ocean music

The fish is dragged from the sea in a spray of salt water and slammed onto a wooden dock. A black fishing net entangles him for a moment until he accidentally wiggles out of it. He is free. And that terrifies him more than his inability to breathe.

“She loved me once,” says a shaggy-looking man on stage at the bar built semi-parallel to the ocean. “I wrote this song about her, but I don’t listen to it anymore.” He puts bright orange earplugs into his fuzzy ears and strums his guitar.

The fish flops across the dock, grows legs, and steps wobbly up to the bar’s counter to order a glass of water. “We’re all out,” the bartender tells him, “we only have beer.”

In a corner sits a girl with hair so blonde it’s almost white. The fish sits down across from her and smiles. “I’d never thought I’d sit in a bar with someone before,” he tells her. She stares at him, mouth gaping, bubbles leaking out and floating away over her head. He likes her immediately and decides to never leave her side.

“I lost my ocean,” he tells her. “I have legs now. I can’t go back. I’ll follow you.” The girl agrees, happy to have attention, even from a fish she never wants to be friends with.

The man on stage is still playing but no one is listening to him, not even himself. He realizes this and smashes his guitar noiselessly on the ground. Then he asks the bartender for a broom and carefully sweeps up his mess. He digs the earplugs from his ears and holds them carefully in one hand as he steps over to the fish’s table.

“You’re an idiot,” he tells the fish, flicking an earplug at him. The fish doesn’t mind too much. He knows he’s an idiot, but now that he’s found the blonde girl, he doesn’t have to think about anything ever again.

The musician looks over at the girl. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he says to her, flicking the other orange earplug at her face. He turns to leave, waving happily at the pile of broken wood and string he’s left on stage.

The fish looks at the girl. She looks at him looking at her. A tsunami arrives and washes them all into the ocean.