I guess I write stuff now

After arriving in NRC, your secondary gender was a bit ambiguous. The boys in NRC couldn’t quite place you yet, especially since you were always around Yuu, whose beta scent constantly dulled yours. That is, until one day you show up in an oversized jacket that's covered in an alpha scent.

HEARTSLABYUL

Riddle - Omega

Riddle is the first to notice that you smell different. It’s the weekend, so he had come over to help you study, with Yuu and Grim being out of the house at the moment. At first, it’s just a small thing, the slight scent of something smoky, he figured it was just remnants of one of your alpha friends' scent. Then it got closer- okay just someone else answering the door.

Once you open the door in that oversized jacket that reeks of an alpha, all words leave his brain. Slowly turning red as he takes it all in it was hard for him to hold back from yelling at you that coming to the door in something like that was inappropriate. 

“A-am I interrupting something?” His voice came out shaky, the omega in him wanting to cover you in his scent instead. Do they prefer alphas? Is all that he can think at the moment. “Huh? No, I said I was free today. Remember?” You reply just as sweetly as usual, as if you don't see anything wrong. As if there wasn't a scent clinging to your skin that made his skin crawl.

The study session continues though strangely Riddle seems on edge, covering his nose occasionally and hiding his face when you realize that the normally clean and rosy scent he carries is bitter showing his dissatisfaction. “Riddle, are you okay?” There’s a pause before Riddle stands and gathers his things. “I think it’s best if we continue this another day… When you smell like yourself again.” 

Riddle eventually makes it back to his dorm room, allowing the emotions that he felt to show on his face. Tears pooling at the corners of his eyes, as he desperately tries to convince himself that it was just one of your friends' jackets (even though he’s never smelled those pheromones) 

Heartslabyul was VERY aware of their housewarden's emotions, his bitter scent clinging to everything he passed by. Many alpha students were collared this day, even if the scent didn’t match the one on the jacket.

He starts to gather up things for his nest, meticulously putting everything together before collapsing into it. Holding a shirt you lent to him to his nose as he whimpers into it and tries to sleep, even though it’s against the rules to take a nap at this hour.

How can you make this up to him?

Cater - Beta that acts like an omega

Cater was one of the first to notice Riddles’ new attitude. It was strange, especially because he was supposed to meet up with you today, usually that means that the omega came back with his head high and pheromones stronger than ever.

Well Riddle probably doesn’t want company right now, he’ll deal with it later. With a couple of pouty-faced pics posted on magicam he decides to head over to your place since you both were going to try out a new cafe and he needed you to eat the sweets.

All Cater could smell was Riddles’ dejected scent as he approached. “Knock-knock!” He calls out before letting himself inside. “Oh Cutie~ It’s time for our hang out!” Then he catches a whiff of something distinctly alpha. His eyes widen as he walks over to you, poking at your shoulder. “Pft what's this, some new mates scent?~ Cmon you gotta put on something more magicam-able~” You pout and hug the jacket around you tighter. “No way! I love this jacket…” 

Eventually Cater gives in and lets you wear the jacket out, maintaining his “sweet” persona but on the inside he is hoping that his own beta scent or even the omega scented perfume he was using would rub off on it and hide the current scent on your jacket. He puts on a smile as your food is brought to the table.

“Okaaay I get that you totes don’t wanna ditch the jacket, but like… just for the pic? Your cute outfit is hidden!” You sigh and finally relent, pulling it off and folding it in your lap whilst Cater takes photos. His arm wraps around your shoulders, casual right? Wrong. He’s subtly trying to rub off any of the scent sticking to your skin with his own.

Sadly for him it doesn’t. It’s tacked onto you like a second skin and it’s infuriating to him. “Hmph… So will you still hang out with Cay-Cay after that jackets’ owner comes back?” You shoot him yet another confused look. “Of course I will???” 

When you and Cater return to NRC, he snaps a couple more pics before running off saying something about editing them to perfection before posting them. When in all reality Cater is stalking your entire life online, there’s nothing about any specific alpha…

Trey - Beta

(oh dear, Trey. I don't know how to write youuuu!) 

Trey first hears about the sudden scenting from Riddle. Trey had brought him a tart in an effort to keep the peace, though Riddle wouldn’t let Trey see his nest. It was fair enough, most omegas don’t enjoy it when people outside of their mates see the nests they make.

Trey sits and listens to Riddle’s experience. Silently wondering who could have snuck into Ramshackle without Yuu, Grim, or anyone else noticing. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to think of such things though. 

He sighs softly and leaves Riddle to the tart as he leaves. “Should I visit? I should at least make sure they’re safe…” Trey starts his way to Ramshackle, passing by a very strange smelling Cater… He must have gotten some of your scent on himself.

Lightly he rasps on the door twice. You open the door for the third time today. “I’m feeling pretty popular with the amount of people coming to see me today!” You laugh and step aside to let Trey in, your jacket firmly wrapped around your shoulders again. “Oh no don't worry, I’m just here to drop off some snacks for everyone here at Ramshackle. And maybe give some unsolicited advice.”

Handing over a cardboard box you can smell some sort of cake inside. “That's sweet of you, I’m sure Grim will gobble it up~” Nodding Trey clears his throat. “It’s no problem but… You should make sure you’re safe with whatever you’re doing and firmly state how you feel to those around you. I know you don’t want to hurt someone” 

He pushes up his glasses as he turns heel and speed walks away. His cheeks were strangely hot, he’s not sure what caused it. Anger? Embarrassment? The fact that he thought about pulling that jacket off and smothering you in his scent? Who knows~

Deuce - Omega

Deuce wasn't exactly sure how to feel when he heard rumors circulating about you having a potential alpha. On one hand, no one really knew your secondary gender or if you were truly in a relationship, after all it could just be a pack bond. 

On the other hand Deuce wanted to curl up in his (admittedly) poorly made nest and beat up his pillows. He was never a traditional omega, during his delinquent years he rejected this side of him, HARD. Covering his naturally sweet scent with the smell of smoke from his blastcycle and a very intense alpha cologne. 

Aha! Maybe you’re just covering up your scent with an artificial one! That would explain everything (and the ache in his chest would disappear) He shoots off a text to you, saying that you both should meet up in the courtyard. He’s ecstatic when you say yes!

He hurries off to a large tree where you, Ace, and him usually meet up. He waits anxiously, fidgeting with his hands. Deuce's shoulders relax a bit as he sees you running over, without this so-called “courting jacket” he’s heard about.

“Hey Deuce!” You smile as you run up to him, happy to sit next to where he’s standing. The smoky scent is still clinging to you. His heart drops, metaphorical ears drooping. “You smell… different” Sighing you start to pick some of the dandelions around yourself as he sits. “What is everyone's issue with how I smell today? Is it just because Yuu isn't around?” Deuce fidgets with his hands as he watches you weave together the flowers in your hands. He wasn’t sure what to say…

Ace - Alpha

“Hey!” Both of your heads snap up as you catch sight of the red headed alpha. A collar, courtesy of Riddle, adorning his neck. “What did you do?!” Ace unceremoniously throws himself on the ground next to you and Deuce. “What do you mean?” You question while Deuces’ eyes meet Ace, both sharing a knowing look.

“You reek of an alpha.” Ace says bluntly, shoving you. The flowers you were weaving together lose a few petals and Deuce glares at Ace. “Now you’ve got all of the upper classmen all upset! I didn’t even earn this collar yet!” 

“Ace, it's not their fault. I’m sure there's some kind of explanation… Like they just so happened to spill alpha pheromones on themselves at Sam's shop!” Realizing what happened you laugh. Shaking your head and enjoying the chaos you caused. “Nope~” You pop the “p” sound as you drag out the word. “It’s from someone very special to me.” Deuces’ eyes almost jump out of his skull as Ace simply glares at you. A short growl coming from his chest.

“Oh ha, ha. That's not funny.” Ace pokes at your side to show off his displeasure. “Seriously who’s it from? Because I can assure you if it’s from a potential mate there are many people who’d like to fight them.” Laying back against the tree you roll your eyes. “It’s from my dad, and you all would have known that IF you asked.” 

Ace lets out an indignant huff. “You should’ve said that sooner, Idiot! You caused like five people a heart attack today!” Deuce nods in agreement. “But it’s nice that you have something from your father. We should probably tell Riddle, huh?” Ace and Deuce dismiss themselves to talk to their Housewarden and two seniors.

Ace considered himself to be the basketball club’s ‘rookie of the year’. You knew it, Jamil knew it, you're pretty sure Floyd knew it. And it’s not like he's bad, cause he’s not, he’s just. . . very Ace about it. While he claims to not get the athletic mindset, he has no problem boasting and showing off his skills like he's a seasoned pro. Always “Yuu, check this out!” “Hey prefect, watch this!” Even once, mortifyingly, “THIS SHOT'S FOR YOU!” in the middle of a game, he then tried to score from across the court (he missed). He called you his “number one”, as in number one fan, embarrassingly loudly anytime you came to watch practice. Y'know, typical Ace stuff right?

No! Unbeknownst to you, Ace has a massive, humongous, horrifyingly obvious crush on you, and much to the basketball club and ALL OF HEARTSLABYULS collective despair, you seemed to be completely oblivious. Although, secretly, you liked him too.

Now, club day was coming up at NRC, which meant the sports clubs were opening tryouts for new team members. Ace knew how much you loved basketball, you told him many stories about how you were part of a competitive team back in your home world, even taking home championships a few times. It was perfect, he would tell you about club day and obviously you would want to join the basketball club, then he would personally host your tryouts, beat you in a game while simultaneously wooing you with his skills and you would fall hopelessly in love with him. It was a foolproof plan, what could possibly go wrong?

You hurriedly gathered your stuff, haphazardly throwing a few papers into your binder, slamming it shut, and ran. You nearly tripped four times trying to get out of class, only to crash full force into someone as soon as you exited the classroom. Why were you rushing like war was about to break out in the school? Because it was. Today was the day Night Raven got sponsored by that bakery or whatever, and if you didn't move faster than the speed of sound and get out of class, the cafeteria was going to clear out like a culinary shelter during the apocalypse.

Your binder exploded in a flurry of worksheets and notes, and you slammed into the floor with a very undignified sound, the other person not doing much better. When you looked up, you saw a familiar ginger sitting across from you, rubbing the back of his head.

“Ace!? What the hell! Are you ok? Shoot, I'm gonna be late!”

You said, sweeping your papers up and hoisting yourself up off the floor. You grabbed the redhead by the collar of his jersey and pulled him up, dragging him along as you sped down the hall.

“Ay ay ay! Ok, I'm coming! Let me go!”

