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Short Story #3 - Aquatic Child (Science Fiction/Horror)

BriAnne McDowell October 22, 2017 Short Story #3

Aquatic Child Naomi could remember all the way back when she created a hybrid she has always dreamt of ever since she was a little girl. She used to draw sketches and pictures of her on paper whenever she got the chance to. She drew them with the best scribbling she could do, messily of course, but still out of love. Naomi spent her developmental years in school, growing, and honing her skills in Science more predominantly. She later went into high school, where her ideas followed right behind her, running along side her just as wild as they always were, and just as free as she let them be. Wherever she went, she would be preoccupied with thinking, chiseling and carving away, chipping and chipping away at her ideas and shaping them into exactly what she wanted them to be. Her ideas grew and shrank, added and subtracted as time went on like a balloon, inflating and deflecting but still staying just as interesting as it started out in the beginning. On in to college Naomi went on growing her brain's capacity and her imagination. She graduated into a university with the honors she earned while taking those extra AP classes in high school, proving everyone wrong in the school that she could be a mixed-raced girl with honors, graduating at a young age, and still chasing her dreams like many failed to do even if given the chance. Her dreams no longer followed along behind or besides Naomi, now she was the one who was chasing after them. She made the dreams, now it was their time to make her. They pleaded and cried out to be brought to life, and she promised to her drams that she would bring them life if it was the last thing she had to do. Naomi could remember the first moment that the creature in her Petri dish looked back at her from under the shining glass surface. In her own section of the lab she held it under a microscope to stare into the glass to see what was growing there. It was something that many of her co-worker lab technicians have done before, and this time she got to have her chance. The primal, little ball of living flesh tissues, nearly completely transparent, shaped like a blob of gelatin-like, green sperm cell floating there in the liquid proteins. It had a body shaped like a mushed egg and a dark green flagella that occasionally thrashed about to propel it forward if need be. With only a few brain cells that existed within it's cephalized body, it managed to look directly up at her from the single pinhole of an eye that it had. It seemed to know exactly where to look to meet her eyes through the scope. Naomi was stoked, the most she has ever been since she graduated college and held her diploma for the first time, probably even more so.The little blobby mess had a hint of violet within it's microscopic eye, and Naomi could not be feel any happier with it. It was perfect. It was hers. This creature grew as Naomi took such wonderful care of it. She was in her mid-twenties by now, and while having no children of her own was a bother, she could not help it. Her life was within the lab and it always will be until she either gives up and quits or retires forever. Because this was the way of her life, she considered this thing, this experiment, a child that she had created without the use of personal conception. As it grew in to a sort of wriggling tadpole, its tiny, white arms trashing until it climbed up a rock within its small, fancy, sealed-off aquarium tank that Naomi fashioned for her within her lab, Naomi always watched it for the longest duration of time whenever she would come to check on the other aquatic life in the area of the lab. Her days and most often her nights as well were spent watching the little thing grow, its white tail coming in just fine as it shaped into an actual tail from its previously flimsy flagella. It came to know who its creator was. It's second eye finally grew in and could follow light as it came through its vision range. It's violet, pupil-less eyes could identify Naomi through the glass, and their eyes always met. Soon the creature grew into a spawn, and was no longer a tadpole. Its arms grew into actual arms, its body grew larger, its tail grew longer along with the dorsal and ventral fins. Naomi's artificial child had successfully grown into a water nymph. Its eyes stayed violet, and became round and full of youth as they grew eyelids and peach-fuzz eyelashes came in to frame around them. Its skin over time had tinted into a misty blue, but just barely off from the colorless, translucent white it was before the transition into color. Its hair that grew in was only about an inch long, and came in with a dark, deep green, iridescent tint similar to the deepest emerald or onyx green sheen over the underlying black. The long tail grew to become the same shades and tints as the hair on its head with a deep forest green sheen that shined through the deep black as light hit the small, shimmering, smooth scales that overlay it entirely from waist to tail fin. Naomi noted that it was most likely becoming a