The Man of the Deep

Down in the depths of the sea, there is a man who flosses with seaweed and gargles with brine. Somewhere in the midst of that deep there is a vast array of trinkets that he uses, and there is a wide variety of uses applied with these trinkets. The man of the deep refers to this collection of trinkets as “my sterling collection.” The uses include but are not limited to: playing music, sitting, clipping nails, writing notes, disposing of waste, recording, painting, cooking, eating, listening, and playing games. He handles his trinkets with care and puts them to good use, and has been steadily and patiently collecting them over the past twelve to thirteen years. No one else in that part of the ocean has anything close to such a broad collection of thingamabobs. 

He has gizmos and gadgets aplenty, he has who-sits and what-sits galore. If you wanted thingamabobs, he has twenty. But in his mind this is something to not really care about, no big deal. He is wanting more. 

He has lived in these depths for his entire life. He welcomed life with bright eyes, looking out into the salty water, looking upon the corral reef and the vast array of colorful fish. His first word was “Swim!” And he kept on repeating it as he became used to his surroundings, “Swim! Swim! Swim!” And he began to swim, arms flailing at first, feet puttering and trying to keep up, but like his first word, once he figured out the basic structure of swimming properly, it was as if he couldn’t stop himself. Propelling himself like a motorboat or a torpedo from a submarine. Once he got started he just couldn’t stop. 

When he crossed the threshold into puberty the skin on his arms and legs began to turn green, the irises in his eyes bloomed a crystal blue, and he was able to see twenty feet further in any direction. By his fourteenth birthday, the fingers on his hands and the toes on his feet were completely connected by a thin but strong layer of webbing. This made swimming from one reef to another considerably easier for him. 

At the age of fifteen, he could finally breathe in the water because he had sprouted gills on the sides of his neck. Up until that point, he had been operating on a finely-tuned oxygen-installation system that was cumbersome to lug around with him and is much too complicated to explain here in detail. At the age of eighteen, when he welcomed himself into adulthood, he was completely green and had full fledged fins attached to his head and his back. At first he thought the extra green was algae, but it was not algae – it merely resembled the color of algae that formed on the rocks and sunken ships nearby. 

He became great friends with the fish around him. He could speak Fishish fluently, and is currently trying to perfect his English. English has been a difficult language for him to learn. However, he can speak Spanish fluently. 

He has become friends with a few octopi and gets along well with the sharks in the area. At first the sharks were intimidating, with their sharp yellow teeth and beady eyes. Especially intimidating to him as a child, looking at them gliding in formation overhead. But once he befriended one of them over a dissected starfish, all of the sharks in the area have at least let him be. 

He has seen a few humans – until they were mauled by sharks, that is. Funny enough, one of the sharks involved in the mauling was the shark that he befriended over the dissected starfish. The humans seemed nice enough, but also really, really dumb. They had no idea how to swim properly and could not understand the language of Fishish. There had been a whole school of fish yelling at the top of their gills, “Watch out for the sharks!”, but the humans didn’t catch on in time. The poor, unfortunate souls. 

The man of the deep is named Kevin. He has been working on a scrap book containing everything he has seen and captured with his Polaroid camera. He is also consistently contributing to a daily journal of his feelings and thoughts, which are plentiful. 

Kevin is hoping to make a trip up to dry land – make new memories, meet real people, journal about it, and bring Polaroids and stories back to the schools of fish and marine life awaiting his return. 

Kevin says hi, and he can’t wait to meet you!