Aquarium Blues
AQUARIUM BLUES
By
Paul Lucas and Phil Velasquez
This was a story originally commissioned from me by Phil Velasquez. He came up with the characters, plot, and some of the ideas, and I wrote it out for him. It was the first of now more than half a dozen stories I've writtten for Phil, all fo them enjoyable experiences.
If you're interested in a story commission, if you have an idea for a story but don't have the time or experience to write it up proper yourself, feel free to contact me at [email protected] and I'd be gad to do it for you at a reasonable price. I'm a published writer and novelist with well over 12 years of experience.
Even though this does address mating behavior, its not really a "yiffy" story in the classic sense. But it is a decent read. Enjoy!
"Sorry, we do not require your services at this time."
Shannon sighed, crumpling the form letter. She had seen those exact same words on rejection letters over five dozen times now, paper and email both. No crueler sentence existed in the English language
She shucked off her shirt and casually worked her jeans down, revealing a black swimsuit underneath. She threw them both into the haphazard pile on the cool linoleum floor. A feathery shiver danced down her spine as the cool air kissed her near-naked skin.
She had worked so damn hard through six years of college. Grubbing under egotistical professors, gathering apathetic references, collecting caffeine migraines with all-nighter study sessions. For what? So she could flick flakes into a million gallon fish bowl and constantly be told she wasn't good enough?
Well, okay, she had to admit that working at the Markham World Aquarium wasn't quite that bad. Constructed in the early eighties, it was still rated the eleventh largest aquarium in the world, even if it was beginning to show general wear from its age and slow starvation in funding. Its main attraction was a million-gallon megatank scuplted with three-inch thick reinforced lucite for tourist viewing, with a dozen satellite tanks for specialized species or dedicated research.
Shannon had imagined her career in oceanography would be a bit more glamorous than slicing up mackerel by the crate and throwing it to mindless gilled eating machines swimming in the same megatank over and over all their lives. She imagined going on oceanographic expeditions, diving to coral reefs, swimming with whales. Exciting Jacques Cousteau stuff.
Instead, she worked in a barely-maintained tourist trap, forced to create her own excitement. She slipped over the chrome-and-glass railing, and dived into the tropical-warm water of the tank. She knew these unauthroized after-hours swims could quickly become career-damaging if she were ever caught. Only management-approved divers were ever supposed to actually enter the tank. But this was one of the few ways she had found to relieve the unending frustration of constant rejection.
The gentle current surged over her skin. The shift in perspective, the beauty of ocean life unfiltered by glass, was a thrill she found impossible to resist. Good thing she had started going out with Blake in the security department. He'd shown her how to reloop a previous nights' recordings through the security cameras. There was also a janitor on duty this late at night, but Shannon knew he was probably already nursing his usual bottle of Jim Beam in the basement boiler room.
A school of blue nomadfish flowed around her and darted past. An dark-scaled eel undulated below her, then swerved to avoid the two-meter-long hammerhead shark the crew called MC. The sleek predator sluiced further into the depths of the megatank as silent as murder, utterly unconcerned. A heartbeat later, a stingray angled by, swam a single orbit around her, then continued on his way.
She could almost imagine this was what it was like in the real ocean, exploring it in the way she had always dreamed of. Then she spotted her reflection in the megatank's glass.
She frowned, the illusion broken, then smiled at her sleek curves. She prided herself in the shape she kept. She had tried to convince Blake to join her once or twice in the megatank so she could play naughty mermaid, but he wouldn't go for it. He really had no sense of adventure. She had managed a small miracle just to eventually get him to tell her how to fool the cameras.
She surfaced for a breath and dived deep again, slicing through a small kelp forest and driving dozens of colorful denizens out ahead of her. She didn't know why she stayed with Blake. He was nice enough, but staid and boring. She supposed she had been attracted to his stability, but had grown listless not just about him, but about everything in her predictable life. These illicit dives were still kind of exciting, but even their novelty was beginning to wear off. The same fish day in and day out could only be so exciting no matter how exotic.
Shannon surfaced near the railing, squeezing the water from her long hair. She walked casually to the divers' wash in the far corner. She pulled the chain and was inundated with fresh water to wash the salt and scum from the megatank off her skin.
She sighed, knowing she would have to spend a good deal of the next week sending out another round of resumes. She wished she could find a way to explore the oceans and have the life of adventure she dreamed of. "I would almost sell my soul for it," she whispered.
"Almost?" came an unfamiliar voice with a small laugh. "Can't you do better than that?"
