Saving Terry the Octopus.

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, two young individuals settled into their home. Sky was thin. On this winter’s day, they were rather cold, had trouble fighting the winter’s low temps on their own, and took to roaming around the apartment wrapped in a thick blanket. They wore the knitted slippers Fern made them last Christmas. The slippers were wool. They were blue and gray and thicker than any sock.

Fern also struggled with the cold. To combat the bitterness of the snow stricken environment, they created an ornate nest on the couch, using their innate talent with aesthetics to elegantly weave a comforter and fuzzy throw blanket into an igloo-esque shelter. They had a little peep-hole for their head.

Sky and Fern relaxed after a long day of work, and wanted to watch something educational, something with animals. This was not a time to confront worldly sadness, so they skipped the documentaries on orcas in captivity and the ones on Climate change and the ones on Flat earth. They chose a rather cutesy local piece done at their city’s aquarium. Fern found it on Facebook while apathetically scrolling for something to throw on. Sky scoured Netflix, slowly becoming more and more and more anxious about their ample selection. They bared their teeth unconsciously. Tensed their shoulders. They put a strange sense into the air. It was not a smell or taste or object to see-- just a feeling in the air of which one notices only in the back of their mind.

Fern, being very aware of this phenomenon, integrated Sky’s blanket into their igloo and made it big enough for two. They kissed Sky gently on their cheek and said, “I think I found one.”

They summoned their three dogs, Dwight, Pickles, and Hercules, onto the couch and pressed play. The dogs became little, sleeping brown balls and paid no mind to the strange ordeal occurring on the television screen. The documentary which Sky and Fern chose was a student film. It was called Ten Tentacle Terry. It focused on one creature in particular; Terry the Octopus.

At first the viewing experience was pleasurable. The film followed the typical beats of a documentary, but it did this only to lull its viewers' emotions, and not to provide a delicate and informative message about the aquarium. The film followed a strange man who wore a fake mustache and bushy set of eyebrows. They wore a tan bucket hat, and an equally tan suit which draped over him and his lumpiness. It also appeared this strange mystery man had trouble keeping right, and continuously buckled at the waist, as if he were a conglomeration of children and not truly one whole human. His voice sounded young when he interviewed Tentacle Terry’s keeper. The keeper was a rather old gentleman of Southern American descent. He looked worn and happy about it. The keeper had once lived where octopuses lived naturally and he told of how he swam with them.

“I swam very deep one night,” the keeper said, “my father had fallen ill. He developed Hepatitis C and was very weak. He depended on me, his only son, only real family member. This was a lot for me as a young man, and I tried my hardest not to show him.”

The interviewer wobbled slightly at his center. He held out the microphone with his tiny fingers, then brought it back to himself to interrupt the keeper’s story.

“Is this about an octopus?” he said brokenly.

The keeper nodded respectfully, “Yes- I’ll skip to it. One night, after a frightful moment of illness struck my father, I swam deeper than I had ever before. The water pushed against me, blue as crystal with the whane moonlight arrowing down. I reached the bottom with a surprising amount of breath remaining and began searching the new lands before me.” He slid over to the wobbly reporter, wrapped his arms around the reporter’s boyish shoulders. He painted the air with his calloused hands, “imagine my strange friend, corals the color of lobster shells, white as bone, and a highnoon yellow.”

The reporter appeared gravely uncomfortable. The keeper, being a man of minute, unspoken signals, back away to a more comfortable distance. He apologised. There was a moment of uncut silences.

The Keeper coughed into his elbow, apologized again, then continued. “I saw many strange creatures as well, but to remain focused, I'll speak only of the octopuses. At the near bottom of my breath, I came upon a queer gathering of shells in the center of a sea floor valley. There, I saw for only a second’s time before having to surface for air, the playful entanglement of many of these ten armed creatures. Upwards of thirty inhabited the valley. Of all colors and shapes and sizes.”

The reporter wobbled forward, then cantered back, using his arms to realign himself above his hips. He put the mic below his mouth, breathed heavily, “Did that experience make you want to work with Octopuses?”

“Very much. That moment changed my life forever.”

The documentary then cut to a silent video of Terry the Octopus. Terry was rather small. Terry was a girl. She was the color of dried blood and looked to be dead in the water. She lived in an aquarium, a place where people designed her habitat to simulate the outside world. Terry hated this place but she couldn't figure out how to tell the people, and so depression took over her- leaving her to float like a plastic bag.

That’s why people were filming her, to figure out why she wasn’t moving for her audience.

They also wanted to know why their expensive lights above Terry’s tank kept shorting out. As the documentary outlined, they first assumed the culprit was steam emanating from the tank below. At that point, the issue had cost the aquarium nearly 10,000 dollars in electrical damage and the replacement of equipment. A serious investigation was put in order.

A short, stubby finger with a face drawn on pointed to a broken light and outlined the obvious signs of water damage. The finger also stated, in a low, hidden robotic voice, that in no way would steam be able to corrupt the circuitry. The light would have to be shot by nothing less than a steady stream of liquid to bypass its safety measures.

“Damn thing’s a mystery” the finger said.

Fern paused the movie and looked over to Sky. “Is it just me, or this weird?”

Sky resurrected themselves from their previous cuddly position, “No, it’s definitely not just you.” They scratched their head, “Did that reporter look like they were 12 to you?”

