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"I’m telling you, the trick is in the wrist, not the shoulder." the man in the tuxedo had said, demonstrating a precise, flicking motion with a silver coin. He had been a street performer in a city three time zones away, a man whose only contribution to Venison’s life was the realization that some people can make a living simply by distracting others from where their hands are. It was a lesson in misdirection, the art of making someone look at the flashing light while the real action happened in the shadows. But it didn’t work on Venison. He couldn’t see what the deal with the whole performative act was anyways.
Venison sat on a vinyl stool that smelled faintly of old citrus and stale beer, staring at a hand of cards that felt too heavy in his grip. The bar was a dimly lit cavern of mahogany and nicotine, the kind of place where the clock on the wall had stopped working in 1994 and nobody felt the need to fix it. He shifted his weight, feeling the oppressive thrum of his own heartbeat in his fingertips. He had been told he needed a break, a word that sounded like a mercy but felt like a diagnosis. Screw you, Alchemilla. I don’t need a break. I need help, but you won’t listen. All the thoughts rushed through his head, making his poker face increasingly hard to read.
"You're staring at the King of Hearts like he’s about to tell you where the bodies are buried.” a voice boomed, cutting through the low hum of the bar. A heavy arm draped across Venison’s shoulders, smelling of saltwater and something vaguely metallic. Florian slid into the stool next to him, his eyes wide and shimmering with a manic, infectious energy. He was wearing a bucket hat that had seen better decades, frayed at the edges and stained with a map of unidentified spills.
Venison let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. The static in his mind, the jagged, screaming noise that had culminated in the near-death experience of his coworker Raven the previous night….at his hand, at that…seemed to dampen in Florian’s presence. Florian didn't ask about the gaps in Venison's memory or the way his hands were shaking like they were during the briefing with Alchemilla. He simply existed as a whirlwind of chaotic warmth, a human spark plug that didn't care if the machine he was jump-starting was currently broken.
"You're playing blind poker, Ven." Florian practically giggled at his own joke, his voice vibrating with a genuine, frantic sort of affection. "Literally. I can't tell if you're bluffing or if you've just forgotten which card is which, but your face is a goddamn fortress. You're terrifying the guy across from you."
Venison didn’t look at the cards, because he couldn't, but he felt the embossed texture of the pips beneath his fingertips, a modified deck for the visually impaired that Alchemilla had insisted he use if he was going to indulge in the "therapeutic" vice of gambling. The man across from him was sweating; Venison could hear the wet, rhythmic slap of a nervous palm against the felt table. It was a strange sensation, knowing he was projecting an aura of calculated menace while his internal world felt like a shattered mirror. The memory of Raven’s terrified gasp from the night before flickered in the back of his mind, a jagged piece of glass that refused to be smoothed over, but Florian’s presence acted as a buffer, a soft layer of noise that drowned out the psychic static.
"I've got a feeling about this hand." Venison lied, his voice sounding distant even to himself. He pushed a stack of chips forward with a slow, deliberate motion. The sound of the plastic clinking was the only thing that felt real. For a moment, he wasn't a man who had almost committed a workplace homicide, he was just a gambler in a dive bar, a void in the shape of a human being who happened to be winning a pot of fifty dollars.
"Jackpot!" Florian roared, slamming his hand onto the mahogany bar with a sound like a gunshot. He didn't care that the other players were scowling or that the dealer was eyeing them with suspicion. To Florian, the world was simply a stage, and Venison was currently the lead actor in a high-stakes drama of sheer luck. He scooped up a few of the chips, not to steal them, but to juggle them clumsily in his palm, the plastic clicking a rhythmic accompaniment to his excitement.
Venison felt the tension in his neck slacken. The void where his eyes should have been didn't feel like a deficiency in this moment, it felt like a shield. He couldn't see the judgment of the other patrons or the pitying look Alchemilla likely would have given him. Here, in the dim heat of the bar, he was just a man with a steady hand and a hidden depth of fortune. For the first time in days, the screaming noise in his head subsided into a low, manageable hum, replaced by the tactile reality of the velvet table and the warmth of his friend's proximity.