Shannon spun. On the railing of the main megatank sat a young woman, a few years younger than herself, one knee drawn up into the clasp of her fingers. She was dressed in casual jeans and black tee-shirt, topped with the darkest hair Shannon had ever seen.
Shannon instantly half-crouched, shooting her arms across the exposed parts of her body. Her cheeks burned wildly. "How did you get in here! This area is for staff only"
The girl smiled through blood red lips and drew a long sip from a soft drink cup. "Spare me the modesty. I've seen it all before."
Shannon straightened, looking around to make sure it really was just the two of them. It was kind of silly acting all modest. How many times had she showered with other women? But she still hated being exposed. "All right, but who are you anyway? The aquarium isn't safe after hours."
The girl laughed again. "What's going to happen? Am I going to fall in and big bad sharks are going to bite off all my clothes too?"
Shannon's blush deepened.
"Oh, relax. I can't harm you. Its part of the rules."
"What rules?"
"Heaven and Hell rules. I'm a demon, you know. My name's Jennifer."
Shannon laughed. "Right. A smart-ass teen-age demon named Jennifer."
She pouted. "I like Jennifer. Its ironic, like 'Fluffy the dinosaur' or 'Huggles the nuclear bomb.' No one would take me seriously if I was still Kervortirax or Deathmaw the Devourer. Sounds like a bad video game."
"I really don't think anyone is going to take some stoned kid seriously anyway. Why don't you just..."
"I'm here for your wish, Shannon."
The older girl's eyes narrowed. "How did you know my name?"
Jennifer rolled her eyes. "Not this routine again. Look, before we waste time on cliched banter back and forth, why don't we just skip to my proving that I'm a demon?"
Shannon was shrugging on her clothes. "Right. And how are you going to do that?"
"Look at me."
Shannon did. And screamed.
She tore her eyes away, heart jackhammering in her chest, the most intense migraine of her life stabbing away behind her skull. "W-what..." she gurgled, tasting vomit in her throat. "..what...what the HELL was that!"
"Well, I saw you naked, so I figured it was only fair that you see me raw as well. Demons and angels and a lot of other critters you've never heard of exist across much more than a mere three dimensions. You saw me uncoupled from the veils we usually wear in these little hovel universes."
Shannon hesitantly looked up, relieved to see Jennifer back to normal. "You--you were bending... and curving...it couldn't be..."
The demon shrugged. "You saw the contours of the real me curving into higher planes of existence. Your little analog brain isn't built for such concepts, much less their reality. Kind of like a flat piece of paper trying to comprehend a jungle gym. I mean, what did you expect from a demon? Bat wings and horny tentacles? You watch too much Hollywood crap."
"W-what do you want?"
She spread her hands expansively. "I told you, I'm here for your wish. I overheard you say that you would almost sell your soul for something. I'm here to see if I can make you go all the way."
Shannon hugged herself. This couldn't be real. "I'm not giving up my soul..."
Jennifer threw back her dark hair and laughed. "Its not like you little mortals have a lot of use for those things. Seriously, what have you ever used your soul for? Even after you die its transformed into something else. Very little of what made you what you are survives. So why not give it up and be happy in this life while you got a chance? Its win-win for both of us, really."
"That's got to be a lie," Shannon said.
"First of all, that's another rule. I really can't lie to you either. We demons just get a lot of bad press. And about your soul, it lasts for eternity. Billions and billions of years. How much of your measly three-score-and-twenty year human lifetime do you think matters to something like that? Your whole life as a human in this silly little cosmos is worth less than an eyeblink."
Shannon was quiet for a long time, thinking, a miasma of thoughts swirling through her mind. It could all be a lie, or a hallucination. But what she'd seen of Jennifer in that one moment of revelation couldn't have been faked. She had never been religious, and had never really expected any kind of afterlife anyway. And there was so much she could gain with this...
Finally she looked up at the girl-demon. "All right, tell me what I have to do to get what I want."
"Just state your wish, and that you're willing to trade your soul for it. Then I give you what you want and take your soul. And don't worry, its painless, unless pain is what you wish for, of course."
"I guess...I guess I want to be able to explore the oceans. Yeah. My wish is to be able to breathe like a fish so being underwater doesn't bother me at all, and every day can be a new adventure. I'll give you my soul for that. Ha! I'll be sure to get all kinds of offers after I do a little research like that!"
Jennifer smiled thinly, narrowing her eyes. "All right. Done."
Shannon blinked. "What? Just like that?"
