Echo

So today’s the day. It’s family history time and well having the sort of luck Echo does, he’s going first and although he knows everyone’s excited, he’s petrified.

He begins- “So my name is Echo and I’m a great white shark, not the type you see many pictures of; in fact some people often confuse me with a bully shark because I’m around eight feet tall when I should be eleven feet and 700lbs when I should be 1200lbs. It’s pretty embarrassing, especially when you attend the annual feast fest and your own family questions whether you should eat with them or be eaten by them.

For instance, one time Uncle Boltz came charging towards me with all 278 of his razor-edged teeth and if it weren’t for cousin Big Ben, I would have lost my fins. It may sound funny but I’m serious. Uncle Boltz was known to strike at lightning speed; chomp his way into flesh, let go and then turn around and do it all over again. Kinda psychotic if you ask me. Big Ben was my cousin named Ben who was big, hence Big Ben. He was three times what he should have been and often times went neck to neck or should I say fin to fin with the largest women in our family and to think he wasn’t even an adult yet.

Now magnify the level of ridiculousness when you put us in the same picture. Exactly! But if it weren’t for him I would have been chowder. You see, there I was celebrating Aunt Muda’s 62nd birthday on the day of the seal fest, minding my own business being entertained by remora fish, a rare occurrence by the way, because usually the small suckers just maintain and protect our multi-faceted skin, a service we sharks are eternally grateful for and could never do ourselves, but not today. Today, two were traveling together under Aunt Padonia, and they kept bumping tails and well what seemed to be a debate quickly turned violent. Witnessing all this unfold was too much to pass up, so like if it were a mini Flex and Chill event, I grabbed a small multi-colored squid swimming nearby that tasted exquisitely scrumptious, might I add, and it began-

““It’s Blue, on the left letting out a striking blow with his back fin, pushing Silver four inches away. Silver, taking the hit like a champ, begins extending his upper fin and wap there he goes, serving up an explosive punch to Blue’s side. Silver’s swimming away and it appears the fight is over, but wait, Blue is coming back and his glowing eyes are fixed in Silver’s direction. It’s crunch time. What will he do? Bop, bop, bop! That, people, is the sound of Blue’s tail striking Silver’s face. It seems like Silver isn’t recovering. Will he bow out and live for another day; it seems so because he’s starting to make his way underneath Uncle Tito but will he be accepted or will his blood be too appealing to ignore. Hold your tail fins we are about to find out, and chomp. There goes Silver’s body being pierced with Uncle Tito’s coarse serrated teeth.””

The whole fight was indeed as stupid as it gets because whoever got killed would just be replaced with another one but none the less it was riveting. So unbeknown to me, I had strayed from the family quite bit and Uncle Boltz who was late in attending the seal feast and hadn’t seen me for the last two years mistook me for a bully shark; a shark he quite fancied eating from time to time. So while just a meter away, he came in fast, donning all five rows of his murderous teeth and would have sunk them into my flesh if it weren’t for Big Ben blasting his nose into Uncle Boltz’s side, throwing him off his tracks. ““Hey man, calm down! That’s our nephew Echo!””

Uncle Boltz now in duel mode, once again opened his monstrous mouth and was ready to charge until he recognized it was Big Ben who hit him and immediately went from red to amber. Then looked at me, registered what Ben said and with a half-murderous, half- welcoming smile asked ““Nephew. What’s good?”” As if the past thirty seconds hadn’t occurred. Remaining as still as could be, which obviously as you know is impossible for us sharks.

I said faintly while quivering, “Hi Uncle Blitz.”

Unexpectedly he dashed over and mumbled ““Nephew, that was a close one! Anyways, you’re alive and no harm done so don’t bother mentioning any of this to your mom. Okay lad.”” Then he gave me a slight touch of the fin and dipped towards the live seals, which by now had been difficult to see with all the left over blood and flesh. I never understood why some of my my family couldn’t enjoy their food with some dignity. Like was it really necessary to have guts flying everywhere. No, because most of them could have swallowed their food whole. Anyways, these are the thoughts I primarily kept to myself. I mean I was the smallest of them all; I didn’t also need to be the kill-joy one as well.

So there I was, witnessing them devour everything in their path, from seals to seagulls. It was a blood bath and however alluring the smell was, the sight wasn’t.”

