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The Sanctuary: Part 3 of the Horror-quarium Miniseries

All the parts of this miniseries are intended as stand alone submissions for the aquarium vocal+ contest, because why not! Even though they're intended as individually "complete" stories, they also have an in universe continuity-- to kind of emphasize the idea that no story, no matter how full is ever really TOTALLY complete... I'm intending them to be kinda morbid and a bit absurd. Hope you enjoy!

By Sam Desir-SpinelliPublished about a year ago 13 min read
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The Sanctuary: Part 3 of the Horror-quarium Miniseries
Photo by Piron Guillaume on Unsplash

"Okay Milli," Doctor Ivers beamed ear to ear as he spoke. "I'm very pleased to see your recovery from the surgeries is tracking well! The pain on those skin grafts may persist as a general soreness for a few more weeks. You may note some itching as well. That's usually just the new tissue, sort of, eh, adjusting if you will. The moisturizing medication will help with this, but if the itching is too bothersome we can talk about prescribing antihistamines."

He smiled, benevolently at her. "But, unless you need reconstructive surgery again, this is likely the last time we'll see each other. After today, you'll be in the care of the attending physicians here at Southrise and your primary of course. Try your best not to get attacked by any more seals, right?"

He smiled as if to say this joke was pure good humor and really a superb kindness. "Any questions or concerns before we part ways?"

As she shook her head a tear fell from her cheek and landed with a delicate splash on the hospital linens.

His smile faltered. "Are you in pain? We can do something about that. A simple--"

"No, no pain... nothing physical. I mean the meds are already enough. I'm just sad."

He nodded and scooched his chair a little closer. "Ah, of course. The boy."

"Yeah. I couldn't save him."

"But you tried! I'm in the business of saving people, and sometimes all you can do is try. You did good Milli, but the boy did not want to be saved."

She frowned. "How would you know that, doctor?"

"Well I've read the articles typed up by those butchers at Newsland, haven't I? You didn't throw him in that seal tank. You didn't drown him. He leapt in there of his own accord. Also... there's not much I'm at liberty to say on this note, but I was the physician who inspected his wounds and it's clear to me... The poor boy wanted to stay down there, under the water. Seems like he was trying to die."

She sighed. "No, he wasn't trying to die. He was unwell. Crazy. Thought his mom was a fucking seal. Thought I was too I think... Thought I knew how to find her... and he... He needed help."

He sighed too. "Yeah, again, I caught most of that in the news. Point being, and perhaps it's wrong for a doctor to say, but it sounds like maybe he was beyond help. In any event you did your best. It was up to him to do the rest, and, well... he didn't. But I'm not the only one who regards you as a hero. The city knows your name now. Even though there was no happy ending, the fact that you dove into the seal tank after that young man, despite the danger... The fact that you stayed in there and tried to bring him to the surface-- even as the seals circled around and attacked you both.... It's a shame the boy died, but you tried to save him and you really ought to be proud that you even tried at all."

"That's not true."

He furrowed his brow. "What's not true?"

"The seals didn't attack us."

He nodded and indulged in an easy smile. "Ah, I see. Well, Milli, I looked very closely at your wounds-- for Christ's sake I'm the one that cleaned them and stitched them closed. They were bite marks, clearly inflicted by the seals."

She shook her head. "Bad word choice on my part maybe. I mean, yeah they technically bit us, and anybody would call that an attack. I don't think they really mean to harm us. They stopped nipping at me the moment I started kicking towards the surface. I almost.... I tend to think they were trying to tell us to get out of their enclosure, perhaps for their privacy but maybe for our own good."

Dr. Ivers stood from his chair "Of course, well maybe you're right. In any event, I wish you a smooth recovery, and hope to never see you again! At least not in an operating room."

He waved goodbye and saw her smile back as he shut her door. That was his last official order of business at Southrise. He was still on call, and he could get paged in but the OR was well staffed today. He doubted he would be needed, and that meant he could get back to his side projects-- a little bit of research at a lesser known medical center....

He felt his heart almost humming in his chest as he walked through the parking garage. The air was all full of vehicle smells, stagnant voices of tar and oil and asphalt, all begging for a breeze.

Or maybe he was the one begging for a breeze. He hated the way the parking garage smelled, and for some reason it always seemed worse after a rain.

Still he would't let this ruin his excitement. He had a stable test subject and that in itself was a rarity.