"Enough of this," Florian declared, his voice slicing through the low chatter of the bar. He didn't just stand up.. he launched himself from the stool as if propelled by a hidden spring, nearly knocking over a half-empty glass of rye. "Ven, you’re winning too much. If you keep this up, the regulars will start thinking you’re a professional, and then they'll stop letting us in because we're 'too disruptive.' We need a change of scenery. Something high-octane. Something with a high probability of property damage."
Venison felt the ghost of a smile touch his lips. He didn't need to see the chaos Florian usually trailed behind him to recognize it, he could hear it in the way the man’s breathing was always a few beats too fast for a resting heart rate. "What are you thinking, Florian?"
"Exploding. Bass.” Florian whispered, though his version of a whisper was more of a conspiratorial shout that made the dealer flinch. "The spawning season is peaking at the Cobalt Basin. We go in tomorrow. Just you, me, and my brand new, state-of-the-art, slightly refurbished gimbal camera. We’re going to capture the exact moment a fish detonates on the hook, Ven! We'll be legends. The algorithm will feast upon us!"
Venison leaned back, the vinyl of the stool sticking to his shirt. The idea of a fish that exploded sounded absurd, but with Florian, the absurd was simply the baseline. It was a distraction, a loud, wet, dangerous distraction, and that was exactly what he needed. The memory of Raven's face, the one he couldn't actually see but could feel in the phantom echoes of his mind, began to retreat. If he could focus on the tactile sensation of a fishing line snapping or the shockwave of a magical detonation, perhaps he could drown out the feeling that his mind was a house with a leaking roof.
The next morning arrived not with a sunrise… which Venison wouldn't have seen anyway… but with the aggressive, rhythmic thumping of Florian’s boots against the floorboards of his small, cluttered apartment. The air was thick with the smell of a humid day and old electronics, a byproduct of the various "content creation" rigs Florian had cobbled together from salvaged parts. Florian was currently humming a frantic, off-key melody while wrestling a tripod into a shoulder bag, the metal legs clattering against a pile of discarded cables.
"Gear check! Bait check! Mental fortitude check!" Florian shouted, his voice echoing off the narrow walls. He practically tackled Venison into a hug, nearly knocking the wind out of him. "You feel that, Ven? That’s the electricity of destiny! The Cobalt Basin is calling, and it’s calling specifically for us to document its most volatile inhabitants for a global audience of precisely fourteen subscribers and one very confused bot from Estonia."
The drive to the Cobalt Basin was a symphony of rattling plastic and Florian’s relentless commentary on the "cinematic potential" of the surrounding marshland. Venison sat in the passenger seat, his head leaning against the window, listening to the same loop of high-energy synth-pop that Florian favored. The music acted as a sonic wall, keeping the silence of his own thoughts at bay. He could feel the humidity clinging to his skin like a damp shroud, and the air grew heavier as they descended into the basin, smelling of peat and a strange, pond-muck-heavy electrcity that tickled the back of his throat.
When the car finally lurched to a stop, the sound of the engine dying left a sudden, ringing void. Then came the sounds of the basin: the wet, rhythmic croak of amphibians and the distant, muffled thump of a fish detonating somewhere in the reeds. It was a sound like a heavy book falling onto a carpet, repeated at irregular intervals. Venison stepped out into the muck, his boots sinking with a satisfying, visceral squelch. He didn't need eyes to know the landscape was jagged and treacherous, he could feel the shift in the wind and the way the air vibrated whenever a bass hit its critical mass.
"Stay right there! Don't move a muscle, you're the perfect atmospheric foil!" Florian’s voice drifted from several yards away, accompanied by the frantic clicking of a camera gimbal. Venison stood motionless in the waist-high reeds, his boots anchored in the thick, sulfuric mud. He could feel the humidity pressing against his skin, a heavy, wet blanket that carried the sharp tang of wet heat. Every few seconds, another distant thump vibrated through the soles of his feet, a rhythmic reminder that the water around them was populated by biological landmines.