female in gender, but could not assume yet, because any aquatic life, primarily fish-types are known to be subject to changing of gender right as puberty hits depending on supply and demand within a school. All fish are female at some point in their lives, so she could never assume what this hybrid child was going to be. It was healthy, but still numb in the brain when it came to functionality. It had yet to learn to think for itself instead of by light signals and simple Morse code, but it was showing signs of getting there -- slowly but surely it was getting there. It took a long time for Naomi's creation to develop communication with her where it could speak up on its needs instead of Naomi having to rely off of vital signs for everything. It grew faster than an actual human child did, but it's mind was at the same pace if not slower than a human child on the contrary. Its body grew, but because of the slower mind, it was a little bit more time consuming to teach. As soon as the creature grew into a 5-year-old, child-sized being after two years, it then tried to attempt communication with the outside world. After two years it did not learn to talk like a human on the outside even thought it was half human in its genetics. What it learned was a better form of communication for its type of species. When Naomi heard the creation using fast tongue clicks, she knew that her child learned to utilize the Morse code signals the lights gave it before. It sounded very similar to a dolphin in how fast it could click and whistle, but how it learned that instead of vocal language, Naomi did not know. It was a little surprising, in fact, that the creature was half human and half fish of sorts, with the upper half being almost completely human aside from a few, boney fins that protruded from the shoulders and neck, and the rest of it which was a long tail instead of legs made it obvious where the rest of the fish genetics settled in the DNA's formation procedure. Even though it was a surprise, it could not be completely blamed on something she did wrong, as Naomi had to come to terms with the fact where her experiment lived was 90% water, and the use of airy, breathy words would be simply impossible without more exposure to air. If Naomi did not talk while underwater, neither did it learn that it had to. It was at this stage where the creature got its name. Naomi knew that her creation might have been wordless but it still exhibited very human feelings accordingly. Every time Naomi looked into her creation's bright, round eyes to tell her hello or waved to her, it became the happiest most gleeful little thing Naomi has ever known. And because the creation did not morph into a male after hitting a growth spurt, she noted it down that her creation was going to stay a female. Naomi named her after her greatest virtue, calling her "Jubilee", after her high amounts of joy, and in favor of her own sense of joy she felt for her, and the in-all joy they had for one another. As Jubilee grew with Naomi, she got an aquarium fit for a large fish or a shark at the least so that she may get the exercise she needed. She was fed almost every day now and grew a tiny bit more each week. Naomi fed her favorites to her. A bucket of live Salmon was poured in to her large home, and Jubilee would spend hours chasing after them either for fun or for food. Her onyx, green and black tail and hair was a sight to see through the , deep, clear waters of her tank, the light from the sun and from the lights shined through on to her in the most beautiful way as she swam around rocks and several multi-color coral structures. Naomi tested Jubilee's speed and agility, her weight and her length, all at least once a week and noted all of her progress as it would come to light. Her communication skills were growing, now with added body language, her health stayed at its peak, and even when she was ill she would recover quickly. Naomi's progress in raising Jubilee was something that she could phone home about. Her co-workers were amazed at all of what she has done so far in her career as a genetic engineer. No foreign, original species such as a mermaid-type has ever been created before, at least successfully according to what records have always said. Most of these attempts never made it beyond tadpole stage. Some were leery of this, though, thinking that the world's ecosystem was not ready for a species like Jubilee, but Naomi could spend days begging to differ from what those who opposed her said about her child. She had a strong feeling that her artificial daughter would make it far in the world as a new, invented species just like the rest of the creations ever made by others in her field of profession. The lab's lead technician was the only one to truly worry as he got the reports of the rise in food amounts being brought in each months to feed the ever-growing Jubilee experiment. She was eating more each months, and by the time a year was up she had doubled in her food intake according what that the papers said. This was confusing, due to the fact that Jubilee was reaching her peak growth length and stayed the size of a human teenager, but was doubling