He climbed into his Mercedes and pulled away from Southrise Hospital. The Sutherland Aquarium was not far away, it swung into view after his second turn. It was a very blue building, lots of glass and light. He didn't care much for architecture, but this building in particular was aesthetically well designed, or so people said.

He only saw it as a safe place... a familiar place where he could do a different kind of work.

One of the benefits of this building and the aquarium as a business, being owned and operated privately rather than by the county or city was that there wasn't quite so much red tape. There was still a code of ethics, but it was personal and not imposed. The ethical imperative was to push knowledge and understanding as deep as one could.

He wasn't here to help people. Not that he regretted or resented that role in his public life as a surgeon. Of course he took great satisfaction in helping people on the table. But he was here to plumb the deeper reaches of medical understanding and push the limits of bioresearch. The experimentation and his fellow researchers here heeded no Hippocratic oath, their duty was to knowledge.

And what could be more important? This duty commanded him, not for any money nor recognition nor glory-- nor even his obligatory humanity towards other people-- but solely for the duty itself.

He parked in his designated spot and walked into the main lobby. He waved to the receptionist. He never bothered to remember her name. She had a forgetable face, but perfect arms: long and slender, and full of grace in their every movement. Her fingers danced across her keyboard and reminded him of seaweed fronds swaying through a current.

Perfect.

Those fingers and arms in particular. Truly idyllic.

She waved back and said, "Hello Dr. Ivers, I hope you're doing well today."

He nodded a quick thank you and walked through the employees only section, then to the "restricted access: research and development" door. He swiped a card and slipped inside.

The smell of salt water wasn't so strong in here. Hardly noticeable in fact. Really a stark contrast to the ocean smell that lingered around all the public areas of the aquarium. They kept these tanks at about 15% salinity-- much higher than natural sea water, to intensify the antiseptic qualities of salt water and increase the density of the water in the operating tanks.

He was privately quite proud of himself for finding the salinity sweet spot, or so they'd taken to calling it. Firstly, increasing the density of the water to about 1.1 g/cc meant their subjects would be just slightly positively buoyant-- which made manipulating them in their operation tanks much easier. Secondly, at the salinity sweet spot, almost all bacterial growth slowed to a crawl. It didn't just help keep the test rooms from smelling like seaweed. It also irrigated the work sight during any invasive procedure and eliminated the risk of infection-- and with such full scale operations this was quite literally a life saver. Osmotic damage to most subjects' cell tissue tended to be a bit of a problem after about 6-8 hours, so aqua-surgeries were still done in pieces, with dry or sea-level salinity recovery breaks as needed. In fact, some surgeries were still conducted on dry tables, no different from a traditional hospital.

They had already learned so much!

But he knew that their work, as it stood right then, would not pass an ethics review board, so it would still be some time before the sub-aquatic surgical techniques he and his associates had pioneered saw the light of public awareness. And it was a shame! Because these techniques would be invaluable to veterinary medicine-- and human surgical care.

He saw Mr. Singh-- the owner of the aquarium, and the only source of funding for their research-- in a surgical gown standing beside Dr. Li-- the lead geneticist-- both gazing over a dry recovery tank, and walked over to say hello.

"What do you think of our handiwork?"

The taller man smiled, and inclined his head. He had tears in his eyes. "Incredible work. You and your surgical team-- Dr. Li and her groundbreaking genetic manipulation... Well I don't believe in miracles, but these past few weeks you all have come as close as could be to changing my mind. Over the years your surgical care has saved the lives of many of the creatures in my Sanctuary. Turtles, seals, sharks, dolphins.... It's truly a testament to your skill as a surgeon to work on so many differ animals-- and maintain a success rate that's nearly fifty/ fifty."

He sighed, and patted Dr. Ivers on the shoulder. "Of course, I'm not trying to inflate your ego, but if I were it would be deserved. I thank you, and so does the Sutherland Aquarium. If our animals could speak, the ones you've saved with your surgical medicine, they'd surely thank you too...."

Then he let his eyes drift back to the recovery tank. "But this.... What you two and the rest of your teams have accomplished... this is on another level. I would say this is your finest achievement to date, and one of the greatest scientific achievements in human history.... The applications are...."

His eyes seemed to drift in sea of their own, but eventually he finished, "... The applications truly endless."