The demon pointed at herself. "Higher-dimensional infernal entity, remember? I'm doing a lot of things you can't perceive right now. But yeah, its done. Your wish is granted, and I have your soul."
"But I don't feel any different."
Jennifer sighed impatiently. "Feel the sides of your neck."
Shannon reached up to encounter three thin slits in the skin just above her collarbone on each side of her neck. "Oh my God..."
Jennifer shrugged. "Well, if you insist. But I'm really just a demon."
Shannon shot her a dirty look, then gasped in shock as she felt the slits dilate open. She tried it a few more times, and found she could control the reaction. She tentatively reached inside and felt rigid, familiar-feeling structures. "Are--are these really gills?"
Jennifer nodded. "There's one way to know for sure, isn't there?"
Shannon hesitated for only a second before turning and throwing her clothes off again as she trotted toward the main tank. She dived in, schools of small yellow-brown fish darting away from her like mad. She swam forward, dilating her neck slits open, and sure enough felt a tremendous surge of energy as water sluiced through them.
She giggled and laughed into the muffling water, then kicked hard to dive deep. She caught up to MC, the hammerhead shark, and paced beside him. He twisted and turned to get away from her, eyeing the odd intruder warily, but she easily kept up.
Shannon chuckled some more. It was not just that she was able to breath underwater, but she was able to swim much more effortlessly as well. And faster! She could never have kept up with MC before.
Her life was going to be so different now! The studies she could conduct, the expeditions she could join! The prestige, the grants, so much she could have now. She would have to keep the gills secret, of course. She could have special wetsuits constructed to hide them and only pretend to use scuba gear. The oceans would be her playground!
It all felt so incredible! Her every nerve tingled against the water, like during the best sex. But this was better than any sexual feeling she'd ever had!
The only thing was her back felt itchy. She reached back to scratch, murring at the sensual feel of her fingers on her own skin. To her surprise, she found an angular bump along her spine. And shockingly, she could feel it growing slowly, stretching the skin and muscle under it.
She paddled forward, the urge to swim overtaking her like a hunger she had never known. Her vision hazed at the incredibly sensuous sensations on her skin. What was going on? She just had to keep swimming, the rush of the water over her skin and through her gills near-orgasmic. Through the shimmering light bleeding through the transparent lucite walls she could see scales dotting the skin on her arms, growing more numerous with every second.
What had that Jennifer done to her? She was transforming into a monster! She had to get out of the tank, call for help! But she couldn't bring herself to do anything but instinctively swim with all her energy.
She realized she couldn't kick her feet apart anymore. She looked back and saw that her legs were fusing together into a single mass. How could that be happening? Panic seized her as she lost control of her body completely. She thrashed and quivered in the water, slowly sinking toward the bottom. A powerful, body-wracking ecstasy like she had never imagined possible swept through her, a burning explosion of rapturous nerves in every inch of her flesh.
For a long time, she couldn't think, only feel the visceral rapture flowing through every limb. She was dimly aware of her arms shrinking, her legs transforming, her neck disappearing as her head retracted into her shoulders. At one point the air in her lungs exploded out of her in a froth of bubbles, and she knew, somehow, that those organs were now forever gone.
Her body warped and shrunk, then expanded and rewove itself. The raptures flowing through her reached a crescendo, reducing her entire universe to the hot pleasures they provided.
They stopped abruptly. She could think clearly again.
She darted immediately toward the surface with all her remaining strength. She had to escape! Her body felt lumpy, stunted somehow. What had that demon done to her?
She breached the surface, trying to gasp for air that would not come. She shook her head, a motion that sent her entire body undulating. She no longer had lungs to draw air into! She tried to call out, but no sound came except for her own splashing.
She sunk a few feet, angling toward the broad clear wall of the tank, looking for her own reflection. What she saw horrified her. Staring back into her own eyes was a large fish, sleek and angular like a shark but clearly of no species she had seen before. Her flanks were streaked with gold and red against black scales, almost like some strange kind of home aquarium species bred monstrously large.
Suddenly human eyes were superimposed over her own in the reflection. Jennifer!
"So how do you like it?" the demon asked.
"You can't leave me like this! You can't! Please!" she pleaded silently.
To Shannon's surprise Jennifer heard her. Given her other abilities, it almost made a weird kind of sense that Jennifer could read her thoughts. "Oh, come on," Jennifer laughed. "How could you not like it? Exactly what you wished for. You can breathe just like a fish now, and have all kinds of adventures underwater."
"But I don't want to be a fish! I want to be human!"
