The Mermaid Joke

On the outskirts of a small town in eastern Missouri, there once lived a farmer, his wife, and their three sons. Once upon a time their dairy farm had been huge, and business was booming. But a terrible cow-afflicting disease swept throughout the town, and hit this families bovine particularly hard (some believed it to be sabotage, that the disease was introduced by Alpenrose to eliminate all competition. But that's neither here nor there.)

The farmer had been left with nothing but a single, pathetic old cow. His family was struggling, and making money in any form was a thing of the past. In fact, his sons more or less lived off milk and the hot-pockets they stole from their friends freezers.

One midsummer's evening, the farmer was feeling particularly good about himself. He had split an onion with his wife for lunch, and he thought a nice glass of fresh, frothy milk might top his day off. His sons had drained the milk that morning, of course, so he grabbed his pistol and strutted off to the barn (the barn was infested with a strange variety of absurdly large rats, quite possibly the source of the infection that had killed most of his cows, and he made a point of killing one on every trip to the barn.)

He heaved the door open, and began to walk inside.

And stopped dead.

There, in the middle of the barn, lay his single cow in a pool of it's own blood, clearly dead.

The farmer had always been an honorable man, and a courageous one as well, but the crushing weight of his discovery was to much even for him. He fumbled with the pistol, put the barrel to his head and blew his brains out.

Hearing the gunshot, his wife rushed out to the barn. Upon seeing the shit that had gone down in that barn, she also grabbed the gun and blew her brains out.

Several hours later, when the bodies were already cold, the eldest son came home from his friend Randall's house. Randall was a massive douchebag. When he couldn't find any milk (or his parents, for that matter) he headed out to the barn to get some for himself.

Upon opening the door, the eldest son saw everything that had happened, and, devastated, he ran down to the stream to drown himself. Just as he was about to thrust his head into the stream, a mermaid popped out.

"Hello, Farmer Jr." She said. "I can make everything better. But, I have a price. You must have sex with me five consecutive times, no breaks and no mercy. If you fail, I'll drown you myself."

Farmer Jr. readily consented, and, to his credit, made it all the way to 4 before his heart gave out. The mermaid sighed and disappeared into the water.

Shortly later, the middle son showed up at home, found his parents, and ran down to the river. Again, the mermaid popped up, and promised to fix everything if only he'd have sex with her 10 times. Again, his heart gave out, and he drifted away down the stream.

As I'm sure you've guessed, the youngest son made his way down to the mermaid as well. Again she promised to rectify everything, if only he'd have sex with her 15 times.

"15? Please, don't insult me. 20." He responded.

The mermaid was shocked.

"Fine." She smirked. "Make it 25."

"30!"

"Yeahhh, no. 25."

"Deal!"

As they were about to begin, the boy stopped and took a step back.

"Wait wait wait." He said. "One question."

"What?"

"How...how do you know this won't kill you like it killed the cow?"