As always, Mr. Skimmer, Stroke, Niches, Chang, and Tanachi are mine. Gill and all others with names not mentioned above belong to Disney and Pixar.
Thank you very much for your reviews and please send some more! The more reviews I get, the faster I update, so send 'em in pronto!
I originally named the dentist Pete, but then I found out that is first name is Phil, so I had to go back and change his name. I have no idea where this is taking place. It should be in Asia somewhere, so I tried to give the fish-collector an Asian-sounding name. I don't know if Tanachi is Chinese or Japanese or whatever, I just made it up. How much do fish usually sell for? 50 might be too much, but I just figured tropical fish like him would be a lot of money.
I hope you enjoy this chapter and look forward to my next update. The next chapter is very long, and Gill finally meets his tank mates!
Chapter 5- This Little Piggy Went to Market
The next leg of my journey was completed as I found myself in an unfamiliar area, different from all the others. I had reached a port, although I didn't know this at the time. The water didn't seem to be as clean, and I coughed a couple of times, getting my first taste of this new environment.
Great hulking pieces of metal floated effortlessly above me. These were boats afloat. I was fascinated by this wonder, never seeing an active boat in my life. I swam a little closer to the metal bottom, hoping to get a better view. Even in my new adulthood, I was not omniscient. Never had it occurred to me that swimming next to a boat was a bad idea, and that I might injure myself. Of course, I am much wiser now. The ship itself didn't actually hurt me, but this was more than just a ship.
I turned a somersault, got a good view of it from upside down, and mentally noted down my observations. On my way here, I had pondered what type of profession I would like to go into. After figuring it out for several days, I had decided to be either a travel agent or a human expert. If I was going to be a human expert, I really had to study this boat.
Just then, a booming voice erupted from the surface. "Hey, wait a minute. What's that in the water?"
A monstrous face slowly descended above me.
I was paralyzed with fear. Some fish say humans are awful and cruel creatures, and some fish say humans are trying to help us. Now I was face-to-face with one of these horrific giants without knowing if it was friend or foe.
"Wow…" he shook the water around me. "What a pretty fish. Is that an angelfish?"
Slowly, a second, equally horrid face appeared next to the first face. This man looked a little frantic and concerned. "My God! A tropical fish like that shouldn't be swimming around in this port!"
At this comment, I frowned. This was a free world; I could go wherever I wanted. The problem was, I couldn't tell him that. Believe me, if fish could yell at humans, I would have been yelling at him. Seeing that they weren't accepting me, I turned around and began to swim off in the opposite direction, the heck with observing the boat.
However, before I knew it, I was suddenly yanked from the water, trapped in a small net. I flailed my fins and my tail, trying to get myself untangled, but it did no good. The net wasn't invulnerable, and I would have been able to get out of it with a little concentration, but soon after the giant man placed me in a thick plastic container full of water.
As much as I bashed my pointy snout against the side, the material didn't budge (but I did hurt my snout). Swimming frantically in extremely tight circles, I got the idea that maybe if I bashed the side enough times, it would topple the container over the side and break it open.
I never got a chance to test this hypothesis. After about two more bangs to the container's side, the gentle rumbling feeling shaking the container gradually slowed until it at last subsided.
The container moved again and lurched twice to the side. I slammed against the plastic. The man was innocently walking along a path and bouncing the container, but I was in the container and feeling every little bump. I was hoping and praying he would try to swing the container, accidentally let go of it, and fling me back into the port. No such salvation came.
Through the heavy plastic siding, I was able to hear the giant man's giant voice. "Hello! I'm home!"
A few moments later, I breathed a small sigh of relief as the man placed me in my container on a solid surface. There was an alarming cracking noise as the man's colossal hand reached in and tore off the cover. His nightmarish face appeared again, looming over me. It grew closer and closer, that destructive hand reaching out…closer…I quickly covered my eyes, hoping I would wake up. What in the world would this dominant creature do to me? With one hand he could easily snap my neck and kill me. I made up my mind that as soon as the hand was close enough, I would bite it as hard as I possibly could.
It was too late. Once my mind was made up, the hand was already reaching around my body. It lifted me out of the container like a forklift would a heavy machine. With one of his swift fingers, he rubbed my right side, feeling my scars.
"I knew it," he said, a little softer now. "I have no idea how this fish got all the way here, but it's already gotten itself hurt, probably in one of the city machines. Don't worry, I'm saving you."
