Here’s the story behind this story.
Back in 2018, in an attempt to get back into writing, I entered a short story competition. We were assigned a genre, an object, and a topic: mine were crime caper (think a heist, like Ocean’s Eleven), a bicycle, and a blood-drive. That hyphen threw me for a loop. Are we talking about a Red Cross event or vampires?
The following is what I submitted, and somehow, it was enough to advance me to the next round. As one judge wrote in their feedback, the ending doesn’t make sense. (In hindsight: accurate.) Also, as you’ll see, I have always had a weird thing for aquariums.
Earlier this spring, I mentioned “The Catsharks” in a talk at my local library because that’s where I wrote it. At a recent paperback event for Remarkably Bright Creatures, an intrepid attendee (who caught this library talk online) asked about it during Q&A, which resulted in me trying to explain it and then promising to put it on my website in case anyone wanted to read it. So, here it is, for a limited time, because I keep my promises no matter how regrettable they might be. (The synopsis was a required thing for the competition. I’m including here because it’s cringeworthy in and of itself.)
Enjoy! If you’re laughing, please know that you’re laughing with me.
THE CATSHARKS
BRIEF SYNOPSIS:
Gemma is a little shark with big dreams – and big plans to break free, along with her siblings, from the sideshow aquarium in the dingy boardwalk arcade that’s always been home. But when an unplanned encounter with spilled blood turns the rest of her crew mad, will she hang on to her wits, or will she succumb to her senses and have just one little taste?
#
There’s a quarter stuck in the Pacman game, the old one in the corner. It plinks against the hatch of the coin return every few seconds, defying the machine’s attempts to expel it. In the daytime, such a sound would be drowned out by the bleep-bloops and banging joysticks, the crunching of jawbreakers and popcorn. But at night, with only the gentle gurgle of the pump, the quarter’s clatter is impossible to escape.
Gemma watches, wincing, as Chloe rams her nose against the glass. Again. Should she say something? Chloe’s nose, normally a beautiful greenish-blue, is starting to look pink and raw. Gemma and Sid exchange a look.
Hey, sister, let’s take a lap, Sid nudges Chloe’s speckled flank. Chloe spins around and bares her teeth.
That racket! I need it to stop. Chloe’s gills flare and her beady black eyes look as if they might bore through the glass tank. They’re looking toward the Pacman machine, or at least in that general direction. Chloe doesn’t see well, not nearly as well as Gemma, although Gemma never mentions it. Chloe doesn’t like to be reminded of Gemma’s gifts.
Maybe we can stop it, Sid says. Maybe we could send Jimmy out to –
Don’t be stupid! We need Jimmy tomorrow, Chloe snaps. I need to be on point tomorrow if we’re going to pull this off, and I can’t even hear myself think.
Gemma shrugs and waves an apologetic fin at Jimmy, who sneers as he scuttles behind a rock on his crabby little legs. Then she eases her slender body between Chloe and the glass. Listen, we’ve been training for ages. It’s going to be fine. Let’s take a lap.
Thanks, miss know-it-all, Chloe mutters, rolling one of her inky eyeballs toward Gemma. But she swishes away from the glass and heads counter-clockwise.
Sid drifts into formation and they circle the tank, Chloe in front, the other two flanking her. Gemma starts counting the number of times they pass the big sign Mr. Minetti displays next to the tank. It reads, in purple block letters:
OCEANSIDE’S VERY OWN CATSHARKS! MIRACULOUS MINIATURE SHARKS!
Six times, eleven times, thirty times. To Gemma’s relief, Chloe’s gills finally slow their frantic heaving. They circle away the long night hours. This is how they’ve always swam. This is how they’re meant to be.
The quarter continues to plink in the Pacman machine. The noise doesn’t bother Gemma. She’s going to miss the sights, sounds, and smells of this place. The wheeze of the cotton candy machine. The sticky fingerprints on the outside of the tank, which Gemma finds strangely beautiful. Chloe and Sid can’t see well enough to study things like fingerprints, of course, so Gemma has never had anyone to share them with. They’re hers alone.
She’s even going to miss the smell of Mr. Minetti’s morning cigarette, which he lights before he rolls open the big front door.
The moment when Mr. Minetti rolls open the front door is Gemma’s favorite part of the day. When briny fog wafts in from the bay, carrying the taste of scallops and seaweed and sweet rotting fish, letting in cackling caws of the gulls as they circle and swoop over a school of sardines.
Her rubbery tail-fin quivers. She can only imagine what it will be like to live in that world! Yes, she will miss the cozy arcade. And yes, tomorrow will be dangerous. They’ll need to do everything exactly right. How many times has Chloe reminded them of that?
Yes, she’ll miss this place, but Gemma is sure it will be worth it.