He protested, stumbling after you before catching up and falling into step beside you. You let go of the back of his jersey and- wait, jersey? You whirled around and saw Ace clad in his club wear.

“Why are you in your basketball stuff?”

“I just came from club, I gotta tell you something!”

You sighed, pinching the bridge of your nose, already starting to walk away.

“I'm really sorry Ace, but I'm kinda in a hurry, tell me about whatever trick you mastered another time!”

You called over your shoulder.

“Wait, no! That's not it! Yuu, the basketball club is opening tryouts and I thought-”

Ace didn't even get the chance to finish before you were in front of him, practically vibrating with excitement. All thoughts of the cafeteria are long gone.

“I'm sat.”

You said, grinning as the redhead gave you a look that said “what the FUCK are you talking about”.

“You're standing though?”

“It's a thing from my world, nevermind. Anyways, basketball?”

A triumphant smile spread across Ace’s lips and he grabbed your wrist, dragging you, now, down the hall opposite to where you were going.

“So, right now if we run to the gym, you can do your tryouts with me while Jamil and Floyd watch as scorekeepers. I'm sure you know how this stuff works by now though.”

He explained, turning a corner and leading you out of the school. You nodded, but then realized something.

“Wait, now? I thought club activity stuff was supposed to happen after school?”

He looked back, smug.

“You're my number one, of course I got you a private, priority sesh.”

He winked, and you made an ‘ohhh’ sound, trying to ignore the way your heart backflipped at the nickname.

“You just don't want to be embarrassed in front of the newbies when I beat your ass.”

You claimed, and Ace snorted.

“As if! I'm gonna wipe the court with you!”

You laughed as he pushed open the gym doors and you guys walked inside. Sitting on the bleachers, all by his lonesome, was Jamil, who very much looked like he was being held at gunpoint to be here.

“Floyd bailed, for the sake of my mental health I chose not to listen to the excuse he made up as he left. Please make this quick, I have to get back to Kalim and the others.”

You sweat dropped, and Ace cleared his throat, pointing to a locker room across the gym.

“There's a spare set of club wear in there, once you put it on we can start.”

You gave him a thumbs up and ran over to the change room, locking the door behind you and throwing on the jersey and shorts. They were a bit big on you, but it was high quality material. You posed in front of a mirror for a bit, excitement flowing through you at being in the familiar style of clothes. You practically bounced out of the locker room and out onto the court. Jamil explained the rules and the style of game you were playing and you nodded, locking eyes with Ace across from you

“Ready?” 

He asked, looking all too confident.

“Ready.” You confirmed, and Jamil blew the whistle.

Ace fell to his knees, panting like he was unathletic, which he might as well be compared to you.

You beat his ass. No, sorry, you didn't just beat his ass. You COOKED him. Grilled, fried, boiled, deep fried, baked, seared, broiled, simmered, burnt, ashes, throw him out the window and start again.

It had been a simple game, first to 10 points won. Such an easy challenge, yet he hadn't been more humiliated in his life.

“10 - 1. Yuu.”

Jamil announced your win with barely concealed amusement before packing up and making his escape, leaving you and Ace alone. His hair was disheveled, and he was sweating, but the unsexy kind of sweating where it looks like he got dunked in the ocean. You, however, looked ethereal. Your hair was tied up beautifully, and you had barely broken a sweat. Any beads of perspiration shimmered on your skin like glitter as you pumped you first in the air.

“WOO! Oh, that felt good!”

You cheered, flipping your hair over your shoulder. You turned to look at him with a teasing smirk, offering him your hand.

“Need help there champ? You made a decent opponent.”  

You said playfully as he took your hand, you pulled him up and laughed a little, squeezing his hand lightly. He sighed, heat rising to his face as you kept his fingers intertwined in yours, and he looked away in a rare moment of awkwardness.

“Damn, I can’t believe I lost. I knew you were good but man, you really wiped the floor with me! And to think this was supposed to win you over. . .”

You froze. Ace froze. You looked at him, he stared at the floor.

“I- I mean, uh.”

“Ace.”

You started slowly.

“What do you mean, win me over. Do you. . .?”

“Ok, listen. I mean, it's not like I expect you to like me back or anything but I thought if I could, like, show off and beat you in basketball you’d be so impressed it’d make you fall in love with me but-” 

Ace didn’t even get the chance to finish his sentence before your lips came crashing onto his, kissing him in half an attempt to get him to shut up and half an attempt to show him you did, in fact, like him back. You leaned back before he could react, leaving him there wide-eyed and in shock. His entire body was frozen, and he blinked a few times, trying to process what just happened before lunging forward and pulling you into another kiss. You laughed against his lips and he smiled, pulling away and letting out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.

“Wow. . .”

He sighed.

“Wow?”

You echoed.

“Just, wow.”

He repeated, a little nervous.

“So, uh, what does this make us?”

He asked, fiddling with the hem of his shorts.

“Together, hopefully.”

You replied, sending him a playful wink as you watched relief flood his body.

“Together, yeah, cool- I mean, yes! I would love to be your boyfriend.”

You laughed.

“Good! Because I didn't do that for nothing!”

He laughed, too, crying dramatically when you fake punched him, leaving you both standing there a giggling mess.

“So, Ace.”

“Yeah?”

“Did I pass tryouts?”

© @glowinghisteria on Tumblr

Rook 🏹

Vil 👑

Vil's taken up the habit of making you his mannequin. It made sense to you. Mannequin's are blank slates, and you're as blank as it gets around this campus. Vil, the queen himself, is intoxicating to be around. So when the opportunity arose to stand still and have him so close, you agreed instantaneously. He laughed at the eagerness in your voice, petting you on the head with a satisfied smile. The way your heart raced was akin to running a marathon, maybe even two.

Despite this past excitement, all you could feel was dread as you walked through the fancy hallways. Why exactly? It was hard to say. Maybe Vil's presence was just naturally intimidating?… Totally. That was the explaination you settled on as you met with Vil. Smiling, you gave him a wave and a greeting. He nodded his head in acknowledgement before guiding you off to his closet.

From here, the dread was turning into regret. Standing around, you were forced to watch as Vil observed the look of different clothes on you, taking notes and organizing them into different piles. His judgemental gaze was the norm, but something else pricked at your skin. Something you couldn't exactly name. Something that made you feel like even more of a burden despite being the one technically helping with a favor.

"Smile." Vil's command was like a splash of water to the face. The thoughts absorbed you so much, you hardly processed his demand. "I… What?" He furrowed his brows at that response.

"Smile. I can't properly judge the cloth if a frown is dragging it down unfairly." He spoke as though it was common knowledge. A tiny smile perked on your lips, but that didn't seem to satisfy him. "No, no— that won't do."

Without warning, his hand gently tilted your chin toward him and held your cheeks. He turned your face to one side and then the other; observing. "The look of sorrow would ruin any outfit. What's bringing down your spirits, Prefect?"

You didn't know how to reply. Partly because he was still holding your face and kinda definitely squishing your cheeks. With your voice a bit muffled because of his hold, you tried your best to answer with, "I dunno. Legs getting sore probably?"

That caused him to shoot you a mildly annoyed, semi-disappointed look. "It's hardly been 10 minutes. Are you passing Physical Education?" You swat his hand away with a laugh. "Hey!"

Retracting his hand he shakes his head. "Lying to me is pointless. The truth will come out, Prefect."

You let out a small groan at those words. Of course. No one in Night Raven would ever accept an "I don't know" as an answer. So instead of answering, you quirk a brow at him.

"Shouldn't you be focusing on the outfits? You know— the actual important part?"

He let out a scoff, crossing his arms. "The mannequin themselves is equally as important."

That instinctively get's an "Ehh" out of your throat without you even realizing it. Vil shoots you a look, daring you to question him. And you do.

"Well, I've just been standing here. The real important work is all with you, Mr. Designer." Your voice is lighthearted and teasing, not wanting this to become actual bickering. Unfortunately, Vil doesn't seem as amused.

"While I play a vital role, yes, I could not accurate judge any of these items if not for you. Thus, solidifying your importance. Stop arguing."

His words seemed final as he turns around to grab the next outfit arranged. Your eyes narrow a bit. Normally you'd follow his word. It wasn't like this was a big deal anyways, and Vil does have a valid point. Yet, with your head full of those thoughts from before, you can't help but continue.

"Oh yeah, because it's not like literally anyone else could stand here and do my job. Just like how no one else totally could've been the SDC manager if you didn't just want to use Ramshackle."

Vil stopped in his tracks. His hands went still as his head snapped in your direction. It was almost terrifying. "Do you have a problem?" He firmly asked, fed up. Vil stepped closer to you, staring you down in a manner that evaporated your attitude.

"I—… No. Sorry, I don't know what's up with me. I just…" You let out a heavy sigh, unable to meet Vil's intense gaze. "Maybe you should find someone else to do this. I don't think this is right for me."

His eyes softened every so subtly as he observed your behavior. "… What makes you say that?"

"Everything? I'm not great at posing. Standing still is hard too. I can't even make the right face— it's like I'm just… there." Your hands shook by your sides briefly before you clenched them into fists, looking downward in shame. "I can go grab Rook for you if you'd like, Vil?" Sevens above, did you feel like a major let-down right now.

Vil stared at you with a calculated gaze, as though trying to understand your soul.

"Dearest, if I wanted Rook, I would've had Rook." He stated simply. Vil sighed before his hands found your fists. The unexpected gentleness of the gesture eased your nerves a bit. "I asked you because I needed someone likeable. Someone who leaves others wanting more. Someone who's so kind you just want to take them in your hands and—" He cut himself off as he took in a deep breath.

"You are not just there. You are never just there. Taking on the roles you do— whether mannequin or manager— takes mental fortitude and strength. Quiet, but apparent strength. Not everyone can do what you do without breaking."

His words catch you off guard, causing your eyes to widen as you glance back at him. Vil seems to want to keep your gaze on him as he immediately leans closer when you look his way.

"How many times have you stared a dangerous, overblotted student in the eye and still returned to your bed, smiling and laughing the day off with ease? How many weeks have you spent taking in my critiques and implementing my criticism, even when they come out harsher than I intended?"

Vil's lips hover above your own. Despite enjoying the feeling, you flinch. Your throat feels dry as you force a response. "Too many, definitely. I'm not even supposed to be here."

"Don't say that." Vil hisses like you insulted him, the words sparking a bigger reaction within him than you thought it would. His jaw is tight as he tries to keep his resolve. "While true, we don't know why you were sent here or what caused it… It was supposed to happen. It had to have happened."

You're at a lost for words and he seems to have a lot to say, so you remain silent.

