Spider Lake Read Free

thought at first that he had mistakenly entered into an up-scale fish store for the very rich, or possibly the foyer of Sea World. On each wall, there stood large built-in aquariums filled with brightly colored tropical fish. Ben scanned the room looking at each of the tanks, and then his attention stopped at the receptionist’s desk. He was in the right place.
    The fish were obviously there to calm down all the overly-excited lunatics who were seated in the soft leather chairs of the waiting room. Ben looked at his fellow mental patients. He expected them to be fidgeting or trying to suppress nervous ticks, but they looked comparatively normal. He walked to the receptionist’s desk. The young blonde who was sitting there was working on her chewing gum at a ferocious pace. She gave Ben the obligatory forms to fill out, and after he did, he wished he hadn’t. He wanted very badly to turn right around and head back out the door. He thought again of Jill, and stifled back the urge to bolt.
    He was too nervous to sit down. He didn’t want to sit next to any of the schizophrenics, so he decided to get a closer look at the fish. He walked from one aquarium to another, finally stopping at the largest. The tank looked as if it was a coral reef plucked right out of the Caribbean, and he watched the fish swim this way and that with great interest. The fish were doing their job. He was feeling more calm.
    He followed a puffer fish as it moved to and fro in the largest tank. It was a beautiful fish, grayish in color with pink-magenta and midnight-blue features and it had very large eyes. Ben was transfixed. The soft movement of the fish coupled with his own fatigue was lulling him to sleep. He needed sleep.
    “What a beautiful fish.” He thought to himself.
    The puffer fish swam around and around in the tank, and then it swam opposite of Ben and stopped. It seemed to be looking at him as it stayed in place, and Ben was thinking that maybe the fish was expecting a feeding. All the other fish were still swimming around, oblivious to him or the dry outside world, but the puffer fish kept watching Ben with great interest.
    The fish seemed to be in a stare-down with Ben. It’s gentle side to side motion and it’s two side-fins slowly moving back and forth were lulling the over-tired Ben into a hypnotic trance. Ben bent his head closer to the glass to see what it would do. The fish only moved its fins just a tiny bit faster, but it held its position directly opposite of Ben.
    “What an odd experience.” Ben thought.
    Suddenly in an instant, without warning, the fish inflated to three times its size. Ben was so surprised by this that he stumbled backwards and tripped over one of the plush waiting room chairs.
    As he laid there on the floor, Ben felt a sharp pain on the back of his head. He also noticed an unusual cool sensation spreading there. It felt kind of like a gentle breeze on wet skin. The room started spinning slowly around. Ben noticed that the loonies were in a state of great agitation, and as he drifted off to sleep, he smiled and mused at the chaos all around him.
      The last thing that he noticed before he closed his eyes was the aquarium and the puffer fish, still inflated like a grayish volleyball with pinkish fins and blue eyes, still looking at him with the same keen interest, and then he remembered no more.
    “Mr. Fisher, can you hear me? Mr. Fisher can you hear me? Mr. Fisher. Cathy, please go put a towel under cold water for this man’s forehead. Mr. Fisher, can you speak?”
    Ben slowly opened his eyes, and looking around, he had no idea where he was. He was lying on a soft leather couch in a richly decorated room full of wooden cabinets and book shelves. Where there were no books, the walls contained framed documents of all types, penned with fancy embellished calligraphy. The vertical blinds were mostly closed allowing a filtered light to enter from the sunny outside world. He wondered why he had fallen