horror stories I think mermaids would make up to scare other mermaids:

• There’s a pelican so huge you can’t possibly dive down far enough to evade its beak

• If you get bitten by a deep-sea shark when it comes up to the surface to die, you’ll transform into one and have to live in the abyss

• Hagfish can fill up a dead mermaid, make it look alive and use it to trick you

• A mysterious mermaid wanders at night waiting to startle you with the horrible crustacean in her mouth. If you flinch, she steals your tongue and leaves the creature in its place.

• You might think you’ve made a nice new friend who just doesn’t talk much until she grabs you with her metal hook hands and drags you away on an invisible line to get eaten by land people

• If you eat too many jellyfish, one might turn out to be a vengeful jellyfish ghost that will only choke you to death from the inside*
  

*this one is real because it’s a plastic bag