In the Water

I work in a psych ward. It’s a really strange ward, however. Most people have either done something horrific or had something unordinary happen to them. The unordinary happenings were the more frightening of the two. Reading through the files of certain patients always made my skin crawl though.

In front of me was a girl with yellow eyes. She was shaking in her seat.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I say to try and calm her. This would be my first time writing down what happened to a patient. “Just tell me the story on how you got here.”

“I really don’t want to,” she whimpers. She moves her head down a bit and her brown hair covers her eyes. “I don’t want to.”

“It’ll be easier on both of us if you do,” I try to convince her. She didn’t look up at me when I spoke. She just clenched her fists. “I won’t interrupt you so it can get done faster.”

“That’s not the issue, I don’t want to talk about it,” she mumbles. I cross my leg over the other and sigh through my nose.

“Please, we’re here to help you,” I mention. I smile at her and she looks up at me. Most of her hair still covers her eyes.

“Fine,” she gives in. “But please don’t interrupt so that this can be over quickly. I really just want to move past this.”

“I promise I won’t interrupt.” I am honestly shocked that she gave in so quickly.

I pick up the pencil in front of me and wait for her to speak. As she does, I write down everything she says. I write:

“I was going to go down to Florida with my family. I know, it’s nothing special. It’s just a father, a step mother, a step brother, and me, a sister.

Before we were going to go, we were planning on what we were going to do. It was all mundane things like the beach or an aquarium. Although it was still ordinary, boat fishing stuck out of the bunch. I whined because I hated boats and fishing. I kept saying things like “it won’t be fair to me” or “you know my fear of boats”. It was planned anyway though.

That night, I had a dream. I was boat fishing with my dad, but there was no boat. For a few moments we were just standing on top of the water. After those moments passed, we were standing on a small plot of land that couldn’t really be considered an island.

We both had fishing rods in hand. My father asked me if I remembered how to cast my line. I told him I did and cast my line in the water. It was very incorrectly cast. It was basically just dropped down straight into the water below.

Of course my dad got mad and forced me to reel in the line so I could do it properly. On the end; however, a fish was already hooked. It really shouldn’t be possible that something bit down that quickly, but there it was. It was flopping and waving and gasping.

It didn’t look like anything I’ve seen before. It was thin and sort of long. Its scales were pure paper white and only had a few specks of black littered across it. Its fins were ungodly and longer than they should have been. The most striking feature was its eyes. It’s eyes were bright yellow.

I wasn’t fazed and just held the flopping thing by its mouth. My dad then cast his line to show me how to do it. He cast it the same though. The line just dropped down into the water. He then smirked at me and reeled in his line.

On the end of the line was the same fish. Its giant yellow eyes gazed out at the both of us. It just stared and then everything froze. Nothing would move. After a few moments, I woke up.

I ran upstairs to tell my family about what just happened. I just kept telling them what happened over and over again. But, they passed it off as just one of my little stories. To them, I was just being silly and over dramatic.

So, the time came to go on vacation. It was a long and tiresome drive with lots of complaints between my brother and me. If we weren’t gaming, or sleeping, we were wondering how much longer it would take to get there.

After 15 long hours in the hot car, we made it. We made it to a house I’ve never been to before, but they were family. Night came quickly, and I had the feeling that something terrible was going to happen.

I laid there waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. There were no noises or even strange shadows. Even the part way open closet wasn’t what was causing the fear. Everything was in place, or normal, but something made my skin crawl.

A few days passed after that night and something once again felt off late at night. This time, the light was flickering. I got up out of bed and walked to the door to go sit in the living room until I calmed down, but I overheard my brother talking to my dad.

They were talking about the fishing trip. Everything was planned out. I was to be left behind, as well as my step mother. They would go pretty far out with people they didn’t know. My brother even mentioned that he wanted to bring a pocket knife just in case, but my dad said it would be fine.

I laid back down and watched the lights flicker more and more. It got to the point where I just shut it off. All the hair on my body was sticking up, but I just ignored it and went to bed.

I had the same dream, the one with the fish with yellow eyes. It was bigger in the dream though. It was about six inches longer than the last time. Its eyes were the exact same though.

I told my dad again, but he brushed it off, just like the last time. It was the end of it once again. No one batted an eye.

