"Fathoms"
by Peter Vilardi

In my dream, a man with binoculars watches the sea from a hill some distance away. I’m not sure what he’s looking at: perhaps the rush of the waves on the beach, or the swath of pink ribboned across the bone-gray sky like a crack in a windshield. Maybe he’s seen a shark or some other sea creature. He looks like a statue, stone tethered to sand.

It occurs to me, suddenly, that he may be watching me.

I detach a long periscope from my belt and walk to the tidal inlet. I am resolved to sink my periscope into the ocean as deep as it will go. In the dream I am unconcerned with what I may find in the churning, brackish depths of the beach water. Rather, I am preoccupied with the scarcity of light at certain depths, and wonder if my periscope will survive the journey.

Almost unconsciously, and in the dream, I turn around to look for the man with binoculars. He’s gone. But the feeling of being watched remains, persists.

I lower the periscope off the end of a nearby dock, watching the metal eye sink into the briny deep. After a moment, I look through the other end.

And this is what I see:

-----

In the churning darkness, a lone eye winks open, gazing dully at me through the periscope. This is no human eye, but the eye of a great and fearsome fish, predatory and snaggle-toothed, as if snatched from prehistory. For some time, this fish and I gaze at one another.

Suddenly, the location of the dream changes. I am standing on a sandy hill on the beach, at some distance from the man with binoculars. He notices me and waves me over.

“Get a load of this!” he shouts. “You’re not gonna believe what I’ve spotted.”

He hands me the binoculars and I look through them.

And this is what I see:

-----

I wake in a sweat.

I walk to the curtains and pull them apart. The sunlight is blinding.

I am looking out over an empty beach. The shore is deserted; only the sea and sand. (And the fish. Wait, I thought, what fish?)

I am just about to close the curtains when I see two people. They are standing at an inlet near the edge of the beach. One of them holds a pair of binoculars. The other, I realize with a jolt, looks like me. The man hands the binoculars to the me on the sand. I want to shut the curtains, to look away, but I cannot. I know what happens next.

The me on the sand takes the binoculars and looks up at my window--

straight at me,

right through me--

And this is what I see:

-----

I stare out into the ocean.

Without thinking, I begin to swim.

The first fish dies quickly. I snap the bones of its neck with my serrated teeth.

I gnash, I shred, I kill without feeling.

My gills take on water.

A large metal object has sunk into this stretch of sea. I stare at it, unblinking. This is no fish.

At the end of the metal object is a lone eye - blinking, surveilling.

I stare deep into the metal eye, into who knows what.

And this is what I see:

-----

At the bottom of the ocean, a human skull lays upon the seafloor.

A fish’s carcass slowly floats up to the surface.

In a hotel room, I wake up.

It’s still dark.

I pull back the curtains.

And this is what I see:

-----

I give the binoculars back to the man on the beach. “Thanks,” I say. “Quite a view.”

He smiles and nods before turning around to stare at the water. With nothing else to do, I join him.

Looking out at the vast, churning ocean - at the waves rolling in and rolling back - I wonder what it would be like to be a fish long ago, before people. I wonder if a fish we’d thought extinct had somehow lay dormant and survived in the depths of the ocean. And I wonder if maybe, if this fish happens upon me alone on a beach, it will snap my neck in its jaws and carry me under the sea, into the mouth of the earth.

I look out into the waves.

And this is what I see.