The Legend of Blue Whale's Treasure

The Legend of Blue Whale's Treasure

by Jon Plante

She frequently gets immersed in her own thoughts while driving, then snaps back to reality and finds that she drove to the wrong place. She always regains reality while still driving. Today though, she regains herself in a strange circular room. The room has no windows, and no doors, and cats everywhere. A black cat with one unusually large eye glares at her. She frantically runs her hands all over the walls looking for a door. She’s seen Forensic Files; she knows she dies here. She doesn’t dare scream for help and risk arousing the attention of whoever put her here. Exhausted, she slumps to the floor and reaches to pet one of the cats, while wondering if they’ll eat her face off when she dies in here. Or perhaps she’s already dead, she thinks. Several cats come to her and rub their heads on her. Each cat has a one-dollar bill twist tied to its collar. She used to knit with her grandmother who said it helped to calm her nerves. She sets about untwisting each tie off each cat and stacking up the dollars, letting the rhythmic, mindless motion soothe her. When she finishes with the final cat, she counts the money $63. Then all of the cats flash different colors and disappear. She looks around the room, puzzled. They were all gone, even old stink eye.

Strange, upbeat music starts to play, and flashing cats rain from the ceiling. “Bloody hell, it’s raining cats and cats,” she says. She crouches down and covers her head like she was taught to do in school tornado drills. The music stops, the new cats approach her, and they all have one-dollar bills tied to their collars. She begins to untie their ties while laughing hysterically. She’s simply gone mad, she thinks and laughs some more. When she is finished untying, she counts $100, then she flashes different colors and disappears. Then she’s in her car driving. She’s full of cat hair, and there are $163 in singles on her lap. She’d like to pull over and cry, but she wants to be safe in bed.

At home, she throws herself in bed, but it doesn’t feel quite right. It’s moving ever so slightly and rhythmically, and it’s weirdly squishy. Her bed slides her off gently and uncurls itself to become an albino king-size-bed-sized dragon. It pushes a doctor’s bag her way and blocks the door until she opens it. Inside was $19,837 and a little black book. She opened the book and every page said, “Free the Blue Whale and Free Yourself.” What a load of rubbish, she thinks. She hides her combined $20k in the yard. As the car ride had betrayed her, and her bed had betrayed her, she decides to walk in the forest for a bit.

Naturally, when anyone steps into the forest, they transform into their soul animal. She turns into a lovely deer. She loves the crunch of fall leaves under her hooves, the smell of the forest after it rained, and how the wind feels on her face when she runs fast. One day, as she is admiring the sun’s sparkling reflections on the stream, she sees an orphaned fawn come for a drink. She adopts her instantly. She loves the fawn so much that she stays a deer forever.

Although her former yard was long ago eaten by the forest, her $20k is still out there, (as is a trapped Blue Whale, a disappointed dragon, and a room full of broke cats who after their dollars were snatched by a disappearing woman started trying to sell their stories on the internet. This is one of those stories, by the way, meow). Happy treasure hunting, pirates.