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This story starts with one shrimp.
This shrimp is called Runo.
Luckily, I, as the writer of this story, and you, as the reader of it, know that this shrimp will eventually be called "Runo", so we don't have to wait until he is actually named Runo before we can start using his name. How the shrimp identifies himself - or indeed herself - is not known to anybody, so we can allow a little bit of creative freedom.
In fact, it seems that this particular story will have to allow a lot of creative freedom. But more on that later.
Runo the shrimp, then just known as "a shrimp", lived a shrimple life in what we know as a shop. He lived with some other shrimp, and swam around with his little legs, and watched the people enter the shop and leave, and never thought about life much, but that last part is just a presumption, because we don't know much about what shrimp actually think, so a lot of this story is going to be very presumptuous. I did warn you.
One day, Runo the shrimp was dragged away from all his shrimp friends, placed unceremoniously into a bag, and hauled off to whatever fate awaited him by a man dressed in all black and carrying a sword.
Maybe if a shrimp had a concept of the Grim Reaper - the "Swim Reaper", perhaps - then poor Runo would've thought he was being taken away to the shrimp afterlife, and that his journey was finally over. But it was, in reality, only the beginning.
The man dressed in all black was not the Swim Reaper, he was just a lawyer who carried a sword around for very complicated reasons, so instead of taking Runo to the afterlife, he took Runo to a dusty room in an attic, and put him into a new tank to swim around in. This new tank felt different to the tank Runo used to live in, because there were no other shrimp, and only a moss ball to keep him company, and we can all guess that moss balls are not very good company.
Without any entertainment other than swimming around a bit, and without any conversation from the moss ball, Runo amused himself by watching the people who entered and left the attic. Apart from the man dressed like the Swim Reaper, they were all different people to the ones Runo had seen before, but then they stopped being different, and they just became the people who walked in every day.
The man would walk in each morning, sometimes sprinkling in some food for Runo to nibble. The man would then sit at his desk, and he would write something down with his pen. Or he would sit at his desk, look like he was about to write something down with his pen, then put it down again and stare at that large one-eyed doll on the shelf, or out of the window. Runo had never seen out of the window, so he never knew what the man was looking at. Perhaps when he'd been brought home in that bag, he had seen it. But he couldn't remember enough to piece that all together now.
Often, another person would also enter the attic early in the morning. This person was dressed in pink. Shrimp can see a lot of colours that we cannot, so perhaps Runo saw that she was wearing a different colour entirely, and he'd be right, but since we can't ask him, we will say that the colour was pink.
The pink woman would often look into his tank with wide eyes, but would not feed him. Then she would sometimes make herself some food - or maybe it was drink; Runo knew no difference - and because it was hot, there would be clouds drifting off it into mesmerising patterns that decorated the room.
The woman would sit at a different desk, and she would pull out a book, and she always wrote things down with her pen. Perhaps, Runo might speculate, if shrimp do indeed speculate, this is why she never fed him. She was very busy with other things, unlike the man.
Then a voice would call from down the steps, and again, Runo had never seen down those steps, so he didn't know what lay down there. But it was something interesting, because whenever the two people in the attic heard that voice, they always followed it, leaving Runo with the company of the moss ball once again, and the view of dust in the sunbeams.
Sometimes somebody very short would run up the stairs, and stare into the tank for a while. Her hair was also pink, but a very different pink to the woman from earlier, so perhaps Runo thought it was a completely different colour altogether. The two would lock eyes for a moment, then the girl would turn to the man and ask a question. Depending on the answer, she'd pull out a box, stand on top of it, and sprinkle in some more food. This girl was Runo's second-favourite person because of this.
Other people entered the room that weren't those three. There was someone with a funny hat who was very loud and moved around too much, often startling poor Runo. There was once another girl with a grumpy stare, who stayed in the attic before creeping out again in the middle of the night, never to be seen again. Runo barely remembered those people, because those people weren't always there, and his memory wasn't very good. He'd already forgotten his other tank at the pet shop, and what was outside the window, and the fact that he'd been with other shrimp once, instead of a moss ball and an anemone.
One night, the woman wearing pink - though it may not have been pink, and it was in the dark anyway - threw the man to the floor, and water leaked from her eyes. Shortly after that, she too crept away in the dark, and did not return.
