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Fish in a Barrel

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Fish in a Barrel

He took a deep breath in and then let it out slowly.
He’d had a good day today, spending his entire time out on the beach, enjoying the sun, listen to the waves. He was pretty sure he’d even dozed off a few times.
Work had been pressing him harder and harder lately, and he was glad for some time to himself. The day had passed too quickly as far as he was concerned and the sun was already below the horizon.
He took another deep breath, letting it out quickly this time, and then stretching his arms out.
He didn’t want to leave and he certainly didn’t want to have to go back to work tomorrow.
Leaning back on his arms, he stared out into the water, enjoying his last few minutes of freedom, before he had to go back home.
A small breeze blew in his face, and although it felt nice, he could feel a chill on the edges of it, and seeing as he was only wearing a T-shirt and shorts, he knew it was going to get cold pretty fast now the sun was gone.
“Ah, there you are.” He heard a voice behind him say. He suddenly had a very bad feeling, as he knew who the voice belonged too.
“Go away.” He said, without turning round.
“Is that away to speak to your girlfriend?”
“Oh for the love of...” he whispered to himself, then he spoke to her “You’re not my girlfriend. We broke up last week, remember...”
“Oh, come on, I know you didn’t mean it, all those things you said.”
He rolled his eyes and let out a sigh.
“Yes I did. As I have already told you three times this week, it’s over. Ok? Now, please, leave me alone.”
“Don’t be like that, honey. I know you love me.”
“Actually I don’t. It’s hard to love someone when they’re running off with someone else.”
“Oh, I see. Are you still upset about that? I told you honey, it didn’t mean anything.”
“Bullshit.”
“But it didn’t.”
He finally turned around and looked at her.
“I don’t care whether it did or didn’t, that’s not the point. The point is you shouldn’t have done it at all.”
“But it really didn’t”
He turned away from her, sighing. This conversation went exactly the same way every time they’d had it over the past week, and he was starting to get really tired of it.
He didn’t know why, she just wouldn’t listen to him. No matter what he said seemed to go in one ear and out the other.
That said, he’d probably still be going out with her if it wasn’t for her stupidity. They’d been talking one day, while walking down this very beach, and she’d just come out with ‘Oh, just so you know where I was last night, I was sleeping with Philip.’
He’d stopped, completely floored.
Then followed a little argument where he had split up with her, when he’d found out she’d done it several times since they’d started going out. It turned out that she didn’t see a problem with it as ‘It doesn’t mean anything; I just use him for fun. But I love you.’
In the end, he just had to walk away, knowing that if the conversation kept going, he’d probably end up doing something he’d later regret.
So he’s stormed off, leaving her behind and telling her that it was over.
Then she’d rang him up the next day, happy and chirpy as if nothing had happened. After another conversation, similar in direction as this one, he’d slammed the phone down on her, only for her to start showing up everywhere he went.
She just refused to take the hint.
And now he’d finally reach the end of his tether.
He stood up and faced her.
“Ok, look.” He said, trying to keep calm “I’ve actually been pretty nice to you over this past week, hoping that maybe you’d grow a brain and take the hint. But I guess even that was too much to hope for.”
“I...” she tried to interrupt, but he wasn’t going to let her.
“No, no, no. Let me finish. Seeing as you can’t grasp the simple premise of breaking up, unless of course you’re the one doing the breaking, I can understand that you’re not smart enough to get that sleeping with someone else while going out with me is wrong.”
“But...” she tried again, but he wanted to finish.
“Wait, I said let me finish. Now, I’m actually letting you off of that because I guess that you’re too stupid to know any better. But that doesn't mean we’re getting back together. Now, I have no idea what level your brain is working at, so I’m going to put this is simple as I can. IT’S OVER. Ok? No more. You and me are no longer together. Can you please get that through you thick little head? Ok?”
She stood there and stared at him for a time. In his mind, he saw through her head and imagined lots of gears working overtime to process the information.
He wondered what she was going to do or say.
In the end, he saw tears beginning to swell up in her eyes.
He rolled his eyes and sighed.
“Please...” he whispered to himself, turning his back on her and walking up the beach.