Florian scrambled back toward him, his breathing heavy and excited. "The lighting is incredible, Ven. Everything is a shimmering, iridescent purple. I mean, you can't see it, obviously, but you can feel it, right? The sheer majesty of the chaos!" Florian shoved a heavy, carbon-fiber fishing rod into Venison’s hand. The grip was tacky, designed for slippery fingers, and the reel felt oversized, built to withstand the violent torque of a fish that might decide to vacate its physical form while still attached to the line.
"Now, remember," Florian whispered, his voice buzzing with a mixture of awe and genuine panic, "the trick with these things is the 'Critical Release.' You don't want to reel them in too fast, or they’ll pop before the camera is in frame. You’ve got to play the game. Tease them. Make them think they’re getting away until they’re so agitated they practically vibrate out of the water. That’s when the detonation happens."
Venison felt the line go taut. It wasn't a sudden jerk, but a slow, heavy pull, like a mountain of wet velvet shifting beneath the surface. He leaned into the tension, his shoulders locking as he fought the current. The vibration traveled up the rod and into his arms, a high-frequency hum that felt like a live electrical wire. It was a physical manifestation of the noise that usually plagued his mind, but here, it was external. It was something he could fight. He could feel the fish fighting back, a rhythmic pulsing that synchronized with the drumming of his own heart.
"Hold it! Hold it right there!" Florian shrieked, the sound of the gimbal whirring as he pivoted frantically to catch the angle. "The tension is cinematic gold, Ven! Look at the rod bend! It’s like a bow string about to snap a goddamn mountain in half!"
Venison didn't need to see the arc of the carbon fiber to know he was on the edge of something. The vibration in the line had shifted from a hum to a scream, a frantic, high-pitched oscillation that rattled his teeth. The fish wasn't just pulling, it was pulsing. He could feel the water churning beneath the surface, a violent, swirling vortex of pressure that threatened to pull him waist-deep into the sulfuric muck. For a fleeting second, the phantom image of Raven's terrified expression flickered in his mind, but the sheer, physical demand of the fight crushed the memory. This was a different kind of violence, unpredictable, biological, and completely devoid of malice.
The oscillation reached a crescendo, the fishing line vibrating so violently it felt like it was slicing into Venison’s palms. Suddenly, the tension vanished. There was a split second of absolute, vacuum-like silence where the world seemed to hold its breath, and then the water erupted. A muffled boom shook the basin, a concussive wave of pressure that slapped against Venison’s chest like a physical blow. A spray of warm, mineral-rich water drenched his face, and the sudden release of tension sent him stumbling backward, his boots slipping in the thick sludge.
"Did you see that?! Oh, wait, you didn't see that, but did you hear that?!" Florian was screaming, his voice barely audible over the ringing in their ears. The gimbal camera whirred frantically as Florian pivoted, likely capturing the iridescent remains of the bass raining back down into the muck. "That was a textbook detonation! The timing! The spray! The sheer, unadulterated violence of the biological process! Ven, we just captured a gold-medal explosion! The subscribers are going to lose their minds!"
Venison didn't just smile; he felt his chest crack open as a genuine, guttural laugh tore its way out of his throat. It was a sound he hadn't heard from himself in years— a ragged, honest noise that drowned out the screaming static of his psyche. For a few fleeting seconds, the laughter acted as a physical barrier, a wall of sound that blocked the memory of Raven’s terror and the suffocating weight of Alchemilla’s clinical pity. He wasn't a broken man or a potential killer, he was just a man standing in a swamp, drenched in fish-scented water, laughing at the sheer, ridiculous violence of a detonating fish. The laughter scrubbed the same same-colored grey from his internal landscape, replacing the void with a vibrating, electric kind of joy.
"I think," Venison gasped, his voice shaking with the remnants of the mirth, "that it actually took a piece of my sleeve." He reached down to feel the frayed fabric of his wrist, where a small, scorched fragment of fish scale had adhered to the cloth. The absurdity of it, the danger, the mess, the total lack of logic, felt like the only sane thing in his world. He didn't let himself wonder why he was suddenly capable of this lightness, or if the laughter was merely a symptom of the same instability that had led him to the edge of a breakdown. He simply leaned into the feeling, letting the warmth of the moment anchor him to the present.