her food intake by the year. Nobody had a clue where Jubilee was storing it, but she was beginning to eat a lot more than anybody would have thought she would. It seemed to be that Jubilee's fish genetics went to her stomach, as she ate like a fish would -- whether she was hungry or not peckish at all, she would still eat what was there. It was Naomi's turn to grow worried about her daughter's eating habits, now, as she would witness Jubilee devour all of her salmon within a few hours, and then come up to the glass wall of her aquarium to plead, clicking her tongue to communicate, asking for more. She often ate her day's supply in half the time it usually would take, and it was hard for Naomi to turn her down, telling her that she ate all of her rations already and she had no more to give to her. Noami's conclusion was that this was a behavioral habit that Jubilee developed, and made a dedication to herself and a note in her binder stating that she was going to start Jubilee on a limitation diet, following a procedure similar to that of a behavioral scientist's experiment. Naomi told Jubilee of what she was going to have to do was for the better for them both, and began to withhold food from her daughter every day and only feed her at set times every day and night. Nothing changed about these times and it went on for weeks as Naomi was trying to adjust Jubilee, trying to her to become hungry only at the certain meal times, trying to condition her in the way of Pavlov's dog. The whole group of lab technicians thought this was a great idea, to try to influence change in Jubilee. It seemed to be working. Jubilee was not asking for food any more after eating but did communicate that she was still feeling hungry. Jubilee caught onto the habitual meal times but her body refused to cope with it, and her hunger never really changed, just her habits. Naomi came in one day from an unrelated meeting to find a big digress in Jubilee's progress in the form of a horrible accident. Jubilee was found on the cold, metal floor of the laboratory, drowning in air without her water supply around her as she was biologically in need of having. She had sought, and gone after a bucket of fish that was left out for her next upcoming meal time, left unattended. Naomi had to grab and carry her heavy, leg-less child and set her back into her tank, running back afterwards to then go save the drowning fish that had flopped out of their bucket to escape Jubilee's hungry, grabby hands. Jubilee was only able to stay out of water for an allotted time of about five minutes tops, which is not a lot of time. For the time it took for Jubilee to find her way out, crawl with her arms and tail and open a door, crawl over to fish and try to eat more than two, it would have been more than enough time to end up with serious internal damage had she not been saved before getting to that third fish. She could have nearly died, and all because of an unusual, insatiable hunger she had, and the innocent salmon nearly died because of it, too. A couple more months passed, and Naomi was given an opportunity of a lifetime that she had always dreamed of ever since she was a teenager in high school. She was invited to host a seminar, starring herself and her magnificent Jubilee, what was the biggest step up in genetic engineering history in about a century's time. She has created the first, successful, half-human, half-animal hybrid to ever make it past a tadpole in history's records known to that day, and she was urged to show off to the eager rest of the world what she had created, and how on earth she did such a miracle with her own, two hands. Naomi could not have accepted the invitation much faster than she did. She could go home that night with a much bigger smile on her face. The day of the seminar came upon them a month from when Naomi was invited, and she could not be happier. Jubilee seemed just as happy, but she could not say to her humanoid mother on how she truly felt about it. Naomi would not have really known anyway, she much too busy getting things set up. A huge, crystal clear water tank was set up on the stage of the site for Jubilee, but it was half as big as her normal home, but just enough room to move around without being cramped and to show off her skills and progress with no hazards to injury due to space. It was set beautifully, coral adjusted to the temperatures of the water and flourished into bright, airy colors that were pleasing to any set of eyes. The nearly metallic rocks that were placed carefully and accordingly through the aquarium were stunning. To have an Onyx-pigmented mermaid amongst these waters was going to make it outstanding, and breathtakingly amazing and perfect to observe. As people gathered in to seat themselves in the auditorium full of the press, journalists, camera men, and many, many scientists of all trades and backgrounds, Naomi did not feel nervous one bit, but Jubilee did as they rest behind the oversized, heavy, royal blue, velvet curtain that separated the front of the stage to the performance area where her tank was sitting. Naomi and Jubilee spoke between the glass, discussing what was going to