Fish Out of Water

Natalie Harris-Spencer

The Bio Hunters are coming for us. They’ve been scouring the waters for our species, seeking out our cobalt-blue scales to trade at the Flesh Markets. They’ve traced our shoal—another Fish from a rival shoal betrayed us—and now we’re forced to swim for our lives. We have an escape plan: New York City is accepting our species for a limited time through a “door ajar” policy. In school, we completed the New York City virtual immersion program that took us through Central Park, got us hooked on all the good sitcoms and Christmas movies, learned why the Big Apple is the Greatest City on Earth.

Except Earth isn’t where we live yet.

We steal from our parents’ substantial savings and splurge on one-way AmphiShip tickets for two. My sister knows a guy who knows a guy from the Flesh Markets. He comes through with the tickets.

Because of your family name, he says.

We tell our parents to hide deep in the Yellow Reef, knowing that the Bio Hunters will murder them for their scales if they find them. We say we’re going to find help. We don’t mention the AmphiShip; they’d insist on coming with us if we told them, but it’s far too risky. At least if we go, if we survive the trip, we can send help from Earth.

We don’t kiss them goodbye. We don’t even cry as we prepare to leave our home planet forever. There’s no time for kisses or tears, barely time to consider the face of the enemy. All we care about is that our parents stay safe and alive, as far away as possible from the Bio Hunters, swaddled in the capillaries of the Yellow Reef.

We board the belly of the AmphiShip with a finful of other passengers from different shoals who also look like they’ve secured their tickets through wealth or influence. We’re the lucky ones. One nods my sister’s way. I suppose he recognizes our status within the shoal, our specific, iridescent blue.

We strap in, hook our ventilation units to our gills and cushion them against our fragile spines like rucksacks. I glance at my little sister, younger and wetter, more feminine than me, a waxy fear on her face, her thick, ivory lips spread in a clownish frown. She looks the spit of me but slightly shorter: webbed, a crackle of blue hair flowing down her back, and a long, golden tail. She’s fleshy, too; all her Fish curves in all the right places. I grip her pectoral fin in mine to reassure her, but we’re traveling so fast through space that our fins slip apart.

The AmphiShip rattles up, along, then down, descending fast, entering the Earth’s atmosphere at a treacherous angle. Then we’re sinking to the ground from just thirty-eight thousand feet, but it feels like we’re rising to the surface, like air bubbles about to pop. The descent feels like progress. Our brittle bones shake and crack against the slimy seats as we plunge to land. The ventilation units take a little getting used to in this new atmosphere; our gills are sore, our breathing labored. We sound like human astronauts.

We touch down with a tremble, wheels reverberating against sizzling tarmac, and dive into the mad swell of JFK Airport. The frenetic foreignness of suitcases rolling along the ground is comforting, in a way. If you follow the wheels, follow their jaggedy patterns, it means you’re going somewhere. It means you have direction.

Except we don’t have any luggage. None of us do. What could we take from our underwater planet that could last long on land? Besides, I’m sure we’ll find everything we need on Fifth Avenue. The elegant store fronts look so bright and brilliant in the pictures, a bounteous reserve of graphic fashions and furnishings.

We’re marshaled in line with other Fish who look like us, but who come from different shoals. They sound different. We compare passport photos, searching for something, anything to connect:

You look so young in this picture, a fellow passenger tells another. Your scales look so shiny. Why aren’t you smiling?

We’re kept behind a thick, navy rope, separated from the humans. Quarantined, they call it. We’ve been told our presence is expected, that we’re not the first Fish to arrive at JFK, but still, the stares. Still, the whispers. I curl my tail in embarrassment, its golden feathers brushing along the dirty airport floor. There’s a long line of human passengers across the hall, uneasy with shuffling sneakers. We stand a little taller than the humans, our blue bodies radiant. A toddler starts pointing and screaming at us:

Smelly Fish! Bad smell. Stinky.

His mother raps her child’s hand, shuts him up. The mother turns away from us, gagging. She’s less glamorous than I expected her to be; her skin doesn’t shimmer at all under the strips of airport light. The child’s cheeks look wan.

After nearly two hours of waiting in line behind the rope, we’re frogmarched to the front. Dark uniforms come straight for us, their epaulettes glinting proudly. We flop through border control, thirsty, desperate for water, our scaly skin starting to parch. Our bodies ache from the intergalactic journey and from standing upright, balancing on the tips of our tails for so long.

Papers? Passports? bellows the man from behind the Plexiglass screen.