#
As far as Gemma can remember, the tank has been home. Mr. Minetti loves to tell customers about his buddy who cross-breeds exotic sharks in an old jacuzzi down the shore, so Gemma has always supposed that’s where the three of them came from.
Chloe, Gemma, and Sid were named by Mr. Minetti’s son, Sam, back when Sam had chubby cheeks. Back then Sam was around the arcade all the time. He would drag over the stool from the Deer Hunter game and sit by the tank for hours. They don’t see him often now, but he sometimes rides though the front door on his yellow bicycle. He always has a heavy-looking brown bag slung over his shoulders.
When Sam isn’t around, Mr. Minetti complains to anyone who will listen about how that boy needs to get a real job because being a damn hipster bike messenger isn’t a career.
#
Of course, it’s Sid who begins to express doubts.
Dawn seeps through the crack under the roll-up front door. The door spans the width of the arcade, exposing the whole room to the boardwalk, which will be quiet when Mr. Minetti first opens it. As the sun rises higher over the bay, the humans will multiply until the entire boardwalk is crammed. Some will filter into the arcade to bleep and bloop on the machines and gawk at the tank.
And today will be extra crowded because today is special.
We could wait, says Sid. He’s pacing at the back of the tank. We could do it another day.
No, snaps Chloe. It must be today. I’ve explained it a million times. Do you need to hear it again?
Sid shakes his head and sulks off behind a fern.
Gemma is glad not to hear Chloe’s lecture again. She has it memorized:
It must be this day. This day is special for two reasons. One: it’s the first of the month, so Sam will change the filter. He’ll take the old filter out and leave the padlock off the hatch while he fetches a new one. And two: it’s the Oceanside Festival. Dumb old Minetti will prop the back door open to run the cord from the generator he uses for the extra machines he puts out, like he does every year. Make no mistake: we need both of those doors open. How long might we wait for a filter change and Oceanside Festival to happen on the same day again? Do you want to die in this tank?
No, Gemma and Sid would always agree. They did not want to die in this tank.
Sid peeks out from behind the fern. But Sam changes the filter every month. Why do we have to go out the back door? Can’t we go out that way? He waves his tail fin toward the front.
Oh, dear brother. Why can’t we? Chloe drags her tail through the gravel, then flicks the tiny rocks in Sid’s face. That’s why. The beach, you moron. The back door goes straight to the pier. If we go out the front, we’ve gotta cross a sandy beach. Not to mention the crowds. Do you wanna end up on the bottom of some human’s shoe?
Sid shakes his head.
Chloe huffs up to the top of the tank to study the hatch again.
I know she’s an asshole, but she’s right, Gemma nuzzles against Sid’s gills. I’m scared too. But it will be worth it.
Sid doesn’t look convinced, but he nods.
#
A key turns in the back door, and all three freeze. Jimmy creeps out of his den and chuckles softly. You fools are actually gonna do this, ain’t you?
Shut up, Jimmy, or you’re breakfast, Chloe snarls. Jimmy chuckles again. Chloe’s bluff is obvious. It’s Jimmy’s job to crawl out and unhook the latch with his strong claw. Chloe’s been slipping him smelt heads for months to sweeten him on the plan. Then Sid, the biggest and fastest of the three sharks, can swim up and knock the hatch open with his nose.
They’ll flop over the edge, landing on the linoleum floor. They’ll make their way across the arcade, out the back door, and down to the pier.
The pier. A knot forms in Gemma’s stomach. When the front door is up she can see the end of the pier across the boardwalk and beach. It seems very far. Chloe has assured them countless times that they’ll make it. But Chloe doesn’t have Gemma’s vision. And now, watching Mr. Minetti prop the back door open, Gemma wonders, does Chloe have any idea how far away the pier is?
The quarter clinks in the Pacman machine.
“What in the hell?” Mr. Minetti stomps over.
He bends over and whacks the bottom of the console with his fist. The quarter flies out and sails across the room like a tiny frisbee, landing with tinny crash at the base of the popcorn machine.
Mr. Minetti’s face turns as white as a bleached barnacle. “What in the hell,” he whispers. Then he turns toward the back door and hollers: “SAMMY! Come fix this damn machine.”
“On my way, Pops.” Sam shuffles in, his brown bag slung over his narrow shoulders. He looks like he’d rather be anywhere else.
“This fucking machine, it’s possessed,” Mr. Minetti grunts. “See what you can do, boy genius. Maybe it’ll be like fixing that damn bike of yours. How would I know? Just make it work, we ain’t got time for out-of-orders today.”
“Right, Pops.”
“And don’t forget that filter change!”
“Got it, Pops.”