Florian didn't immediately pivot back to the camera. For a heartbeat, the gimbal stopped its frantic whirring, and the silence of the basin rushed back in, filling the space where the explosion had been. He didn't shout about the algorithm or the "cinematic gold." Instead, he let out a long, shaky sigh and slumped forward, his shoulders dropping an inch as the performative energy drained out of him. He stepped through the muck, his boots squelching heavily, and draped a wet, salt-crusted arm around Venison’s neck.
"God, my arms are actually shaking," Florian admitted, his voice dropping the manic pitch. It was the first time all day he sounded like a man rather than a brand. "I think I almost dropped the rig when that thing went off. I was terrified for a second that the shockwave was going to knock us both into the sludge." He chuckled, a soft, grounded sound that didn't need an audience to exist. He didn't check the playback, he didn't even look at the screen. He just stood there with Venison, two drenched silhouettes in a sulfurous swamp, sharing a moment of genuine, unscripted exhaustion.
Venison felt the shift instantly. The air around Florian had changed, the frantic, buzzing electricity had smoothed out into something warm and steady. For the first time, the conversation wasn't a series of hooks and punchlines designed for a digital void. Florian leaned his head against Venison’s shoulder, his breathing syncing up with the rhythmic pulse of the marsh. "You know, Ven," he murmured, "the fish are actually kind of terrifying up close. I think I’m starting to hate the sound of them popping. It’s like a bunch of wet balloons in a wind tunnel."
They spent the next hour drifting away from the "prime filming spots," wandering aimlessly through the reeds. Florian stopped talking about subscribers and started talking about the actual world,the way the mud felt like warm porridge between his toes, and the strange, humming silence of the basin. He stopped narrating and started observing, describing the iridescent purple of the water not as a visual asset for a thumbnail, but as something that reminded him of a dream he’d had as a child. He was no longer the curator of a spectacle; he was just a friend, sharing the quiet of a place where the only thing that mattered was the physical reality of the wind and the weight of the fishing gear.
Venison found himself relaxing into the silence. Without the pressure of being a "foil" for a video, he stopped monitoring the static in his head. The memory of Raven, usually a sharp, piercing needle of guilt, felt duller, as if it had been submerged in the thick mud of the basin. He realized that he didn't have to perform "stability" for Florian. He could just be a blind man in a swamp, leaning on his friend, listening to the distant, muffled thumps of fish that didn't care about his mental state. The void of his sight didn't feel like a hole today; it felt like a sanctuary.
As they began the slow trek back toward the car, Florian started humming. Not the high-energy synth-pop from the drive, but a slow, meandering tune that sounded like it belonged to the landscape. He tripped over a submerged root, splashing violently into a shallow pool, and for once, he didn't try to turn it into a "blooper." He just lay there for a moment, laughing into the muck, and Venison joined him, the sound of their shared amusement echoing across the Cobalt Basin. In that moment, the world felt believable, plausible, and for the first time in weeks, entirely safe.
"You know," Florian said, his voice soft and genuine as he hauled himself up, dripping with sulfuric slime, "Alchemilla is a bit of a hard-ass, and he’d kill me if I ever met the fucker, but he was right about one thing. You really did need a break. Not a 'therapeutic' break, but a 'get-your-boots-filthy' break." He paused, the lack of a camera between them creating a space of rare honesty. "I don't know what happened with you and Raven, Ven. I don't even really care. I just know you're here now, and you're not screaming inside your head. Or, at least, you're screaming quieter."
Venison stopped walking, his boots sinking deep into the peat. He didn't know how to answer that, or whow to explain the jagged edges of his psychosis or the terrifyingness of the episodes, but he didn't feel the need to. The warmth of Florian's presence was a physical anchor, something he could hold onto while the rest of his life felt like it was floating away. He reached out, finding Florian's shoulder, and squeezed.
"The noise is quieter," Venison admitted. "It’s just... the sound of the water."
