These stories were written live on stream based on prompts provided by the viewers. They have been edited, with this second more in-depth edit occurring much later, but not meaningfully rewritten or expanded so as to preserve the spirit of the exercise. Sadly, the prompts themselves were not recorded until many stories in.  Sometimes the prompts were silly challenges, or quirky thoughts, or dark ideas, or utter nonsense.  I did my best each time.

If you enjoy this, please check out the other activities from the stream. If you would like something longer and much more thoroughly planned, simply investigate my more traditional work at the top of the page.

Last Spot in the Bouquet

prompt provided by swetankarmy

The cruise liner Seraphina had sunk more than a year ago. Its bow stuck out of the slimy sand at the bottom of the ocean like the jagged lid of a can pried open. Her contents had spilled out, settling into a swath next to her. Bacteria had come. Worms had come. Now the eels were enjoying their day in the accidental reef.

They came by the hundreds to hide and sleep in its shadows, but Seraphina provided them so much more. The eels hadn’t realized what living in the nearly lightless depths had done to their minds, with nothing to focus on, or to cherish, as it all simply drifted until it was buried. Now, here was something prolonged in burial and lively in construction. Eel minds experienced attention, new things to see beyond a dim horizon of marine snow.

One fish in particular took advantage of these opportunities. They had not names, there was nowhere on their serpentine bodies to pin a name tag, but they had features. This one had a small white spot on the tip of her nose, so we will call her Whitespot.

She started that morning, though the darkness made all times identical, dozing inside an overturned ukulele. Whitespot dreamed of music, every tune the instrument had ever produced. Its optimistic strummed tones were unlike anything she could comprehend down in the crushing depths.

The humans who had died aboard the sinking ship had left all their memories behind to get eaten up by the plankton, but the eels had just the right sort of minds to see them; shredded pieces of their lives flooded into black blank consciousness, filling and changing it. Now the memories were their world.

Whitespot was the only one to figure out how to get into the ukulele, as the others thought it had no holes, but she tunneled in from under and slept there: a nap filled with melodies that restored her more than any of her prior silent dreams. It gave her back the age she’d lost simply by growing and maturing.

She always made sure to tunnel further away before emerging, so none of the others would find her music box. That was how it worked, they’d learned. The coils of your body needed to be right up next to the object the memories clung to, otherwise you would feel nothing, otherwise you would feel nothing but your ordinary fish inanity.

Once she was out of the sand she patrolled the wreckage, shopping for new memories to enjoy. There was an outfit, shorts and a flower-covered red shirt, brought back to life by the wriggling eels moving in and out of its sleeves. Whitespot took a turn through it. Its memories washed through her once in the middle, where the heart had been, and she saw herself standing out on the deck and under the sun, breathing air.

After that basic refreshment she moved on to one of the restaurants for something more complex in flavor, deep in the wreckage. That place always teemed because they’d never tasted any actual food like those memories. Whitespot put on a wineglass like a helmet and swam around with it, enjoying fruity bouquet across her human tongue, vaguely wondering what fruit was.

It at least felt human, anyway. After she tossed it aside she rummaged around under an iron skillet, tasting sunny hot eggs, grease flowing down her fork, over her thumb, and dripping into her lap. She didn’t even care about the stain; this was her vacation! Nothing could go wrong here.

After slithering around the edge of a sundae dish, slathered in dripping chocolate fondness and strawberry recollections, Whitespot craved a palette cleanser. A nice piece of dry toast would do it, so she went in search of the rusty mound that had been the toaster. It moved on occasion, thanks to so many eels squeezed inside. Eventually she found it under a tablecloth, next to another fish coiled around a carving fork.

Strange, she thought as the rubbed rust rained on her. The memory was… less than before. Crumbs and crust rather than toast. Going in again, she came out with even less. A theory formed. Perhaps food memories were perishable, just like the substance that created them; the galley and restaurant would dry up and die soon, nothing but bacterial mounds and old fishy instincts left. Yet, there were more eels present than ever, even as the tastes faded with each tongue stroke.

Whitespot would not hold onto a dying thing, she would let it go. To pull memories back from inevitable death would be like torturing them, tying them into knots so they couldn’t slip into the burrows of their final sleep. She refused to be a part of the hungry mob.

One of the cabins took her mind off it, where there was a pillow case with just enough sand to be extra comfortable. She’d already slept, but the case had memories of human sleep. They were much warmer, like the outer boundaries of the volcanic smokers, without the risk of sulfur poisoning.

A fitful sleep this time. Whitespot struggled free of the case, shedding it like a phantom attempting to strangle her. Something was wrong with every memory. Why weren’t the others noticing? She swam in and out of the Seraphina, through engine room, game room, crew quarters, captain’s quarters… and it was the same everywhere.

All perishable. All eroding, or perhaps being digested by their minds. She realized her ukulele would grow quieter and quieter with each use, and then she understood why the others swarmed the memory buffet instead of panicking. They could not accept it. As long as there was a scrap of memory left, there was a mountain.

Even now she felt the urge to burrow back into the instrument and suckle its sounds. Instead she stopped over it and circled nervously. Once more. If she heard it even once more, she would not be able to leave. It needed to be ripped away. The only thing that would allow her to go was the imagination the memories had helped her grow.

It wasn’t difficult to imagine the horrors that awaited the eels once the last wells of humanity ran dry: a great empty space, an entire ocean, full of nothing but instincts. She wouldn’t let this treasure go. Nothing was more precious than intellect.

One hope bubbled up, for among the hundreds of eels, a few others had found and gnawed on smarts like hers: Stripetail, Smallhead, Muckfin, Greeneye, and Longsleeper. They all had the same ideas, read the same warnings from fading memory.

Whitespot found them at the tip of Seraphina’s flagpole, having tied their bodies together with a piece of twine from the ship, a feat that took many hours given their slime coats and general lack of hands. She approached and asked what they were doing.

The answer was simple: a bouquet. The eels would stay together, just like she stayed with her ukulele, and share their rations of memories as they journeyed out into the dark in search of more fallen mankind. The twine was of their civilization, and would make an excellent conduit through which to share their favorites.

Whitespot squeezed into the bundle, having shown up just before departure. She had a song for their sendoff, which she passed around, happy to let it go. Hearing it stung a little now; the plucks were too sweet to have forever.

The eel Bouquet swam, away from the Seraphina with its ethereal rations, firm not in body but in their understanding that what they shared could never be more than rations anyway. Moving was what kept them alive.

The End