When Colin returned from the kitchen with his lunch, he was surprised to find the armchair nearest the window had acquired a salmon during his brief absence. It brought to a wholly unexpected end the chair’s hitherto exemplary record of not containing fish. Stranger yet, the new arrival was not in the horizontal position in which one might expect to find a salmon in an armchair (were one to find a salmon there at all of course). Rather it seemed to be well…sitting in the chair. Ridiculous, but what other way was there to describe it. The tail stretched out in front of it and its body arced round to rest against the back cushion, with its head pointing forwards. It was sitting.
Most disturbing of all though, the salmon appeared, notwithstanding the lack of water, to be alive. This Colin ascertained when it raised its left pectoral fin as if in greeting. His mother, a pillar of the local community, had been diligent in instilling in her youngest son a strong sense of social protocol. Be polite at all times. Greet when greeted. On this occasion, however, he failed to respond – unless one counted the involuntary distancing of his bottom from his top lip.
“Good afternoon Colin,” said the salmon, in a passable impression of Sean Connery speaking through a mouth full of water. “We need to talk, you and I”
Colin maintained his uncharacteristic silence. He was having considerable difficulty in selecting an appropriate course of action. Which was perhaps unsurprising given his previous experience of talking fish was limited to a handful of childhood cartoons, and the mounted trout in his boss’ office, which sang Don’t Rock the Boat when you pressed the red button. None of these provided particularly useful reference points.
“Perhaps you’d like to have a seat,” continued the salmon at length, indicating the second armchair as best it could with its right pectoral. Colin turned vacantly toward the chair, noting with some relief that it had not succumbed to the new fad of containing a salmon. And then abruptly he snapped out of his disembodied daze. His uninvited guest simply could not be real. He was overworked. He’d been drinking a lot of coffee lately.
Colin closed his eyes and, with the hand not holding his lunch, pressed his thumb and forefinger into his eye sockets, until coloured shapes danced and spiralled in the blackness. Removing them again, he opened his eyes.
Well that hadn’t gone according to plan. He had been rather banking on the salmon disappearing, so he could put the whole incident down to the stress and caffeine and get back to his lunch.
Colin allowed his gaze to drop to the plate in his left hand. Freshly made sandwiches. Philadelphia cheese, cucumber and…oh God. He looked up sharply. Had it noticed? Would it care? Of course it would care! They might even contain friends or family members. Assuming salmon had such things of course. The last thing he needed now was an embarrassing scene. He had to get rid of the plate before it noticed.
“Is that salmon?”
So much for that. What to answer? It’s clearly salmon. Honesty is the best policy.
“What?…er…this…no…no…of course not,” he stammered unconvincingly. Lying had never been one of his strong suits. And where the hell had honesty is the best policy got to?
The salmon said nothing, leaving a long agonising silence hanging between them like a bad smell. Colin shifted awkwardly and conspicuously avoided eye contact.
“Please sit down Colin, you’re making me nervous standing there.”
Snatching gratefully at the opportunity, he placed the sandwiches on the mantelpiece and sat down. Much better.
“Don’t you want your lunch?”
“Hmm?” The attempt to buy time was feeble at best.
“I was just enquiring as to whether you were going to eat your lunch?” said the salmon, indicating the plate.
“Oh…er…no, not right now. So what did you want to talk about?”
“Ah yes. Colin, I believe you purchased a salmon from Sainsbury’s on Friday last, yes?”
The tone, if one could look past the nauseating gurgling sound, was pleasant, friendly. But it reminded Colin of the beginning of interrogations in the ubiquitous police shows that flooded prime time TV. It seemed to have a dangerous undercurrent.
“It’s possible – I don’t really remember”
“But you remember what happened to it, no?”
Colin was about to answer when a rational voice surged forward and seized control of the operation. Why the hell was he allowing himself to be interrogated by a talking salmon in his own home? It was a fraction of his size. It had neither sharp teeth nor venom. And what’s more it was surely a figment of his imagination. He would just march over there and go to grab it. Either it would disappear or…well it had to disappear.
Taking a deep breath, Colin suddenly launched himself forward as if catapulted and snatched at the salmon. His hand encountered only the cushion. For a few seconds he stood staring blankly at the empty chair. So that was that. It really had been all in his head. For a moment he felt almost…disappointed. And then other more appropriate emotions muscled their way to the fore. He let out a laugh mixed equally from relief and disbelief. Everything was back to normal.
Although his brain had to be pretty messed up to start creating talking salmon. Some rest was clearly required. All the stress of the promotion race must have been getting to him more than he’d realised. On Monday he’d book a couple of days off. Get out of the city. Two days wouldn’t harm his prospects. He still had almost his entire entitlement left after all. On the other hand maybe one would be enough.
