Fake lips, fake eyelashes, fake brows, fake complexion, fake curves and fake hair.

All that and no wonder blokes don’t trust women nowadays.

I ring the doorbell and my date answers, looking just as stunning as when I’d asked her out at the pub. Anthea is a Mediteranian beauty, dark blonde hair framing her bandage dress, her olive skin radiant. But that’s just how she looks. Me and my mates know looks can be deceiving.

The amount of foundation some of these stuck-up birds in our neighbourhood trowel on is atrocious. Who gave them the idea that vain cakefaces are what guys dig? Everyone always jokes about how, if you don’t want to wake up next to a 2, you need to take her swimming first.

Well, I’m not joking tonight.

“Where are we heading?” Anthea coyly asks from my passenger seat. “I hope I’m not overdressed.”

“Hmm” I reply. “I was thinking we could take a walk by the shore, sit on the pier and...just relax.”

“Sure, that sounds like a nice first date! Just...no swimming okay?”

Typical princess, I think smugly as I nod. What Miss Perfect doesn’t know is that I’m actually planning a midnight dip in the sea for her. It’ll be the ultimate gag—snapping a video for the group chat of an ice queen melting after I’ve tossed her off the pier.

“Tonight was wonderful, Alfie” Anthea swoons to me later that evening, dangling her legs over the jetty.

Surreptitiously, I set my phone on the boardwalk to record her climbing out of the ocean. Now it’s finally showtime. Interlocking my fingers with hers, I suddenly send the two of us lurching into the water.

As I surface, I expect to see running mascara and waterlogged extensions.

Indeed, my date’s form is beginning to melt away. But what I’m glimpsing is...skin shedding into scales...fingers melding into webbed claws. I can only tread water as the woman metamorphosizes into a serpentine monster before my eyes.

Whatever illusion this creature had going, seawater has clearly broken it—and Anthea is not happy.

“We could have had so much more fun together” she hisses, incensed. “This is premature.”

With that, the sea siren viciously seizes me and drags me underneath the waves, her voice echoing on as water fills my lungs.

“I only take men drowning on the last date.”