happen, and Naomi also discussed a timeline so that Jubilee could feel less nervous about how long she was going to be spied on. It did not work much but it worked enough to help her breathe easier, knowing that it was going to be only for a limited time. The event began with an opening, that Miss Naomi Reasons, the first successful inventor of living animal-and-humanoid hybrids was there to finally show the world her greatest invention, Jubilee, the first mermaid to be created. Curtains drawn, parted from the center, dragging across the floor to open wide the view of the massive tank before the eyes of possibly thousands of bodies sitting within a crammed auditorium. It was intense. Naomi kept her cool and went about introducing herself in a humble manner, noting in order the schools she attended through her life, the degrees she has earned, and any achievements she has obtained through her life of dedication to science. She stated her great sacrifices and rewards, her countless sleepless nights due to long hours of research, her trials and tribulations, and her great success in creating a world wonder, and creating history. She spoke to everyone as she would anyone, and told them just how much she cared for Jubilee, where she got her name from, and her journey in watching her grow as a experiment and as a child. Her heart poured from her lips as she spoke every word in utmost truth without a single faulter, as she knew speaking from the heart about any subject was bound to succeed without much of a slip up because she felt the heart needed no rehearsal or papers, but just a place to speak on it's own. When Naomi signaled for Jubilee to show herself to the crowd of individuals, it was like magic. Already people were on the edges of their seats, but now some scientists were leaning forward on to their toes within their multitude of black, loafer shoes. The sight of Jubilee, fully functional, breathing, and very well alive and just as interesting as her creator said she was, drew gasps from the crowd, some swooned in awe, some exhaled in disbelief. It was amazing! Before their eyes was a living, breathing, wonder within the world of science. Jubilee swam and show that she was able to function with swimming abilities of a natural aquatic animal, how she could bend and twist around reefs, showing she had a functioning structure of bones and systems within her body. When she was asked to communicate to Naomi she proceeded on in Morse code clicks like that of a dolphin, and Naomi could do the same for her. She was healthy, real, and could very well communicate -- She was a miracle! Naomi had created a marvel to set hopes higher. The crowd's amazement could no longer contain within the body of the crowd, and applause erupted from every last person. There was not one silent body within the whole gathering, and this was a heart throbbing experience for Naomi, but not for Jubilee. The mermaid was frightened. She was already on edge from so many people being present before her, and now suddenly they were up and moving, shouting, whistling, and acting in ways in which she had never experienced more than two or three people doing at once. It quickly turned from a quiet zone to a war zone in Jubilee's head. The situation was too much to comprehend because she was still young, and unknowingly unprepared for that sort of stuff. A faint beeping began to resonate from back stage. Scientists that were hanging out back behind the curtain went to go check it out. The screens were flashing green against the black absent background, indicating rising vital signs within the water tank that held Jubilee. The staff was puzzled, and could not figure out if the rising vital signs were health related or due to the clapping and uproar that might have been shaking the glass. They suspected neither, so both options seemed unexpected to consider. They saw that Jubilee was happy before she came to the event, but the vital signs were not lowering. Something was going on. They decided it was time to let Naomi know that her mermaid was possibly having a heart attack, but when they went out to check from the side, hidden away behind he curtain, Jubilee shown no visible signs of pain. Jubilee took off from the front of her tank to the back, hiding back out of sight to try to gather herself the best she knew how to for not being fully human, but all she could think about that calmed her down was food. It hit her like a tsunami. Her hunger drive kicked in, just as bad as it did before she was put on that dreaded diet that her scientist mother thought was a good idea. She has not had her meal yet, and it was just about five minutes past time, and it hit her. Back stage her vitals were beginning to go wild; The machines commenced louder signals to indicate that there was something going wrong in the water. Swimming in circles around a rigid rocky pillar, Jubilee swam endlessly, trying to control herself, but her instincts would not let up. Her genetics were too much to control. She could not control herself and began to malfunction, raising her arm and trying to eat at her very own arm flesh, puncturing her skin and suddenly the crowd began to