Colin turned to sit back down, to return to normality, and froze. The salmon was sitting in the chair he’d recently vacated.
“If you wanted to sit there you just had to say,” said the salmon. “I’m fine with either”
Without further thought, Colin lunged for the salmon again. The result was the same. Just as his hand reached it, it disappeared. He whipped round, hoping, praying. But there it was. Back in the original armchair. He allowed a sound to escape his lips, which pitched exactly between laughter and crying.
“We can keep going if you want, but I think you’ll tire before me.”
Colin drew his hand down the length of his face. What the hell was wrong with him? He needed to get out. Take some fresh air. Maybe that would finally blow some sense into his ailing brain.
“You’d rather talk outside?”
Just ignore it. It’s not real.
“For a smart man you´re kind of slow on the uptake.”
It’s all in your head. Go.
Colin walked purposefully toward the door, resisting the temptation to look back.
Suddenly the salmon was in front of his face. Hovering in mid air like a particularly unattractive fairy. He let out a startled yelp and stepped back.
“Until we’ve talked, I will be wherever you go. Your house. Your office. The park. Makes no difference to me.”
“You’re not real!” It was intended as a defiant statement. Oozing confidence and certainty. Unfortunately the effect was rather undermined by the pronounced vibrato in his voice.
“I’m not in your head Colin. I’m a ghost”
It left him reeling as if struck. So many challenges to his fundamental beliefs in such a short space of time. And then, through the mental turmoil, came an unexpected moment of clarity.
“Of the salmon from Sainsbury’s?”
“That’s more like it Colin”
“So you’re here for…revenge?”
The salmon did not respond.
“B…B…But I didn’t kill you. What do you want with me? You want…you want the fishermen for God’s sake.”
“Come on Colin, you don’t really think I’m angry because I got killed do you?”
It seemed like a pretty good reason to be angry, but he elected to remain silent.
“No. As a salmon you have to accept there’s a strong probability of premature death. The list of creatures which find us appetising is not short I can assure you.”
“But if you’re not bothered about being killed, then what…”
“Please Colin, I didn’t say I wasn’t bothered about being killed. As I lay on the deck of that vessel snatching desperately for oxygen from your air, I was not indifferent. Nor, I can assure you, was the unfortunate salmon currently occupying your sandwiches.”
Colin flushed and looked down at his feet like a naughty schoolboy.
“I was simply remarking that being killed is very much a fact of life for a salmon. It’s not something we tend to stay bitter about.”
“Then what are you here for?”
“Imagine that you have one purpose in life, one goal,” began the salmon. Colin found himself shaking hands with a beaming Mr Bradshaw in one of the top floor offices. At the door a workman stepped back to reveal a brand new gold plaque, bearing his name and the legend Partner.
“I was referring to reproduction,” interjected the salmon, “the continuation of my species.”
Colin flushed again. Was it reading his mind? He’d have to keep a tighter rein on his thoughts.
“Try to put yourself in my position. Imagine how it must have felt, as I lay there expiring, my purpose still unfulfilled. Imagine the frustration, the sense of failure.” The salmon twitched as if reliving the memory. “But when I died Colin, I achieved understanding, peace. Suddenly I knew that whilst I may not have achieved my own goal, nonetheless I would have played my part in the grand scheme. Provided sustenance for a bear, a shark, a human, whatever. You with me?”
Colin nodded. He had a nasty feeling he knew where this was headed.
“So imagine how it felt when I discovered the truth, Colin. That I was not eaten, but simply thrown away like common garbage. My life completely wasted. Can you even begin to imagine that feeling?”
For the first time the salmon’s tone had shed its calm controlled exterior. It sounded genuinely angry, bitter. Colin decided now was not the time to point out its corpse would still be eaten by maggots and worms. No, now was the time for passing the buck.
“It must have been terrible, and I assure you I didn’t want to throw the salmon away. I mean it looked good. But when I went to cook it, I realised it was after the date on the label. I was worried I’d get sick if I ate it, you know.”
“But you said I still looked good, no?”
“Well yeah to me, but the supermarkets advise you not to eat things after the dates have passed. If you feel you were still perfectly edible, you’d really have to take that up with Sainsbury’s.”
“I see,” said the salmon thoughtfully, tapping its tail against nothing. Colin could feel the beginnings of a triumphant smile tugging insistently at the corners of his mouth.
“Only you purchased me before this date had passed, did you not?”
He nodded slowly, reluctantly, the triumphant smile back on ice.
“So why was I not eaten earlier?”
He swallowed. This would be more difficult.
“Well, I mean obviously when I bought you…er…the salmon, I was intending to eat you…I mean it…in time, but…well a senior position opened up and I had to work harder, make myself stand out. It’s very competitive, you see.”