So we took that long drive to the other side of the state. We got to my grandfather’s house and just crashed. Each of us took a minute of a nap. This house was safe, there wasn’t anything off about it.

The rest of that day was normal too. We just went to dinner and then went back to my grandpa’s place. He had this cute dog named Abby. She was very cuddly with me and ran away from my brother. He would always get a little annoyed about this.

We had to go to bed early, since the fishing trip was the next morning. No one did though. We all stayed up late and had a laugh with each other. Or, for us kids, we played games on our devices till our eyes stung. Everyone did go to sleep eventually though.

I woke up the next morning and my father and my brother were both gone. My grandpa was at work too, so it was just me and my step mom. I wanted to stay home to wait for the boys to get back, but instead, I was dragged out to an outlet mall.

We were there during the whole fishing trip. I will admit that I had fun at the mall, but I couldn’t shake the bad feeling of that fish showing up on their trip.

The whole shopping trip was full of me seeing little black specks in the corner of my eyes. Sometimes I thought I saw those yellow eyes, but nothing was ever there. It was never there, but I could feel that it was.

Each twist.

Each turn.

Each store.

Each smile.

That fish was there, staring at me, waiting for me to let my guard down. But I never did, because I knew it was there, even if I couldn’t see it.

Once we finished, we saw the boys again. We were also shown many pictures of fish that were caught. I remember looking through everything. I made sure that that fish wasn’t there. It wasn’t. There wasn’t a trace of it in any of the pictures.

The only thing off was the blood on my brother’s shirt from one of the fish he caught. It dried too quickly, sure it was hot out, but it dried quicker than it should have. You could see it dry in the pictures.

It dried in about two minutes. Two minutes too quick, but when I mentioned it, they all said that it was because of the sun, but I wasn’t too sure. My brother then made fun of me after. But I swear it dried too quickly.

Nothing else really happened after, well, that was until we went to an aquarium. I mostly just wanted to go see the manatees, but we decided to do that part last so we didn’t spend all day there.

We walked around like normal families did. We laughed at some of the weird looking fish and we joked that we were going to throw one of us into the shark tank. We called each other brainless when looking at the jellyfish. I even called my brother a coward after he didn’t want to touch one of the stingrays.

We headed to the outdoor part of the aquarium. There were plenty of local fish there, and snails. There was even a giant toad. The best part was the giant tank in the middle of the area.

In this tank were many sharks and other huge fish. On the bottom sat a giant black grouper that looked depressed. There was also a huge ray that kept sweeping against the walls as it swam by. My brother kept saying how he was going to toss me into the tank to catch the stingray for him. I kept telling him that if he wanted the ray so bad he could get it himself.

We stared into this tank for a long time. The sharks would circle and have their top fin come out of the water. The ray found a nice place on the bottom to lay and all the other fish had their own paths that they followed.

It was nice watching them all, even as the specks of black started to fill in my vision. I was just so focused on the tank. I was focused on the patterns. I was focused on the swimming. I was focused on how many sharks were in there. I kept focusing on everything until I couldn’t see anymore.

When I couldn’t see I rested my hands onto the glass. The next thing to go was my hearing. First, it was the screaming kids. Next, it was the chattering adults. Last, it was the water.

When everything came back, my ears were full of water and I was in the tank and in front of me was that white fish, it was the size of one of the sharks. We stared at each other until I ended up here.

After I got here, I wasn’t wet anymore and everything went back to normal.”

Once she finished, she just sat with her hands in her lap. She didn’t look down this time though, instead, she just stared at me.

“Did anything happen when you were staring at the white fish?” I ask her shakily. She nods her head. “What happened?” I crack my wrist before preparing to write again.

“It spoke,” she started. I looked at her and waited for her to continue. She let out a breath that she was holding in. “It was saying things like: he comes and you’ve been chosen. That’s all.”

“I see,” I say as I slump back into the chair. “Is that all?” She nods her head. “Do you remember breaking the glass tank?”

“No,” she answers. I stare into her eyes and it looks as if she’s telling the truth. “Did I break the tank?”

“Yes, reports say you pounded three times and your fist went completely through,” I inform her.

“Oh.”

“Well, you’ll have to go back to your room now,” I tell her. She just nods and exits without a word. A guard that was waiting outside will take her back, but I felt shivers down my spine.

I swear that when she walked passed I heard something whisper “she was chosen”.

 

Credit : Pandora

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