Chapter Text
─── .˚• 𓆟. °· ───
A jolt wakes you up, the bus passing over a speed bump.
Your head knocked against the window, before you sat up, rubbing your temple. With a turn, you noticed the bus’s arrival.
Your classmates shuffled about their seats, eagerly filing out of the bus. How could they be so energetic at 8:00 AM?
You were among the last to leave, joining your friends as the teachers organized students into groups, delivering a spiel about “behaving well” and “sticking with the group.” Their words flew over your head, while you took in the sheer size of the Aquarium in front of you.
This Aquarium was over an hour away from your school, and without a doubt the biggest Aquarium you’ve seen. Among one of the biggest buildings you’ve seen, actually.
A field trip here seemed impractical, but an offer to the school (and a day less of schoolwork) made it worthwhile.
Permission slip and water bottle in hand, you followed the others into the building.
“…and so I was like”
“Do you think they got sharks?”
”Look at this…”
The room hummed with chatter, blending with the oddly theatrical music. Too suspenseful for an aquarium, you thought. An employee tried but failed to get the students attention, while you looked at some of the fish.
Tilapia.
Then the teachers urged your group to move.
Past tanks of Jellyfish, Seahorses, Sea Stars, and other small aquatic creatures, time passed quickly. Before you knew it, it was lunchtime—or what school likes to call lunchtime, at 10:00 AM.
The Aquarium's dining area was huge, a food court lined with restaurants. It was empty, besides the food vendors and hundreds of students now pouring in. Your school had conveniently picked a day that not many other people would be here.
Each student got the complementary choice of a ham & cheese sandwich or a slice of pizza. You, however, remembered the 20$ you brought on the trip, and took the opportunity to treat yourself to some fried chicken.
You would’ve gotten something from the other vendor, but they served sushi, and you didn’t want to risk cross contamination with your allergies.
You didn’t know which was more ironic: someone who’s allergic to fish at an aquarium, or an aquarium serving sushi.
It figures that you’d be fine if the fish were behind glass, but you knew better than to eat something that’s come in contact with them. Now, the chicken in front of you begged to be eaten.
It proved to be a tastier dish than you thought, and you ended up finishing quickly. The rest of the students and teachers were still busy eating, while you peeked into the hallway that you and your classmates would continue the tour in.
The hallway was lined with fish tanks, as per usual. You browsed through each one, passing the time by reading the placards.
A peacock mantis shrimp peered up at you with its beady eyes, one of the few acknowledgements any of the animals had given you so far. With all the rambunctious students, most of the creatures hid behind rocks and plants. Yet now, alone, they seemed just that much more curious and content.
An employee passed you, pushing a cart of cleaning supplies, students slowly coming in behind them. It seems they had the same idea as you.
It wasn’t long before lunch concluded and the group continued, the liminal hallways turning into big displays. It became difficult not to marvel at the beauty of it all, water caustics dancing above a sea of colorful scales. Stingrays, sharks, eels, and dozens of exotic fish everywhere in view.
You turned from the group once more, standing silently next to an employee busy cleaning a tank. A lionfish tank.
Invasive, yet beautiful things they were. Spiky and explosive, they looked menacing. They peered back at you, with just as much fire as you saw in them. The fish weren’t all that big, but they had fins that fanned out to be an impressive size, accompanied by their venomous spines, each filled with neurotoxin, as you recalled from the placard. The giant tank accommodated a dozen or so of them.
The pungent scent of glass cleaner wafted up to your nose, the employee next to you wiping the tank down with a squeaky cloth. Feeling a subtle itch on your chin, you realized that you probably shouldn’t be standing next to cleaning supplies for fish tanks. A red, bumpy cluster of hives was the source of the itch, as you saw in your reflection on the tank.
Eyes leaving the reflection, they caught on something else in the corner of your eye.
Hives weren’t the only thing you saw in the glass.
A chip, like a spiderweb, lay plastered there on the tank. Kneeling down to inspect, you traced your finger over the glass, to see if it might be behind a second layer. With a brush of your finger, a few grains of glass fell off. A bead of water swelled up from where you just touched.
Wet.
You looked up to the employee from where you kneeled, and saw them stepping back. Looking right at you. Before either of you could speak, an ear-splitting shatter sent a wave of water and glass over you.
You curled up, a ball welling in your throat, escaping your lips and spewing a muted scream through bubbles. The saltwater hurled you away, shouts and shrieks of the other students reverberating off the walls. Glass shards cut through your clothes, your skin, the salinity of the water making every incision burn.
The water swept you to the middle of the room, teachers and staff running to you. Not until then did you notice the lionfish that’d been flung at you, now sprawled out on the floor in various places. The ceiling swam above you, through stinging eyes you were quick to shut. Where and if you had been pricked by the fish, you couldn’t begin to guess, with every inch of your body on fire.
You sputtered bits of water out of your lungs, coughing wildly and gasping for air as countless voices around you called for help.
The stinging was relentless, and you could already feel your skin swelling up. Your blood vessels throbbed, the flesh under them somehow transitioning from painful, to numb, to painful and numb.
Obeying the voices telling you to breathe, you tried your best. One, counting each heavy inhale. Two, you told yourself that the shock would wear off. Three, that lionfish venom wasn’t fatal. Four, that you’d live.
Five, that you would live.
───
‘Til the count stopped.