The salmon said nothing. Why the hell had he started referring to it as you?
“Yeah so I was getting home really late and tired, and…you know got some take out instead of cooking and…well a few days passed and then…well, you know?”
The salmon’s eyes continued to bore mercilessly into him. Colin could feel a bead of sweat wending its way down his left cheek.
What a disaster.
“I’ll summarise. You were too lazy to eat me in time and then chucked me away without a second thought.”
It wasn’t quite the spin on events he’d been aiming for.
“Well, I don’t think I did it without a second thought.”
“So you mulled over issues like overfishing, wasting of resources, starving in other countries, and then binned me anyway?”
This was not going well. He was in the process of being out thought by a fish, a group of organisms not exactly renowned for their cognitive abilities at the best of times. And this one had the added disadvantage of being dead. It was hardly the sort of thing that should be happening to the rising star of a top accountancy firm.
Colin wet his lips and swallowed. Maybe something to oil his thoughts.
“Do you mind if I get a drink?”
“They’re your drinks Colin.”
“Right, yes.”
He walked over to the drinks cabinet and retrieved the expensive Whisky his brother had bought him two Christmas prior. It was still three quarters full and most of that had been his brother. He poured himself a generous measure, knocked it back in one and grimaced. Revolting stuff. He poured another.
When he turned back, the salmon had gone. He was about to give serious consideration to becoming an alcoholic, when he spotted it sitting back in the armchair.
“It just felt rather unnatural hanging there,” commented the salmon.
Colin walked slowly back over to his chair, giving the Whisky as much time as possible to induce a brainwave. Nothing. He sat down and looked over at the salmon. Maybe a more repentant tack.
“OK you’ve made your point. And look…I’m sorry. It…it won’t happen again.”
“That’s good to hear Colin, very good.”
Was that sarcasm? Colin fiddled nervously with his glass. It wasn’t easy to read the expression of a creature with no discernible facial movement. The salmon would have made an excellent poker player.
“So…er…we’re OK then?”
“Salmon are not a vengeful species Colin, but sometimes lessons do need to be taught.” It’s tail twitched.
“Well I’ve certainly learnt mine I can assure you of that.” He let out a forced laugh, which the salmon greeted with a complete lack of reaction. Colin knocked back the Whisky and grimaced. What he wouldn’t give to know what it was thinking.
“Perhaps you’d like to eat your sandwiches now?”
He couldn’t think of anything he’d least like to do. With the possible exception of giving up his career and going to live in a hippy commune.
“I’m not so hungry right now to be honest.”
“Ah, so you’ll just throw them away?”
“No, God no, of course not, no,” he blurted, the words tripping over themselves in their desperation to get out.
The salmon said nothing.
“Errr…yeah in fact maybe I am a little peckish now after all. I mean you have to eat don´t you?”
Colin laughed nervously. The salmon continued to stare at him. Reluctantly he heaved himself up from the chair. The second glass of Whisky surged up to his brain, almost unbalancing him. Strong stuff. Recovering himself, he retrieved the plate of sandwiches from the mantelpiece and returned to the armchair. Just looking at them was making him feel nauseous.
“So…err…if I eat these we’re all good, I mean you’ll go?”
No response. Colin hesitated. Well, he had to do something. He picked up the first sandwich, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on it. Anything to avoid the salmon’s piercing gaze as he prepared to eat its kin. Just three sandwiches and it would all be over. Better to make it as quick as possible. He took a large bite and began chewing mechanically, fighting the growing desire to gag.
But much as he wanted not to look at the salmon, he couldn’t help wondering nervously what it was doing. Would it just be sat there watching him, enjoying his discomfort? Or was this all just to distract him so it could take its real revenge? Maybe it wasn’t so sensible to leave it completely unobserved. He risked a glance up. The salmon was gone.
He stopped chewing and flicked his eyes urgently around the room, like a fly searching for a place to alight. No sign. This time it really seemed to have disappeared. He felt his whole body begin to relax. It had all just been to put the frighteners on him. Assuming it had even happened at all. Either way, once he’d forced his way through the sandwiches, salmon was permanently off the menu.
Colin swallowed what was in his mouth. And began to choke. Something was caught in his throat. Instinctively he grabbed for it, as if he could reach in and remove the blockage. The air seemed suddenly thick, viscous. He pitched forward onto his knees sending the remaining sandwiches crashing to the floor.
No. Please no.
As Colin gasped his last breaths, he found himself in the top office. He saw Mr Bradshaw’s beaming smile, the gold plaque bearing his name. All that he would never achieve. A final wave of frustration swept over him. It was all such a terrible waste.
Story © 2014 Keith Rosser, all rights reserved.