Red Fish (Part 2 of 2)
From inside her confinement it was difficult for Koachi to tell time. Her fellow prisoners were not very good company and Marvin talked excessively while he worked. Often his topics were inane and he made it a point to call her Flippy when he saw her, something that drove her crazy. The Captain came and went but always found time at least once a day to spend with his pets. Out of everyone she was forced to interact with he was the one she hated the least. Despite his barbaric hobby of animal collecting she could tell he had a good heart.
By the end of the first week the routine she found herself locked into was not one she was happy accepting. Often she thought of escape. Often she thought of how lucky she would be if she could just get out of the fish tank. Suffocation sounded like a blessing to her. As the days turned to weeks turned to months, she found her hope dwindling but she never gave up. That was the big difference between her and the other animals that lived in the foyer; she would never let the humans win. She would never willingly become someone’s pet – ever.
All of them, the humans and the pets, were unaware that she had a trick up her sleeve, something no one in the compound knew about her species. As years began to pass and she grew older, she knew it was only a matter of time until she would turn into an elder. And then her chance at revenge would come. Then she would make the humans pay for what they did to her and her kind.
After two and a half years she grew too large for the fish tank in the foyer. She heard them discussing what to do with her – she heard the word “eat” used quite a bit. As much as she wished for the release of death, she wished for her chance at revenge even more. When they decided to move her to a larger fish tank at the head of the mess hall, she found herself feeling relieved. The humans, so naive, did not realize how close she was to her transformation. Unfortunately it did not come fast enough to stop what would soon happen.
The first week inside her new prison she watched the men of the compound file through three times a day, filling their plates and stuffing their faces. At each meal she recognized some kind of meat, leading her to wonder if she knew the animal while it was still alive. Being confined to the lakes and rivers during her early life and confined to a fish tank for the rest, she wasn’t very knowledgeable about the creatures that dwelled on the lands of Brevia. Despite this, she gave a mental prayer each time she saw one of the men take a bite of something that once had flesh – a prayer that one day, she would avenge them.
On a day like any other, already trapped in a new routine with no sense of the passage of time, Koachi watched as the men filed through for their evening meal. She cursed each man as he walked by, especially those that stopped to tap on the glass and talk to her. Always they talked, never did they listen. Never did they see the anguish in her eyes. Never did they seem to care that they were murderers.
And she watched, trembling in her prison, as men began to take their seats with pieces of fresh fish on their plates. There were biscuits, cheesy potatoes, and green beans too, but all she saw was the fish. The outer layers were vaguely red; the insides were a translucent white. With forks and knives they consumed, driving her to become more and more distraught.
Oh, the horror! She watched them eat her own kind, perhaps even her own children, laughing and joking the entire time without care for their crime. Her own species – chewed and chewed and swallowed and digested. What a horrible sight to watch, men gorging themselves on innocent life. What a horrific sight to behold, men devouring her brethren by the mouthful.
She pressed her lips together and glared at them. Oh yes, they would pay…
The next night she began her transformation. It was just after the evening meal, everyone already sleeping soundly or finishing up their last patrols. The plates had all been scraped, the floors had all been swept, and the cooks had all gone home to their housing units. All was silent in the mess hall.
No one was around to watch Koachi as she thrashed violently in the fish tank, waves rippling across the surface of the water as large portions of her scales peeled off. Her backside split down the middle and the fins on either side became absorbed into her body. Her bulging yellow eyes popped, causing her to shout out in pain as the clear blue eyes that lied dormant underneath flickered open and saw the unfiltered world for the first time.
With all of her strength she pulled her fins away from her body, but they were no longer fins – they were arms. She reached out of the water, pushing the lid of the fish tank aside and hearing it clatter loudly on the floor. She grasped the edges of her prison with both hands and pulled herself up, half exposed, breathing in her first breath of pure oxygen as her puffy pink lips deflated into flat red ones. She lifted herself out of the tank and fell off the edge of the table, collapsing in a heap on the floor.
She was shaking and shivering, naked and wet – sensations she never truly experienced before. Being wet all the time makes one unaware of what the state of being wet means. Now she was aware. She rose to her feet using the table to support herself and shook her head slowly to ease the headache rising in her skull. Her fire red hair reached down to her shoulders in knotty clumps and matched her pale pink skin well. She stood now at just over three feet tall. On wobbly legs she walked into the kitchen, climbing awkwardly over the counter, and searched for the tool she had seen the men use on her kin – the knife.
Her transformation into an elder was complete; all that remained was adjustment to her new state of being. She had webbing between her fingers and toes as well as gills on her neck, making her capable of living in water or on land. That was the gift of the elders – wisdom beyond the stream, a humbling prospect to a red fish that began life as a tadpole.
