Night was beginning to fall.
Back when he was a pet, Kenny had spent countless nights lying on the sofa, waiting for the sun to come up. Sharks had to keep moving, yet there was something soothing about staying in one place. At first the nights drug on for so long, but as the years passed, the nights went by quicker.
Now the days seemed to pass by quicker. Fancy that.
It was time to spring onto the streets of Gotton and find criminals to beat up and terrify. The bat said that although a lot of robberies occurred in the day – people weren't home, after all – night was the best place to strike when it came to Gotton. The criminals there believed themselves monsters, bogiemen or whatever, and it was Kenny's job to prove them wrong. Monsters who scare bad people can't be bad themselves after all.
But they weren't all bad people, now, were they? A lot of them were animals like him. More intelligent animals. Bipedal animals with opposable thumbs. There were barely any of them in Tiburon, yet they were literally littering the streets of Gotton. On one of his little visits there, Kenny remembered seeing a crocodile in an alleyway. It wasn't dead, but it might as well have been – lying there in a puddle of unidentifiable liquid, wearing an anachronistic trenchcoat, its mouth devoid of any teeth. Kenny knew that he had nothing to worry about when it came to losing teeth – they just grew back. But human's teeth didn't grow back, and the same was true for the more anthropomorphic animals.
He also saw something resembling a cross between a human and an animal, lurking behind a tower of empty cardboard boxes. She – it looked like a girl – looked to be chewing on a dead rat, hunched over. Kenny attempted to near her – seeing a girl this vulnerable reminded him of Kat – but it ran away into the darkness. A chill had ran up Kenny's spine.
Still, there was work to be done. Criminals to find. Murky corners to discover.
Despite the fact he now had 'wings' of black sail, he could not fly, but ran to the city stretching his cape out, like a little boy pretending to be a bird. When he saw the skyscrapers grow, he closed his cloak over him, quickly darting into the shadows. He had been practicing agility and stealth for years – you need that when living in the sea.
Criminals were just like seals. Stupid little blobs that deserved to di...
Oh fuck.
Still hiding in a dark corner, Kenny began to shudder, and couldn't tell whether it was because he thought of murder, or he thought of a naughty word.
It took him a long time to reach Gotton City, and when he did, night had completely fallen. The sky had become an oil slick, and the blinking streetlamps did little to bring illumination.
Perfect.
Kenny was hunched behind a dumpster, not minding the stench an iota, and no-one could see him. No-one would notice him.
A few seconds after surveying the empty streets, Kenny leapt onto a ladder and climbed up onto a building. He swore he heard some grumbling, but he was certain whoever made that grumbling wouldn't think a shark was going up their building. Kenny, wrapping his body up in his cape, stood by the side, surveying the area. From a certain height, the city looked beautiful – the lights looked like large fairies and the dark corners seemed to hide secrets.
Kenny dove.
He continued to skulk the streets, slipping past the hobos and the slouched people, making sure they caught neither hide nor hair of him. A while of stealth later, and he came across a poster, poorly blu-tacked to the window of a closed shop. An organisation for talking animals to find support for each other?
Having walked, slid and sneaked through these streets so many times, finding where that organisation was having their meeting was rather straight-forward. A community centre, less rancid than most of the other buildings. When Kenny had reached the building, he dove under a window and looked up. There at the head of a table was an bipedal elk with impressive antlers, who waved his arms as if he were conducting an orchestra. He was delivering a speech of some kind, and there were other animals there, animals hanging onto his every word. Stroking his chin, Kenny wondered what if he could communicate with humans and human-like animals. Marty the dog, Marty the normal dog, could hold a good conversation, and Kat was smart enough to understand shark, but not other humans. Not anthropomorphic animals.
A few minutes after Kenny had arrived, the meeting ended, with the animals – the gorilla, the horse with hands – going towards their cars. The elk, on the other hand, moved towards the window.
Kenny ducked.
He did not run away, but chose to remain in the bushes, watching the animals mutter to themselves and to each other.
'Hey!'
The elk again.
'It's you, isn't it?'
Kenny could sense the elk approaching, yet he didn't move.
'You're the...thing. That beat up all those criminals?'
Feeling his heart hammer against his stomach, Kenny nonetheless stayed still, not even knowing why he was doing so.
'I want to talk! Can you talk?'
Kenny said nothing.
'Hello?'
All of a sudden, Kenny forgot everything about stealth and subtlety, and just plain darted out of the bushes, right in plain sight.
'Giselle!'
Elliot's wife had told him to come home quietly, as she did have a job interview the next morning, yet Elliot couldn't help but cry as he threw open the door to his flat. Another cry of Giselle's name, and she appeared in her bathrobe, rubbing her head as if awaking from a hangover.
'What? Elliot, you know I have something important in the morning...'
'I saw him!'
'Saw who?'
'That...that...big black monster thing that was catching all the criminals! Only he wasn't a monster...he...'
'Elliot,' said Giselle, rubbing her temples.
'He was a shark!'
Giselle's eyes widened. 'You really saw a shark?' Both of them had heard of sharks walking on land, but neither had seen that happen. They were even sure there may have been a law against such a thing.
'Yes,' said Elliot, looking back and forth, 'and it proves that theory one of my group members had.'
'Theory?'
'Oh, don't you remember?'
'Remember what?'
Elliot slapped his palm against his forehead. 'Don't you...oh, I don't think you would. There was a story I heard about a girl and her pet shark...'
It was almost as if Kenny was in the room with her.
