curls molded with Dep gel fell on either side of her hairline. Her lipliner was a shade darker than her lipstick. She wore a royal blue sequin jacket and sequined big-girl pumps that snubbed the flat rubber-soled Mary Janes all the girls in the class were strapped into. A patent Mary Jane whispered to a suede one that the blue sequin pumps were conspiring to teach all the Mary Janes how to swim. Meanwhile, the mermaid’s glossy mouth spoke of the Immaculate Conception.
Halfway through class, a boy with a trident knocked on the door and asked for the mermaid. The mermaid claimed she knew him just as Adam had known Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Saltwater flooded the room.