"No!" I wanted to scream. "That's not how it is! Put me back in the port!" Of course he wouldn't have been able to hear me.
I was terribly uncomfortable knowing that my fate lied in the hands of this untrustworthy giant. Thankfully, he gently dropped me into a tiny plastic bowl of water. I barely had enough room to swim a few inches forward, a few inches backward, and turn around in a circle. I would have rather he left me in the plastic container.
"I know it's a little small," the man said, noticing me struggling. "I'll get you out of there as soon as I have the money to buy another fish tank."
And when would that be? I thought. One year? Two years? For a moment I considered banging into the side and making the bowl topple over, but then I would probably choke with no water, suffocate, and die. I sank to the bottom of the plastic bowl and stared out through the blurry, concave wall.
As I glanced around the room, I noticed many other fish tanks with various other fish swimming around in circles in them. They looked incredibly lost and out of place. There were little paper signs in front of them, displaying what types of fish were in which tanks, and their prices. The way the tanks were arranged was almost like museum, where people could walk around, marveling at the exotic fish on the tables, from all over the world. This giant man was a fish-collector, a fish-incarcerator.
As I observed this new and strange world, I also laid eyes on the man, sitting at a desk in the corner. He pulled out a black marker, leaned on his desk, lit by an overhanging lamp, and carefully wrote something on a card much like the ones on the fish tanks. I realized after a while that he was making my sign. I entertained myself for a few minutes by imagining what it might say. I saw myself in this bowl, scowling at passersby with a little sign in front of me, reading: "Big, Disgruntled Fish in Little, Constricting Goldfish Bowl."
Soon after, the man finished the sign and placed it in front of my prison cell. Thankfully the card was see-through, and I spent a good hour or two trying to read it backwards. At last I figured out that it read: "Moorish idol, handicapped. Not for sale." I frowned at this sign, particularly that part about being "handicapped", but there was nothing I could do about it.
As I lied on the plastic ground, the top of my filamentous extension sticking a little out of the water, my mind reeled. This was definitely not what I had come so many miles for and I had to get out of this terrible place as fast as I could…but how? The nearest body of water was a long way off and if I managed to get out of the bowl, I would surely dry up and die. Either that, or the man would find me and put me right back where I had started.
My gills constricted a little, and I wheezed instead of sighing. Another problem was that there was not a constant supply of oxygen flowing in this tiny bowl, and the man would have to change the water every now and then, or else I would also suffocate. If only I could turn the bowl into a plastic sphere and roll myself out the door and back to the port.
That night, I slept uneasily, not being totally comfortable. I knew before that I like small dark spaces, but this space was a little too small and dark. In the night, I could hear many different voices speaking in various languages and dialects. Some of them seemed to be trying to make conversation with me, but for some reason I always pictured them as mocking me, advancing on me, stealthily in the pitch-blackness. Nights were always a problem in that strange combination of human and fish world.
In my deep, familiar thinking trances, I realized that I had fallen into another trap, another setback in my travel that someday I may swim away from. This was just yet another challenge in my life, and like Shock Rope Ship, I would survive this and come out unharmed. At least that was what my optimistic, fighting spirit side told me.
My other side was quavering in fear, thinking that I would never get out of this place and would probably die in this tight bowl before that man could get me a tank. Nightmares of the sharks, the barracuda, the electric eels, and that dreadful man flitted through my dreams, hanging over me like a constant rain cloud.
When I awoke the next day, the man came up to my cramped bowl and dropped a handful of small grain-like structures into the bowl. They floated above my head, a halo to go with the filamentous extension. I stared at these fibrous little pieces in confusion. Then I realized that maybe he was trying to suffocate me by sprinkling a little of that material in every day until the bowl was full of soggy pieces.
An hour later, the man walked by me again, admired his "Moorish idol" sign, and then looked over at me. His face crinkled with a little concern. "Are you okay, fishy? I know that bowl is sort of small for you, but I don't have any money right now."
I glared hard at him, hoping to get him to understand how unhappy I was. It must have worked, because his eyebrows creased a little more than before.
"How come you're not eating? You don't look sick…"
Eating? Suddenly I realized that I hadn't eaten anything in a long time. I was dying for some sponge parts, but the fact struck me that he most likely didn't have any sponges for me.