Jennifer shrugged. "Humans can't breathe like fish. There's a reason why the biology's so different, you know. Form follows function. Besides, I stuck by the rules. I gave you your wish to the letter, did not lie to you, and did not harm you. In fact that transformation should have been quite pleasant. You'll even be a celebrity of sorts. You're the only female of your species anywhere, and the marine biologists here will be quite excited to see you."
Shannon wanted to cry, but with her new body that was impossible. "But...but..."
Jennifer waved enthusiastically and smiled. "Well, thanks for the immortal soul and all that. Ta-ta." And with that she turned into an angle that wasn't there, and was gone.
*
The rest of the night was hellish, Shannon repeatedly going to the surface and trying to breathe and gulp at the air, only failing miserably. She felt a cold torpor seize her from time to time, realizing that her now cold-blooded metabolism was reacting sluggishly as she found herself in the colder sections of the tank. She huddled near the surface, terrified beyond words of what the morning would bring.
When the work day began, the aquarium staff was amazed at her presence, pointing and talking excitedly among themselves. She tried signaling them, even swimming in patterns she thought would resemble letters, but to no avail. To them it was just the inexplicable behavior of a mysterious new species.
She spotted three other fish with markings similar to hers, but all three were signifiantly smaller. She also knew, somehow, that they were all males. Jennifer's doing, no doubt. Some sort of sick joke whose punchline she couldn't quite figure out yet.
When all of her attempts to communicate failed, she fell into a deep depression. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Making a deal with a demon! She should have known better, she should have thought things out more!
She began hiding out in the kelp beds and in the darker, more remote parts of the aquarium's megatank. She avoided the human divers whenever possible. Strangely, she still felt naked without clothes, and hid as much out of shame as out of fear of what she had become.
Luckily, the other fish did not harass her much. She was bigger than most of them, and the bigger meat eaters were regularly fed by the human staff anyway. Plus there were the bright colored streaks on her flank. In the animal kingdom, vibrant contrasting colors were usually markers warning other creatures that the owner was poisonous. Was that the case with her? Was her bite or scales or spines deadly to other critters?
She never really got a chance to find out. In off-moments, with her mind occupied by other things, she did find herself stalking and sometimes even devouring the smaller fish. Apparently she was as predatory as the sharks. But it was nothing a fish her size couldn't have accomplished without poison either.
But it still disgusted her. Each time she found herself chewing live prey she wanted to scream and not stop, ever. If only she could cry, or talk, or do something besides swim and eat and drown in her own thoughts!
She would starve herself for days on end, trying to deny everything that had happened, but then found herself snatching food away from the divers as time went by, snapping the pieces of fish in her jaws and zooming back to one of her hiding places to eat. It still burned her to have the people she knew as a human see her naked, even if it was as a fish.
She couldn't go on like this indefinitely. She had to think of some way to survive. A way to stay sane...
*
Weeks passed. Shannon stared doggedly at her alien reflection in the megatank's lucite glass. I'm a fish, she repeated silently over and over. I'm a fish, I'm a fish, I'm a fish. My life as a human is over. I have to be a fish.
Often, she lost complete track of time as she stared at herself like this day after day, when no one else-no one human, anyway--was around. That was as it should be. She was a fish now. Fish weren't supposed to have real memories. She had to forget everything.
A school of darters swam by and almost without thinking Shannon joined it. It felt natural, just another part of her life underwater, to swim with a larger group. The fish ducked and dived, whirled and backtracked and did it all over again. Fish swim, fish swim, fish swim, Shannon repeated to herself the whole time. I'm a fish. Fish swim.
Suddenly the school angled into the main area of the megatank, right in front of a crowd of tourists gathered by one of the main viewing ports. Shannon panicked and broke away, diving into a concealing bed of kelp.
She swam in a tight, agitated circle. It still burned her for people to see her naked! Of course she knew that didn't make sense, but she couldn't help it. Her being a fish now only seemed to heighten her shame at being so exposed. They were like predators, watching her every move!
She half-buried her head in the silt at the bottom of the tank. She did not feel excited now, as she thought she would when she first made her bargain. Only naked and vulnerable and weak and stupid.
No! She couldn't think like that. She was a fish! Fish did not feel naked or alone. They were just fish!
Eventually the tourists thinned out, and Shannon slowly drifted out to stare at her reflection some more. I'm a fish, she began to repeat again. I'm a fish, I'm a fish...
*
Two months passed. At least transformed Shannon thought it was two months. Time was so hard to comprehend, much less keep track of, in the endless sameness of her existence.
