Thalassophobia

Thalassophobia

Eleanor and I visited it when it first opened. A new aquarium just around the corner of the street, near the shoreline. She was fifteen and I was a year younger, but the top of her head barely reached my shoulder. The security looked at us with suspicion and checked our student tickets. It wasn’t new for me, since I did seem too tall for a kid, and student tickets were, of course, cheaper.
It was a small aquarium. It had only a few exhibits; Eleanor wanted to see the tropical fish, and I wanted to visit the harp seals. But everyone in the aquarium that day visited for the mermaid performance. Zodiac would be performing.
“When does it start?” Eleanor asked. She took out her camera out and aimed it at a flustered group of angelfish.
“Nine o’clock. Put your coat on, it’s cold here.”
She stared at me as if I was an idiot. “This is literally the warmest exhibit. Tropical fish and anemones, Cathy! You’re going to see the seals. That’s where it’s cold.”
The corner of my mouth twitched. “Seems fair. Hurry up, we have less than half an hour.” I didn’t want to tell her again that it felt cold everywhere. There was no ceiling, just a dark void above, and the glass between us and the crushing water. She sorted her pictures. Most of them were blurry patches of color, but she seemed satisfied. We entered another exhibit, and I kept myself from glancing up. The seal room was different. Bright lights everywhere, and there was nothing but silence, except for the muffled crackling of ice.
“Well, there you go. Your seals.” Eleanor muttered, pulling her coat tightly
together.
I squinted through the thick glass, but saw nothing. The ice was empty, the water was clear, and there wasn’t a single other visitor around. There was a dark grey mass in the furthest corner; the seals were asleep.

We returned to the central exhibit. All the visitors were crammed in there, and the noise was deafening. I saw a banner across the chairs that said, ‘Support ZODIAC for WMC!” The only light came from the aquarium tank, and it illuminated the crowd in deep blue. A large, winged shadow glided past the back of the tank, and a glittering shoal of fishes circled the reef. Somewhere in the darkness where the lights were out to save electricity, a lazy whale shark waited for the obnoxious chattering to cease. I told myself that it was a whale shark, although the sinister outline drifted like
something unnatural, something quite dead.
The tank stretched up to the ceiling. Something in my heart froze; there was no exit to the tank except for a trapdoor. Maybe to stop fishes from jumping out? What if—what if, it did not open in time? How could anyone trap themselves in there willingly?
“Look, there she is.” Eleanor poked my arm. “She’s going to practice her routine for the World Mermaid Championship.”
“I didn’t know they had competitions for that.”
“Of course. You hate swimming, how are you supposed to know?”
I smiled politely. She was wrong, though. It was the diving part that frightened me; the quietness, the pressure, and the feeling that I didn’t belong. No human being should have the audacity to call the ocean home, try as they might to… pretend otherwise.
Zodiac entered the aquarium in a cascade of bubbles. She had a new tail suit, and this one was red and purple, sparkling under the harsh white spotlight that made the world dim in comparison. Her hair, which was dyed blue, swirled around her head like a strange, sentient marine creature.
I took out my sketchbook, but Zodiac moved too fast and never stayed in one position for more than a few seconds. Eleanor gazed in awe at the girl in the spotlight, who swam gracefully and naturally. I fixed my sight on Zodiac and sketched blindly with my pencil. It worked at first. But soon, her movements became more and more irregular, frantic. The crowd had begun to question, too, but she seemed fine; she was still smiling in that peculiar way, but surely it was because of her eyes being exposed to water? She was too far away for me to see the whites of her eyes, and that made her
smile look a bit uncanny.
I followed Zodiac’s sight and looked up.
The black ceiling, with the little trapdoor in it.
Someone in the crowd began to scream. “Open the door, quickly! Now!”
There was no space for air between the ceiling and the water. My heart beat erratically, and it felt as if my own lungs were also being slowly depleted of oxygen, as if the pain and numbness would spread through my limbs, paralyzing whatever defenses I had left. Was the distant, immobile darkness part of the aquarium landscape? Or was it something unknown, with scarred scales and an enormous reptilian eye that reflected the little room? The distressed shouts of the audience would be reduced to whispers, the only sound would be my own heartbeat and the deafening roars of pressure in the water. Who would care enough to find what’s left of me, once I disappear into the void? How many faultless lives did the waves take from the world, and how many of them were truly without fault? They named it ‘the call of the void’. I failed to understand what part of our brains were attracted to incomprehensible ways of death, but I would sink anyway. Freezing temperature, searing pain, uncontrollable movement, and then nothing else except knowing that the light was fading away, fast, without having to expose your eyes to salty water. The water, so much water that raged on the surface, bringing down towers of ice before crashing down and joining the rest without more than a splash. A drowning person shares their resting place with the creatures in the depths, and many others with the same fate before them.
Zodiac seemed calm. Why did I imagine drowning? The ocean didn’t care about impostors. She was not supposed to be here, to act out her show and to pretend to be something she was not.
The trapdoor was pulled opened with some difficulty, and Zodiac left the water.