After that, the man still continued his usual routine, but without the food (or perhaps it was drink), and without writing anything down, as he had decided that staring out of the window was something better to do. And perhaps it was, Runo mused, if shrimp do indeed muse, because he had not seen out of that window, and there might be a lot to see.
After a while of that, the man changed his routine. When he sprinkled food in for Runo to eat, he would also talk. Runo did not understand most of what he said, but it was better than the moss ball and the anemones, because they never spoke at all.
One day, a very pensive look crossed the man's face as he spoke. He left the attic, as he always did, and Runo couldn't watch the dust in the sunbeams because there were clouds outside and water on the window, and Runo wondered, if shrimp do indeed wonder, if outside the window was just another tank after all.
This appeared to be true, because when the man returned, he was carrying a bag. Runo did not recognise the bag, because he didn't remember ever being in a bag, and he was usually used to buckets that refilled the water in his tank. But as the man poured the bag into his tank, he recognised what was in the bag.
Runo was now not the only shrimp in the tank. He was now accompanied by Susie, Hurley, and Iris, who have also not been named yet, but we already know that it benefits us all to refer to them that way anyway. The tank felt very crowded now compared to before, but the other shrimp were much better company than the moss ball and the anemones. They didn't talk to each other, because shrimp do not speak, but they communicated in their own shrimple ways, and Runo felt a lot less lonely after that. He hadn't actually noticed he had been lonely until he wasn’t lonely anymore, just as he didn't know there was anything outside the shop before he had left, and he didn't know that moss balls and anemones were poor company until he had met them.
The man started to speak to the shrimp as well. Not just to Runo, but to Susie, Hurley, and Iris. Every morning now, he would pull a chair over to the tank, and feed them all, and make sure their water was clean, and talk to them. None of them understood him, not in the way they understood each other, but it was polite to listen anyway.
One day, the short girl with the hair that might have been pink and might have been something completely different came in to see them, and that is the day she gave them all names. Runo, Susie, Hurley, and Iris may not have known if they had names or not, but now we can all breathe, knowing we are finally referring to them as we are supposed to.
Runo and the other shrimp did not attempt to talk with the girl, and did not even talk with the man, although he often talked to them. This was shrimply, as I said before, because shrimp cannot speak, so they couldn’t, even if they wanted to.
They did communicate in the way they knew how, and the man began to understand that. The man spoke to the shrimp too, in his own language. He spoke to them in sounds, which was difficult to understand, but he also spoke in actions, which the shrimp grew to understand more and more.
The shrimp would swim to the front of the tank if they wanted food, and then the man would feed them food, indicating that he understood them. The shrimp would press themselves against the edges of the glass if the tank needed to be cleaned, and the man told the shrimp that their tank would be cleaned by scooping them all into a bucket for a while. When the man walked into the room, the shrimp knew they'd be listened to, and when the man walked out of the room, they knew he'd be back eventually. Their languages were different, but eventually they had one together, and they could communicate with each other in a very shrimple kind of way.
One day, the man looked into the tank, and Runo was gone.
Shrimp probably do not contemplate the meaning of death. This is another presumption, but a fair one, because even though shrimp can see more colours than humans, it seems unlikely that they'd be able to see the concept of death just as clearly.
Maybe it was the Swim Reaper, who had taken Runo by one of his tiny little legs and gently led him away.
Susie, Hurley, and Iris all continued to swim around, and continued to communicate with each other and with the man, and the man continued to communicate with them, but Runo was no longer there. He was just gone.
Perhaps it was the Swim Reaper, or perhaps Runo was just in his tank one day, and then the next day, he wasn't. Just as one day, in that little shop he could no longer remember, he did not exist at all, and then the next day, he did. And in the end, of course, Runo did not remember either of these things, even though he’d lived his life, and maybe he’d thought and wondered and mused and pondered, or maybe he hadn’t, and he had just existed, and now he didn’t exist anymore.
It really was as shrimple as that.
"Well..." says Iris, placing the wad of papers she's been reading down on the coffee table. "We all need to start somewhere, right?"
Her expression turns to one of thoughtful sympathy.
"But, Runo, I feel like I need to tell you... Those aren't shrimp in there. They're prawns."