Shannon repeated her mantra to herself, as she had done thousands upon thousands of times now. I'm a fish, I'm a fish, I'm a fish. Fish eat, fish swim, fish avoid other fish.
She could not allow any other thoughts. It was too painful to be reminded of the life she once had. The only way she could keep from snapping and throwing herself out of the water was to live and think like a fish. She had done so for weeks upon weeks now, her life as a human mercifully becoming a dim memory.
The other three fish with markings similar to hers were swimming close by, pacing her on either side. Shannon did not try to wonder at the motion, just accepted it. Fish swim.
Through some unknown urge, however, Shannon found herself swimming faster, the smaller fish struggling to keep up. For the first time since her change, she felt a thrill of pleasure shudder down through her body. Suddenly one of the males flashed forward and rubbed up against her underside. A tingly thrill flashed its way through her flesh.
A moment later, the same male did so again. Shannon angled herself down to meet him at the last second, the brief second of contact again filled with a powerful feeling of ecstasy.
A dim sensation of fulfillment washed over her afterward. For the first time in weeks she allowed herself a new, complex thought: the male was mating with her!
For just a brief moment, the old human emotions of panic and horror seized her. She was going to lay eggs, she realized. Eggs! She wanted to scream again.
Then the male--the strongest and most capable of them, able to outswim the others--sped toward her again, and again she pushed through the water to meet him. She noticed that he flipped over at the last second, his underside meeting hers. Another almost-orgasm swept through her, and, unbidden, thoughts of Blake suddenly resurfaced. She couldn't recall his face, but she remembered the intense intimacy, two bodies gliding together, yearning for deep closeness.
The tiny male mated with her a dozen more times, and Shannon began welcoming him. Make love to me Blake, she whispered to herself deep in the still-human part of her mind. Make me feel alive. Make me feel worthy of living again.
The high from her overpowering sexual instincts faded, and the small male was gone, nowhere to be seen. Shannon suddenly realized her teeth were ripping at something in her mouth.
She was eating him. He had broken himself keeping up with her, his purpose finished. In the brutal alien world she was now a part of, her lover, her mate, the one thing that had made her feel slightly human again, had instinctively become just another meal. She swallowed.
A thousand silent screams crescendoed deep in her skull. Something in her mind died, never to reawaken.
*
Many months later, all possibility of human thought was gone. Her actions were automatic. She ate when fed, swam, mated, laid eggs, and occasionally entered a torpor state that resembled sleep.
Jennifer the demon licked an ice cream cone watching the transformed Shannon through the megatank's three-inch-thick glass. She'd overheard the marine biologists buzz excitedly over their new arrival's dream-like state. Apparently a rarity in fish.
In a way, Jennifer had to admire Shannon for the trap she had laid for herself within her own mind. The silly human had been so convinced of things being only a certain way, so willing to believe all the bad hype about Jennifer's kind. Jennifer had been a demon, Shannon believed, so of course the bargain could only work a certain way. The human capacity for self-delusion was one of the greatest tragedies of their species.
Quite frankly, it amazed the demon that it had never occurred to Shannon that the girl could change back whenever she wanted to. All she would have to do is heave herself out of the tank onto the dry floor and will the transformation, much the same way she had first dived into the tank and willed herself to breathe water. But the fish-girl had never even tried.
Part of the rules of Heaven and Hell stated that Jennifer couldn't lie to Shannon. But that didn't mean that she had to tell the silly little human everything.
Of course now shifting back to human would never occur to Shannon. What had been left of her human mind had snapped, like dried coral under a tidal wave, and she had become purely fish now. Some vestiges of the old thought processes remained--the sleep-like state was one of them--but for the most part only pure instinct remained.
Humans made such a big deal out of the horrors of Hell and eternal suffering and such, but very few realized how easily the human mind could create its own worst nightmares for itself.
Shannon eased her way to the edge of the tank, her eyes meeting the demon's. For a brief moment, there was a dim flicker of recognition in the back of Shannon's brain. But a silverback swam by, Shannon was distracted, and the moment passed. The black-red fish had already forgotten the demon had ever been there.
Jennifer knew it would be the last human-like thought the transformed Shannon would ever have. Well, Shannon would have the life of non-stop adventure she always wanted after all. What else could life be, when you couldn't remember more than a few minutes into the past?
Jennifer the demon finished her ice cream and twisted into levels of existence humanity had no name for. Her only witness was a large black-red fish who swam endlessly, unconcerned with the business of Heaven or Hell.