the bottom (a short story)

Today, the world has gotten smaller. I see a fish I’ve never seen before. A giant—an alien, holding me in the concave of its fin. I watch it breathe on the outside of the world, and I feel a certain restriction over my gills. I don’t know what this feeling is. There’s pressure building inside of me. I don’t know what to call this. Except, perhaps, a collection of fear.

And there’s nowhere to go.

My world is limited.

The creature’s fins surround me. The atmosphere is getting warmer. The pressure builds. It laughs. God. What oddly shaped teeth it has. So dull, and yet it’s proud to bare them. My world is turned upside down as a giggle manages to escape its gills. Panic spreads throughout my entirety. How does one return to normal? How does one swim right side up?

“Look, daddy! Look at the little fishy trying to swim upside down! Ain’t that funny?”

“Oh, come on, Susie, don’t torture the little fella. And make sure you take him out of that there plastic and pour him into the tank. There’s a lot more water there for him to swim in.”

Plastic? Water? What’s water? The creature’s name is Susie. It flips me over. My fins cease to struggle. The stress subsides, but only for a moment. The creature moves me towards whatever this “tank” is.

“Susie, didn’t I tell you to put the kettle on?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, daddy.” Susie places me on a flat surface. It swims toward another flat surface, to something round, black, and hard. Like the eye of a shark. It hits a shiny arm like figure, and somehow, like magic, the atmosphere falls from a shiny mouth. It places the kettle on a black surface, and leaves the room. My body loosens. I can finally relax.

- - -

“Sweetheart, did you put that little fishy of yours in the tank?”

“I think so, Daddy!”

I cannot remember the last time I felt like this. Never, it would seem like. I feel the weakest I have ever been. I swim towards the end of the world and knock myself against the edge. I miss the old world. There was so much more for me there.

“Alright, sweetie, just checking. Don’t want him to die on ya.” Die. I wonder what that means. Everything they say to me is garbled. I don’t understand them. I don’t understand anything they say. All of it is alien. I don’t understand why their fins have smaller fins attached. I don’t understand why their teeth are shaped differently or how they swim. I don’t understand what a kettle is or how they have instant access to the atmosphere. I don’t understand why I’m here.

I am still here. At the end of the world. I knock my head against the edge. I’m losing energy by the second. What’s going to happen when I run out of energy? Will I become one of them? The fish that sink to the bottom of the ocean, waiting for the bottom feeders to make its loss of life meaningful? Only, I am still at the edge, and there is no other fish, no other organisms to give my loss of life meaning. I am alone, in a world that is too warm. And the bottom waits for me. It always did. It is in this moment that I know for sure, that the next second is no more important than the last. Everything I’ve done has amounted to this.

The bottom waits for everyone.

Thank you for reading my short story. If you like my work, please check out my poetry, such as 'under a mushroom cloud sky,' and 'a dream beyond'!