silence as they saw blood in the water. Naomi did not know where Jubilee went, and began to scale the sides of the tank on foot trying to see where she went, crying out for her in worry as she spotted the bright red gushed of blood swirling in and shifting through the water currents provided by the underground pumps. Everyone could hear the manic beeping of the machines in the back behind the curtains leading to back stage, and panic began to break out; First with Naomi, then with everyone else. Everybody knew something was going horribly wrong, but nobody knew what, or what to do about it. People rose from their seats, some brave enough to try to rush onto the stage to help Naomi search for the problem, but as the tank's water was beginning to fog up with blood, nothing could be seen. Murmurs of worry and distress replaced the applause, but it soon took a turn downhill as there was a shocking visual. Jubilee swam head first into the glass of the tank wall, aimed to get out. The murmurs turned to gasps and jumps, and people began to back away from the stage. It happened again, Jubilee's once perfectly violet eyes were a deep purple, shot with blood. Naomi banged on the glass trying to get Jubilee to snap out of whatever was wrong, crying aloud her name. The scientists came from round the side stage entrances to grab Naomi to take her away from the pending danger, but she resisted as much as she could. Naomi was dragged only a few feet before her wild, primal kicking and screaming let her win and she kicked free. She ran back to raise her fists and beat on the glass trying to bring Jubilee to her senses, but nothing worked. The scientists came back rushing in to grab Naomi again but as she ran from them, they were interjected. From the top of the tank, Jubilee swam and trajected herself out into the open and landed on to the stage floor, hissing wildly at the scientists, creating a terrifying scene with her needle-like fins shooting out from behind her ears and the top of her parted, black and green hair. All the scientists could do was back away. They ran back stage. Naomi stopped to look back at her rabid experiment and realized it was a little too difficult to calm her down in this situation. She was never exposed to public people before, and this was her mistake to deal with. Crawling on her gnawed-opened arms and scratched elbows, Jubilee rushed after the closest person available to her. The other scientists ran off back stage, the guests were headed for the door, and all who was left was Naomi who was desperately trying to talk her little Jubilee down as calmly as she could for the sake of the public. Jubilee heard nothing but a loud ringing in her ears, her heart beat racing, her breathing rampantly cycled through her lungs as she knew of the urgency of her genetics not allowing her to stay out of the water for long. Jubilee leapt up, her tail pushing her up into a full leap of about ten feet trajected into the air and attached to Naomi. The creator of the monster screamed wildly at the top of her lungs, joining the sudden screams of the public who witnessed as Jubilee began to take chunks out of her shoulders and arms. The insatiable hunger won. Terror had broken out, and all because something went wrong long ago with the creation of Jubilee where one mitochondria would not function as instructed, leaving her stomach to the order of the fishes. Blood shed between creation and creator was the result, and a lot of broken trusts have been forcefully put between Naomi and her peers. Naomi tried frantically to pull Jubilee off of her face, looking up with her wide eyes to hers, seeing the hunger in her monstrous expression, ballistic and starving, and in that moment she thought what had she done. With beating fists and bloody teeth gnashing in mindless gluttony, the struggle seemed to last for hours -- until Jubilee's violet eyes rolled back into her skull and her body fell backwards onto the hard, wooden floor of the stage. The scientists had rifles loaded with bear tranquilizer pointed down at Jubilee's limp, seizing body, holding steady to make sure she does not get up. All Naomi could do was sob violently, dropping down to her knees to hold her creation's face, looking down at it with a look of rushing sorrow and shock an regret all at once. Her daughter became a monster, and everyone knew this step downward was going to cost them all a lot of wasted money and time, and Naomi knew that she was going to endure a very harsh task later on after the news spreads of what just happened. In the emptied, disheveled auditorium, she lay by her daughter, crying endlessly as nurses tended to wounds of the scientist and her knocked out creation, but they had to move quickly. A mess had to be cleaned up, doors had to be locked, and Jubilee had to be put back into the water before she drowned in her coma, and both of them had to be taken care of. Days went by, Naomi was in the hospital for rehab for the time being, and Jubilee was kept sedated until her mother could get back to her to wake her up. They did not want her doing anything else damaging while her creator was out. Naomi was traumatized, not by the fact that