He wasn’t stupid enough to fall for that. He seen her use the trick before on one of her old boyfriends, and there was no way that he was gonna fall for it too.
He left the sound of her sobbing behind, and headed for the road.
After a minute or so, he took a quick look behind him, just to make sure that she wasn’t following him.
But she was.
“Oh...nuts.” He said under his breath
The last thing he wanted was for her to follow him. He was lucky in that she’d never been to his house and therefore didn’t know where he lived. If she ever found out, he’d never get any peace from her.
He stopped and thought quickly.
It was late and he knew that there wouldn’t be enough people to loose her in a crowd, and the route home was too straight to loose her around a corner...
He glanced around, looking for inspiration.
And he saw it.
He wasn’t sure if he would be able to make anything out of it, but he knew that it was worth a try.
He turned left, and at a slow jog, headed towards the underside of a nearby pier.
The pier itself was old and unused, the wood underneath rotten and full of holes.
Even so, the way it was set up meant that there were quite a few places to lay low until she gave up.
Just as he got there, he took another look over his shoulder. She was still following him, and he sighed.
He didn’t want to have to do this, hiding seemed so childish. But if it got rid of her, even for just one night, he had a feeling it would be worth it. He also hoped, somewhere at the back of his mind, that maybe she’d get the hint, but he doubted it.
He climbed over a plank of wood, and started weaving his way between the pillars and other planks. He moved toward the start of the pier, hoping to find a nice little hiding space underneath.
“Honey, wait for me!” he heard her call out.
“I hate being called honey.” He said to himself.
He was crawling around under some low planks, when he saw something that made him do a double take.
Looking back, he saw a barrel, lying on its side on the sand.
He stared at it, something in the back of his mind wondering why it had never been washed out to sea.
But he didn’t think about it for long, as he heard a soft thud behind him, and he realised that she had just tripped over.
Stifling a chuckle, he gave it a few seconds worth of thought before he headed over to the barrel. He gave it a look over and saw that it wasn’t in too bad a condition, and he could probably stay inside of it for ten minutes while she wandered off.
He checked the lid, and it came off easily enough. He crawled inside, holding his nose against the awful smell inside and pulled the lid shut.
Everything went black, with the exception of a small hole in the lid, which allowed him a fairly decent view of what was in front of him.
He breathed in through his mouth, the stench inside almost unbearable.
Then she came into view.
“Honey!?”
He hoped that she wouldn’t think to look where he was. She wasn’t known for her problem solving ability, but the barrel was kind of conspicuous.
He watched her through the hole, absentmindedly scratching the back of his neck.
She kept calling out to him, getting closer and closer to the barrel, and he wondered if she’d think to look inside.
He saw her go right up to it, and for a second he thought she’d worked out where he was, but she just stood in front of it, and looked around.
“Oh, where did he go?” he heard her say.
And then she was gone, moving off to the right and out of his field of view.
He leaned back from the hole and let out a sigh, relaxing.
He scratched the back of his neck again, as he leaned back and waited for time to pass.
He knew it was childish, hiding from her, but she acted like a child so much there didn’t seem to be any other way.
He also knew what their next conversation would be like. She’d have completely forgotten what he said, and would have put him walking off and hiding down to some game.
He scratched his neck again, harder this time as it felt a little sore, and wondered if he should get in touch with her parents. After a seconds worth of thought he figured that it probably would do more harm than good. Considering how she had turned out, he didn’t much feel like meeting her parents.
He aimlessly looked around the barrel, his eyes now used to the light. Considering there was only that one hole, the inside of the barrel was quite light.
He figured that he’d lucked out this time.
He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, noting at the back of his head that the barrel didn’t smell bad anymore.
Almost as soon as he’d let the breath out, he felt a sharp pain on the back of his neck.
“Ow.” He said, mostly in surprise.
He moved his hand to the back of his neck, thinking maybe he’d caught it on a bit of wood or maybe a nail and he wanted to check to see if it was bleeding.
Reaching back, he felt his neck, but something was wrong. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but something was definitely wrong.
Rubbing the back of his neck, for a constant sting had been left in place of the stabbing pain, it slowly dawned on him what was wrong. Moving his hand back and forth along his neck, he was almost sure he could feel a lump where it shouldn’t have been.