We have them ready, facing upwards for inspection. We push them under the gap in the glass. Mine is stamped with the letter F, printed in a solid, emerald ink. The letters J, F, and K look so ugly on our tickets. English always seemed such a hostile, foreign alphabet to me, drenched in spikes and edges. My sister is four years younger, but already has much better English. The passport stamp smudges like seaweed as it’s snapped shut.

There are sixty of us in a small room, some from the earlier AmphiShip flight. The ones who got in first have been waiting for us to arrive, they tell us. Only two flights a day allowed, for the next week. That’s fewer than five hundred rescued Fish. We’re the lucky ones, the rich Fish who could afford the tickets. We’re saving our species by risking our lives. We’re billions of miles from the Bio Hunters, but also from everyone else on our planet. I snuff out thoughts of my parents. It’s easier that way.

I hear coughing and wheezing—a strange, faraway whistle from our collective lungs. Some huddle in their shoals. My sister hugs her tail for support, bends it up into her body like a blanket. I keep us hydrated by re-filling a bottle at the water cooler. The air is too dry. It stinks of hot mackerel.

An hour slips by. Maybe two. Someone who speaks our language comes in with a clipboard and starts reading names from a list. My sister and I are included in the rollcall. I wonder how they’re sorting us. It’s not by shoal. I look around at those lining up—it’s by age. We’re sorted with the other teenage Fish.

The uniforms come for us. A human male with an Al Pacino gun addresses me. I wonder if guns work the same way on Earth as they do in the movies. We don’t use guns like that on our planet; we use harpoons. The male has a whiny accent. I recognize the odd word, although it mostly sounds like a lot of jumbly sounds. My sister translates:

Raul. His name is Raul and he’ll be escorting us, my sister and me.

We don’t dare ask where, exactly. We’re cautious of the thin gun slung across his middle, its potential. We assume he’s taking us somewhere safe for the night. Somewhere well-guarded. They told us on the AmphiShip that the people of New York City are sensitive to our situation—they’ve welcomed many humans before to the shores of Ellis Island, humans searching for freedom, to make their fortune, to seize the chance at a new life. If the Statue of Liberty can keep the humans safe under her gaze, why not the same for us Fish?  

Raul holds each of our dorsal fins as he steers us through a back exit. His leather gloves can’t get a good grip on any other part of us; we’re still far too wet. He glowers at us like we revolt him. Like we absolutely reek. In the hot Earth daytime, I guess we must.

Raul nudges his way through the banners and protesters at the picket line, shepherding us with him: one Fish in each glove. I don’t understand what the protestors are saying, but when they see us, they go nuts—absolutely fucking nuts—jeering and hollering. One throws something; it splatters at my feet. It’s an old haddock head, its wet eyes flashing up at me. They look like little pimento olives I’ve seen on pizza pies, in the movies. Its dead lips are turned down in a frown. I slide up closer to Raul, trembling, seeking the protection of his movie star gun.

We reach the parking lot, skyscrapers visible in the distance like stencils against the fading afternoon sky. Raul opens the back of a black van with an EMPIRE STATE license plate. He mutters something to my sister and pushes us into the back, slams the doors on us. I bang and kick and holler, alarmed by the instant darkness. I watch him climb into the driver’s seat. The engine jolts. The van swerves away, and the two of us are hurled back against the plastic panels.

Hey! Where are you taking us? Do you understand me? Hey! Look at me, you sonofabitch!

My sister pulls me back.

Shush. Calm down, she commands.

I stop. My sister’s right. What’s the point in getting all worked up? He can’t hear me from the front of the van. He can’t understand me. My fin is throbbing, and I’m shattered from the journey. My sister doesn’t speak again; Raul said something to her that she won’t repeat or translate, and now she’s lying against the van’s wall, unsteady on her fins. We’re too warm and fragile to move much. I spit on her brow; pat it in. It’s all I can do to keep her wet.

I ache to know what my parents are doing right now. Are they still hiding? Are they safe? I have to believe they are. This must be what homesick feels like. So far, New York’s not what I imagined it to be. The bleak airport was nothing like you see in the movies. Still, we’re alive. We’re breathing.

I check my ventilation unit. There’s a dry area forming around my hair line; my skin is flaking off, scale by scale. I don’t mean to do it, but I start scratching. I show my sister, try to compare patches but she doesn’t want to look, because looking will mean acknowledging that we’re drying up. Our icy blood isn’t adjusting well to dry land. I lie down next to her, bending my body beside hers. She’s too hot, her scales crumble when I touch them. I can feel she’s fallen asleep by her great drags of breath against my chest.

