This Side Of The Glass

Darkness still lay across the land when vibrations in the water alerted Shana to the presence of the creature above. Although it wasn’t quite time to eat yet, she grabbed her hunting trident and flicked her tail, propelling herself toward the surface. Better to hunt the creature now, before the rumblings of hunger distracted her from her duty, than to wait for the light. Even as she ascended, a warm glow broke upon her world, illuminating the rocks and ferns, reflecting off her castle walls.

Intent on her prey, Shana noticed only the small fish above her. It was disoriented, swimming frantically in this unfamiliar territory. She took advantage of its confusion, spearing it effortlessly behind the gills. It never knew what hit it. As it floated toward the surface, Shana retrieved it, dragging it back down toward her storage room, where she would keep it until she felt hungry. Already, its eyes had glazed over. Its scales felt slick in her hands.

This was life as she knew it. Oh, it wasn’t always the same meal. Sometimes it was fish, but sometimes it was crabs, snails, crawdads, and on one memorable occasion, a giant lobster. She had been injured on that occasion, but she had healed after enough time. Only her tail had suffered permanent damage, where a piece of her tail fin never regrew. She had adjusted to its new shape and no longer even noticed it was missing. She had learned quite a lot from that fight and next time, she would be better prepared.

She stuffed the fish carcass into her storage room and spent a few moments rubbing its scales clean. That was the worst part of the fish, she reflected. The slime on their bodies wasn’t dangerous, but it did make it difficult to maneuver them sometimes, and it tasted terrible. After she finished, she decided to go have a look outside.

Outside, the audience gasped as they saw Shana swim over to the glass and press her face against it. “Is it really real?” one of the elderly ladies in the front asked, standing up to see more clearly.

“Yes,” Gerard replied, beaming. “She’s quite real.”

“But how did you teach it to do that?” a man in the crowd demanded. “I mean, to use the little spear thing and everything.”

“Oh, I didn’t teach her at all. It came quite naturally to her,” he responded, adjusting his white lab coat self-consciously. “All I did was supply the means for her to succeed, and she surpassed all my expectations!”

“What did you name her?” a young man asked. “Did you name her Ariel?” The crowd chuckled at the idea.

“No, no,” Gerard said, blushing slightly. “I just call her Shana. I don’t want to diminish her at all, you know. She’s quite a remarkable creature. Hans Christian can have Ariel, and I’ll have Shana.” He smiled sheepishly, nervous at this first display of his creation.

“What else can she do? Can she talk at all?” a woman in a pinstripe suit shouted above the murmur of excited voices.

“No,” he answered, “At least not that I can tell. She doesn’t have any peers, so she really hasn’t had any reason to. She does respond to tapping on the glass though. She doesn’t always do what I try to get her to do, but sometimes she does.”

“Okay, but can she do tricks though?” the pinstripe lady pressed. At the same time, a man stood up and said, “Can we tap on the glass to see what happens, or can we touch her to make sure she’s real?”

“Well, I haven’t wanted to push her too hard,” he said, responding to the woman first. “After all, she’s the only one of her kind, and I don’t want anything to happen to her, so I haven’t tried to make her do tricks really. Just what I said, about responding to the tapping. And I can’t let anyone come tap on the glass, insurance reasons you understand, but I can show you what she does.”

Gerard reached out and tapped gently on the opposite side of the aquarium from where Shana watched. Almost immediately, she looked over toward the sound. She did not, however, swim toward it, and the audience groaned with disappointment. Gerard smiled at her encouragingly and tapped once more. Three taps to the side, the way he always did. Perhaps someday she would make the connection. He had thought about training her with food rewards, but he wanted to perfect her hunting skills before giving her easy, already dead food. The less confusion there was, the better the training would go, he theorized.

She swam toward the sound and looked out at the oversized finger, its tip half as large as her face. He drug his finger up the side of the aquarium and she followed it curiously, to the excitement of the crowd below the stage. “Tap it where her face is and see if she flinches,” one of them yelled.

Gerard shook his head. “No, I don’t want to frighten her,” he said. “She’s a real creature, you know?” He looked back out at the crowd, searching for understanding. He saw no compassion in the faces below, only curiosity, and in some cases, cruelty.

“Well, we paid good money to see a show, so you better show us something worth seeing,” one man grumbled, adjusting his oversized bulk in his chair with a scowl.

Frowning, Gerard replied, “You paid to see a marvelous creature, the likes of which have not only never been seen before, but which have never even existed before! That ought to be worth your money. I won’t torture Shana for your enjoyment.”

The crowd grumbled angrily, but one woman toward the back stood, clapping. “She’s just like us,” she said with a smile that lit up her brilliant blue eyes. “Would you want someone to treat us that way?” she continued, directing her gaze at the overweight man who had made the complaint.

The man scoffed. “Look at it!” he said. “It’s just a little thing. What’s it gonna do about it? Besides, we need to see what it’ll do, ya know? For science.” He smiled grimly. The crowd murmured agreement.

From the stage, Gerard watched as various people shifted in their seats or stood, shooting glances toward the aquarium. “Well,” he said, smiling nervously as he prepared the aquarium to move, draping a cloth over its edges once more, “I think Shana needs a break now. I don’t want to stress her too much.” He began to wheel the aquarium to the back, to the relative safety of the room behind the stage, to make a swift retreat out the back door. Even as he did, he heard shouts from behind him and chairs scraping as people jumped up from them angrily.

“Hey, we weren’t done!”

“I thought we were going to get to touch it!”

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Gerard rushed as quickly as he could toward the exit. Behind him, security guards blocked the stairs as well as they could, but guests were already beginning to leap up onto the stage. Gerard barely had time to load the aquarium into his van before they began streaming out of the building, shouting.

Suddenly, everyone stopped and looked toward the sky as something like thunder sounded three times in quick succession. Something was there. Something huge and circular. Was it some kind of meteor? A moon falling to the earth? It didn’t seem to be getting any nearer. Gerard looked farther out, searching for a tail or some further sign of what, exactly, it was.

As it turned out, it did extend beyond the smooth circle. The color was fainter the further it went out, but it also appeared to become thicker as it went. As he watched, the circle withdrew, becoming fainter and distended, then approached once more. Boom! Boom! Boom!

With dawning horror, Gerard looked at his aquarium. Then he reached out and tapped the glass. Boom! Boom! Boom!

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