Thoughts of tumours and cancer raced through his mind. As he kept rubbing it, he hoped it was his imagination, but it almost felt like it was growing.
He suddenly began to feel a little dizzy all of a sudden, and he stopped rubbing his neck to bring his hands to his head.
“Ugh...” he moaned his head spinning.
He suddenly wondered if he’d somehow caught something from the barrel, some cold or flu that had a very fast reaction. Not only did he feel unwell, but he had a feeling that his t-shirt was getting tighter too.
Even though his mind was spinning, he still couldn’t help but notice that something felt wrong with his hands. Pulling them away from his face, he focused his vision on his hands.
Even though the light in the barrel didn’t seem bright enough, he was able to see what was happening to his hands perfectly.
The very tips of his fingers had turned black, and the blackness was quickly spreading down towards his palm.
Now his mind was ringing with thoughts of things like frostbite and flesh eating viruses. The thought that he was going to be eaten alive was not one he relished.
These thoughts were thrown however, as, when the blackness got to about halfway down his fingers they stopped turning black and started turning blue.
He stared in horror, fascination, puzzlement...
So many thoughts ran though his already overloaded head that he didn’t know what to think. The change in colour hadn’t even reached his hand when he spotted something behind his hand, at the other end of the barrel. Looking down, it took him a few seconds to work out what he was looking at, they were so different.
What he saw was five long black stick-like things, connected together with blue things. All of this led down to a large beige-pink-ish thing, and it was only when he saw that did he realise what they were.
They were his feet!
They seemed to have changed in almost the same way as his hands, only more so. Although his mind still reeled with random thoughts, one thought was beginning to surface above all the others. He wanted to panic.
He pushed himself forward, and pressed against the lid of the barrel.
But it wouldn’t move.
He pushed as hard as he could, but it was as if he was pushing against a solid wall. He turned around and pushed against it with his back, hoping that it would come loose.
But nothing happened.
Looking down, trying to keep his slowly returning mind from complete panic, he saw something on his knees, at first he thought, or maybe hoped, that it was just dirt from the barrel, but the longer he looked the more he realised what it was.
They was fins. A small fin had appeared on each knee; black on the end, but blue further in, just like his hands and feet.
His mind was slowly beginning to put the pieces together, but he was so distracted, he wasn’t seeing the whole picture.
Something else he wasn’t seeing was that fins similar to the ones on his knees had appeared on his elbows, and the lump that he’d felt on his neck, was now sticking out quite a way.
He slowly found the dizziness fading away from his mind, although, as he looked at himself with renewed clarity, he wished that it had stayed.
Looking closely at the strange colour on his hands, he saw that not only has his skin change colour, but it wasn’t even normal skin anymore.
It was scales.
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place, but still he refused to see what was happening, his mind convinced that he was hallucinating.
As the changes continued, the fins on his elbows and knees continued to grow, and the blue scales continued to spread, other changes began to happen too.
His nose had turned blue, with a bit of black on the tip, and had pulled his upper lip into itself, making the bottom of his nose the edge of his mouth. The nose itself was now stretching forward, like Pinocchio when he lied.
As it slowly, yet relentlessly, pushed forward, he crossed his eyes and stared at it, sensing every change, but somehow only feeling this one. It was almost too much for him, he felt like he was going to go mad, if he wasn’t there already. Also, although he couldn’t see it due to his growing nose, his bottom lip had changed colour and has also grown into a slight point which, although nowhere near as fast as his nose, was still growing forward.
At the other end of his body, his feet have continued changing after his toes had grown long and black. The blackness has spread across almost the whole of both his feet, and there was now no sign that he had ever once had toes. Instead, his feet had flattened and thinned out and had grown into one large point with a curved outer edge. On the inside, however, was a small point, which pointed straight forward.
Pain stung him in the sides of his neck and he reached up his hands, or whatever they now were, to feel what it was.
Three slits, one on each side of his neck, now twitched slightly.