I stare out the rear window as we descend under the Queens Midtown tunnel. It’s hot and strange and beautiful. I imagine a watercolor painter gliding their brush along the tunnel’s dark walls, journeying with us beneath the river in streaks of faint color.

Afternoon sunlight again. We sail past erect skyscrapers, their shadows long. My tail looks greenish, translucent. My sister swats her neck in her sleep; an invisible dragonfly is there. Raul is still driving, manly and silent.

The van stops, suddenly. My sister sits up, alert, peers out the back. She translates the sign: FISH JUNGLE. We weren’t expecting this—they’d promised us accommodation befitting our species—but a jungle? A jungle makes me think of suffocating vines and creepers coming to choke me.

The Fish Jungle gates open with a greasy creak and we edge through crowds of noisy protesters. My sister translates:

No travel ban! Save the Fish! Free the Fish!

That’s good, right? I ask. The people of New York City must be on our side? Right? Right?

She doesn’t reply.

Raul delivers our documents to the human woman at the checkpoint. Her gun is slung casually across her back like a ponytail resting there. More guns mean more protection. Good. But her face is hateful as she peers at us through the back window. She wrinkles her nose, hocks, spits on the ground. I cradle my sister closer.

The Jungle is crowded. There are many others like us. I can see them surfacing from the river, dipping up into the world, forming small Os with their pouty lips, sinking back down again. Some of them look Fishier than others, some are almost humanlike, their eyes pulled tight in anguished slits.

The gates lock behind us. Still, we have to trust what’s going on, because they told us on the AmphiShip that New York City was a safe, free city, where there would be no sanctions placed on Fish.

Everything’s going to be okay here, I tell my sister.

She nods, but she’s not looking at me. She’s peering down into the dark, churning water. Raul leads us down some mossy steps to the edge of the Hudson River. These steps are man-made, deliberate. They twist round to the left and down beneath the pier and out of sight. Down here, it’s cool and shadowy. The sky is charged; the sun is dipping down for dinner. I can hear the mechanical call of sirens and car horns from beyond the Jungle gates.

My sister gags. Her throat contracts, her mouth springs into an exaggerated oval. I check her ventilation unit. Its narrow pipes stay firmly implanted in her neck.

You’re fine, I tell her.

She looks at me, a hint of sadness in her burgeoning eyes. My sister has always been the brave one. The ballsy one. The one who would swim the farthest beyond the Yellow Reef, in search of tastier algae. She’s the Fish with the guts—a dumb joke we’ve shared with each other. Except that ever since we escaped our world on the AmphiShip, she’s been acting gutless. I grip her, because her sadness frightens me more than anything. It means she thinks we made the wrong call leaving, that it would’ve been better to stay where we were with our parents and take our chances with the Bio Hunters than come to this alien planet.

You’re absolutely fine, I say. We’re going to get through this together. We’re going to send help back there. The humans will help us fight the Bio Hunters, you’ll see.

There’s a wooden sign by the side of the river. FISH ONLY, my sister translates. Her voice is quiet. The sound rattles in her throat. Raul chuckles and pushes us into the water, first my sister, then me, fast and hard. There’s no time to scream.

The river is crowded with Fish. We thrash, trying to find room, trying to fight against the current but it’s too strong and we’re dragged down deeper.

I tear off my ventilation unit—a painful rip of flesh and scales—at least we can breathe properly again. I swim across to my sister—see she’s also ripped off her ventilation unit. Her gills flash bright, angry scars that look almost indigo against her gleaming curves.

The wetness comes as a glorious relief, until we realize that there’s some salt, but not enough. Nothing like what we’re used to back home. We’re instantly queasy from the mix of salt and fresh water, our heads swimming with white crystals. Down here we’re in a soup bowl of water and sky, compressed in a blended body of water. And there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it.

I gaze around, spot a boot, a hook, a sandwich packet. I taste human feces. I hear a collective moaning sound coming from beneath us. It’s a churn of others, whole shoals of them, dark shapes of Fish flicking their tails hither and thither. Why are they crowding like this? Why aren’t they swimming away?

I take my sister’s fin and we swim like crazy, buck and soar like we did when the Bio Hunters came for us. My skull bashes into something hard. I open and close my eyes from the pain, notice a thick, transparent surface.

Where are you going? The other Fish laugh. There’s no way out. The only way out is up.

