WHEN YOU HAVE a mythical creature lying naked in your bath, how do you convince a colleague who has roughly the same proportions, to bring her smalls over to your apartment, without seeming inappropriate, or completely nuts? This is the conundrum that our hero, Frans (Francois Coertze) finds himself in, in episode seven of Martyn Le Roux’s serialised podcast tale, Die Soutwaterheks, (The Salt Water Witch).

At this point in the tale, he confronts the unthinkable with a sense of utter incredulity, replenishes her energy with water and salt in his bathtub and discovers how fact, fiction, misbelief and superstition interface and layer one another. Salacia (Elzáhn Dorfling) is the manifestation of his odd inklings in this story, so far. Or is she simply a product of his imagination? She’s there, in his head. She’s also there, in his bathroom.

The work takes on a bit of a cutesy tone, comingled as it is with the things under the sea that we cannot comprehend, as yet. The mermaid in question knows a lot about human culture. She has languages and culture in her sensibilities and has a strong handle on Frans’s thoughts. But who is she? And where is she from? And how will Frans make sense of her presence?

Die Soutwaterheks has 25 chapters: Watch this space for consecutive reviews, which will appear each Monday, from now on! Recorded and released independently online, in both MP3 and MP4 formats, in Afrikaans with bits of English, this tale, told in individual episodes is accessible through various links.

Die Soutwaterheks: Episode 7 Vreemde Tonge, Vreemde Vlees (The Sea Witch: Strange Tongues, Strange Flesh) is written by Martyn Le Roux. Directed by Martyn Le Roux, and featuring technical input and sound research by Arné von Molledorf and Martyn Le Roux, and music by Yolanda Strauss and David Muller, it is performed by Francois Coertze, Elzáhn Dorfling and Annette Havenga. It is available here.