Out-of-Hat story #4

Out of Hat #4:

 

 

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. Reggie had been lying on his back on the ship’s deck staring up at the sky, at the dead sky, asking himself, “Why?”

At that moment he felt a sensation in his ear, and out fell a ball of earwax. He turned it between his fingers and saw an image on it—a clear image of fish eggs.

Fish eggs?

It means nothing and yet it must mean something.

Fish eggs.

His life that held no purpose as he lay beneath the dead sky suddenly had meaning. He jumped off the deck and strode down the plank and into the row of bars in town that catered to sailors. The Pussycat Lounge drew him like the tuna he reeled in everyday at sea. He pushed open the door and shouted, “Fish eggs!”

A man wearing sunglasses approached him. “Reggie?”

“How do you know my name?”

“I’ve been waiting for you. We’ve all been waiting for you. Come, follow.”

He led Reggie to a room overflowing with sunglasses. In the center was a woman in sunglasses smoking a big wad of ganja

“Got tired of the television sky, hmm?” she said, exhaling a stream of smoke. “They all come to me eventually.”

“I came because of the fish eggs,” Reggie said. “The ear wax that—“

“Oh I know all about it. Ear wax, fish eggs.” She crossed her legs and sat like a squatting Buddha. “Point is that you’re lost, and you think that what, joining me in a sun salutation will bring you enlightenment.” She handed him a pair of sunglasses from the mound next to her. “Here, put these on.”

He looked at the brand name printed on the side—Fish Eggs!—and did as he was told. Could this be it? Could this be his way out?

He strode out of the Pussycat Lounge wearing his Fish Egg glasses. He looked up and down the street at all the other bars—the Red Fox, Dante’s Inferno, the Blessed Trinity—and heard the horn from his ship calling all the sailors back to work, back to six months at sea beneath the dead sky.

He adjusted the Fish Eggs sunglasses on his face, turned and walked the opposite way from the port, and as he walked, the dead television sky shifted from gray to white to the most brilliant clear blue sky he’d every seen.