Toronto Aquarium
Marine Mammal Rescue and Study Pool
From this side of the thick green glass the rescue pool looked entirely different.
****
It had somehow pleased him in a sick and twisted sort of a way, to visit the Toronto aquarium.
Mostly it amused him to visit the Marine Mammal Rescue. The system of quarantine pools, the buildings, the clinic, and the large salt water pool all held a curious and illicit attraction for him.
He had always found it amusing that those idiotic, tree hugging environmentalists volunteered all that time and energy trying to save a few injured or sick marine mammals.
He would stand in the tourist groups and listen to those 'holier than thou' know-it-alls whine on and on about the brutality of the seal hunt, the violence of the poachers, the problems with the overfishing, global warming…yackity ,yack, yack, yack .
For what? He had thought, for what? So that you can set them free again and we can catch them and skin them, and line our pockets. You biologists and professors and activists all think you are so smart, well you're not. You're stupid driving around in your beat up vans or damn hybrids, living in your co-op housing. I'm the smart one, I'm the one with the big house, the fancy cars, the trophy wife with the silicon tits and the fur coats…me! Yeah I'm the smart one .
He liked to lean over the edge of the railing and look down into the salt water pool. The water was deep and green and cold. There was even a real transplanted kelp forest in the enclosure. Brought in and carefully tended at great expense by a team of scientists and volunteers all supported by the donations of a bunch of bleeding hearts whose heads were obviously as soft as those hearts.
It was just business, that's all it was. All those seals those idiots were so worried about were just so much meat enclosed in a fur coat made out of money. The Organization recognized that there was a huge market for endangered or controlled animal products; the more illegal something was the bigger the demand and the higher the price tag. His bosses and his associates all made a great deal of money on providing people with what they truly wanted, whether it was gambling, drugs, murder, extortion, women, art or antiquities, or the by-products of poaching and the traffic in endangered species. They knew, as he knew, there was money to be made. And he made his share.
What he really liked to do best was to go down to the glass observation tunnel, beneath the salt water pool. He liked to stand and look through the glass at the seals twisting and turning through the water around him. Sleek and agile they flew through the liquid. If he was alone, sometimes he indulged himself in a little fantasy, where he pulled his piece and pretended he was shooting them as they flowed sinuously by the glass, picking them off like fish in a barrel…
***
From this side of the thick green glass the rescue pool looked entirely different.
His head hurt and even the icy water did nothing to ease the throbbing.
***
He knew that they had knocked him unconscious. When they had taken him in his own driveway, he had caught a glimpse of the sealing club before it came down on his head. The world had gone black and when he had awakened next, he was bound and gagged with duct tape in the trunk of a car that had eventually turned out to be his own. There were five of them when they had eventually pulled him from the trunk, of his own damned car!
They were all young, all male and all grim and angry. He resisted as best he could but between them they dragged him, struggling, into the aquarium grounds.
The rest held him upright as one them used a pass key to enter. He had then crossed to the control room and disappeared. In a moment he was back whispering, "The cameras are recording the tapes from two weeks ago now. Let's do it."
He had begun to struggle in earnest as they had dragged him to the edge of the rescue pool. The surface of the water was smooth and silvery in the brilliant moonlight. The sleek spotted heads of two grey seals emerged at the edge of the pool, whiskers quivering and their huge dark eyes curious.
They had forced him down to the wet concrete at the pools edge, his nostrils flaring as he struggled to breathe. He drew in the tang of the salt water and the stink of dead fish. They bound his legs together at the ankles with more tape. He was breathing in sharp bursts as they lifted him by ankles and shoulders between them. He mumbled and murmured behind the tape, but they paid him no heed. He bucked as he hung in the air and his eyes grew wide and imploring. He shook his head, no, no nooo….
The cold water closed over his face, and for a moment he could see though the wavering surface three young men and two seals at the edge of the pool, looking down on him. They grew more distant and indistinct, little by little as he began to sink.
He twisted his body in an effort to free himself and he began to sink faster through the water, now feet first. His eyes were wide as he watched the sleek body glide effortlessly through the water towards him. He felt the blunt nose impact hard with his chest and he lost most of the air in his lungs, in a rush of silvery bubbles that slipped quickly to the surface. The impact spun him over horizontal again. Now he was facing the bottom of the pool. He could see the glass tunnel illuminated below him, a hollow glowing tube. He drifted down and down until his cheek contacted the cold glass of the observation tube.
***
From this side of the thick green glass the rescue pool looked entirely different.
The face of the murderer appeared as he drifted up against the glass of the roof. The murderer's hair floated around his head, pushed to and fro in the artificial currents of the water, his cheek flattened against the glass. As he slid down the side of the tube they could see his wide panicked eyes, imploring above the tape covering his mouth. A trail of tiny silver bubbles escaped his nose.
Joseph reached one hand down to touch the still slick coat of his companion.
"Nicki," he said and directed the seal's liquid brown gaze by pointing towards the murderer's bound body. "Watch, he is paying the price for his crimes."
A soft whistle was the only reply as the seal pushed its head up under Joseph's hand.
***
Inside that tube he could see a man, his long brown ponytail hanging over his shoulder, pointing at him. The man bent his hand on the coat of a seal that crouched beside him on the tunnel floor.
His lungs were burning now, and he shook his head telling himself…Don't do it, don't do it…
There was air on the other side of that glass, air he needed. Christ! I'm going to drown.
Help me, Please….
He felt the glancing impact of another seal at his side, spinning him up and over again. He saw the smooth silvery body dart away to disappear amid the waving strands of kelp.
His lungs were on fire now, a dreadful burning that was initially relieved when he drew in the first breath of cold salted water. He was nearing the bottom now; the bright underside of the water's surface was surrounded by encroaching darkness on all sides. He saw graceful forms, flippers extended, cut through the water, gliding over his head, silhouetted against that silvery light. Dancing and cavorting. His lungs flooded as he instinctively breathed in again.
He watched the tiny bubbles rise away from him, escaping to the air above. As his shoulder touched the pool bottom he turned his head to the waving forest of kelp. He saw a scuba diver in among the long dark fronds, his arm looped carelessly around a seal that hovered there. He looked back to the surface once more. The silvery wavering light was shrinking quickly now smaller and smaller…
***
They left him on the bottom for twenty minutes, until they were sure he was dead. With the help of the seals they brought him to the surface and laid him in a plastic body bag. They took him back out to his car and placed him the trunk. Working quickly with the adeptness of long practice they carefully removed all evidence of their presence and before leaving returned the surveillance cameras to their proper record function.
When they were all in the car and pulling out of the lot Joseph said to another young man, "I wish that we could skin and butcher the bastard, the way they do to the seals. But I suppose that would make us as bad as they are. We'll take him home, just like the others."
***
The surface of the rescue pool was silver and placid in the moonlight. A spotted snout and curious liquid brown eyes broke the surface. A second snout emerged alongside the first. The bulk of their bodies hung suspended and swaying in the pool. One seal quietly submerged and darted smoothly away flying through the waving dark kelp beneath the water. The remaining seal raised a whiskered face, ageless dark eyes reflecting the moon overhead and barked a challenge to the night.