The Talkative Fish & The Sunken Pink Beauty

So one day I’m walking down the Shadow of the Valley of Death and all of a sudden I come across some big purple fish, with his head faced sideways and upward, walking down the lone black road towards me in a black and white-lined foot suit, sporting a cigaret holder, a small piece of brown luggage and a plastic pack at his waist that seems to be filled with small bottles of whiskey mixed with green seawater.

As I get closer I try to pretend I don’t see him. Hard to do on account of him towering eight feet in height and me sizing up to a lousy five-foot two. His big yellow eye, looking as if it had light egg yolk floating around in it, peered out at nothing as a black small pin of blankness rested at his optical center.

It’s depth knew no bounds, but I wasn’t about to stop him to inquire about the make-up of his corneas. I kept to myself, pressed my brown fluffy coat real close to my red shirt, ducked my head and passed the fish-man, with reluctance, might I add. Before he gets too far behind me I hear him call out and suddenly my eyes shut real quick with the building fear of a man who assumes he will meet a quick hasty social encounter from which he will not escape unscathed.

As I was stating, there I am slowly turning around to the purple fish, who was green on the other side, and suddenly his one cycloptic eye looms down at me like a predator looking up and down at his next meal. He wasn’t vicious of course, but any joe-shmo my age with any relative idea about where he is or where he’s going knows that when it comes to the matter of fish in zoos suits, well, there ain’t a lot of things to be done once those google-eyed sea-dwellers pick out a stranger for a conversation.

Fish are boring. Simple and honest. Not a single one could hold your full attention from the beginning to the end of an argument and that was because they’re duller than seagulls. Their voices or low, they choke on air, their sentences get lost and they constantly change the subject. Not to mention the conversations they start are always about them.

It is literally the kind of experience that has you fall to your knees on the side of a deserted road, begging for the next truck to come by and crush your head like a hammer to a melon, agonizingly wishing for the trance of the insufferable fish to release you from his dull-guided attention. So there I was, looking into the face of blankness.

Well, one eye and the green scaly side of blankness. The green and purple fish faced me and spoke as best he could. I couldn’t make sense of his direction. While he talked about his mother-in-law, and the fact that the yellow flowers she had given to him on the date of his brother’s death withered slightly too quickly, leading him to believing that this was some sort of half-assed ill-faded attempt for her to convey that she, subconsciously, never really cared for him, I desperately tried to look around for an idol.

Some item to fixate on whilst the suited salmon blathered before me. That’s when I saw it. The vision of my salvation. A pink convertible, half busted and sticking out of the sand, just a yard or so from the road.

There it was, a pink beauty, a savior of the mundane, sitting out amongst a sea of black and green skies and cold dirt that went on for miles, that was, unless you were following the road which offered a great many sights you could mysteriously make out from any distance. The pink, half buried, convertible just lied there; its back-half, untainted. It was paradise.

And for a while the voice of the fish, gulping for breaths out of the cold valley’s wind, came to a stop and my eyes were colored pink, basking in the glow of this treasure amidst trash. Then, my mind began to wonder. The fish was dense. He never noticed me looking off to the side of him, past his right sleeve.

He assumed I was all ears and I kept up this appearance by constantly shaking my head and replying, “Yeah.” Every thirty to forty seconds. I was entranced. I thought maybe the car was made of gum? Perhaps it was a piece of a rainbow, stolen by a leprechaun, turned into a car and rode until the sky cleared and the car plummeted into the valley, here. So many possibilities.

Sudden, from out of the corner of my eye came a spilling of liquid out the back of the car. It looked like oil. Then came a slew of other colors. All of them came racing out as if the end of a hose was carrying them up from the deep dark bottom of the trunk’s interior. This had just started up, for no reason.

I thought to myself that the damned boredom might be driving me mad and so I might be imagining this phenomenon. But I was mistaken. It wasn’t too long before the fish noticed my eyes drifting, after about thirty minutes, and turned his attention to the trunk as well. The second he turned I darted away.