Sam pauses as he passes the tank, right in the spot where he used to pull up the stool. Gemma wonders for a moment if he might stay there and watch them for a while, like he did when he was younger. The corners of his mouth play with a smile, then he shakes his head and walks off toward the popcorn machine. He picks up the expelled quarter and drops it in his cargo pocket.
Gemma hopes that Sam will someday have a better home, too.
#
It’s midday when Sam finally fetches the ladder to change the filter. Out front, the festival is in full swing, human bodies swarming the tents and booths like schools of sardines. Chloe is pacing catatonically at the back of the tank, as she has been all morning. Sid is holed up under a rock.
Chloe? Gemma calls out. Sid? It’s time.
Jimmy cackles from his perch on his rock. Fools, like I said. You ain’t gonna do it.
Shut up, Jimmy. Gemma is surprised when the words come out. Something roils in her belly. Before she can think, she yells, Shut up, Jimmy, and do your job or we’ll have you for lunch on our way out.
Jimmy’s buggy eyes widen. He clambers up the pump pipe toward the hatch and tucks underneath the rim just before Sam pulls it open.
CHLOE! SID! Gemma bellows. THIS IS THE DAY!
Silence.
A SPECIAL DAY!
Trembly bubbles emerge from Sid’s hiding place.
DO WE WANT TO DIE IN THIS TANK?
The whole length of Chloe’s body quivers. She shakes her head at Gemma.
Gemma dives low, then blasts herself skyward with all her strength. Her nose smarts as she bursts through the hatch.
#
Almost there. Keep going. So long as she hears flapping fins on the pavement behind her, Chloe and Sid are okay. The dark asphalt is hotter than Gemma had imagined possible. It sears her underbelly as she flops along. Slipping across the arcade floor was easy, but with the pier so close now, she’s parched and tired. Each heave forward requires more effort than the last.
Come on, not much farther.
Heave.
Keep going.
Heave.
Chloe? Sid?
With effort, Gemma twists herself around to check. That’s when the smell hits her.
My God. She’s never smelled anything like it. Sweet and rotten and sticky and delicious. A stream of dark red trickles toward her and pools in a crack, inches from her nose. Her head whirls, that dizzying aroma. Just a taste…
She slaps her fin on the concrete. Chloe and Sid. The pier. Home.
From the boardwalk comes a scream. Gemma twists the other direction and sees Chloe attached to a man’s leg, her teeth sunk deep in his hairy, meaty calf. The man screams again, and it’s a sound like Gemma’s never heard, different from the screams of the kids in the arcade. He shakes his leg, flopping Chloe back and forth, but she hangs on.
Behind the man there’s a toppled cooler and dozens of crimson pouches scattered on the ground. One bursts and fluid rushes over the concrete like a silky red tide. Taped to the cooler, there’s a sign that reads, in handwritten black letters:
BLOOD DRIVE! DONATE TODAY!
“HELP!” A woman screams now. Sid has her foot in his jaws. “I’m being attacked!”
“SHARK ATTACK!” someone else yells, and the entire crowd starts to dart and dash in every direction.
Chloe! Sid! Gemma flops as fast as she can toward the boardwalk. The tip of one of her fins dredges through a small puddle of blood.
My God. That smell. It feels like her brain is spinning inside her skull. One little taste?
Her snout is millimeters from the puddle when the crowd quiets and parts. She looks up to see Mr. Minetti charging though with his baseball bat.
“Hold your foot still!” he commands the screaming woman. He raises the bat over Sid.
Sid! No! Gemma screams.
A pair of rubber wheels whirs by so close that it ruffles her gills. Sam leaps from his bicycle before it’s even stopped moving. In an instant he has Sid by the tail.
“Sammy! What did you —”
“Fuck off, Pops.” Sam opens his brown bag and slowly lowers Sid inside.
The man with Chloe on his leg stops shaking it, his mouth a dumbfounded circle. Sam squats down and whispers something to Chloe and her speckled body drops to the ground. Sam bags her up, too.
“Why can’t you do anything right?” Mr. Minetti hisses at Sam. Then he turns to the crowd with a tight grin. “Who the hell leaves a shark tank open, am I right?”
The crowd laughs.
“Like I said, Pops.” Sam slings the bag over his shoulder. “Fuck off.”
His sneakers leave bloody footprints, squeaking louder and louder as he nears. He scoops Gemma up and tucks her under his arm. Gemma can hear his heart thumping. She’s surprised at how cool his skin feels.
The brown bag squirms and Gemma can barely make out the muffled lamentations of Chloe and Sid inside. They’re going back. They will die in that tank.
But Sam mounts his bicycle and, steering one-handed, pedals away from the arcade. He rides faster once they hit the pier, clutching Gemma tighter when she starts to slip. She can hear the quarters jingling in his cargo pocket as they bump over the weathered deck boards toward the pier’s end.
Where are we going? she asks.
“We’re going home,” he answers.