"The amount of change that has been implimented in NRC… in my life since you've arrived that fateful day is jarring. It's as though the entire world flipped on it's axis; becoming what it was meant to be once you changed the game. No one else has ever made me feel so… human." The words are surprisingly sweet and sappy. So much so you could hardly believe it was Vil speaking them. 

"So don't believe yourself to be, 'just there'. No one else belongs in my room and in my good graces as much as you. I would pick you as my mannequin and SDC manager a thousand times over if I could."

Vil leaned away with a quiet, shaky breath. It was barely audible and hard to notice. But you caught it. Of course you did. Before he could turn around and continue organizing the clothes— likely about to shoot you a quote something along the lines of, "Now let's stop wasting time and get back to work. Sevens knows I stroked your ego too much,"— you grab his arm and pull him into a hug. A deep hug. Your face is buried in his chest as your arms hold him tightly.

He's stiff at first, not expecting it and instinctively wanting to shove you away. But he doesn't. He's still and silent for a moment before his arms slowly cover you, reciprocating the affection. His arms wraping around you immediately summons a smile to your face. You glance up at him from your spot against his chest. His purple lipstick looks very kissable right now.

"Thank you, Vil. I really needed to hear that."

He blinks at you. Is he flustered or is the pink on his cheeks just his blush? That doesn't matter much. He looks gorgeous either way. Vil can't help but lean down, closer and closer. When you don't lean away or pull back, he gently places his lips against yours. The kiss is careful, almost shy. When he's done, he admires the light stain of purple on your lips that he caused.

you laugh, before pointing down at the little keychain, “its cute like you.”

Riddle flusters before holding the hedgehog closer to his chest, “i see… thank you,” he mumbles. It isn’t long before riddle puts it in his bag. He won’t put it on his bag in fear of it getting dirty, but the little hedgehog friend will be following him everywhere!

LEONA KINGSCHOLAR

“a lion? how creative.” he lets out a sarcastic huff, but he clutches it in his hand. Despite his disheartening response, he has a small genuine smile on his face when he attaches the tiny plush lion to his belt hip. 

“do you like it?”

“yeah its fine.” he says honestly. When he says fine he means he must like it, as it becomes rare to see the prince without his derpy lion companion. (you say it reminds you of him, yet he cant help but be reminded of you whenever he sees it.)

AZUL ASHENGROTTO

Azul didn’t know whether he should be offended or awed when you tell him this octopus trinket reminds you of him, and he hesitantly makes that question known.

“A very good thing, you’re very cute!”

“Ah.” he voices, ducking his head down to stare at the trinket in his hands, he holds it gently and you can faintly see his neck radiate color. “Thank you then.”

Everytime you now see Azul in his office, the little octopus trinket is there too!

KALIM AL ASIM

A soft, cute looking otter plushie is clutched tightly against his chest, above is a radiant smile so full of unadulterated joy.

“Thank you!!! It’s perfect!!” he thrills, holding the little guy up into his line of sight, “you think i’m this cute?”

“absolutely!”

He got you a matching plushie for you to keep, one that reminds him of you!

VIL SCHOENHEIT

“how cute, and this reminds you of me?” he inspects with a soft smile, holding up a beautiful peacock charm. It was well crafted (and admittedly a bit over budget),

“Yes, I saw it in Sam’s store and thought of you.”

“I am honoured.” 

Vil puts the charm on his purse, and cleans it from dirt every time he gets back from an outing. Seeing it fills his heart with warmth, he’s quite a fan of considerate gifts.

IDIA SHROUD

“I knew you liked this type of stuff so I got you it.” 

Idia stares at the figurine in his hands, it’s one of his favorite character from some niche manga he loves. “You remembered..?”

“Of course, I can’t see content from this series without thinking of you.” you laugh shyly. Idia stays still, and you can slowly… see the clockwork in his head as he hides his face with the figurine box. “Thanks I guess…”

Next time Idia lets you into his room you can’t help but notice the figurine proudly displayed next to his manga stack on the shelf.

MALLEUS DRACONIA

A little lizard tamagotchi lays in Malleus’ hands. Its cute, he watches it wander around in its little room and Malleus feels overwhelmed with softness.

“You got me this..?”

“Yeah! I know you already had one, but this one reminds me of you. Lizards and all.”

“…Thank you dearest.” 

The first two times you try seeing them, all you see is your reflection. 

It makes sense unfortunately. With the lack of any light, you are going to have a hard time seeing them. Cloudy black settles over the skeleton and hair shaped vegetation. You can turn your head on a swivel (which you do on the second try) but there is no way to discern what swims through darkness. Instead, all you see in the aquarium tank’s water is your face. 

Each uniquely human feature of yours squints in the nebulous, oscillating dark. To an observer, it would seem that you think if you flatten your eyes into pressed almonds something will reveal itself to you. Nose scrunching, you squint in a grandmother who lost her glasses way that is simply laughable. 

There must be something inside the exhibit.

Nothing. Nothing but your desolate reflection. 

On a small plaque, the words no use of flash photography wags a censure finger at you. Besides the cerulean halo on the corners where the wall meets ceiling, the room must remain dark at all times. Even during operating hours – or so you have heard from Deuce – they refuse to allow any other light in the secluded room. 

Besides the ultramarine ouroboros, the oval-shaped room is dark beyond dark. An extreme that is on another level than what you are familiar with. As a nightguard, you are familiar with the dark. Quite familiar. 

For example, there is one aquatic animal that you managed to see that other people cannot find nine times out of ten. In the shadows, spider crabs hide. They call their environment interestingly enough: the twilight zone, a part of the seafloor that gets little light and is very cold. With only three crabs in a sizable aquarium, it is understandably hard for others to find them. While the guests that linger after hours or closing staff puzzle over their location, you find them with ease. Behind the ship, by those bones, in the left corner no no higher in the left corner;  your eyes have long since adjusted to the nocturnal proclivity of your job. 

(One of the closing staff employees joked you were like a cute, little opossum. You think he meant it as a flirt; you found it insulting. Pressing your shades higher up on the bridge of your nose, you clocked in with your head down, vexed.)

However, in the tenebrous depths before you, you are like a disgruntled archaeologist standing in a desert of Swiss-cheese holes. Unable to locate anything. Tilting your head in a slightly different direction, your eyes squeeze into petite slices, searching. 

The flashlight in your hand is a heavy temptation. If you just raise it, the absence of light will readily receive it. Melted pinks and greens of vegetation will pop, brown and amber of decorative rocks will shine, and whatever colors lie on these new fishes will certainly look like a gorgeous splendor under visible light. It would take the smallest wrist motion. Your reflection held in black water stares back at you, glaring daggers. ‘C’mon, do it,’ your reflection urges.

Light slugs over your sneakers, contemplative. ‘Perhaps not,’ you think with regards to the penlight. You know that you loathe having any type of light in your face; do unto others as you would have done onto you. The button of your tool clicks off. By now, you should already be down by the stingrays. 

‘Third time might just have to be the charm,’ you think with a frown. 

In the fishbowl glass, mummified with shadows, your reflection mimics that childhood disappointment.

‘I’ll try again tomorrow.’

Turning to leave, spine to the aquarium tank, you miss the first instance of light emerging out of dark. 

It pulls upward like an ember blown skyward out of a campfire pit. The movements of it are languid. Flickers of yellow orbit in a whirlpool, lazy like they have just woken up. That clean circle becomes distorted, shrinking and growing like window-shades are being maneuvered over it. Then, a twin of yellow joins the first, a hair keener than the first. Both circles of light hang in the shadows, not brightening or shining beyond an intensity that is noticeable. Shrewd with their intentions.

When the door to the oval room clicks close, the window-shades pull down like a blink and the aquatic water changes from being speckled with playful yellow back to tenebrous black.

As it turns out, the phrase ‘third time's the charm’ holds an eternal merit. Because the next night, which is the third time you look into the aquarium tank, your wish is granted. 

The unluckiest charm; the unluckiest wish.

The aquarium gets new deliveries once every two weeks. As the nightguard, you are not kept on the up-and-up unless Deuce Spade is working. And as an honor college student, Deuce is usually scheduled – during daylight hours of course – on the weekends when exam season is not keeping him occupied. So, you missed the news about this new delivery initially. All you knew about them was from the very insightful texts of Deuce Spade (two in total):

The new deliveries can’t be around light. Think it's anglerfish? 

and

Apparently not anglerfish, those have to live under pressured water. Why do people act like that’s common knowledge to know??

Your available information is: they are not anglerfish. That is all.

You really are left with no hints to what hides in murk. After two weeks, no plaque detailing the species is nailed to the wall or statued on a slanted board. The room is void of identification. Perhaps that is the reason your body seems so magnetized towards deciphering this mystery. No identification by now is unusual. Plus, night shifts drag like limping feet; why not try to stall off boredom?

This time around, you power off your penlight before entering the room. Instead of letting the light stamp a circle of itself on the ground, you enter pure darkness. Blue vibrates above you. Not complete darkness, you correct, stepping on the path that limited blue illuminates. 

The room and tank resemble an egg with a cut-off top. The room is oval shaped but missing a quarter of its full shape, the top half knifed off to make room for a tank full of about five hundred gallons of water. When you reach the wall, the length is forty feet, this sliced egg-top, you place determined hands in your slacks pocket. 

And squint until the muscles in your eyes quiver with strain.   

Penguins must be kept in cold waters. Vents are constantly blowing cold air into the exhibit to keep it under forty degrees. As your breath comes out in a puff of frosty air, you wonder deeply just what kind of species can be kept in such frigidness. Deep sea penguins? That would certainly be interesting. 

Your reflection challenges you with a mimic of your squinting. Keep dreaming, it says. No matter which way you look over tenebrous shadows of vegetation and rocks, nothing is making itself clear to you. This time you risk inching closer. From this distance, you can count the vertebrae-esque leaves of a winding ludwiga. Ice seems to heartbeat off the glass, kissing your features. 

What can you see?

Nothing. Nothing but your desolate reflection.

That is until a little organic lantern – small like a dragonfly– comes alive in the water. Despite your excitement, you keep yourself frozen and still. Your tiny gasp bleeds out your mouth and hits the glass gradually. The dragonfly powers on and off in two blinks. Morse code for ‘I’ but you doubt this animal knows that – you just happened to take a college elective for Morso code. You watch this single, pinprick lantern with great interest.

‘I think it really is an anglerfish. I mean, it makes complete sense. Deep sea water temperatures. The utter lack of light. Maybe, the researchers found some way to replicate the pressures, and the staff just doesn’t know yet. That would be revolutionary.’