Dr. Ivers looked into the recovery tank and he smiled too, with the shining pride of a father.

***

Waking softly, Jimmy blinked in the sunlight. He heard the waves crashing on the sand and sighed. He loved the beach, even though it carried such painful and poignant memories.

He couldn't hear waves or feel sand between his toes or the heat of the sun on his skin without thinking of her. His mother.

His father had told them she had died. And his gullible older brother had believed it.

He closed his eyes to block out the sun's glare.

But Jimmy knew better. Even as a little kid he had known better. She had NOT died. She had left. She had ran away.

And she had done it in the most magical way...

Grownups and bigger kids were too rigid to see any truth that didn't fit their limited ideas of the world. None of them could ever accept the fact that he'd been strong enough to cling to since way back then: She had transformed. She had slipped out of this modern life and the trap of human life-- and become a freer creature. A seal.

That was why she had always told them those old celtic stories about selkies-- men and women who could shape shift into seals-- because she was one.

Why couldn't his older brother understand that? She wasn't dead. She was a selkie.

And he missed her so much. He'd do anything to see her again. Anything at all. He stretched out in the sand, and wallowed in his longing.

Last thing he remembered he'd gone looking for her. And he'd met a woman who he knew was a selkie. She was on land, but he knew.... ould tell just by looking at her. Milli. He'd told her to tell him the truth and she'd lied and he'd jumped into the seal tank at Sutherland Aquarium-- knowing in his soul that she would come in and save him and admit she was a selkie and show him to transform into a seal himself, just like his mom and then he'd be able to find his mom again and... and... and...

But--

why was the sand on this beach so hard?

It didn't matter! The fact that he was alive was proof he was right. Where was Milli though, and was his mom with them?

And if the sunlight was so bright why wasn't it warm?

He opened his eyes and squinted. The sun was hyper pure. Almost blue.

Almost electric. It hurt to look.

He called out: "Milli...."

"He's waking up."

That wasn't Milli's voice. that was an older woman's voice.

Tears of recognition welled up in his eyes, "M-m-mom?"

He tried to flex his toes, but they felt numb so he turned on his elbow and shielded his eyes to gaze down the beach and look for her but his mind slipped out of place.

This wasn't a beach. This was a room. All metal. All sterile. There were three people standing next to him and he was on... not sand... a... a bed? No, it wasn't soft. A table.

The taller man said, "Incredible."

The older, and shorter man said, "Good morning, Jimmy! Or do you prefer I call you Mr. Rose?"

"I-I'm Jimmy. I'm sorry... wait... who are you? Where's my mom?"

"I suppose, in a manner of speaking I'm your mom. My name is Dr. Li."

The woman who had spoken was an asian woman. Certainly not his irish mother. What the fuck was going on?

"And I'm Dr. Ivers. I've been providing you surgical care since your accident, and..." He chuckled, "I suppose if Dr. Li is your mother, then perhaps you'll permit me to introduce myself as your father. We uh... well I guess we'll get to that in a moment. For now, let's just say I'm very pleased to see you awake and alert. You seem lucid. What's the last thing you remember?"

This wasn't the beach. That woman wasn't his mom. And that man wasn't his dad. "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!? Am I like fucking dead?"

The taller man laughed, "Of course you're not dead. Though you likely would be if we hadn't had such accomplished physicians on site when you tried to drown yourself those weeks ago."

Jimmy's stomach lurched. He tried to sit up and felt sharp pain in his upper legs, but numbness from the knee down. He looked down and failed to make sense of what he was seeing.

His legs were gone. Just totally gone. But he had a... fucking manatee tail. Or more like a dolphin. Or maybe a... a... a seal?

"What the fuck am I looking at?"

The short man said, "I suppose I'd say you're looking at your flippers."

The woman said, "This is the new you!"

Tears spilled from his eyes and an idiot smile cracked across his trembling lips. "Am I a... am I a selkie?!"

He sobbed for joy, and the doctors shrugged. They didn't know what a selkie was. They'd created the world's first human-animal hybrid specie-- and they had meant it to look like and function like mammalian mermaid... but there was no accounting for the way a brand new creature might behold itself.

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About the Creator

Sam Desir-Spinelli

I consider myself a "christian absurdist" and an anticapitalist-- also I'm part of a mixed race family.

I'll be writing: non fiction about what all that means.

I'll also be writing: fictional absurdism with a dose of horror.

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