48 Hour Short Story Contest

Howie, the lobster, crawled about on the ocean floor. The gentle shimmer of the moon illuminated the colorful coral world he lived in.
A small school of fish in dazzling stripes swam by. One of them called down: “What’s up, old man? You need a cane?” The bully’s friends laughed bubbles.

He had recently experienced a traumatic event in which one of his legs broke off. It was the day that big shovel had grabbed, him and pulled him out of his home. It was one of the smaller legs under his belly, but he still missed it. For days, Howie was scared to die. He was stuck in a white box. It moved. It stood still. Then, there were squeaking sounds and a foul chemical smell permeated his delicate lungs.

The sounds came from the top of his box and described patterns. The sounds stopped soon, but the stench remained longer.

A human said to another, “Use permanent marker, that felt tip pen is going to rub off.”

The box vibrated with a horrible scraping sound from the top. Soon, the squeaking sound returned, accompanied by a worse chemical smell. This one lingered for a long time. Howie fell asleep, only to be shaken up hours later. From then on, the motion didn’t stop until he was released into his new reef.

All his life Howie had heard of the missing. Some were scraped right off the ocean ground by huge nets that caught everything that wasn’t quick enough to escape. Very large shadows regularly crossed over his part of the reef and slowly his family and friends were all taken away. They never came back.

Now, he knew where they had gone. Limping about his reef, he searched for his companions. He found nobody and eventually took refuge inside of a cave he discovered. When he woke up, the light was bright and the sun came straight from above. Howie had never slept all the way until noon. He went out to find food.

Not far from his cave, he found a cube that smelled like fish, but it wasn’t a fish. Maybe later, he thought. I want fresh food. The teasing fish came back. This time they didn’t look at him, they were headed to the surface. Something interesting was happening up there. Howie saw many more fish pick food from the surface.

What a strange reef this is, Howie mused and looked at the dead fish again.

He crawled around and came to a clam. He cracked it open and ate it. Then, something really terrible happened. Maybe the scariest thing ever! The sky moved right above the water surface, but this wasn’t any of the big shadows, this was something else. A small net, a miniature version of the huge ocean scraping net removed the clam remains. The side of the net pushed the fish scented cube up to Howie.

Scared, Howie scrambled to his cave. Cautiously, he peered out. The sassy striped fish were completely unfazed by the activity. Moving just fast enough not to hit the net, they didn’t break formation when swimming past it. Slowly, the tool of death lifted out of the water.

To Howie’s annoyance, the sun stayed right above the reef all day long. Then, at once, it dimmed with a loud clicking sound. Howie curled up as deep as he could inside of the cave, but hunger drove him out soon. He looked up. The water’s surface was smooth. The sky didn’t move, and there didn’t seem to be any sign of that wretched net to come back.

Hours later, Howie’s world was bathed in the soothing light of the moon. He dared coming out. Unnerved, he realized the moon was also right overhead. The world had definitely changed since he had lived in the box.

Out of fear that the net would come back, Howie didn’t eat any of the clams. He took a nibble of the cube. It tasted bland, but not foul. He pushed it into his cave and went back out to explore some more.

His world was beautiful in the moonlight. The coral spawned and thousands of tiny gametes floated by Howie. Enchanted, he watched them follow the water’s current. Dazzled, he went along on their journey until he came to yet another strange new thing. It was a sponge, but not like the ones that grew naturally around here. It was shaped like his food cube and it attracted the gametes like a magnet. Luckily, they didn’t get absorbed. The sponge’s holes were all of equal size, all too narrow to hurt the spawn.

Howie wanted to walk around this peculiar sponge, but he was abruptly stopped by something hard. It was as if the water had turned to solid material. He bumped against a few time. The clicking sounds attracted the school of fish.

They giggled. “Look at the buffoon, doesn’t know the mystical barrier yet.”

“What is this?” he called to them. “Why doesn’t the sun move? Why is the moon in the exact same spot? Why are sponges magnetic and rectangular?”

A small snail slowly slid down on the hard water. Howie wanted to faint. He wanted to wake up. This had to be a nightmare. The world didn’t work like this.

The snail said with a small voice, “If you promise not to eat me, I’ll explain.”

“I promise.”

The snail came closer and closer. Howie wanted to crack her shell so badly, but he was a lobster of his word. In the following conversation, he would be happy he had let the snail live. It would become his first new friend in this place called aquarium.

The snail told Howie to stop eating other animals. It brought the net into the water. Every time the net showed up, terrible things happened. One day, the whole school of fish disappeared for hours and the water surface came really close as a big scoop kept taking more and more of it out. Then, the surface rose again, but not like it does during tide. It fell out of the sky and tasted kind of good. It was at the same time fresher than then it was before and also left a chemical taste in everybody’s mouth for days.

Luckily, even though they were a nuisance with their constant teasing, the striped fish came back.

Howie took his new friend to his cave. They shared the food cube. Over time, Howie learned to not worry about the net’s appearance through the surface any longer. On some days it brought new friends into the tank. Some of the newbies were delicious snacks for him.

1116 words

Howie The Lobster  (ASR) Howie has a strange adventure #1648352 by Annette