Then, a second dragonfly joins the first. On a black-emerald and black-turquoise torrent, the ember dips down low. Glittering like a sun-rays on water, it slithers closer with curious intent. It was leagues keener than its twin, metaphorically hexagonal instead of circular. This dragonfly too powers off and on in quicker blinks. Four blinks which is ‘H’ in Morse code … useless knowledge. 

Anglerfish cannot communicate. The entire ecosystem of a brain from fish to human is different, like trying to compare a tropical amazon to a winter wonderland. Just far too different to understand one another.

But, it is impressive that the aquarium was able to get such a deep sea creature to survive in a simulated habitat. 

“Hi there.” You wave your fingers. Pressing yourself closer to the glass, you wait for your eyes to adjust and register the razor teeth and fat jowls of an anglerfish brown face. Cold air starts to swim under your jacket, your body’s tilt causing the material to slip. Then, you make eye contact.

Eye contact? Eye contact. Turns out those lantern-shaped dragonflies you are looking at are not the bait anglerfish have attached to their bodies. It is not a hunting evolution you openly leer at. Rather, you look them in the eye. 

All the fire of your wonder extinguishes like a pinched match.

As if the vents are working overtime, a sudden chill falls over you. Goosebumps settle over your shoulders. You jump back and misty gray air (your gasping breath) explodes in front of you. It is not your desolate reflection that swims in front of you. Someone else’s face is in there.

There are creatures in there; that is undeniable. What fights to make itself conclusive in your reeling mind is the image of the creatures. Creatures – so completely alien when compared to the mixture of muscles that make up an anglerfish– with human faces. Human features. A nose. A pair of lips. A pair of squinting eyes, staring right back at you. 

One of them throws their head back in laughter when you fall to your ass, reeling inward and outward. What the fuck is a human – two humans! – doing inside an aquarium tank at 2 A.M.!

You climb back up to your feet with all the grace of an injured crab. Your left arm feels longer than your right; you feel like the ground has morphed into quicksand and is suckling on your right boot; all of your world has become disoriented. In your jacket, your penlight weighs down your left side like a brick. Pulled by a mental riptide, you wrestle until you finally stand on two (trembling)  legs like all bipedal humans should. Earth tilts as you watch the one who laughed move forward, blue blanketing him. 

He taps the glass. Exact over the bullseye point of where you stand, reeling, in the glass from his point of view. In intelligent acknowledgment of you.

You two lock spheroid eyes, analyzing each other with hell-bent resolve. Mapping the features of each other in your brain’s fusiform face area so you can recognize each other at later times. His human features settle like all the others before him in your cerebrum. Packaged in the inferior temporal cortex, packaged in the fusiform gyrus. The human visual system that specializes in recognizing faces accepts him. 

‘That is a face. I will recognize it later and recall it as one thing only: a face.’ Just like that, your brain, your fusiform gyrus mails you the annotation. 

A part of you wants to cry and the other wants to puke. You do neither. You react with a different system of your body.

Muscles press your flashlight’s button on and muscles move it up quickly when the second one starts to move closer to the glass. You do it out of fear. And with strange, instant regret. 

The one closest to the glass folds into himself, seething. A webbed, tooth-white-with-green-gradient hand covers his eyes in agony. His other hand slams the tank in a tight fist. It knocks the world back into orientation. You flee the scene with your flashlight swinging wildly back and forth with your sprint. 

This time there is no laughter.

You rush out like they are chasing you, laughing over your shoulders. With a harsh crash to the ground, panting in disbelief, you pull trembling knees towards your stricken face. What the fuck – what the absolute fuck! A carapace cloak falls over your brain to ignore knocking thoughts and rationalization. Wordless beyond three words, they swirl in your head. What the fuck – what the fuck.

Your spine lies on another exhibit. Stingrays lie underneath the aquarium’s sand, sleeping and unaware of you. Part of you knows you will not be able to sleep in the morning. 

“What the fuck.”

You unlock your phone with your face when you get home. 

The lamp glows, allowing your phone to register the face identification. As quickly as the string is pulled on, it is tugged off. Dawn rests against your black-out curtains like zombies pounding on doors sheltering food. Brightness on the screen is kept down to the lowest possible setting. You type the name of where you work into your phone.

‘There has to be information on them. You can’t just have that’ – pale-green faces with matching gold eyes – ‘that living in an aquarium. And if it’s in an aquarium, shouldn't that aquarium be like inside Area 51 or the Oval Office. Anywhere but nowhere!’

You click on the website of your place of employment. The types links are highlighted in white bubbles: GET YOUR TICKETS, WAYS TO SAVE, and ANIMALS UP-CLOSE. Your finger follows the last tab and you come across a Let’s Get Started sheet, asking if you are a member and, if not, to start booking. A colorful curse parts your lips.

You return to the home page. Take in the organization again. Okay, there are some links above too: Visit, Animals & Exhibits, Learn, Research & Conversation, News & Events, Support Us, Shop. 

Gravitating towards Animals & Exhibits, you watch as a list unfurls like a scroll. None of them are unusual animals. From beluga whales to steller sea lions, you are looking at a dead-end list of regular animals which you have passed multiple times on your nightguard route. Aquatic animals whose features do not turn your entire morning full of sleep into restless pacing. 

This is nauseating. For piscine features to be manipulated like that. Sea creatures come in a variety of features that are unique to them; eyes that reveal the innate instinct to survive above compassion or companionship, dorsal fins that branch off their body like tiny mountains, or those puckering lips that circle to suction fish-feed from the surface of their tanks. Those features you can compartmentalize with the aquarium you work with well. They belong there with the other undersea creatures. Your heart pangs in disgust.

This is immoral. For human features to be manipulated like that. A face you might see walking out of a movie theater, hand in hand with his girlfriend. A face you could have the possibility of getting to know if you were not a college dropout; someone in your biology or english elective or calculus class that would ask for help with a certain question. Staring into that man’s left umber eye and right gold eye, you realized how all those features made him human. Your heart pangs in sympathy. 

This is? You take a tranquil breath that soothes you like medicine from an inhaler, and the next thought sets your world back on the correct axis. This is out of your paygrade.

You return because, fucking, of course you do. A job is equivalent to a life. You experience less hardships when you have a good job – which you thankfully do. You have a good job that you must keep.  

One: legally, graveyard shifts pay more than others in your state. Two: it was ideal for the degenerative disease you have. Three: “I need money. Money is good. I need money. Money is good. I need money. Money is good. I need money. Money –'' There have certainly been better mantras sung in your car; though, this melody keeps you sane. Most importantly, it keeps your foot steady on the accelerator. So with three very good reasons – really just two overlapping ones and a single unique one – you return to work the next day like nothing is wrong. 

Thus, you are going to ignore it. Thus, “I’m going to ignore it,” you tell yourself. Thus, you are going to stand in front of the oval-shaped room’s door for the larger half of thirty minutes, studying the steel. Ah, this is far from ignoring it.

It is just … absent of sentimentality, you know that they are only fish. Fish that you see on guys’ dating profiles, fish that you eat with a medley of dipping sauces, fish that shit in the very water they swim in. You are no PETA advocate that will say fish are like the monkeys of the ocean, learning to use rudimentary tools and are sophisticatedly smart because they form social groups. However, despite this, there is a tiny pebble in the river that manages to disrupt the entire flow; the pebble wants you to apologize to them.

Which is outlandish and pure insanity!!

Which is really why you should not push the door open with your hand. And, which is why you glare at your traitorous fingers and listen to the creak of an opening door, bemoaning how utterly stupid you are to be opening this Pandora box of possibilities.

You let the flashlight sway once in an overarching cut across the room. Then, you point it at the ground and squint at the aquarium again. Besides a few layering shades of ebony speckled with blue, there is really not much for you to distinguish in the stomach of shadow. Putting yourself on an even playing field, you flick off your flashlight and step forward. 

Feet shuffle inch by inch. Looking straight, your acuity of vision decreases bar by bar. Gravity shifts like a restless faultline has awoken under your feet. You want to run away while you walk forward.

When you touch a hand to the frigid glass, you finally feel steady again. Once more, your exhale makes itself physical in a small cloud on the tip of your nose. The temperature is graciously grounding. 

“I’m okay,” you remind yourself. You blink to stabilize your vision.

Apologize to the fish then you can finally leave. Simple enough.

Yet, as you wait and squint, no glowing eyes emerge in the dark. You hold yourself there, waiting for just a flicker of motion in what seems like everlasting comatose. 

This is pointless. Why am I even here? I doubt they remember my face, much less hold a grudge over it. Fuck, why did I let myself get sentimental over some eldritch homunculus that is an affront to biological evolution! Why aren’t they at Area 51 or the Oval Office – why did faith push them here?

Inner seething concluded, you turn your flashlight on and the room brightens. For a split second, your face lies its reflection on glass with a resentful aura. You maneuver light towards the door with determination. Your body follows, making a hasty turn towards your exit. There are rounds around the aquarium to be made, iced frappuccinos in the breakroom you want to drink, and momental, life-altering plots to be ignored forever.

Until the glass behind you thuds in tension-raising noise like when a bird hits window-panes with little to no warning.

Breath caught in your throat, you whirl around to make eye contact with him. He wears such a handsome face, one that could belong to a heartthrob actor if not marred by the fins replacing his ears and the mossy green hue of his skin. His playful inquisitive eyes are entirely human in shape and structure; the black pupil and then the color ring of an iris. Too bad they too are disfigured by rare and nauseating colors, olive-umber and gold. 

That right eye reminds you of lighthouses on the coast. Captains are not supposed to stir towards lighthouses; they avoid the light, even if it carries a certain warmth. Why is he looking at you so warmly?

Somehow, you just manage to catch out of the corner of your eye the motion of his hand. An acute nail points down at your beaming flashlight which imprints a halo of light on the carpet floor. Then, he raises his hand up to around his shoulder. His fingers move in the starting shape of someone about to play thumb-war before he starts to move his thumb up and down. Clicking an imaginary button, signaling for you to turn off your flashlight.

Stunned, you numbly do. Light is pulled and magnetized back into the pen’s surface, like an object beamed up into a spacecraft, at a speed unseeable to the human eye. The eye contact between you two is almost an intense lip-lock that both of you cannot part with. 

This is one you shined the flashlight at. Right into those encapsulating eyes. The right one is yellow like liquid spilling out of a pineapple. Bright and playful.

“I- I uh,” you fumble with your apology. He probably won’t understand a word. You purse your lips nervously. Are there any words in the English language that can package up your sympathies from homo sapien to fish; is opening your mouth even worth it? “I wuh-wanted to –.”

