Aquarium Story by Ava Yap
You can always go down to the aquarium on the corner of 12th and Main. Reliably, you are greeted by the gaudy rooftop sign, bubbly rainbow text faded by the years of malignant sunshine. It hangs over you sacrificially, creating a rare patch of shade for your asphalt-burned toes. You push the revolving door and the screams of the cicadas are suddenly dampened in the vacuum of the space which separates the here and there. The slow gravity of the door pulls you into the aquarium, and gusts of chilled air brush your cheeks, threading their fingers through your hair. You take the first step forward.
The noise of the fans are cut through by the crunch of your bare feet on a soft plastic film, it rests over the mat which you almost trip over as your toes slip into and catch on the holes. A television is mounted to the wall behind the counter, playing a constant loop of mute advertisements through its bent rabbit ears. Various yellow caution signs lay propped up around the store, their unnatural colour reflected and refracted by the swimming-pool blue of the surrounding tanks. A quick dripping from the air conditioner fills up the chipped mop bucket perched to the side of the plastic you continue to follow religiously.
Bulging eyes trail over your skin, tracing every rise and fall of your sweat-adorned chest. The heat from the outside returns as a ball of flames licking the sides of your stomach. It’s washed away by a comforting vibration, rumbling calmly as if from the barrel chest of a father, which disperses through the cool air to reach your skull. Your breath is stolen away in the midst of the gurgling water. Like a babbling babe, your body moves without conscious volition around the corner.
The miserable wooden door to a staff break room hangs from its hinges like a puppet absent of his strings, and the puddle of water seeping out into the carpeted floor is distinctly darker than the tanks near the entrance. You step over the caution tape, it falls and drifts away, picked up by a gentle current created by your wading through the shallows. The drip of the air conditioner seems to fall silent as the swishing of tails greets you in the twilight.
This section is almost void-like. A strong, warm scent of mildew permeates through the walls, and you notice... your footsteps do not echo in this confined space. Something barely perceptible through the thick abyss of it all stands fixed in the very centre of the tiled floor. If it were not for the one bright light shining down from the top surface of the water like a skylight... you would not be able to see the cylindrical tower of deep navy water. There are only ripples of silver which flicker ever so slightly, in perfect tandem with the migraine beginning to build its way through your eye socket. Catching your breath is impossible in the face of the cold, cold room. Until you close the distance between you and the cylinder.
You drop to your knees in front of the glass, causing a liquid crater to form, crashing against your sides and moulding your clothes into the crevices of your body like a second skin. Pressed up against the curve, you indulge in the way your eye is a fraction of a centimetre away from kissing it, and yet... you bask in the freezing absence of sight. The spoiled, blackened walls are not closing in on you, but the cylinder does seem to grow in size, arousing a signal of commiseration within the creatures as their bright orange eyes flash lovingly. The soundless snapping of their jaws are so merry, their spirits carried sky-high in the outburst of bubbles that sprouts forth in a display of overeagerness. Oh, how they writhe with life! Upwards, they swim in circles, their bioluminescent underbellies pulsing pure reverence into your mind.