Once she stepped out through the doors of the mess hall she vanished into the blackness of the night. She stumbled blindly forward towards the housing units, vague shapes she could barely make out in the distance. On either side she glimpsed the outlines of machinery that were strewn about, drills and auto-buckets and jackhammers mostly, each used to collect resources for the outpost. She cursed the humans again, this time for their exploitation of the natural wealth that Kresnovek held. They were creatures of rape, taking from the universe without care for their crime.
With light footsteps she made her way into each housing unit, which were essentially boxes the men lived in while they were stationed at the outpost. She would crawl through an open window or pry open a ventilation shaft, still gripping the knife firmly in her left hand. She would look down on the men, lost in their dreams, and hope it was a good one because it was the last one they would ever have. With all the ferocity of an individual who watched their own kin eaten she drove the knife home for a killing blow. Again and again she would strike, so quick they never had a chance to emit any kind of cry besides a whisper or a muffled moan.
When she at last came to Captain Hezholt’s home she found it eerily silent. Carefully she crept through the foyer into the bedroom, the animals in their cages turning a sleepy eye to watch her as she passed. She found the Captain hunched over his desk with an artificial candle flickering to his left, an animated picture hanging on the wall above him showing scenes of what she assumed was his family. Such a dedication to his work – but she knew no man was entirely good. Asking for a silent plea of forgiveness she found his throat in the darkness and relieved him of his duty permanently. Out of all she did that day, this was her hardest task. He was always the one she liked the most.
She stepped out of the bedroom with the knife still clenched in hand, the blade leaving a trail of dripped blood in its wake. She paused in front of the fish tank, tapping on the glass and scowling as her former cellmates ignored her presence. Hearing a click she turned quickly and saw the door sliding open. Marvin walked in for the late night feeding and a cruel smile crept across her face. When he looked up and saw her his eyes grew wide in shock. She rushed quickly forward to bury the knife into his abdomen. Out of all she did that day, this was her easiest task. He was the one she hated the most.
“Flippy?” he asked in disbelief, a glob of blood oozing out past his lips and off his chin.
“My name…” she said, twisting the knife into his gut. “…is Koachi.”
A gurgling noise was the only response she got. With great satisfaction she pulled the blade out and jammed it back in, again and again until he collapsed in a pool of his own blood. He gave one last groan before falling silent. She left the knife inside him and escaped out the door, leaving the gruesome scene and all that preceded it behind her.
When the sun came up the next morning, no men rose to greet it. The entire camp was silent, the only sound escaping that of the drip, drip, drip of flowing blood. Koachi was long gone down the river by then, following the current towards the Elder Grounds. It took time for her to adjust to her new body but after a few hours of swimming she felt comfortable for the first time in years. When the blue sun reached its high point in the middle of the sky she took a reprieve on the bank of the Vengo River, breathing her first sigh of relief since she had been taken prisoner so long ago.
Her mind was filled with thoughts of all the lives that were lost, of all the children she never got to see grow up, and of all the kin she never got to befriend. Already her experiences felt like a lingering wound, cut into her soul so deep she feared it would never heal properly. She wanted more than anything to leave the memories of the humans behind but she knew she couldn’t do that. For the sake of all those lost she would have to hold on, to preserve the past – even if it pained her. She hoped the elders would be able to give her some guidance in this most troubling of times.
Just as night was beginning to fall, the small glowbugs coming out of their dens to dot the black overhead, she arrived at the Elder Grounds. The Vengo River split into a fork, the left stream leading down a cascading series of waterfalls and far south out of Brevia, and the right leading into a shallow pond overlooking the mountainous valleys below. As she approached she saw figures moving cautiously, disappearing beneath the surface of the water before she could get a good look at them. For a brief moment she feared she had taken a wrong turn having never been to the Elder Grounds before, but then…
“You, you’re an elder,” a soft female voice spoke to her right. She turned and saw the head of one of her kin sticking out of the water. The instant her eyes fell upon the girl she vanished, reappearing a few seconds later farther away. “Are you really one of the red fish? Are you really one of us?”
“Yes, I am,” Koachi replied. She stood at her full height, the water reaching just below her small breasts. “Please, tell me, why is everyone hiding?”
“Shhh,” the girl said as she swam over, wrapping her arms around Koachi’s waist once she got near enough. She pulled her underwater, both lying horizontally to keep entirely submerged. Around them small octopus swam, their innards illuminating with colors of orange and blue. Pressing her lips against Koachi’s ear she whispered, “We can never be too safe. There is no way of knowing when they will show up.”
“They?”
“The humans.”