Your apology withers when the eel-mer starts to tap on the glass. 

Intentionally, you listen. Yet irrationally, you expect to see or hear more Morse Code. Perhaps it is his anthropoid features that misled you to the conclusion that he might know the coded language. With a needle-hook nail, he taps a rhythm. 

It’s nothing though? The letters are gibberish, with even the number 5 sitting pretty between an O and a C. Of course it is not a code. Coming to your senses, you doubt he could even understand your apology if you gave it to him. There is a fine line drawn in the aquarium’s sand: fish and humans are not equal, one is more intelligent.

With some infinite patience, the fish taps the glass again. You listen and recognize it as the exact same taps and pauses from before.

“This is ridiculous,” you mutter under your breath. You hold eye contact, scrutinizing him. So used to having zero company, you surmise aloud, “I must be so sleep-deprived and loopy that I dreamed you up … A piece of undigested beef like Scrooge said.” As if to solidify his independent self and independent thinking in your solipsistic world, he taps the rhythm again.

This time – you think because of the repetition – you finally understand why he is tapping. It almost sends you flat on your ass once more. 

Oh. You throw a hand up to your mouth, faintly covering up a disbelieving laugh of joint horror and amusement. Disbelief crystallizes itself in the air; a tiny cloud of your reeling mind dissolves in front of you as you drop your numb hand. “Hah.”

The fish taps a nursery rhyme. One you know from kindergarten. One you would clap the rhythm of with your hands. You remember vaguely the pattern you’d move your hands to play with another child. The vague lingering sense of being hushed and secretive while playing your little singing games, giggling in the back of the classroom, bites your goosebumped flesh. 

How appropriate for a man trapped in an aquarium to know the nursery rhyme A Sailor Went to Sea. He does it again, the lyrics plucked from the cobwebs of your memory: A sailor went to sea, sea, sea; to see what she could see, see, see; but all that she could see, see, see; was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea. 

You don’t know fully how well your sight would fare in the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea. Still, with a hesitant squirm, you approach the frigid glass. The man inside the aquarium waits this time rather than launching right back into tapping.

Raising your arm, you make certain to dig your nails into your palm. A little reality-checking pinch never hurt anyone. One of those pallid nails rises up and taps back. Feeling like you are the spinning ballerina, you listen to the melody of this Pandora box plays unchained and uncaged in the ice cold air:

A sailor went to sea, sea, sea

To see what she could see, see, see

But all that she could see, see, see

Was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea

There is no way to get around it. The third shift is lonely. Here in this aquarium? They only require one person to clean all the tanks, turn off decorative filters, and supervise aquatic life. That sole person has been you. With an iced frappuccino and penlight as your pirate’s sword and hooked hand, you have managed the task of protecting this vessel well.

Just because of your longevity of working as a third shifter, it does not make it come easy. Two tabs in your eighteen open Safari tabs are on articles about coping with night work. Coping with solitude when the entire world works in the opposite of you. One article details trying to stay on top of social interactions. All these shifting hours have been mistakenly used up. As you move through hallways like a haunting shark, you roll in your mind all the lost opportunities and all the regrets of having people in your life that you could’ve formed relationships with but never did.

Your metaphorical ailment has been sleep apnea. Eye scorned. Unable to catch your breath. You've been awake for years with no company. Along with being alone, you have been so achingly tired. Circadian rhythms in a body never change.

Your friend plays well in rhythms. The instrument of his disposition is easy to read after a month of ‘knowing’ each other. He has the attitude of a drummer. 

It is hard to get yourself used to his existence at first; he remains uncaring to your fretting. Lacking melodies or harmonies, he seems like the type that would rather keep things easy and simple than embellish. 

You come to visit? He wants to play. You’re too exhausted to play? He can entertain himself. What you have is very plain sailing and hardly involves any talking unless you start it. Besides, he is still just a fish and thus cannot converse with you. 

He really enjoys tapping on the glass. He plays a variety of rhythms; ones you do not know then, very strangely, some that you do know. As night by night moves along in time’s steady march, you grow comfortable enough to play back. He will play a rhythm only once, you copy it back with aid from your memory. You have even started to show him music on your phone, seeing how quickly he can pick up on certain beats and mimic them for himself.

Sometimes though, all he wants to do is simply listen. Which is activity the two of you share in tonight, absent of that third member who you are sure is hiding deeper among the burrows and the oscillating, five ribbed kelp. That distant drummer in your phone floods the cold room with music.

A small booklet covers your heart as you lie wistful. The floor is rough cement. There is no better place to lounge though. Underneath your head, a furry gray seal pup you borrowed from the toy store acts as your pillow. You try to think of yourself weightless like you are in water as you remain close-eyed and contemplative.

Like a siren call, music slithers out of the bottom of your phone’s speakers. Legs crossed over one another, you briefly tap your foot along to the rhythm that you are sure your friend is enjoying. “Look for reeeflections, in yo-our face; canine devotioo-ton, time can’t erase; Out on the cor-ner or locked in your room; I never buh-lieve them and I never assume-uh!”

Speaking of your friend, you have not bothered to check on him in a while. One of your diseased eyes peels open. Face held in a wink, you estimate if your friend is close enough to the glass that you should be able to see him clearly enough despite all the darkness. 

You do not expect him to be lounging right there beside you. It gives you a little shock of surprise. A moment passes by and that feeling suddenly intensifies to a shock of the heart. Not in a romantic way but in the way of a death row prisoner being electrified to death. 

You bolt upright, skull and hair flying off the seal pup plushie. Prescription sunglasses tilt down from their forehead perch, landing crookedly on your nose. The creature waves a sharp set of gradient-covered claws in your face. The only reason that your electric heart runs above its normal BPM is because that glowing lighthouse-esque eye is on the left side rather than the right.

“It’s you.” The creature, who you have not been becoming friendly with for an entire month, smiles at you and your shocked voice.

Though you are certain he has been watching you – not just while you were resting your eyes on the ground for a much needed cat nap, but for the entirety of these thirty-one nights – his eyes still flutter around the space where you sit in observation. He takes in each individual item around you like trying to find certain objects in spot-the-difference puzzles. After a moment, you ask while pointing to your phone, “Do you not like the music?” His wandering eyes are magnetized to your face when you address him.

Hell, they are intense. Intenser than any eyes you have really looked in before, rivaling even the strictest teachers you had or the meanest secretaries you have known. The colors in his gold and umber iris swirl like tiny galaxies of brown dust and broken stars. Intelligent eyes like those are daunting and, thus, terrifying to level your gaze with.

Despite knowing you will not get an answer, you march on in your one-sided conversation, “I get it that music isn’t everybody’s thing. Does it disturb you?” You wait. The newcomer does not talk either. “Ah, not a fan. I get it.”

You may receive no verbal answer, however you sense he does not want to play patty-cake through a sheet of reinforced aquarium glass. “Whatever yooo-u dooo-oh, don’t tell anyone; whatever yooo-u dooo-oh, don’t tell –” The song cuts off as you press the pause button.

“I should have been more considerate,” you apologize, able to steadily carry on this solo because you have grown used to it. You do talk a lot to the other fish. Almost in the same way one can carry on an unbalanced conversation with a pet cat or dog. “You just swim over to let me know and I’ll turn it off. I would never want to disrupt anyone’s sleep.”

‘Just like I would never again want to shine a light in anyone’s eyes.’ You still regret that with each fiber of your being.

For a silent moment, you two observe each other. Though you are a hundred percent certain this is not his first time scrutinizing you. You realize his hair is a mirror-flip reflection of the other fish’s just as he raises one of his hands. 

Maybe he is like the other fish. Despite not giving the impression of a drummer, he might still want to play that rudimentary game of patty cake where you two match and copy each other’s rhythm. Perhaps it is all their fish brains can comprehend. Even though his eyes might seem intelligent, he is nothing more than a piscine creature. However, that thought stalls when a single, black-dyed claw reaches up to his own throat, tapping it delicately.

“Hm?” You tilt your head curiously. 

In response, he takes his index and middle finger and taps once more his own throat. Then, he takes those fingers and depresses them over the reinforced sheets of glass. 

“Do you want me to,” you trail off, eyes stuttering over the items at your disposal. “I can’t sing if that’s what you’re getting at. I’m no singer.”

 Eyes, one of them full of shattered stars and the other full of blown-up planets, stare on. Unchanging and showing you no inclination of what he wants you to do. The other fish will at least whine, squint, or show joy if he thinks whatever words your vocal cords stretch into will entertain him. “Though, I could,” you trail off again.

Trailing off is an awful habit of yours. You rarely can make full, complete conversation after almost half a decade of night shifts. However, those intense eyes encourage you to go on. “I could read to you?” Your fingers point towards the booklet that had fallen off your chest. “If you want?”

Once again, no answer. But, at least you are not staring alone at your desolate reflection. His figure behind the glass – the yellow eye on his left side watching each of your body’s movements – is so very real and alive. At least, you are not alone this time. Though, the company is unorthodox biologically.

“Reading … I can do that.” Only for a little while though. Eventually, your eyes will start to blur at the tiny scripture. However, as you pick up the book and place it in your lap, the first line is big enough that you can read it easily, “Once upon a time –”

As a wedding gift, Pandora received a box from Zeus. Though gifts by definition are simply something given from person to person, the word gift carries with it a subliminal, secondary definition. Gifts are to typically be opened.

Acting against that thought, Zeus warned Pandora to never open the box. You never understood that. 

Why would one dangle temptation in front of another’s face? Why even plant an apple tree in the Garden of Eden? Why even craft a box if it should remain shut evermore? Temptation is a seductive thing. It slithers up into a body with shining honey eyes and lures like a hook. Because of this, it is best to keep it under lock and key.

If Zeus really did not want the box opened, he should have kept it as a hidden secret underneath thousands of layer crusts in the mountains.

As the story goes, curious Pandora opens her wedding gift. From it, the four horsemen of Judgement Day leap and gallop out, thick plumes of disease rattle out of the box in shaking coughs, and envy and greed claws their way out with black, knife fingernails, raping Pandora of her beautiful face and stealing her glittering necklace. Bleeding scratches upon her cheek and lungs filling with disease-ridden smoke, Pandora slams the box shut with a regretful hack. 

Only one thing remains in Pandora’s box. Hope remains trapped inside the wedding gift. Alone, hope paces the perimeters of the box in their curiosity. Marveling at how much room and space they have to stretch out, hope takes a long, peaceful nap for all eternity.

You wish you could take a long, peaceful nap. You have a lot of trouble managing to fall asleep fully without waking up in intervals. When you work against your body’s natural circadian rhythm that is simply what happens.

