False Promises of the School's Solace

Three fish slowly recruited other members of their crew as they swam, becoming ten, then twenty, before reaching the hundreds. From there, the school grew at a suspicious rate, forming as if there was a magnetic pull between their bodies—something they couldn’t see, yet felt. They gravitated towards fish of similar body sizes and colors, unintentionally avoiding those who did not meet their unofficial standards.

      The fish in question were blue. Thin black pinstripes adorned their ribs, wrapping around their bodies like ribbons tied around a gift—and they were a gift, to themselves, at least.

      They swam in the same direction, swirling ever so slightly and streaming silently up and down, left and right, at impressively increasing speeds. They were an underwater tornado, strictly made up of fish, whose scales shimmered as they sped by. They brushed up against the flowery sea floor and made their way around countless corals and rocky structures, narrowly avoiding collisions with other sea creatures.

      The other sea creatures saw the school as quite uncouth, discriminatory and reckless, unnecessary traffic within the water. The school did not care. They swam so close; they seemed to become one with each other: a tight-knit socialization that brought them a solace they were unable to find anywhere else. The school became their safe haven.

      Within the school were friends and family, yet they formed new friendships and relationships, too, even finding mates amongst the crowd. They formed new families, foraged food in abundance in comparison to their efforts on their own. They shared secrets with each other, information stimulating their skin and searing it into the sailing bodies next to them, traveling from fish to fish like a game of telephone. 

      The tunnel of fish grew, expanded. Its height seemed to climb from the ocean’s floor all the way up to the surface. The cyclone traveled from shores to the middle of the sea, passing by boat after boat, tempting those who noticed it like a siren’s song. Sailors and passengers looked down at the hollow cylinder of fish, a black hole floating over the water’s surface as if a sink hole had opened up within the sea rather than the land.

      Any human could peer down into it and tumble to the bottom like an empty water well. They daydreamed about what it would mean to become one with the school, to drown within its core, to feel the fish around them swarming, in constant motion like a motor-powered hug — to watch the sky above them dissolve as they sank, to be transported to Atlantis or Heaven or Hell. Mesmerized, they dove, false promises of the school’s solace, falling victim to the shoal within as the school scurried off, leaving them alone at the bottom of the sea.

      The school did not care.