F - Dominion

"Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum"
Soundtrack to JAWS

The creature moved with deceptive slowness, careful always, because it
was conscious of the limits to its world. There were, it understood,
barriers through which it could not pass, barriers which it had never
been able to pass, and rudimentary logic, or perhaps instinct, made it
wary of them.

Occasionally, the creature's dull black eyes would take in aspects of
the place beyond its' world, and occasionally it would register
movement in that place. But there was little definition in the
movement, because the barrier distorted all that lay beyond. This was
of no concern to the creature, which did not have the intelligence to
retain interest, or even to remember the movement when that movement
had ceased.

The creature was alone in its world, and had always been so. It
survived contentedly, because it had little concept of itself as an
individual. It lived to eat and to move. There was food in its world,
and room to move, so the creature ate until it could eat no more, ate
on the move, moved as it ate, moved when it had eaten.

The creature had no recognition of time, and therefore had no wish for
change, nor any expectation of change. Ambition was not layered in its'
brain. Indeed, it envisaged no future to aim ambition towards, just as
it appreciated no past and identified no present.

Had the creature been able to communicate its reason and philosophy, it
would have asked for food.

But for the creature, things would soon change. Had it known this, of
course, it would not have feared the change, nor would it have
experienced anticipation. Such states of mind were beyond the
creature's grasp. It would have continued to move, or to eat, until the
change came.

In the final analysis, the creature was simply the creature, thus
proving that the sum of a thing is sometimes merely that which can be
seen. But of course circumstance influences continuity, and the
creature's destiny, like all living things, was governed from time to
time by circumstance. And for the creature, circumstance would dictate
a destiny involving the place beyond.

Thus it was that a time came when the barrier was destroyed, and the
creature left its' world behind.

The time was a time of light. For the creature there were times of
light and times of darkness, and it vaguely recognised this, mainly
because it was conditioned to realise that light meant a greater
availability of food.

The change came thus:

There was a moment when all was as it always had been, although the
creature had no capacity to acknowledge that.

There followed another moment, when the creature's world was opened,
and the calm waters in which it normally operated became a crazy,
moiling turbulence.

There followed a short time when the creature lost a necessary thing,
and it flung itself from side to side in a vain attempt to reclaim that
thing.

There followed an instant of ending.

In the confined space of the houseboat, the hustle and bustle of
excited children made it impossible for Lindsay Keating to unpack her
shopping in a logical sequence. She shouted twice to calm Tom and Wendy
down, but the children were, as usual, irrepressible. Freezer stuff,
she thought. Get the freezer stuff put away, then make a coffee. Settle
down. Do the rest later.

The sudden silence took her by surprise.

The scream froze her to the marrow of her bones.

Wendy was in the living quarters. Tom was up on deck. Which child had
screamed? Which way should she go? Panic welled. The wrong choice
could&;#8230;..

A second scream. As loud as the first. Wendy. Definitely Wendy.

She turned, stumbled over a shopping bag, regained her balance, started
to move again, was halted this time by the tiny figure of Wendy
barrelling into her on the run.

"Wendy," she said, grasping the little girl's shoulders. "What on
earth&;#8230;.? What's happened, child? What have you done to
yourself?"

Wendy's tears flowed freely. "The cat, mum", she said inbetween sobs.
"The cat's gone and eaten Mork."

Lindsay gasped for breath and control. A bloody goldfish, she thought.
All that over a bloody goldfish.