“Gills.” He said, barely above a whisper
The last piece of the puzzle fell into place in his mind, and he finally realised what was happening to him. He didn’t accept it though, his mind repeating over and over that it was impossible, that things like this just didn’t happen.
That didn’t change that fact that it was, and even as he tried to deny it, it continued to happen.
He stared at himself; watching as the blue scales spread across his skin, knowing that there was nothing he could do, but desperate to find a solution anyway. He couldn’t help but just stare and watch though. Although scared, terrified even, he was also curious about what was happening; having seen things like this in the movies, and none of them having looked this realistic.
A large ripping sound erupted from behind him, and although he couldn’t quite turn around to see what it was, he could feel it. What he couldn’t see happening was that a thin yet rigid fin had grown out of his spine. It had first stretched his t-shirt, but had grown so big that it had just ripped in half.
Without even thinking about it, he grabbed the shirt and pulled it off of himself, letting it drop to the floor of the barrel.
At the same time, another fin, this one made up of more ridged spines and looser webbing, began to push its way out of his head, splitting his hair in two.
He had barely enough time to think about any of that though, as he heard another rip, this time from his shorts.
He looked down, scared, but unable to stop himself. The ripping had been caused by his thighs, which were completely covered in blue scales, joining together. As he looked the links were only slight, but as he watched he saw them move closer together and the join between them became thinker and thicker. Not only were his thighs becoming one, but the link was spreading down his leg too.
He also noticed two new fins where his hips used to be.
With his newly acquired dorsal fin, the fact that his legs seemed to be stretching as well as joining, and coupled with all his other changes, he began to feel cramped inside his tiny wooden prison.
He hammered his hand against the side, hoping that maybe something would happen. He heard it creak, but it still wouldn’t give.
As he was doing this, on the side of his head, his ears slowly melted away, sinking into the side of his head, leaving nothing but a black hole. He didn’t notice this however, as both his hearing didn’t change, and he was too occupied with trying to escape.
All of these changes continued to progress, as his hope for escaping began to dwindle.
His legs had fused right the way down to what were once his feet, but were now his tail-fins. The legs themselves, or rather tail as that was now pretty much what it was, was becoming more flexible by the second, already starting to bend in places it had never done so before. As he watched he saw the last few signs of the fact that his tail was once a pair of legs start to disappear; the last of the gaps filling, his kneecaps beginning to fade away.
There were only a few patches of his skin that weren’t covered in blue or black scales and he noted, absentmindedly, that his chest and inner arms were actually light blue. He didn’t know why he noticed his, but his mind was so overloaded with what had happened he figured that it didn’t matter what he saw any more, it was all part of that same thing.
The barrel had become very tight with this growing tail and body. As his body continued to change, he could hear it creaking around him, and he wondered if he would grow big enough to weaken it enough so he could get out.
He was hopeful.
Something yellow-ish fell in front of his eyes and he followed it down. He was just in time to see a clump of his hair dissolve away into nothingness. He realised then that he was loosing his hair, but he found that he just didn’t care anymore. Nothing he did seemed to be able to stop his transformation, so there was no point in getting all worked up about whatever happened next.
His nose had continued to push forward, and he began to wonder if it would ever actually stop. It seemed ridiculously long as it was right now, but it was still going.
Another thing that was growing was the spine that had been the first thing about his transformation that he’d felt happening. It was now longer than his dorsal fin and the spines on his head. It was yet another part of his body that told him the barrel was getting too small. It was creaking a lot now, and he was sure that he could even hear it snap a few times. He kept trying to force it, but whenever he tried to push it, it stopped creaking, so he figured that leaving it alone and letting it break on its own was his best option.
He began to feel that things were finally coming to an end.
His tail, which now had no signs of knees or joints, seemed perfectly flexible, a complete extension of his spine; even though he could hardly move it in the barrel. His skin was now completely covered in scales, and his dorsal fin and head spine finally stopped growing.
The last thing he felt stop changing was his nose, which was now so long, it could reach the top part of his tail. He saw, when he crossed his eyes, that his whole head had changed shape, even though he’d never felt it, and seemed to be more streamlined, with the top of his nose going straight up and over his forehead.