Today, you have what Doctor Safari’s helpful tabs are telling you is a third shifter headache. To alleviate them you take no pills. Far too smart of an idea to take those. Instead, you take an iced frappuccino out of the break room’s fridge and turn off every single light in the aquarium, down to the blue LEDs that snake on the ceiling.

“Much better,” you sigh to yourself in relief. In nebulous black, your feet carry you to the place where company awaits and has been awaiting for about two months now.

It has been a slow trail of companionship. Progress is not fully linear. Part of you has forgotten how hard it is to socialize after years of isolation. 

To be honest, you feel like a man who has lived up in the mountains alone for years, living and hunting by nomad methods, only to be shown a cellphone as soon as you reach the mountain's descent. However, they must feel the same way. They have lived down in the ocean for years, living and hunting in aquatic methods, only to be brought up and shown the eye of a penlight shining in their face. The three of you are all just struggling along in finding how to make companionship work. 

But God, does it work. You hesitate with it, suddenly remembering the fins as placeholders for ears or the tails under their belly-buttons. Yet, human eyes and smiling lips will restore your content in the next moment. Something about them solves your loneliness.

They may never speak. However, you often have trouble navigating the maze of words.  In the end, you consider them friends in an unease definition of the word.

By the time you make it to Pandora’s box, your coffee is drunk down to the last drop and you use the chilled glass container as an impromptu ice pack across your forehead. Where you come through is not the typical oval-shaped room. Instead, you venture up a tongue of metal steps to the top of their aquarium tank. It is a circle-shaped room. Designed largely like a pool, the only lighting is three spheres on each wall. The room consists of a gaping black hole of water and a slight drop in floor elevation so staff can stand ankle-deep while feeding or caring for them.

At least, you assume. Because the first time curiosity lured you to the top of their tank, your fingers had been nibbled at. Nothing extreme and more like dogs cobbing to show affection, but it still surprised you when the right-gold-eyed one took your hand in his.

Now, you carry along with a plastic bag of treats and tread into the water without hesitation. Walking in the familiar steps of your companionship as you have done night after night. They are eager to see you it seems.

Too bad the world tilts and you are suddenly no longer looking down on them but eye to eye. You realize what has happened with gritted teeth. A careless trip of unbalanced feet, now you sit on hands and knees in inch-deep water.

You also realize something with more horror than before. The prescription sunglasses that were perching on your forehead have been knocked off and are slowly slipping inside the tank’s depths. 

“No, shit!” You cry out before, with one-track-mindlessness, you duck your head underwater like a hungry mallard. 

Your eyes fly open as soon as you submerge yourself. You watch as languid sunglasses drift lower and lower. Ribs tight on the cement floor, you spear out your arm in a panic, missing the edge of the glasses by a finger’s width before they go down further and further.

No, no, no! Those glasses cost a fortune! 

Stupidly, you consider the idea of diving right into the rest of the tank before you realize another thing. It paralyzes you, shocking and binding your heart. The entire sight of the tank is so easy to see. The bottom of the ocean floor is as clear as crystal, enough where you pick out each gradient of sand. It is comparable to being a person putting on their prescription contacts in the morning, everything clearing up with the right correction lens. 

Usually, your vision is always mildly blurry. Enough where you can navigate night to night without any serious medical aid. But that lingering, splitting-headache pain behind your irises dulls like a blanketed sound. 

It allows you to watch clearly as delicate, black fingertips scoop up your ebony pair of sunglasses. 

Relief fills you as the fish with upturned eyes gently brings them up to you. You surface from water just as both fish break the surface too. It dawns on you that you haven’t been this close, eyes parallel to one another with you on your knees. 

No reinforced aquarium glass separates you this time and yet, calmly, you say, “Thank you. I really can’t thank you enough for retrieving those for me.”

A giant grin grows on the one with downturned eyes. Though you hold a hand out to the other, this one seems to think your gratitude is for him for he loops his arms around your neck, squeezing you. He starts to pepper kisses on your cheek, which you suppose resembles how dogs like to lick their owners.

Your outstretched hand never receives the glasses. Instead, the fish with upturned eyes takes to placing your sunglasses back on the perch of your head. The temple tops fit snugly behind your ears. You watch as the fish with shrewdness in his eyes starts to move the tendrils of wet hair out of your face. 

As your hair is tucked and your cheek is kissed, you wonder just once more why faith has brought them to you.

“(Name)?”

You smile at Deuce’s surprised gap. Today, you wear Noir sunglasses. The lenses are as dark as vantablack, refusing to allow any light touch your retinas. Even the artificially colored lights of an aquarium during operating hours is too much for you. 

Deuce is in charge of the photography printing booth today. Twenty or so different families, couples, groups of teens flicker in rows across the screen he stands in front of. 

“You sound almost disappointed.”

“No, no, not at all,” he rushes to amend. “Just haven’t seen you out in –”

“The sun?”

“Yeah, that.”

“Even a vampire needs a change of pace.”

Like an examined showhorse, you show off your plain teeth. No fangs or shark teeth to be found. 

“I’ll tell you though. Driving here? A complete nightmare.” And, it really was. Usually you drive one handed. Your right hand lies on your thigh, tapping along to the rhythm of the radio’s drums. Today, you had to grip the steering wheel with both hands.

“Well, it is a summer weekend after all. Sucks to get stuck in traffic. ” Deuce nods his head in sympathy.

“Ah,” you look to the side. “Actually it was kind of just weird driving with other people on the road.”

Deuce’s eyes brighten in particle understanding. He might not entirely comprehend it but he still goes, “Oooh. Because you’re so used to driving at night.”

It is not that entirely. “Yeah,” you give a small, lying smile. When you remember driving, you remember it like a dream. You drive in a single lane, all alone in your white truck. Bordering you, two lanes of heavy, steady traffic move in succession towards the opposite direction. Going somewhere you are not. 

Your isolated Chevrolet Silverado was so high up on the ground that you felt a bird. The width of your truck was so wide that you felt you were shouldering your way through a crowd. That is only what felt like happened, not reality. “I just felt a little disjointed.”

The photographs on the monitor keep changing in flickers. Your eyes fall on them. Mother with daughter. Boyfriend and girlfriend. Father and mother and only son. Three girl best friends. Grandfather with two girls and one boy. Blank. 

“Did you get your photo taken?” He asks. He must have noticed your gaze. Has to do his job after all. 

“Ah no.”

You look at the empty block of spotlighted blue. Dark cobalt around the edges and white in the center. How many photos do you have of yourself? You feel in that moment … if you ran away somewhere, no one would notice; there’s no photographic evidence that you exist.

“Nah; had to fight to let them let me pass. Oh, it’s just mandatory. Completely free of charge. And then, they started thinking I was insecure or something so they started complimenting me. Had to explain,” you tap the side of your sunglasses in reference, “and then, finally they let me go. So much fuss for just a photo.”

“They’re really that insistent on it?”

You nod. 

“So what brought you out into civilization anyways?”

“Wow, rude.” 

Deuce laughs. You smile strained. Every time you speak, it feels wrong. You are being too mean or not engaging enough. God, why can’t you just talk to someone like a normal person and carry a conversation smoothly? There is no desolate reflection for you to spy on the laptop, just an empty space of spotlighted blue.

“Visiting some friends.” is your reply.

The publicity on them is quiet and hush. So much so that you feel the world has already known about them – two merman pulled from the bottom of the deep sea, sea, sea. It is entirely possible. With how disjointed you are compared to 99.9 % of the population, it is not so far-fetched to think that they have been in the public’s eyes for a long time and wonder over them has died down. 

However, this exhibit is still listed as the first one. Out of how many? Well, you suppose you will find out later if more are to come, if this is going to be a big success. You only found out from working the night shift, seeing the date on the break-room calendar. 

COME SEE, FOR THE FIRST TIME, CREATURES FROM THE BLACK LAGOON! That is the first message you spy on the aquarium walls, following along with the crowd. Must have been put up by the morning crew. In bright letters, strung underneath party streamers, a multitude of phrases bounce and shout. Instead of being in awe over the pictures of them, your mind focuses on each line detailing: unprecedentedly new; for the first time; never seen before!

Yet, no one shrieks in terror at the sight of them in the posters. Even when you and others are filed into the aquarium auditorium, the crowd murmurs to themselves softly instead of shouting. Under the hypnotic spell of voyeurism, everyone seems more anticipatory than agitated.

You fixate your glasses tighter to your face as you scale up metal stairs, looking over your shoulder at the water. This is where they do the sea lion or seals show. You have not seen a single one in an entire decade. Under the shadowed surface, you can spy two serpentine lengths flowing through currents. 

“Bet this whole thing is a scam. We should go back to Disney in Florida next year; it’s warmer there. More stuff to do too.” You cast a glance at the daughter in her early twenties sitting next to her mother before moving further up.

You do not pick the top row but you do pick an isolated section. Sandwiching yourself next to a stone pillar, your butt lands on the rickety metal bench. Just as you are about to readjust your glasses, making sure that sides of the lenses are atom to atom on your skin, you are interrupted by a loud, consecutive ‘woah’ that you are not a part of, that swims through the crowd.

But, you manage to see a glimpse of it just in time.

You are not sure which one of the two it is. Yet, all the same, you watch entranced as one of them breaches that ink pool. Bioluminescence tints his body in glittering blue topazes. It is like watching a shooting star suddenly fly across the dark night skies. 

The porcupine quills of black that make up his fins bend and the dragon tail of sapphire that makes up his lower body arches. Aerodynamic, he flies through the air and manages just in time to snag the large, squirming spider crab that hangs from a ceiling beam on a metal wire. He disappears with the same speed as his appearance, taking with him into the black hole of water his meal.

Yet, before anyone can close their hanging jaws or the water can stop rippling with the impact of the eel-mer diving back under, music blares from the speakers, moving spotlights suddenly slide over the water and crowd, and a man comes out of the backroom and onto the stage.

You are just done wincing from the bright flash of a spotlight surfing over the bench you sit on when the man suddenly exclaims, “How are we all doing?” You stay tight-lipped as the crowd cheers. “C’mon, you can do better than that! How are y’all doing today?” The crowd cheers, claps, and responds in a long Goooood! 

Cringing with shut lips, you suddenly remember why it has been a decade since you watched an aquarium show. The script is always a bit childish. 

“We have two very special guests for you today. The strong guy you saw just a few moments ago was Flotsam. His brother, Jetsam, is here too. Jetsam, why don’t you come out and say hi to everyone.”