Koachi pressed her lips together to keep herself from screaming. She balled her hands into tiny fists and shook them violently, swishing the water around herself. She thought – hoped – she had left the word humans behind with the lives she had taken the previous night.
“Are you alright?” the girl whispered.
“No,” she said sternly. “And I won’t be until the last of them are – ”
“Shhh,” the girl said, covering Koachi’s mouth with her hand. She pointed with her other hand to the left, where a dark shape was beginning to carve its way across the surface of the water. Beams of light shone off it, flickering about with no method to its direction. The two sunk lower until they were against the rocky bottom of the pond, the grip the girl had loosening on her as she focused so intensely on being silent.
Koachi watched as the metal boat approached and then passed overhead, a small motor on the back propelling it forward. As soon as it cleared them she squirmed free of the girl and pushed off of the bottom, swimming furiously after it despite the stifled complaints of her companion. She poked her head out of the surface of the water and saw three men with harpoons in hand, seated in the boat and shining their auto-lanterns around haphazardly. With her webbed hands she made loud splashing noises until she caught the attention of the men.
By the time the light from their auto-lanterns reached the spot she was at she was gone, already underneath them and passing over to the other side. She saw the eyes of the other elders scattered throughout the pond, watching her intently as she moved. She kicked off the bottom again and came up next to the boat, grabbing one of the men around the waist and dragging him into the water. As he broke the surface and she wrapped her arm around his throat he fired his harpoon off, straight into the night sky.
The lights from the remaining two auto-lanterns swept the area but all it revealed was the body of their friend floating face down. One of the men looked to his partner and said, “I don’t know no fish that can do that, do you?”
“I didn’t even see it,” the other said. Both looked around at the murky water surrounding them and wearily held their auto-lanterns out. With jerky movements they moved their lights here and there, hoping to catch a glimpse of the horrific monster that must surely be behind the murder of their friend.
A splash at the head of the boat caught the attention of both men. The one closer to the back turned around to the rear, afraid the creature would catch him from behind, and in the two seconds he wasn’t looking his companion was snatched. He dropped his auto-lantern and screamed, standing on the bench in the boat and holding his harpoon up.
“Vile creature!” he screamed. “Show yourself!”
She appeared next to the boat and clenched the hull firmly. She rocked it back and forth violently, forcing him to struggle to maintain balance. He fired his harpoon in her direction but she vanished beneath the surface of the water before it ever got near. In a last act of desperation he pulled a knife out of his boot and dove into the pond, swimming with all his might to reach the shore before she got him. She swam alongside him, watching his panic grow, waiting for the right chance to strike. As he neared the bank and she prepared to make her move she saw the eyes of the elders in the trees ahead, and wisely backed off. He crawled out of the water and broke into a sprint but he didn’t get far.
The figures stepped out of their hiding places and converged on him, tearing the man to pieces. Koachi turned her back on them, taking a seat on the edge of the pond with her feet dangling in. The girl who had approached her swam up and cautiously joined her. For a few minutes they sat, the only sound that of the crunching bones of the man behind them.
“Where did you learn to do that?” she asked Koachi.
“Instinct,” she replied. “When the cause is worth fighting, someone has to step up. How often do they come here?”
“Weekly. Sometimes more. This is just a fishing hole to them. Normally when they arrive we wait patiently until they leave. Violence…is not normally the way of the elders.”
Koachi glanced back and saw what was left of the man who had fled the boat. Standing around him were twenty, thirty elders, each covered in blood and holding some part of him. All of their eyes were on her.
“Perhaps,” she said, rising to her feet and walking over to the crowd with the girl a few paces behind. “It is time to change that.”
She bent down and dipped her hand into the carcass, pulling it out and smearing a stripe of blood across the top half of her face. She walked around the outskirts of the pond, the elders all following closely behind, and came to stop at the precipice that overlooked the valleys below. Dotting the landscape were artificial lights and mechanical constructs. Human settlements.
She pressed her lips together and glared at them. Oh yes, they would pay…
“Elders!” Koachi yelled, turning and raising her arms over her head. “We must prepare for war!”
A resounding cheer, fueled by blood lust, was their response.
- Written by Adam Crate
(The idea for this story came to me while I was in the shower. I’m not sure what originally sparked the thought but I do remember thinking, “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a story about fish migrating upstream? And then they’re caught, and one of them has to watch their friends be eaten? And then that fish transforms into a person and gets revenge?”
Very little has changed from that original vision. All I really added was content to beef it up and an ending, which I didn’t have figured out when I wrote the first draft. One of the things I really like about this story is how the first paragraph (from Part 1) is so happy, then things get progressively darker until the climatic finish. I had a lot of fun writing this story, so I hope you had a lot of fun reading it.)
