Out of Water

When Julia wakes up with a fin in place of her arm, her first thought is: ‘Crap. My shift started ten minutes ago’. 

It feels quite normal, the murky, dishwater blue that trickles up her side like a leaky faucet. Numb, but sensitive. Natural, as she’d woken up that way, but supernatural, unnerving, and something she had not noticed even one bit. The scales crawling up her arm are ticklish, sure, but she writes that off as a dream, a cynical yearning for what her body had clearly craved. It does not cross her mind to tick off the appearance of her appendages when she wakes up far beyond the monotonous cry of her alarm - she had sort of expected things to be in order when she’d dropped to sleep the night before. So, as far as she’s concerned, the prickly feeling in her right side is due to her tired rising rather than something to blink an eye at. Whatever limbs she has would simply have to do, for shelf-stacking at an overpriced supermarket chain waits for no woman, and certainly no fish. 

Showering has never been that comfortable for her. Damp, cold, a shiny cellophane layer clinging to her senses. This morning the waterfall feels more like piercing icicles, mocking her poor timekeeping. She scrubs at her body with her left hand, the more imposing of the two she once had, mindlessly running the cloth over metallic scales. In minutes, she is dry, teeth brushed, the same uniformed polo shirt she’d worn in her two previous shifts collared to her torso. Her morning routine bustles about her as it normally does, and the lack of opposable thumbs does not irk her when she reaches for her morning coffee. She merely accommodates, seamlessly, and abandons the spoon in her cereal to reach for the mug with her other, more typical hand, and downs the lukewarm beverage in shallow gulps in her rush. 

Her bag over her shoulder, matching ones under her eyes, her foot out of the door. She does not have space to think, to wonder what she might look like, to flinch at the spitting droplets that collect in puddles on the pavement. She has a shift, a cheque to collect, shelves to stack. Nothing could ever steal the attention her employer has so gracefully accepted, not anything as menial as her reflection in her dusty bathroom mirror. As she darts through the streets in tandem with the subway she’s chasing, wind whips her hair over her face, fencing her vision between unbrushed locks. The city blurs beside her like a reflection in a puddle, and the faces of the local residents become specks of paint on a canvas, a pixel on a screen - impossible to perceive unless slowly and all at once. 

Her boss is guarding the entrance to the staffroom when she arrives, only thirty minutes late, his folded arms like fortified prison gates. His brows, ever expressive, point towards his glowering gaze. “Where have you been? Had a delivery this morning with no one to sort it out. Bloody nightmare.” 

Julia stops in her place, feeling as though she’s just stepped off a merry-go-round and the world is still dizzying around her. “I overslept,” she explains. She reaches up with her right hand to tame a damp lock of hair, seaweed on her shoulders. “I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Her boss traces the movement of her hand like a leaf following a river’s current. “...Is this some kind of joke?” He asks. 

“I’m really sorry,” Julia reiterates, “my alarm didn’t go off. I’ll stay later tonight.”

Her boss tuts. “I’m talking about the fish arm. Is this a Halloween costume? Did you oversleep because of a fancy dress party?” 

“Fish…arm?” Julia hopes that sounding out the words with unlock some clarity, but it just knits her brow together instead. 

“The bloody fin and gills hanging out your t-shirt.” He gestures vaguely to her right arm with a trunk-like hand. 

“The…” Julia peers down at her arm, the clinical supermarket lighting reflecting stars from her shiny scales. She doesn’t notice anything that she isn’t used to, that hasn’t always felt like it’s been there somewhere. “What do you mean?” 

“What do you mean, ‘what do you mean’? Are you taking the piss?”

Julia blinks, once, twice, and swallows thickly like the air doesn’t quite want to go down. 

Her boss sighs, grumbles at her non-answer, the air coming naturally to him. “Just take that nonsense costume off and get to work. Got a whole palette of yoghurt that needs to be out by lunchtime.” 

Nodding hurriedly, Julia slips past him into the staffroom, clutching her bag close to her in her beeline for her locker. 

One of her coworkers is sprawled out on the cheap leather sofa, an over-brewed tea in one hand, and a half-eaten custard cream biscuit in the other. She glances non-committedly at Julia’s bustling entrance, then draws her attention back suddenly like a latched lasso. “Woah, Julia, what’s with the fin? Is that SFX or something? It’s creepy,” she announces. 

“What fin?” Julia asks, distracted as she punches in the code for her locker and shrugs off her bag. “Why does everyone keep going on about a fin?”

“Didn’t know you were into stage makeup and all that,” her coworker responds, ignoring her question. “It’s pretty realistic. Are you in a show?” 

Julia stops in the middle of shoving her bag in her locker as if frozen in place. “What are you talking about? What fin?” 

Her coworker seems surprised by the outburst. “Jesus, I was just asking. It’s a little offputting, that massive scaly thing.” 

Julia can’t understand what she’s referring to, feeling like her jigsaw is missing pieces, yet everyone is expecting her to complete the puzzle regardless. Frustration tumbles past her lips like an overboiled pot, and she throws her lanyard over her neck and snaps out of the door. 

Inside the stock room is a sand tower of stacked yoghurts of various sizes, waiting to crumble at the bat of an eyelash. She follows the caged tower up as it towers into the clouds, the sea level rising above the warehouse. Braving the storm, she reaches for the bars, left hand gripping a circle around the metal, right fin the driving force. 

