loch ness mikey

Gills

All Mikey could remember was seeing Gerard swiftly lunge at him and then the feeling of the cold lake water hitting his warm skin.

Mikey had never been the best swimmer. At one point him and Gerard's parents had gotten them lessons. He was about 7 which meant Gerard was probably around 10. Let's just say, the lessons didn't go well. It took 3 out of the 5 lessons they did just to get Mikey in the water. By the fourth day Gerard was a pro, Mikey however, wouldn't go past the 2 foot mark. After the fifth day, which yielded the same result, his parents gave up, and so did he.

He thought this was the end for him. He would drown and his life would be over. That quickly, that out of nowhere, it would just be finished. He had accepted it at that point, he had to.

But then the weirdest thing happened, he woke up in what he assumed to be the afterlife. But when he looked around, he realized that he was still somehow underwater. He started to panic at first, but then he realized, he was breathing. Just like he would on land. He didn't understand how, but he didn't care. He was just happy to be alive.

Mikey's first instinct was obviously to swim up best he could. So he did, once he finally reached the top he started to calm down only a little bit, how calm could he be after experience he just had?

He immediately attempted to swim over to shore line that was probably about 30 feet away from where he currently was. When he got there he attempted to climb onto the land and go back to life as normal, well, as normal as life can be after your own brother tries to drown you. He realized shortly after his attempt to climb back up on the land that he couldn't. He physically couldn't. He looked down in confusion on why he couldn't get up on the land he so desperately needed to be on. It was his legs, or, lack thereof. He screamed when he realized his legs were no longer legs, they were fins. As he lifted his shirt a bit to see if anything else had changed, he saw that he now had gills also.

How have I not noticed before now? he thought. He then realized the "swimming" he had done to get to where he was now really hadn't included his legs...it was more just flailing his arms in the direction he was trying to go.

How did this happen? Why did it happen to him? he had so many questions and no one to answer them.

He pushed himself off the small amount of land he had been able to shimmy on to and back into the water. He was stuck. This was his life now. He had to figure out how to adjust to this new way of living somehow.