We’re enclosed by thick and impenetrable glass, the tank walls of the Jungle. I look up at the surface: too heavy and too far. It glimmers in the filtered dusk light, a long way away. I try to remember how to breathe underwater when the salt is low, the basics our teachers taught us in school, but I can’t; all I can do is concentrate on how sick I’m feeling and the raw stench of Fish rot.

The humans can’t keep us trapped here like animals, can they?

Night descends in the Jungle. My guts feel cold and raw. My sister’s eyes are so wide that they look like they have no eyelids. They shimmer like oil puddles—unbearably exquisite without trying to be. She’s so beautiful, my sister. She was always the Fishiest. She was the first one to become a real woman. She grew downy hair on her teenage fins before I did. She started bleeding before I did: a slow escape of crimson swirling in the wet. She had her first kiss before I did. She never told me so I can’t confirm for sure, but I’m certain she’s had sex, laid bright orange eggs, hid them under the fronds. I covered for her because that’s what older sisters are supposed to do. But looking at her now, through my haze of river-sickness, she looks so young. I never should’ve made her leave our parents. We should’ve stayed together, faced the Bio Hunters together. We should’ve died together, as a family.

But it’s too late. Now, the heavy line is extending up and over and my sister—the Fishy one, the more attractive one with her scales like sequins and her sex as ripe as a codfish—is bait for the humans. The humans trapped us down here for sport.

She rips wide.

Unable to speak, I pop out bubbles in alarm. A cold fear, a sickening tear, and the thick bronze hook claws open my sister’s stomach, navel to nostrils. I watch in horror, powerless against the current as she’s lugged up to the surface, thrashing her tail like a maniac. The more she convulses, the more guts she spills: her Fishy secrets revealed to the cold night of the Jungle.

In a swirl of paint, she is gone.

Confusion: like trying to remember a dream after waking. I’m close to the surface; the human world glimmers above in the daylight. Something awful happened last night, but it’s a fast thought that evaporates like a droplet, and I can’t think clearly, can’t breathe. I’m shoved into a passing shoal, bashed and whipped across the face by sharp, golden tails. The sound of constant moaning thickens the water. I open my stretched lips wide, and wider still. My gills are closing, crushing in. I yearn for my ventilation unit, abandoned somewhere on the riverbed.

I have a choice. I can stay down here and die, or make a leap for it, spring from my tail, launch myself out of the Jungle and onto dry land, and maybe also die.

From the perimeters of the Jungle, right beside the pier, I spy on the apartment. It’s a big, beautiful brownstone on Riverside Drive, a model of American living I’ve only seen in 80s movies. A father, his girlfriend and his two young daughters live there. I’ve been watching them for days, biding my time, treading water, my bubble eyes hovering just above the surface. They eat Everything bagels on Sundays and the girls play lacrosse in Central Park. This is precisely the kind of family I’ve been looking for. I’m convinced the only way to fit in here in America, to be part of a family like that, is to shrug off my identity like a raincoat of scales. To dry off. To become one of them. It tears me apart to think I’ll be abandoning my Fishiness, but I can’t focus on that. All I can think about is what I need to do to get the humans to listen to me, to help me rescue my parents. I lost my sister; I can’t lose them too.

It’s Sunday morning; they won’t be back for a few hours. I take my chances. I flop up onto the pier, the American dream apartment in plain sight. My lungs are dead and heavy, and my gills are a meaty-crimson color. I’m dreadfully sore. I try to stand up, but I have no legs and my tail feels too brittle to support my weight. The humans are shouting and screaming at me. I writhe along the side of the pier, the sidewalk and out into the road. There are children laughing, their bellies quaking. I glide, ooze my fleshy body along the tarmac, but I’m too long and too slow; I’ll never reach the building before the oxygen runs out.

Flat on the road—a fat old fillet.  Sideways, I pop open my mouth, once, twice. I look like a deflated sex doll. America is slipping away … until it isn’t.

Because it’s happening, finally happening, my once-icy scales turning a gut red, a female red, as blood cells form and coagulate, hitting my thumping veins, and breathing in life. I’m growing, taller, and taller still—taller than the Statue of Liberty, the largest woman I ever saw, rising like a green goddess from the water, the emblem for aliens everywhere—fingernails and hair follicles, long limbed, seeping with humanness, drenched in the desire to be accepted, to fit in. As if from deep inside a whale I’m sprayed up and out, ejaculated into this Fish-hating world.

I’m doing this for my parents, I think, gasping for life, determined to survive, to fit in, to save them. Transformed, I cross my legs, disguise my Fishiness, and step out onto the very human streets of New York.