Slowly, carefully, so as not to topple the block tower, she wheels the cage out of the stage curtain, the supermarket spotlights staring daggers at her, forcing her head to fix to the floor. Now she is subject to the audience, the practiced eyes of grocery shoppers waiting for her highly anticipated retail waltz. 

The dairy aisle spans as far as the ocean. Before she can start unliking her cargo and polluting the empty shelves, insisting the 2% milk is hiding from them. In plain sight, Julia releases, though they don’t take kindly to that. 

Brick by brick, she moves each new product into its designated place, ignoring customers who take it right from her or scavenge from her stash, cutting into her fin with sharp gazes. Rhythmically, she gives up all of her stock and her energy until there’s hardly anything left to give. Further down the aisle, an inconsolable child sings dissonance from its pram, vibrating around her head like a drop of water in a pool. 

Attention held hostage, she reaches for another large yoghurt to barricade the shelf. It slips past her smooth fin like water and meets its early demise on the dusty linoleum. It cries out an unsavory splat as its bones crack on the floor. Julia can only wince, hands still cradling its ghost. Barely, as if squinting would reverse time, she peeks at the crime scene. 

‘You did this to me,’ the yoghurt pot says, as it oozes out its strawberry intestines, ‘how could you?’     

But Julia had only picked it up to move it. Whatever came afterward had happened without intention. It seems to her like it aimed for inconvenience just to spite her, like it had flung itself from her hands just for someone to blame. She loses a staring contest with the remnants until she turns herself in via her head seat for cleaning weaponry. 

“The hell is this?” Her boss demands as he turns the corner into the aisle, clutching some wipes and spray. Then, he casts out a bewitching sigh at Julia’s guilty expression. “Look, Julia. I know you’re having a bad day. Woke up on the wrong side of the bloody seabed, apparently. But you can’t keep damaging the stock. It looks bad for me.” 

Julia feels like he’s shouting at her through a pool. 

“Julia?” He pulls a face like he’s just eaten rotten shrimp. “Hello? Are you there?”

Julia surfaces and realises she’s being interrogated for her crime. “I didn’t mean to,” she suggests, eyes cast elsewhere. “I was trying to be careful.”

He surveys her fin with disdain. “Well, try harder,” he says, turning away, “and get rid of that thing already. It’s unnerving.” His elaboration trails him like an old dog on a lead. 

Try harder, Julia considers. Get rid of what? 

But rather than voicing her confusion, she remains rooted to the murder scene, gaping like a fish. She glances at the floor, and the yoghurt corpse blinks at her. 

‘What are you looking at?’ It spits before it bleeds out its final berry. 

Julia wipes it up and conducts a small but respectable funeral service over the stockroom bin. 

Nine hours trickle by before she is released from her shift half an hour after anticipated like a compromised dam. Her house sings out a siren song to her, the evening routine longing for an actress. Her fraying bag is an anchor as she wades towards the subway. Through the dusty tunnel to the train platform, a monsoon clouds her senses and fills her eyes with oxbow lakes. Never has she tried to adapt to the freezing temperatures more, stumbling about as she tries to find her bearings on solid land. She does try, really, to fill the mold her boss sets out for her. Usually, she’s successful enough to scrape by with his watery requests and vague instructions. Some days, though, it feels like he smudges the ink on purpose. 

Sardines fill the train platform, and Julia is pushed closer to the ledge, overlooking a waterfall, gaze forced beyond. Across the tracks, standing at the opposite platform, is a businessman, clutching a briefcase at his side with a fickle grip. They notice one another in tandem, and he peers up at her as if it were his reflection. A smile melts on his face. Julia gawks back and feels a fluttering frown wash over her. 

Before Julia can pinpoint the smile, the businessman turns to the side to allow a mother with a pushchair to manoeuvre beside him. As he rotates, behind him, protruding from the back of his blazer like a loose thread, is a smooth, porcelain dorsal fin. It practically winks at her as it catches a flash of LED light amongst the shadows. At first, it seems that the mother hadn’t noticed his appendage, but his awkward shuffling and mumbled apology hands the sight to her on a silver platter. Her eyes harden at his abnormality, and she marches away with the buggy as her chariot. 

The subway for the opposite platform arrives before Julia can catch the businessman’s eye. As it disappears on the current, it leaves behind no trail but her frown. But she knows what she saw, and she supposes he knew that too.

Without anywhere else to look, Julia gazes down at her tingling arm. For the first time, she notices that her human arm has swum away, and a fin peers meekly back at her. In its brilliant blue, the dingy subway lights dance a rainbow over her scales. She glances up distractedly as her own subway leaks onto the platform. It offers her a ride, hopeful, and she accepts, grateful. 

It carries her away like a submarine gliding through the ocean. Delicately, she caresses her fin, dedicating the bumps and ridges to memory. It occurs to her that an arm like this shouldn’t be murdering dairy products and unnerving customers. It should be paddling in open water. Yet it has done it, it has provided all it can, regardless. She has done it regardless, has done her best. 

The train sings out the name of her stop as it approaches a station. At sea, Julia rises from the battered seat. As the doors lurch open, she thinks of the businessman and his own fin, and how she can’t wait to get home and take a bath. She never really cared for showers, and she doesn’t need to pretend to.