You lean forward, enraptured with the sight. Serpentine coils cut through the water, water jetting up with the force of how quickly he swims. Onto the wayward platform that bobs in the black hole, Jetsam pushes his body up onto it. Instead of a pair of flippers, he waves his clawed fingers to the awestruck audience. 

“Flotsam and Jetsam are both eel-mers. Found and rescued from the northern waters, they are the first of their kind and are very excited to show you all what they can do!” Thus, the spectacle begins.

They go through a variety of tricks. From doing a few figure eights in the water, shooting balls into hoops, and even a freeze dance to the music blaring through the speaker, the mixture of tricks they do feels almost infinite. When the staff member rolls out a clownfish mailbox, announcing the birthdays of a few children in the audience, you wonder how long they must have been training. Days upon days of practice drilled into their memory. 

Birthday children come up to the auditorium’s yellow line as the eel-mers hand out little high-fives to them. One child even proclaims, “Ew sticky!” before his dad tickles him under the arms and picks him up, returning to their bench. Even though it is their first show, Flotsam and Jetsam seem so well-versed in social etiquette. 

However, you cannot help but find it a little demeaning. It seems so beneath them to have to perform like this to a leering audience. Sure, the rewards for each trick is generous, a stocky Japanese spider crab tossed and crushed in their razor sharp jaws, but it feels so ignominious. 

Despite the horrified joy swimming through everyone’s gasps and aws, your heart is so sad.

Another round of tricks starts up. This time it involves a dual pair of bongos. As the staff member picks up a squirting spider crab from the cage onstage, he speaks into his echoing earpiece, “Now, our here, Flotsam is an exceptional drummer. We often find him playing something new every morning, completely of his own free experimentation.” Flotsam swims and props himself on stage as the staff member continues, “Today, we’re going to have him show off a skill to you fine folks!”

Your heart buries itself deeper and deeper into sadness. Perhaps, he never was intelligent. Perhaps, he is just another dumb fish. Canine obedience hammered in through reward and punishment, rhythms only learned because it is trained in him. As you two lock eyes, you cannot find anything that would dispute this theory.

You wait, as does everyone else, for Flotsam to start drumming away as promised. In addition, you wait for his eyes to flicker away from your unrecognizable face hidden by your sunglasses. Neither happens.

“A little indecisive today. I understand, there is just so much good music in the world,” the staff member stalls for time. He rips off a crab leg, holding out the reward by Flotsam’s suddenly demure face. “Why don’t we start off with something easy, buddy. A bit of the musical scale. Do-Re-Mi?”

‘You want to watch out for his teeth,’ you think, rubbing your fingers over the little scars you have from his nibbling. They really are such sharp instruments to break through the shell of a Japanese spider crab.

Thoroughly entrenched, the audience watches the repercussions of a box that was supposed to remain closed being opened.

Disbelief ripples through the crowd like one subtle wave. It is the only sound you participate in. Finally, in sync with the crowd of awake people. Someone to your left moans out of a low groan of phantom pain. The volume of interlocking disbelief grows when the staff member raises his hand up into the light. His trembling red hand hovers in front of his face to verify the view, his ring and pinkie finger bitten clean off. 

Poor bastard’s wedding ring is probably sinking down to the bottom of the tank alongside the crab leg that Flotsam spat out.

Volume pitches and rises. A woman screams. Naturally, that rouses up the attendance like puppet strings. The staff member falls on his bottom then crawls backwards. Crawling away from Flotsam like one, big stumbling crab. Since the seatmate to your right is a stone pillar, there is no one to trip over your feet in their rush to leave but you watch hypnotized many individuals shove and trip their way through bodies blocking the stairs leading down to the exits. Then, calmly, you stand on your metal bench to overlook the crowd. 

Flotsam’s eyes are wide as he stares at you. Reminds you of two tunnels branched off in a cave’s stomach. His fusiform gyrus lights up like newly plugged in Christmas lights, recognizing you. The little pea that makes up your fusiform face area– that clocks in every night to a job rarely done, cobwebs on the cubicle's laptop and dust as a seat covering – recognizes him too. 

It already was recognizing him, seeing him as what he really is. Your lips crack open, “Flo -.” Then, you start barreling down the metal steps. 

Weaving in and out of the disjointed crowd, you race down, sometimes landing on the cement floor and sometimes landing on the metal benches in your hopping steps.A shoulder jostles you so harshly that your sunglasses fall off your face. Between rows of benches, they dive to the floor. You trip, trying to make the leap onto a metal bench. The sound you make as you fall onto metal is so tiny in the cacophony. 

The world goes white. It is like flash blindness from a nuclear explosion. 

Tears pour out your eyes. You clap a hand over them in shame and to hide from the bright … too fucking bright … lights. 

When you finally pick up your sunglasses, marks of shoe soles stamped like tattoos on your upper arms and hands, the auditorium is empty of a single soul. Not even they remain swimming in the tank. Someone must have sedated them and dragged them out. You are alone once more.

That night, you dream a dream that is more memory than a mystified fabrication of wonders or terrors. 

Tender like a newborn, you lie on a wafer-thin sheet of paper that unrolls itself from a cylinder like one big, white wave. Perhaps an iceberg is more appropriate. Hospitals are as cold as the arctic. On the paper iceberg, on the fence of girlhood and the fated teenage years, on the tongue of a vivisection, you balance with broken ankles. Under your thin gown, flowing air and goosebump-freckled skin collide. Blue tints your bottom lip.

You are laid down, anticipating future pain.

“Lay down and I will be with you two shortly.” He had said this and nothing more.

The scent at the doctor’s office is ozone with a hint of vanilla. Near your toes, the long neck of a giraffe stretches skyward, painted on the bricks. Under bright, too fucking bright, light, metal tools glitter like slick seashells. You can feel the prescribed numbing droplets in your eyeballs slowly seep in.

You pinch your eyes shut, feeling like there is a cement block lodged and scraping between the bones of your temple. Why wouldn’t they give you something for the pain? When you open them, they are held open by a speculum and hooks like you are nothing past being an animal in a zoo doing your daily checkups. 

Oh, and you are sitting upright on the paper iceberg now.

Must be the dream’s altercations. Time skipping forward in intervals. 

Dreams are always like a pile of bones. The skeleton all jumbled up and disorganized that you move from femur to ulna. You are not graced with a lot of time to think on the analogy as a very big kitchen knife leans towards your pried open eye. 

The muscles in your cheek twitch when it cuts. With the skills of a head-chef slicing an egg, your eye is cut perfectly down the imaginary midline. Both sides are even. 

He scoops out one side of your eye like a person pulling back from a whole cake with a single slice. It is more inky black and sickly gray. The hues of your eye-cake that is. Far from the bright blue or pink frosting of a cake, it stays saturated in montone hues. You always thought an eye would look like the diagrams in school, colorful with reds and blues, but it is a sickly ebon and ashen gray.

The cornea is hard as a freshly cut nail and the half globe of retina slimes in his gloved hand like glue. Now looking at it, it appears the flesh inside an eye reminds you more of a bruised plum’s insides. A muted hue of purple-black rather than full ebon.

It is the lens of your eyes that really captures the doctor’s attention. He takes the half-cut marble in a pair of tweezers. Between those lobster claws of thin steel, your lens which makes up a pupil is rotated back and forth in observation. 

An eye, though entirely soft and vulnerable, has only one hard bit inside like the tough seed of a peach. It can be cut but it will give resistance. With one good eye and half of your other, you watch the hard material between the lobster claws be pinched in and out to test the give and resistance of itself. Steadfast, it does not bend under the squeezes. 

That half-cut pearl glitters.

Time skips again, moving bone to bone like switching channels. Instead of smells and sights, sound takes over the scene. The faint buzzing of the air conditioner as it breathes over the giraffe’s neck. Water oscillating back and forth over rubbing soapy hands cries loud in your ears. Though, faintly, you can hear the blood from your eye that slips down your chin hit the pad of the paper iceberg you sit on.

The tissue in your hand crinkles softly in sound as you wipe away blood tears. In a chair that might as well be across the globe of Earth, your guardian sobs in intervals with a trembling chin. “Guuuh … gah … hu-hu-hugaaah.” You keep soaking up blood, dabbing the tissue against your face as it whispers in light friction. 

After he finishes washing his hands of your sanguine, the doctor intones two words like a priest giving the final prayer at the start of Armageddon, “cone dystrophy.” That is the last sound your ears can bear to hear before you jolt awake.

Your current doctor has given you exactly twenty-one little sheets. Ishihara tests; multiple circles with a number made of circles in the center. They are tests for color blindness. 

That morning, the colors red and orange permanently fuse into one shade. 

You took three nights off work. A little mini-vacation. The first was so you could spend the daylight hours watching the show with Flotsam and Jetsam; the second was so you could attend your doctor’s appointment; the third was so you could clean up what has been neglected in your apartment. Vacations are supposed to relieve the average worker of stress. You find yourself an outlier, once again.

“Blind by thirty? Blind by fucking thirty?” You bundle up the graphic shirt you were trying to fold into a circle and punch your mattress. The pile of already folded shirts tilts and falls in an arch to your right. “That fucking asshole,” you sneer.

Unraveling the graphic-tee-ball, you straighten your hunched posture with a deep sigh. No use taking your frustration out on innocent clothes. The wrinkled shirt joins the tower once you rebuild it. You reach out and grab a pair of socks. Foolishly, you thought organizing your apartment up for a very overdue spring cleaning would help to organize the disorder running rampant in your head. 

Forlorn and desolate, you look at the laundry mountain. Too bad that is far from happening. 

It is just … A person takes a guess at jars full of jelly-beans or what they’re significant other might have made for dinner, those are the true purpose of guessing games. The audacity of a person to guess when someone else is going to blind. You almost tear the sleeve off your cardigan when you pull in from the mountain’s maw. How dare your doctor estimate your finite health with such casualness. 

You suppose it makes sense. The Salvador Dali-esque dream you had the night before, coupled with losing the ability to differentiate between red and orange; all of these were just the bad omens setting up the stage for your doctor’s appointment. 

Mostly a homebody and not a frequent traveler, there aren’t many sights you are dying to see. However, the idea of losing your sight causes you to grieve it prematurely. Mourning the death of yourself. To just wither up inside this box-shaped apartment as a tomb, the thought of that is odious. You shudder and fold a towel.

Across the mattress, you look at your CRT television cloaked in a thin, see-through blanket to dim the lighting. On the square, a blue pick-up truck punches through metal and wooden gating. Even though the movie wrongly uses the sound effect of glass breaking, it is still impactful as you watch the pick-up truck reverse into an open boating harbor connected to the ocean. The whale and little boy harnessed to the back slowly sink in. 