He tried to move, but the barrel really did begin to feel tight. He heard it creak and groan, and he hoped it would give out soon so he could work out what the hell he was going to do next.
He suddenly began to wonder just what that was. He had no legs, and he wasn’t human. He didn’t even know if he could still speak.
He told himself to take one thing at a time, and to get out of the barrel first.
A second later, he was out of the barrel. It has been creaking, and then the next thing he knew, it had just exploded.
He rolled onto the sand, glad to be breathing the free air again.
Only something was wrong.
He suddenly was having a hard time getting proper lungfuls of air. He began to gasp and pant, breathing in heavily at it slowly got harder and harder to breathe.
The wondered if he was changing again and that maybe his throat was shrinking for some reason. Leaning on one hand, he brought the other one up to his neck to feel what was wrong.
He found what was wrong, and if he had still had legs he would have kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner.
His breathing was now very laboured, and he knew it would only be a matter of time before he stopped altogether.
He pulled himself forward with his hands, heading down the beach towards the water. It seemed like it was a million miles away as he took his last few breaths. He knew it would be hard to stay in the water with the tide coming in, but it was his only chance.
He took in a wheezy breath, let it out, and then he couldn’t take another one, his lungs now set up to take in air from the water pulled in by his gills.
He kept dragging himself forward, the water closer now, but it didn’t seem like he would ever reach it.
His vision began to swim, and he knew he didn’t have a lot of time left.
He hit the water, just as the tide was going out and he pushed himself hard into the next wave. It wasn’t enough though as no water had gone into his gills.
His vision began to fade.
He pulled himself forward and suddenly, fell into the water.
As water filled his lungs, and his vision began to return, he kept pulling himself forward, stopping the tide from spitting him back up on the beach. The tide, even though it was supposed to be going in, seemed to be working in his favour and pulling him further out to sea, though.
He took a quick look back, and noted the thing that had saved his life.
He’d fallen down one of the large sandbanks that the tide makes.
When the water became deeper, he pushed himself off of the floor and tested out his new body.
Everything he tried, he did successfully; as if the knowledge of how to use his new form had come with it, and soon he was swimming around with extreme ease.
He found it oddly relaxing; the ease of movement, the sounds of the underwater world.
Even so, he was still deep in thought about what he was actually going to do. He swam up to the surface, sticking just the top of his head above the top of the water, making sure to keep his gills underneath.
He looked back at the shore, and wondered what his family would think to find him missing.
Would they even care?
He did wonder. And then there were the things which he would honestly be grateful to leave behind; his job, his crappy apartment...his ex-girlfriend.
And then he thought about what choice he had.
None.
With his gills he could never leave the water again. And even if he did learn to hold water in his lungs for a long time, getting about without legs was yet another problem.
With one last look, he sank back under the surface.
He sank some way down, and then just floated for a while as he thought about what he was going to do next.
He suddenly looked up, looking out towards the deep ocean.
He could hear it, very faint, but there was something there.
And it was calling him.
He thought about it for a second, and then realised that he didn’t have anything else to do.
He also reasoned that maybe the person, assuming it was a person, could help him.
His mind made up, he headed off to follow the voice.

It is fair to say, that he was hopeful.

END
This story was a request from .

Based on a five picture sequence done by him that you can see here:
0% - [link] | 25% - [link] | 50% - [link] | 75% - [link] | 100% - [link]

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Writing from a completely third-person perspective is harder than it looks.
Still, it was good practice though.

Not too much to say about this really. Pretty much a nice simple TF.
Ageaus’s choice of creature from that sequence was brilliant and very original, so I’m glad that I was given a chance to work with it myself.
As for the trigger for the TF, it was based on an idea that had popped into my head because I’d been playing Donkey Kong Country (1-3) lately. In those games, one of your animal friends is a swordfish, and in some levels, you jump into a barrel and become the swordfish (Named: Enguarde). This is accompanied by the barrel shaking and then exploding.
So I just adapted that idea for the story, and I think it worked well.

Hope you like it. Please, leave a comment.
© 2007 - 2024 Oy19
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confusedkangaroo's avatar
A beautifully written Tf, even though I feel sorry for the guy. The gill and nose changes were the best I think.