"Good. Let's keep it that way." Florian replied. He didn't mention the gimbal or the footage. In fact, as they reached the car, he didn't even check the battery. He simply tossed the gear into the backseat with a careless thud, treating the expensive equipment like a bag of laundry. He was no longer a content creator; he was just a man who liked the way the wind felt on his face after a long day in the mud.
The drive back was a stark contrast to the trip in. The synth-pop remained, but Florian had turned the volume down to a low, rhythmic thrum that felt less like a wall and more like a heartbeat. The silence between them wasn't the heavy, expectant kind that demanded filling; it was a shared exhaustion, the kind that only comes from surviving something absurd together. Venison leaned his head against the cool glass of the window, listening to the rhythmic click-clack of the turn signal as they navigated the winding roads away from the basin.
"I think," Florian said, breaking the quiet with a voice that sounded uncharacteristically thoughtful, "that we should probably delete the footage of the first three fish. The ones where I'm screaming like a banshee. It's a bit much, even for the algorithm."
"Absolutely not," Venison replied, his voice regaining a playful edge he hadn't felt in months. He shifted in the passenger seat, a smirk tugging at his lips. "We are posting every single second of your manic screaming. It’s the only authentic part of your brand, Florian. The world needs to see you terrified by a fish."
Florian groaned, the sound vibrating through the small car, but there was a glimmer of pride in his voice. "You think it's too much? I thought it was a bit much. It's a fine line between 'high-energy enthusiast' and 'man having a nervous breakdown in a swamp'."
"It's art," Venison countered. "And we need a title that really captures the essence of humiliating you. Something like... 'Local Man Almost Eaten by Sentient Fireworks' or maybe 'Cistian man terrorized by fish, REAL FOOTAGE ☠️' Let's go with the second one. It’s a strong narrative arc. Very cinematic."
Florian let out a loud, theatrical sigh, but Venison could hear the grin in his voice. "You're a menace, Ven. A blind, ruthless editor. I’m practically your employee at this point. Fine, we’ll post the banshee screams. But only if you let me pick the thumbnail."
The laughter died down naturally, replaced by the steady hum of the tires on the asphalt. As they pulled into the city, the air changed, losing the raw, metallic tang of the basin and picking up the familiar, suffocating scent of exhaust and hot concrete. For Venison, the transition was a physical weight settling back onto his shoulders. The city didn't just have sounds, it had pressures. The sirens in the distance, the aggressive honking of impatient drivers, and the oppressive, unseen architecture that always felt like it was leaning in toward him, trying to whisper things he didn't want to hear.
As Florian pulled the car to the curb in front of Venison’s apartment, the silence between them shifted. The safety of the marsh was gone, replaced by the reality of tomorrow. The image of Raven… the specific, sharp memory of the syringes weight in his hand and the way the air had frozen in the room.. it tried to claw its way back to the surface. He stepped out of the car, with a final, curt, “Thanks, Flora.” That sounded half hearted.
The silence of the apartment didn’t just arrive. It flooded in like a cold, black tide that rushed to fill the vacuum Florian had left behind. As the door clicked shut, the walls seemed to lose their solidity, transforming into porous membranes that leaked the ghosts of the previous night. The air grew thick and static-charged, the kind of atmospheric pressure that precedes a catastrophic failure. Venison stood in the center of the room, his breathing shallow, feeling the familiar, jagged edges of his mind begin to fray. The "quiet" he had found in the basin was a fragile thing, a thin sheet of glass that had shattered the moment he stepped back into the geometry of his own isolation.
He felt himself sliding, not a fall, but a slow, viscous descent into the ink. The voices weren't voices so much as they were vibrations of doubt, a low-frequency hum that whispered about the fragility of the peace he’d just experienced. He could almost feel Raven’s presence in the room, a phantom draft of cold air that smelled of clinical sterility and terror. The darkness began to coil around his ankles, pulling him back toward the version of himself that didn't know where the boundary between reality and psychosis ended. The void where his eyes should have been felt heavier now, less like a shield and more like a blindfold tied tight by a hand that wasn't his own. Before remembering. He’s in his own rented apartment. Not work.
When did I get here?
…And why am I still standing in the hallway?