Freeform is playing Free Willy. To be honest, you are just biding time until the Harry Potter marathon starts up. Thank God, this movie is nearing its end because it is putting dangerous thoughts in your head. You just want to see little Daniel Radcliffe under the staircase and be interrupted by commercials every twenty-five minutes.

The orphaned boy pushes the orca whale out to sea. You fold another article of clothing, unsure if it is orange or red. The hope that Pandora kept in her box begs for freedom.

It is an open secret now. That is a little contradictory, if you do say so yourself. 

However, it is the truth. The public now knows them without embellishment. With the shining gandour and seductive metaphorical-lingerie, it comes to their attention that predators are still predators. No matter how human they may look. 

The thought saddens you. Slowly and unsurely, you have been starting to humanize them in your mind. When you wrestle with the locked doorknob of the oval-shaped room, you grow sadder. 

It makes sense though. Flotsam and Jetsam? They should have been kept in the Oval Office or Area 51; instead they were brought to an aquarium in the middle of nowhere, used for publicity. The crux of humanity rears its ugly head. Sharing each fetish and body part to the audience is the sin of being a curious human. Everyone is a voyeur for something. No one can keep their mouth shut nowadays, always needing to post about their lives. So, they brought Flotsam and Jetsam here to do the exact same thing.

To think there was a time when you were disguised by their humanity. And now, it's all you hope to preserve and keep safe. Ascending the stairs to the circular-shaped room, you contemplate if there could ever be an inch of humanity in an animal. As a set of honey eyes peer at you from across the black hole water, you wonder if it is only canine obedience in their faces. 

Two against one, you all take a moment accessing each other. There are no plastic bags of yummy treats hanging from your arms. No thumping rhythms of songs echo on the walls. Instead of familiar friendliness and comfortable companionship, you all seem incredibly wary of each other. 

“Ya can come closer … We wouldn’t hurt ya, Shrimpy.”

Who the fuck said that?

Frozen in disbelief, you can do little besides watch the black hole ripple in violent sprays. A harsh slap echoes off the wall as a clawed hand breaches water only to grab the face with a right gold eye. Both drop under the water as your mind reels, spinning around options like a broken, juiced-up carnival ride. 

You are tired! You are so tired that you must have hallucinated that! Being awake for so long on the night shift … Why, it must be entirely possible to hallucinate every once and a while! An evolved headache of sorts! 

Yes. You grab onto that thought. Those words were hallucinations. Too bad your grip on the thought grows flimsy when Flotsam breaches the water, snarling, “I wanna talk to Shrimpy! Jade, lemme go! Get off!” A clawed hand grips the back of his hair and pulls him right back under.

A vivid hallucination you are having. Yes! A paragon of hallucinations and headaches after so many night shifts!

Despite the fear, you stay rooted in your spot. Not close enough to where the spilling water of the tank touches your shoes but close enough where you can watch the water steadily. Every once in a while, the sound of rocketing water echoes in the room. Dragon tails of green-blue fracture the surface. A clawed hand will rise up like a zombie breaking dirt only to disappear in seconds. Water flies in turrets and towers. 

Maybe because of the fear, you stay in your exact same spot and watch. Things start to calm down eventually. Bubbles pop on the surface like they are conversing under there. But, that is impossible because fish cannot speak.

‘Don’t backtrack (Name),’ you think to yourself. ‘Their entire existence is impossible. It’s been impossible since the beginning. This is just another step into that twilight zone. Another unorthodox secret brought to the surface.’ The thought makes you feel disjointed like a pile of bones.

It had hurt. The day of the show. You do not why but it had hurt to know they weren’t yours alone. That the secret had been open for some time and it was not just you and them. Thus, you stay and wait for them to breach the surface one more time.

They both do simultaneously. Water cutting the visage of the rest of their body from the shoulders down. Red returns to the scene, staining both Flotsam and Jetsam’s faces in thick scratches. You barely get a second to analyze the wounds before Flotsam shouts, “It was haaard, ‘kay? I wanted to tell them the pretty nickname I made for them! And tell them I liked the new rocks they put in our tank!” He pouts childishly. “It’s so borin’ not being able to talk. I got so bored! You’re boring.”

Even when Flotsam snaps his sharp teeth at Jetsam, he remains unpulsed. “Forgive me for trying to look out for your well-being, but both of us agreed in junction that we would under no circumstances talk to humans.”

“But Shrimpy’s different from the rest!”

“Under no circumstances, Floyd.”

“I knooow,” Flotsam? Floyd? whines. Then, his downwards angled eyes slide over your comatose form. An excited grin comes up to his face. “Doesn’t matter now though. Shrimpy!!”

You are barely given a second to gather your thoughts before Floyd barrels towards you. Spindly arms wrap around your neck and suddenly you are down on your knees in an inch of water. The kiss on your cheek this time feels much less like a dog licking to show affection; it resembles more a human kissing you on the cheek which causes you to fluster. 

“Truly, you make things so difficult at times,” Jetsam? Jade? tuts. The sound of him swimming through the water draws closer. His deep timbre sends a cardiogenic shock through your ribcage as he addresses, “I do apologize for my brother. He was a bit desolate without you here the past two nights.”

For some reason, you wonder how Jade felt in your absence too. Hands holding onto Floyd’s upper arms for a semblance of balance, you reply, “Uh, I took — I took a vacation.” The words feel like marshmallows rolling off your tongue. Gluttonous, fluffy, unreal with their texture. This really is happening, and you have to come to terms with it.

“Told ya it wasn’t because they were scared of us.”

“I never made such a connection. Merely hypothesizing.”

“Mmh, hypothesizin’ my ass,” Floyd grins as he turns to … sniff your hair?

Pushing him away to gain a bit of distance, you address the one you find the least distracted of the two. “You — You can talk? Why — Why didn’t you say anything to me before?” The companionship you had? Was it truly so fragile that you two had to keep secrets from one another?

“Well, you see, (Name),” — your name is so tantalizing coming from his voice that you feel like you are being resurrected from a heart-attack, defibrillator pounding away on your chest — “it was a matter of safety for my brother and I. If we were to say anything —.”

Floyd interrupts, “Everyone’s kind of a bigmouth buffalo fishy here so we keep ours shut.”

“The day to day conversations of the staff, the chatter from the people who visited us in the daylight hours, the unending gossip. We figured it was best to keep our lips sealed for the time being. Who knows how they would have reacted.”

“Nothing’s better than having a few tricks up your sleeve, Shrimpy.” Finally, you are done being squeezed as Floyd falls back into his tank. He rests his hands behind his head and floats buoyant.

“It is an epidemic, I fear. Fufu. Secrecy is such a rare trait to find nowadays.” Jade crosses his arms on top of the cement incline that you kneel in, looking at you sweetly. “Almost a lost art of sorts, eroded away after centuries of geological and evolutionary advances.”

Then, ping-ponging back and forth, they start to slip each secret (that others would probably want under lock and key) they’ve heard.

“Your manager’s wife is infertile thus he avoids conversations about children or preschool.”

“Lucas hit a guy with his car two years ago in a hit-and-run. Didn’t kill him but still.”

“Martha’s daughter just had an abortion. She gripes to Tatiana about how to possibly be supportive about this.”

“Ashley doesn’t like her boyfriend and they’re breakin’ up soon.”

“Deuce is going to fail his statistics class if he scores lower than a 95 on his next test.”

“Patrick is proposin’ to his girlfriend on December 1st.”

“We could keep going,” Jade says with a sly grin. “However, I think the point has gotten across.” He trails one fingernail across your thigh and smiles when you do not flinch. “All that useless prattle makes for some divine entertainment. Besides, matching up with more animalistic expectations can mean others are wildly underestimating us. Having the upper hand is better, always.”

Scrutinizing over his wandering fingernail, you ask quietly, “Is that why you attacked that man?” The question is meant for Floyd. Jade pulls his keen nail back all the same.

“Nah,” Floyd does not look at you as he answers, fixated on the ceiling. “It was humiliatin’. Being looked at that way by ya, Shrimpy.”

You blink in surprise. Shame is such a human trait. Born of social circles and social behaviors that are just uniquely tied to the bipedal species you are. The look on Jade’s face seems to agree with the consensus. You watch green-blue muscles glide through the water, simply drifting to a tame current. You watch black fingernails tap on cement in a tiny rhythm. 

Floyd continues, noticing your silence, “Shrimpy’s the only one that talks to us like people. Everyone else just treats us like a spectacle.” 

The heart in your ribcage knocks. You cannot Free Willy the entire aquarium. But, your Chevrolet Silverado has enough room in the bed for a kiddie pool or two.

Faintly, you recall a distant memory, when you read to Jade so many weeks ago, just as you open the oval-shaped room with the stolen key:

“The creatures stung Pandora over and over again and she slammed the lid shut. Epimetheus ran into the room to see why she was crying in pain. Pandora could still hear a voice calling to her from the box, pleading with her to be let out. Epimetheus agreed that nothing inside the box could be worse than the horrors that had already been released, so they opened the lid once more. 

“All that remained in the box was Hope. It fluttered from the box like a beautiful dragonfly, touching the wounds created by the evil creatures, and healing them. Even though Pandora had released pain and suffering upon the world, she had also allowed Hope to follow them.”

For the past decade, photographic evidence of your existence has been nonexistent. You have found yourself to be an outlier; the world operates to a different rhythm that you have not been able to copy, relicate, or even play along to. Living in perpetual sleep apnea of the soul, you have only found true connection with two other people.

The blue ceiling lights are off as is now the new normal. Without the aid of your penlight, you make your way into the space with confident steps. Sunglasses perched on your head, you find that what has been slowly developing has reached the summit of itself. An impromptu, unorthodox Free Willy plagiarism.

The dark is easier than ever to see through tonight. You smile back when they smile at you. 

Floyd is curled up close to the glass, calling for your undivided attention with his placement. Subdued yet stealthy as ever, Jade lingers behind yet close enough to be seen. Floyd crosses his body across the glass-canvas up and to your right. Jade crosses his body to your left, floating demurely lower. 

The glass-canvas is painted with a few smudges of handprints. Some are from yourself and others from the only and only drummer. He depresses his dominant hand on the glass, leaning in close. His right hand waves up in dark waters in a fervent, warm greeting. His excitement to see you is palpable. You raise your own. 

Both of their eyes shine like spotlights. The only light that you have looked into and found it does not hurt. Jade’s anticipatory smile slithers onto your face in a perfect mimic. You are going to rob the aquarium of those glittering gold dragonfly eyes. Tomorrow, there will be nothing for the staff or customers to find in nebulous darkness.