By the time he turned back he realized I was gone, shrugged his shoulders and went about his business in the opposite direction after picking up his suitcase and heading back to the narrow flow of the road. Finally, I was alone with my thoughts and my own brain again, and yet, I had summoned up a problem. All my time had been wasted on that darn fish, I found my mind a blank.

I had had no stimulation and my powers of wonderment hand wandered away. I looked back to the pink convertible to try and see that glorious flow of color again, but it was gone. The car, too. That was when I felt I was really losing it. Before I could collect myself, and make out whether or not the fish and the sunken pink beauty were imitations of a mind stricken with hard booze, cheap drugs and a sluggish vision brought on by the addition of tobacco poisoning, I fell victim to  great horrible noise.

One that echoed over the horizon. It came like a screech and was followed up by great terrible white lights that flashed with a story of faded hint of colors behind them. I was shaken.

Shaken to a point of utter fear where the very thought of moving an inch was rendered impossible. I was stiff. Frozen. It was over. The lights had found me and that had come before, or all that there was, was gone as they closed in on me. And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is when I found myself seated before the sheriff of some law enforcement organization.

Headed by pedophiles, no doubt. See, I had heard that in all the major newspapers. Pedos, invading the whole god-damned country on all sides. They were in our churches, our schools, our police. Dammit, I wouldn’t doubt it if they were even in our water! But no, I thought to myself. I had to keep a calm head.

To cool myself down and take my mind far from this small room with a disgustingly neat and tiled floor. I could see the old fart in front of me. I was far from the valley now. All I could make out was the old man, maybe in his fifties, with a belly, aftershave, salt and pepper hair that came to a mini peak in the front, trying to come off like some army general figure in the state of his small town unit.

That was, when he wasn’t off yelling at his son who he forced to join the sports team out of some misguided belief that his boy was only born to fulfill his life mistakes. Or was it to attempt and prove to his fellow outback workers that he was a man with an attitude and worth a damn ounce of respect, despite the menial position he attempted to height by acting like a jackass.

Yeah. That was the kind of guy I found my self in front of in that police station. It was night. I knew that cause Sheriff Prick, which is what I decided to internally name him, was looking at me with the scowl of a man who waited twelve hours to get out of work to a wife who cooked him a steak and propped him up in front of the television with a beer until he falls asleep.

Average child of the age. A disgrace if you ask me. No love in his eyes. In fact, if it wasn’t for me fainting before he could charge me with anything or before any of his deputies could read me my rights, they might not have dumped my drunk and drugged ass back out on the curb, just for the horn of a speeding station wagon to jar me out of my trance and back into the real world. I walked out until I saw that familiar sky.

The sun was coming over the horizon and I smelt that familiar air with a gusto of satisfaction. It was a new dawn. The valley was echoing something fierce today. The sky was this great brush of orange and a sort of weak-blue that poured across one another like wavy strokes on a pizzeria paper cup.

The kind you fill with weird purple fruit juice and constantly question yourself as to whether or not the drink tastes good or not. Yes, it was a classic day in the valley and I was happy to be there. To be a part of it.

So, I was going along the road and out of nowhere a cargo ship, that looked as if it flew in fresh from the Eastern islands, come zooming over my head from behind, putting me in such a rush. As I looked over it came through the clouds and the fuel and smoke it was generating from it’s engine. The machine flew low to the ground and nearly hit it a few times. I was doing nothing better at that particular moment, so I decided to run after it. After all, it might of had something cool inside it. Like the remains of some expedition that uncovered a mummy in Egypt, or the relic of some spirit-beastie from the ancient temples of Africa.

Or, basing my concern strictly on humanity, I did feel an ounce of worry for any possible survivors that might be resting in the crash of the ship. The thought that my presence might give them enough hope to stay alive long enough for some far-away force to assume we needed help, out of the blue, and send aid. I guess I’d be a hero then. But really, I was hoping for the mummy.