she had been bitten, but because she knew that she failed after approximately six years of a single success not being successful enough to be left alone. While in rehabilitation therapy, Naomi received a letter. She knew what was coming before she could even open it. She knew it was coming before it even arrived. Upon opening it, she read it to herself in silence as she sit off the side of her bed. It was a letter from her boss, the man who knew something was not right with Jubilee's existence all along. He had only a few lines of printed text, both heart-breaking but dire to her. Her option, summarized, was to either resign her career in the field of genetic science where she could never set foot in a lab again, or she had to cancel Project: Hybrid Marina. She had only one week to write a letter of her decision, and even though both of them were hard to swallow, she had to choose or both would have been chosen for her. Two weeks passed by slowly and painfully as Naomi was released from rehab and had to head back to her lab. She wrote her letter to her boss and knew what was next. Going to her job the next morning was going to be tough as she got no sleep, thinking of what she had to do. Entering the lab and going about her day as she would have weeks ago, she did not walk with the same bounce in her step. Naomi's boss met her person to person in her lab space in front of the cylindrical water tank that held Jubilee, and they exchanged their verbal agreements within the confines of the silent lab space. The boss saw himself out to let Naomi go about her business in silence and peace. She had to euthanize her project within the hour. She began by first having to turn off the tranquilizer tubes to let her wake up so that they may part on one final, good note. The minutes felt like hours to Naomi, watching the screen of her project child's vital signs and statistical information change and shift into wakefulness was painful to watch, but beautiful. It was be the last time she would see that happening again. As Jubilee woke up she was dazed but aware that she was confined. The coma only made her rest, but her memory was still vivid with what happened to her when she lost control. In silence, Naomi stepped forward, looking up into the cool-lit tank up to her creation, her child, and told her, clicking her tongue to her hesitantly with reddening eyes of her sorrow, speaking to her in her language of best understanding of what she had to do. Jubilee floated down to meet her mother's eyes, listening just as intently as she always did for her, nodding and responding like she always did. Both of them were distressed with this consequence, but they both knew it had to be done even if it was hard, even if Jubilee developed the thought process of a human and felt as they did, even if she too had the ability to question what was on the other side, even if she feared it like the humans did, fearing the unknown just like her mother could, she knew it had to be done. As a fish with the brain of a human she knew something was wrong with her, after all, she tried to stop herself but failed. She knew she had to accept fate, and she wanted nothing more than to let the scientist who created her, the only one she ever knew as a mother to her do it instead of someone else. The grounds were leveled. Before she left her daughter be, she took the remaining minutes of time left to raise her hands up to the glass of the tall, thin tank and rest them there. Jubilee, with sadness matching her mother's deep sorrow, did the same. She lowered herself to meet eye to eye with her mother one more time, pressing her pale, blue-ish hands against the glass of the tank to feel the warmth that seeped through to her touch. Naomi had to be strong, and do what was best for them both once more time, and so she removed her hands after exchanging living warmth among them, and went to her lighted work station a few yards away. Levers were flipped and buttons were pressed in order from the computerized station and Jubilee watched, her violet eyes curious for one last time. Naomi clicked her tongue as a machine began to whirr from across the room, coding the words, "I am Sorry. Be good, where ever you go, and I love you more than you are aware. Do not be sorry for being who you were. You were my child. Goodbye until next time, Jubilee. I will see you soon." and the tank's water supply was tainted with clear fluids unseen to Jubilee. The clicking from Jubilee's tank came through clearly through the station's sound system and translated to Naomi as, "I love you, mom. I will wait for you where ever I go. Goodbye until next time." and the last clicks faded away with Jubilee's vital signs. The serum filled the tank and gently took Jubilee away and out of her shell. Her only child left the world. In the now dead silence of her lab, Naomi wept for hours. All she ever knew was gone, now. No family, no children, but all she had left was her job. Her hopes was to heal her heart, and try again next time with the help of cloning, and a prayer -- that the next hybrid have a different stomach, but the same heart.

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