Two more days passed after that, crawling by slowly and heavily. Most of the time I stared at the wall, thinking. It was nice to have so much time to think, but I was still quite disappointed by the lack of space to move around in. On that third day, part of my destiny would be fulfilled. I was lying, tiredly on the bottom of the bowl, as usual, with fibrous particles swirling around my head and bubbles rising from my sighing.
A moment later, a small bell rang in the corner of the door as a tall man with graying hair stepped into the building.
Oh great! I thought. Customers coming to see "Big, Disgruntled Fish in Little, Constricting Goldfish Bowl"!
The owner man spilled ink all over his papers in shock. "P-Phil! My goodness! You came all the way up here to see me?"
The man with the gray hair smiled. "Well, my family and I were vacationing near here, so I thought, why not stop by Tanachi's house before we leave? Say, how's your little fish business coming along?"
"Oh it's great," Tanachi, the owner replied. "See all the fish I have now?"
I blocked out the rest of their conversation and resorted to blowing bubbles again. After a while, I noticed them walking down the hallway and sighed again. Maybe if I jumped on Phil, he wouldn't notice and I could jump back off when he went to the port. No, that was too risky. Most likely, he would notice if a big fish like me tried to hitch a ride on his back. There was no telling that he was going to the port, anyway.
The two men began coming back up the hallway, and I tuned back into their conversation.
"Well right now I only have one little humbug, a blowfish, and a shrimp. I'm looking for something big, something that will stand out. The parrotfish is pretty, but I need something more majestic."
Tanachi looked around for a while. He lit up as he laid eyes on me.
I gasped. Maybe he was looking at me, seeing me as fresh meat, since I was useless anyway. I'd heard that humans eat fish.
Instead I heard him say. "A couple of days ago I found this beautiful Moorish idol out in the nearby ship port, would you like to see it?"
"Sure, why not," Phil replied.
Tanachi led Phil up to my little jail cell. "That's it, in that bowl. It looks better when it's swimming, but there's not much room for it to swim."
Phil gazed at my sign. "What do you mean by handicapped?"
"Oh, it's got something wrong with its right fin. It looks like part of it's been torn off, but it can still swim fine. I've seen it swimming in the port. I know it says it's not for sale, but I'd be willing to sell it to you."
I stared hard at them, trying to get them to realize that I was a living thing, not an "it", but they paid no attention.
"How much you want for it?"
"50," Tanachi said.
"30," Phil insisted.
First item- "Big, Disgruntled Fish in Little, Constricting Goldfish Bowl" by an unknown artist, let the debate begin.
"I want 50," Tanachi repeated. "This is a delicate tropical fish. People pay hundreds of dollars for one of these in mint condition."
"In mint condition," Phil argued. "This one's been run through the mill and back. Look, if I'm getting a cheap fish, I want it to be cheap."
At this point, I was highly motivated to pounce on Phil, but I kept calm and just fumed quietly.
Tanachi sighed. "Oh, all right, I'll let it go for 30, but only because you're my friend."
He pulled out a bag and suddenly the realization sunk in- I had been sold to Phil. He was going to take me; maybe he'd kill me and eat me! I began flailing and nearly toppled the bowl over.
"Gee," Tanachi commented. "I haven't seen it so active since I first brought it here." Suddenly, he swiftly brought the bag down and I was trapped inside a water-filled plastic bag. Tanachi looked all around me. From my markings, he could tell my gender. "It's male," he told Phil. "I need to warn you," he added. "You ought to have him checked out before you put him in with your other fish. He may have some sort of disease. He hasn't been eating at all."
Phil looked at his friend suspiciously. "You mean I may be getting a diseased fish? You should have told me that before I paid you that 30 bucks."
Tanachi just smiled and shoved my bag at Phil. "Well it's too late now. Here's your fish, pal."
Phil grabbed my bag more forcefully than I would have liked. I lurched forward hard and began to see spots before my eyes. Phil was carrying me out of the building. I wasn't sure what was happening, the world was spinning around in a warped vortex. The tall man held my bag up for a moment. I managed to open my eyes for a moment and I looked straight at him in desperation.
He just frowned, disgusted. "Yeah, you're pretty, Mr. Fishy, but you better not be carrying some illness in that striped body…"
The rest of his rude sentence was chopped off, as I slipped unconscious. Maybe I really was diseased, I thought. Maybe that was the reason I could never fit in and I could read, and I was never accepted. I had something wrong with me, mentally. However, I was about to find out how untrue this conclusion was.