Though she should have been doing her weekend homework – getting it out of the way on Saturday so she had Sunday free – Kat had turned her attention towards the plush shark that sat on the shelf above her. Won him at a carnival game. A plush shark. A plush tiger shark.
No, a plush generic shark. At one time, inaccuracies in shark-related media and merchandise would have riled Kat, the shark expert, but there were more important things in life to worry about. Kat snickered to herself as she remembered the classmate who had actually bothered reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and was always complaining when he saw the monster having a square head and neck bolts.
It was good to laugh. Kat remembered for the first month after the incident, she pretty much forced herself to be miserable; it was wrong to laugh when you lost someone you loved, after all. Her mom, her dad, her shark...but she should just get on with her life. Mom would have wanted her to. Dad would have wanted her to. Kenny would have wanted her to.
As soon as she turned away from that pseudo-shark, she got down to the maths and finished it in record time. Quick look through. Yep. All correct. Whoops, forgot a digit there. Rub out, start again. There. Regular mathematician. Regular marine biologist too. She wore many hats.
Now that that was over and done with, she had the whole afternoon to herself. A little reward for all her hard work. What to do though? Lounging about watching TV was always an option...actually,it wasn't really, since her new Dad seemed to spend all his time in front of it. She did make some more friends in this neighbourhood, including an anthropomorphic moose called Larry. Strange; in Tiburon there were plenty of pets and 'dumber' animals to be found but barely any with their own houses that could speak human languages.
So Larry it was then. She rung him up on her mobile and they had a chat. A chat which seemed to eat up hours, and was spent on nothing of importance. Movies, music, that sort of stuff.
A knock on the door.
Kat, by instinct, walked on over to the landing, phone still in hand, watching as New-Dad opened the door.
A policeman.
'Oh, hello officer, what can I do for you?'
'I just want to know if you know anything about the bat-shark?'
'Um,' said Kat into her phone, 'I'll call you back.'
'Bat...shark?' New-Dad raised an eyebrow. 'We aren't genetic engineering or anything...'
'No, no. Your...daughter,' said the cop as he spied Kat. 'Didn't you once have a pet shark?'
'Kenny?'
'Ah, cute name. Anyway, you've probably heard of that thing that's been going about Gotton City , beating up criminals. And Gotton's not too far from Tiburon.'
Kat began to shudder, her eyes looking like they were about to explode, yet she continued to speak. 'Yeah.'
'We were unsure what he was at first, but then some animal rights nut came in and told us it was conclusively a shark. He put two and two together, and thinks the shark is...your shark.'
Kat's body became stiff.
'I told you we shouldn't have brought Kenny. Now look what's happened.'
Though she thought the scene would become less substantial with time, it was as clear and firm as it ever was. It was like Kat had travelled back in time, and was experiencing it all over again.
They had gone for a night out. Kat, baby Carl, Mum, Dad. And Kenny was there too, due to Kat's persuasion. They had all gone to see a play, and something that vaguely resembled a seal had come up on stage.
'Oh, calm down, dear. You know he can't help himself.'
The family had been told not to disrupt the play any further, and had been sent out onto the rain-splattered streets. Dad would have to call the taxi earlier than he expected. They even suggested that Kenny might have to walk home.
'Hold it!'
A dog came out of nowhere. Not a four-legged dog like Marty, though there was a bit of a resemblance to Kenny's friend. A tall, gangly dog, standing on two legs, draped in a black raincoat. He pulled out a gun, and all of the Cassidys put their hands up. Even Kenny froze in fear.
'Ah, you have a shark, do ya? Ooh, isn't he scary? I bet he's going to eat me!'
Kat wanted to say something, but her throat was completely dry.
'Here, here, sir. Take my wallet, just don't harm...'
'Oh, listen to Mr. Considerate there. Don't hurt my family! Don't kill my big floppy fish! Ooh!'
'Look...'
BLAM
'Peter!'
BLAM
'Mom!'
Mom and Dad fell to the floor, right in front of Kat and baby Carl in her arms, the latter crying tears of confusion. Right in front of Kenny.
Kenny leapt.
The carefree, happy shark that had spent years under the care of the Cassidys vanished, and in his place was a salivating beast, who had pinned down the murderer.
'Oh, little shark's grown some balls AGH!'
Kenny dug his teeth into the dog, but it wasn't a fatal bite. No, the shark still needed him alive, to throw against the wall. To throw dustbins at. To strangle with a bit of rope.
Kat understood Kenny. Kat knew shark. She knew full well that he beloved pet just said, 'I'm going to kill you.'
Mom was still dead. Dad was still dead. Carl was still crying.
'Kenny!'
He stop. He froze.
He looked at the quivering dog using a dustbin lid as a shield. He looked at the corpses of his beloved owners.
He ran.
'Officer, after that incident, I never saw Kenny again. He's never come back here.'
Kenny always did seem to live in a little fantasy world of his own. Kat chalked it up to the naiveté that comes with being a literal fish out of water, but some of his delusions were quite farfetched. Trying to calm the guilt of the living beings he ate? Kat was never as good a psychiatrist as her late mother.
'He hasn't been seen round this neighbourhood, has he?' asked New Dad.
'We have received no reports, no,' said the cop, 'but we may have to conduct a search around this house just to make sure you aren't hoarding him.'
Taking a step backwards, Kat asked, 'Wh-what are you going to do with him?'
'Don't worry, we'll make sure...'
Just then, a metal claw burst out from the window and carried the cop away.
'Well, there's something you don't see everyday.'