All the lights in the aquarium flickered off.
We were plunged into darkness.
The crowd murmured in confusion. I heard Eleanor shove her camera into her bag, and I wanted her to take my sketchbook too, but before our eyes could adjust to the darkness, someone screamed.
“It’s leaking!” Another shouted. “There’s a crack!”
There were a few moments of quietness, and then total chaos. Eleanor grabbed my arm, panicked, and the crowd began to push each other for the exit. Someone was behind me; a woman with her child. She pushed me out of the way, and the little boy’s fists landed uncontrollably on my back. I tripped and fell, a dozen alarm bells screeching in my head; the crowd would trample over me. In the midst of the confusion, something in my mind told me that this was so entirely and perfectly déjà vu. But where? Where else could this have happened? I yelled Eleanor’s name, and that alerted her to my presence just in time to not dislocate my wrist due to her dragging me forward.
Over the clamor of people and children, I heard something shift ominously in the direction of the tank. I guessed that the crack had shattered. Water began to flood in, and I could feel my heartbeat pause for one whole moment. A man stepped on my leg. I cursed. My eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness, and I saw people everywhere, running into each other and striking each other in hysteria. Somehow, the scene was more confusing than it should be, but it must be anxiety messing things up.
Did the central exhibit suddenly become smaller? I didn’t have time for these observations.
“Cathy!” Eleanor shouted, taking my other arm and trying to help me up.
Unfortunately, I was just as heavy as I was tall, and someone had just broken my ankle. “The exit’s there!” I shouted back, but she was practically blind without her glasses, which had been knocked off long ago. Her glasses… where was it? And where was my sketchbook? I needed to go back for my sketchbook. Or everything would be a waste of time… but why? It was just a bunch of sketches of animal anatomy. It wasn’t important. So I pushed the painfully obvious idea out of my mind and focused on standing up.
The water reached my shoes, and I glanced back for a single moment. The lights were flickering, and the spotlight was stuck at a lopsided angle, bright crimson. A bucket-sized hole poured water in from the ceiling, along with some small creatures which were beginning to suffocate. Just like me, I thought. Out of our element. Ocean and ground… they just don’t mix, at least for too long.
A lone angelfish floated past me, and I stared, dazed. It shone with a silvery sheen as it tried to breathe, in vain. Its eyes seemed dead already.
I was brought back to reality by Eleanor calling my name, and we managed to push through the crowd and leave the aquarium. The details were strangely missing, but I didn’t care much. We were under the open air, at last. There would be people here soon, to save us all. We sat under the cloudy night sky and said nothing as the ambulance arrived. They were only here for the ones losing blood from pieces of
glass. No one were really too injured. Eleanor wanted to call her parents, but her phone was ruined.

On our way home, the image of the angelfish floated around in my mind. Had I seen it before? Where? The answer felt so close to me.
“Eleanor.” I stopped walking.
“Yes?”
“Can I see the pictures?”
“Of course, they’re perfectly fine. Unlike my phone.” She laughed to herself bitterly, and I tried to smile at the forced optimism.
I looked at the pictures. They were still blurry patches of color; some blue, some white, some deep red and, oddly, moving across my sight. “Are you sure these are fish?”
Eleanor looked at me in concern. “What do you mean?” She pointed at the blue one. “Don’t you see the fish scales?”
I froze. “What? This is…” Nothing.
But suddenly, her face changed. Her voice changed.
“I’m sorry, Catherine .”

..--.. -.. .-. --- .-- -. .. -. --. ..--..

I opened my eyes. My ankle still hurt as hell, and it was still cold. Someone pulled me up into the open air, and they wore a red and purple insulation suit. It was… Zodiac? No. I had long forgotten what she looked like, after ten long years.
“Another one. No vital signs. No nametag.”
Now I remembered everything.
Of course it was cold. The ocean in polar regions were frigid. Nine o’clock… we were supposed to switch post by nine. I saw the seals on an island on the third day. The black ceiling in the cabin… it had only one trapdoor. I had to leave my notebook in the cabin. I should go back for it. All my work was listed in there, everything. All the files and records of new species, all the sketches. Our team had just discovered so many things… it was not supposed to end like this.
When the ship hit the reefs, someone shouted for the trapdoor to be opened.
Another screamed that the ship was leaking. The trapdoor opened, and we climbed out; but not long after, the waves swallowed the ship.

Silence, except for the sound of my own heartbeat.
Suffocation.
I was thrown against a rock by a current, and my ankle broke. Deep red blood spilled from the wound. But surely, I would survive this? Yes, it’s just a small issue. Nothing too threatening… we had proper safety precautions, didn’t we? The lifeboats should be in position any second, and the best I could do now is conserve energy. Whose fault was it in the first place? Probably no one. Could I have changed it, if I had walked outside a few minutes earlier? Nothing was going to answer my questions, because really, nothing made sense anymore. It took me only a few seconds to know that I would not survive to see the morning tomorrow, or even for the next few agonizing minutes left of my time.

I sank deeper into the abyss. Were the reefs part of an enormous creature, watching the tiny ship disappear under the sea? A single silvery fish glided past me, mocking a beast out of its safe haven.

It was evident; the ocean didn’t care that much.

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