Shark Episode
Black was putting more pieces in the center than I was.
He didn’t block my pawn anymore. I should get my own knight out, knight steel.
I moved him to F three. My hand was off the piece.
“How do you move so fast?” My queen looked up at me pleading. “I could never be so confident.”
I had played this game one time too many times in a past life. Time management was one of my weak spots.
“Trust me, if we end up with a difficult position I’m going to need to slow down.”
“Well it makes you look as a genius O lion.”
Her voice was needy.
I hate the devil. I want peace, I like safety. I don’t like this bargained overstimulation!
“Do you have a star chart O dove? Shall we draw a new one?”
“Oh!” She looked up at me and I knew I had said the right thing. “Of course!” She smiled.
My heart melted and my mind screamed.
The ground opened and the sky burned.
I was in the Barbary coast, where bleary eyed men engaged in vulgar conduct.
I didn’t want to wake up, but hoped it was a dream.
I was trapped amid the unregulated rabbit holes. I probably belonged here.
Stars in this world are named using a letter, and then a number.
Like a chess grid. Just a really big one.
I wish I could say I was interested but I like the romance of mythology more than I like astronomy.
I made peace with the fact I would never visit the stars when I was still a boy. My grades weren’t good enough and I too willful to belong in the service of the state. Let alone private industry.
I found solace later in life with the smug jealousy knowing that nobody else was going to get too far among the stars. If they did, it was probably a media stunt. A dim and pathetic selfish desire to visit in another life had always possessed me. And I felt confident the desire would betray others worse than I.
But some childish part of me still wanted to go visit the stars. Why shouldn’t I? I hate to be a fatalist but I’ll never know.
Certainly my queen wanted to visit. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings and tell her my misgivings.
I wondered why she hadn’t, she had the magic staff. Perhaps for her safety I should tell her what I knew.
We had food that we had packed. Dried meat, apples a little cheese.
It wasn’t enough, I was still hungry. I need to eat so much now.
My queen didn’t conjure food, she was convinced we had plenty and that it was too late to eat.
Perhaps this was simply the urge of a midnight snack.
We retired under the stars, to the cozy tent, with tiny bed frame and mattress, to sleep.
—/—
We were working at the aquarium, there was my cute little wife sitting at the podium.
Ten dollars to pet a shark.
Or rather snuggle with it.
What was my job here? Did I have one? Well I had one, the uniform of an aquarium underling. Like my pretty wife.
Of course I was jealous of every person who spoke to her.
Our room was dark, I stood a servant next to the shark tank. The glass/acrylic tank full of hundreds of gallons of water that had an opening so that tourists could equip their bathing suit and dip into the drink.
The people would pay, they didn’t get to swim with sharks very often.
New Age music played, happy and ethereal. Suggestive of a playful past rather than an oppressive future.
Many people hopped in the tank, they clapped and called to the sharks. But the sharks only came so close before their time was up.
Few sharks wanted to see a human it seemed. The crowed oohed and ahhed when a lucky participant could touch a shark.
Lights flickered in the dark as the phones flashed for pictures.
Growing dread filled my mind as each person left a drop of blood.
I gave them the needles and the droppers.
To call the sharks and repay them for their majesty.
My wife winked at me from atop the cheap tripod barstool she used to perch behind a musicians podium.
The podium that was there only to grant her the authority to collect and hide the money she was collecting. We were collecting. Our boss was collecting.
Who was our boss? How had we ended up in this farce?
My uncle… my slightly pudgy office worker uncle was next in line. Plain bathing suit, slight beer gut. Hairy body.
For an old man he had a decent head of hair but he wore baseball caps to hide a bald spot.
But it could be so much worse. His good natured face relaxed as I opened the aperture so that he could enter the water with the sharks.
My heart stopped as the bloody water parted around a shark that accelerated towards him with the urgency of a particularly busy snail.
The shark flicked its body as if it had business. But not the sort that needed panic.
Its mouth opened as it approached my uncle.
The crowd was silent.
My uncles outstretched hand caught its nose.
The shark nuzzled his palm, and turned for a back scratch.
The crowd cheered.
My uncles cut a finger on one of the shark’s teeth. As thanks.
And as the shark, accepting the offering, dove back towards its kin he waved at the crowd and hopped from the tank.
Some thing was wrong, something was seriously wrong. But I didn’t know what it was.
Nothing should be wrong, why was I panicking? Everything worked out fine. Why am I not happy? Everyone was winning.
A shark crawled out of the tank like a snake and bit my arm.
I woke up to a beautiful woman. She was uncomfortably warm on top of my arm. My arm which had fallen asleep.
Her cheek rested on my bicep, her heavy skull on my shoulder.
Something was pinched.
Yet I couldn’t so easily move without disturbing this gift the universe had given me.
Taken from me…
Now used as a blunt instrument of imprisonment.
The royal tent had seemed plain in the dim evening and in the light of flame.
A little glint and gleam of polished stone and metal popped in the night, but now it was morning. And the tent was light inside. Surprisingly thin, full of folds of cloth, notably pink. A few strips of bright sun baby blue. Blue as a robin’s egg.
Pink and blue, a corrupted candy cane. The technicolor of ribbon road. The comedy and solemn pomp of a forgotten circus. The color palette of the inside of a whale. The pink folds of cloth gave me anxiety. Like I had been shrunk and trapped inside a larger living fleshy body’s
Perhaps that was the intention.
The body of the state? That made a tent like this the reproductive organ of a kingdom?
From first principles all things horrible follow.
But the jewel of this kingdom was my queen, radiant succubus of light. Who had carelessly put my arm to sleep.
No, she was more of a doppelgänger, a body snatcher, a goblin, a witch. Something fallible.
The poor girl, woman, thing, I really wasn’t sure about her, it. It lacked the cool unyielding power and motivation of a demon.
She was closer to an angelic creature, in the old senses not the moral ones. Terribly cruel, powerful yet lawful and cautious. Completely oblivious to the reality of her existence.
She knew of most of it, likely more than me. But still, her tower was too delusional to be a demon, a demon would be more pragmatic right? Demons which by the way, play bad cop to the system’s good cop you know?
I rolled over and embraced the thing. Wake me up when something worth doing doesn’t sell for a dollar and a dream.