While Echo circled the room, he could tell each of his classmates were either on the edge of amazed or on the verge of collapse and it’s understandable as to why. In 321 years, he was the first shark to be sent to Ocean High-the only school for sea and ocean inhabitants, due to the fact that sharks have a tendency to be restless, have an ‘insatiable’ appetite that could send them into a feeding frenzy and are a little short-tempered. To sum it up they don’t make ideal students. Case of point, the last shark to attend was his Great Aunt Vi who did well for a while, until one day she killed half of her classmates. Some say she felt too restricted, and school brought the crazy out of her but Echo’s family knew that she was always a little crazy for plankton, due to the run-in she had with a killer whale a few years before.

Moving on, since then things have changed a bit, they’ve hired bonnethead sharks as body guards because they don’t eat meat and although they’re usually four feet, and one of them would be nothing to a great white or even a bully shark, 1,620 of them is another story. Which is the exact number the school has. Like stated before, every year, the entire school can’t wait to learn more about Echo and his family and every year they ask the same question- ““Is the movie Jaws a true story?”” and usually he dismissed it but not today. Today he’s going to set the record straight once and for all.

He continues, “So that same annual feast I was telling you about earlier was going pretty nice until it moved us further into the ocean, where the floor bed revealed the massive jaw bone of our Grand Jawsana that’s the foremother of all foremothers. For years, we searched and could never find her final resting ground; we went from coastline to coastline, in unchartered territories, any and everywhere. We knew she was gone but it was important to know where.”

Misbel, the most clumsy stingray Echo had ever met, asked “Echo, how’d you know she died?”

To which Echo responded- “Well us sharks have the ability to connect with each other on a certain wave of consciousness, a result of forced adaptation and generational advancement which was caused by our dwindling numbers and currently now extinct blood lines. It was simply a way of sharing information, especially those that include intense emotions. For instance, a feeding frenzy- yes our noses are blood bound but the path to get to the food maybe too dangerous, this information can be shared so a shark doesn’t endanger itself unnecessarily.

Another example is death; the confusion, pain, and vulnerability is also shared and carried as our own. Also, the closer in proximity that you are is the stronger the imprints and to avoid overwhelming each other we self-isolate. When we’re not doing that, we’re doing the same activity and hence can share space, for example eating.”

“Is that why you get mad and eat each other?” asked Bubbles the blowfish, who’s parents definitely had a sense of humor.

Echo replied, “Yes, although rare, it does happen. But back to what I was saying, my family sent out scouts to retrieve her body but none could find it and it would have been difficult to miss, due to the fact that she was the largest living descendant of the Lamnidae family within the last 700 years.”

Eyes grew bigger, most were crouched down and then there were the sea turtles, stacked and peaking out their shell. Echo continued, “She had a sheath of small armored shaped scales, silk like in appearance that were varying shades of blue and gray with highlights of silver- perfect for camouflage. They even propelled water to move with her and not against, increasing her ability to out-swim any and everyone. This toppled with her magnitude made her the best killing machine a shark could aspire to be but there was something that she also had which non-sharks think we don’t possess and that’s a soul.

The movie Jaws described her as being addicted to terrorizing land people, while in reality she was just trying to survive. You see, the last three months before reaching the nursery bay- a safe place to give birth, she had to make a grueling detour because sea hunters were amidst and that decision of a new route meant she and her off-spring wouldn’t be in danger but also, she couldn’t eat. Post the birth of 14 pups, she began her journey back home, during which there was what seemed to be more steel boats, so instead of resuming the normal path the females used for the last 260 million years, she detoured once more. Tired and hungry she ended up cruising along the Amity Island beach.

Upon getting there she didn’t have many options, it was either eat or die and death by starvation was the worst of them all because you literally go mad in search of food. Your conscious pathways go haywire and you feel your body not working as it once did. You can’t regulate your temperature, your sense of smell diminishes, you’re not able to swim at your regular speed and your eyes start to play tricks on you. In the end, Grand Jawasna did what any one of us would and that was eat but instead of seeing it for what it was, she was seen as a deep water terrorist that set eyes on their innocent and peaceful shores. When in fact it was them who were monsters. They set out to hunt her and killed a different shark and felt indifferent and then continued with their plans, and this time with vengeance and even when she tried leaving, they hunted her down and when she fought back, they killed her. All of us sharks, born and unborn acquired those last moments of her life, and it will forever be a part of us. For the last set of pups she gave birth to, they will feel it most.”

“Ahhh, so does that mean that the sharks in the other movies are her children?” Said ducky, the sea turtle, another one of Echo’s classmates.

To which Echo answered, “Well, I’ll give you the answer my mom gave me, which is her legacy will live on.”