The Fish in the Deep

I recently had acquaint itself to me a creature of the deep; a creature whose appearance, vexing and grotesque, had never seen the sun, nor met with the gaze of any human being beside myself. The creature, or *fish*, I'll call it, was a disfigured thing, the length of a canoe, and warped within the uprooted muck from beneath the sea— deep within depths unheard of, unknown, an abyss of which surely be best kept in the darkness.

It would be purely assumption, if I now go on basing precise physical attributes, such as gills and the sort, to the fish, for it was such that it had shown itself only briefly. Also, my stance on it being an occurrence of rarity is based on yet another blatancy of assumption; as the possibility exists that I am but one of many who had brought themselves to the secluded cove whereupon it appeared. That said, I am a reasonable man, and I know that a secret can lie heavy on a man's tongue; shrouded in mystery as it was, it's to my reckoning that the thing was either never seen, or had disposed of any witnesses.

I feel it tried as it may, however, in attempting to lessen my fears when it first revealed itself, wrapping around my calf one of its cold and revoltingly slithering antennae. A waking nightmare, I supposed it was that I was experiencing, that a sentient fish had before me risen from the black water— placid, though haunting, the water had been a thing stalking my imagination before the ascertainment of its terrifying contents.

Terrifying, deathly so, it was at first, but there as I stood at the edge of the bay, the question shortly came of whether the fish, as it hung buoyantly, swaying half out of the water, had brought with it any inclination that be of a threatening kind. I couldn't then, nor here and now, make such a claim, lest I be a teller of tall tales. For I felt as though in its revelation, it intended not to fright or take or hurt, but to make aware to me, a man reflecting upon its surface a sad and miserable mug, that I oughtn't be down in the dumps, but that I share a counterpart off in the seas, and of that receive the tidings as I may, that I am not entirely alone.

The End