Fern laughed a bit, made themselves comfortable again on the couch, “ I thought 10, maybe 14.”

The two of them enjoyed the strange nature of the film. They poked fun at its quirky shots and angles and poorly done audio. But when it was done, and credits rolled, Sky found a deep sense of unease befall them. Not only this, but a thought raced through their brain, a crazy stupid thought hatched by only lunitics or writers or producers of movies, not by a normal everyday person. Sky thought about saving Terry, stealing her from the greedy hands of their keeper, and releasing her back where she belongs; the ocean.

At first, the idea was fun and playful, nothing at all serious-- yet that unsettling feeling remained.

Reading Sky came easily to Fern and they knew, perhaps even before Sky knew, that there was something bothering them. And so they asked.

Sky searched themselves, at first on guard, but soon to relax and see the game at play. They smiled slightly, excited to reveal the cooky thought bothering them. They took a breath, “Okay. This is going to sound strange, I know, but I feel bad for Terry. Like, she looked so sad in that tank.”

Fern scratched their brow, giggled, “This is what’s bothering you?”

Sky giggled too, “Goofy, I know.”

They embraced each other and Fern said, “Well, what do you want to do about it? Can’t just let it bother you forever.”

Sky perked up, jumped to their feet and took on a heroic pose, “I want to save them! Steal her away from their captors-- like in books and movies!”

Fern erupted in laughed, “You want us to steal the octopus? Won’t we get in… In trouble?”

“Not if we become the night, stay as quiet as a whisper, and plan like mad people with a passionate goal. I think we could really do it. You’ve been to the aquarium, it’s not like they have armed guards, operating security cameras, or even sober staff. Who’s going to stop us?”

Fern mulled it over, chewed on their thumb. “You don’t think we’ll get caught?”

“Really don’t-- not if we put our minds to it. I think we can do anything together.”

They quit biting their fingers and nodded as if coming to an internal understanding. “We can be like robinhood.”

Sky jumped with excitement, danced on their toes like a sneaking grinch, “You nailed it my love! We are like robinhood; stealing for good; stealing to save those who are at the will of evil!”

***

It wasn’t long before Sky and Fern took to rewatching the odd documentary a few times. They studied the people in the background, found their Facebook profiles, and questioned them on their day at the aquarium. They researched the lumpy interviewer but found nothing of substance. Everything was fruitless until Fern accidently stumbled upon a short novel written by Terry’s Keeper. There was an Amazon add for it which had his proud face on the cover. The book was called, Ten Legs Of Gold. On the back, there was a synapse that described the author as someone of great wealth, teaching others how to accumulate money through his ten step process. The first step was to dive deep.

“Weird.” Sky said, “you wouldn’t think someone with a bunch of money would still work at a place like our aquarium.”

“Maybe it's their passion. If you were rich, would you still want to teach, or just lounge around all day?”

Sky nodded thoughtfully, “Yeah, I guess I would still want to. We have to busy ourselves doing something, right?”

“Might as well be something you love.”

Sky serpentined their head, shaking around a thought they had about the issue which didn’t quit fit. “You know I agree-- but even in the case where I’m rich, I still would want to teach somewhere that’s a bit more prestigious. Not to shame our aquarium, but it’s kind of gross. It’s like ChuckyCheese, but with glass-eyed fish instead of a mouse.”

“Well, you don’t know his goals. What if he’s trying to challenge himself and improve the aquarium for the better.”

“That’s fair. It would be a challenge after all, even for the best Aquarists.”

The two sat silently, doing their own research on the matter. Fern laid upside down on the couch.

Sky sat criss cross beside them, using their phone to browse the internet for answers on the Keeper. Sky couldn’t swallow that the keeper had managed to make his money off a single book-- especially one on the subject of making money. A bunch of fools, they thought to themselves, a bunch of no good swindlers, all of them!

The keeper, if one is to believe internet blogs, had made his initial bout of wealth selling rare aquatic life to private collectors. He scoured the lower depths of the sea with a net gun and a keen eye for even the slightest twitch of something worth snagging. His first catch, the creature which brought dollar riddled eyes upon him, was nothing other than the especially shy, baby octopus. No other had achieved such a feat of reaching and acquiring the wriggling ocean gem without losing life or limb. The keeper became well known in the sphere of saltwater aquarists in the lower east side of South America, selling creatures to politicians, oil tycoons, and, if rumor has it, leaders of drug cartels.

Sky pointed all this out to Fern, and they chewed on the new information for a moment before erecting themselves on the couch.

In a steady, low tone, Fern said, “Well, I guess we know who’s the bad guy here.”

Sky laughed, “In my opinion, i'm glad this guy’s not some rich saint.”

“True. So, what’s the plan? How do we get Terry back home?”

Sky cracked their fingers with expounding excitement, “Okay, now this is something I’ve been really thinking about.” They tossed Fern a large blue print of the aquarium.

Fern caught the paper with surprise, “Where did you get this?”

“Do you really want to know?”

Sky cleared the coffee table and tapped it to insight Fern to unfurl the paper flat for the two of them to view.

“I..” they unrolled the paper, “ I guess not.”

“Cool, appreciate it. Well, as you can see, I’ve taken the liberty to outline the aquarium's exits in red. We can see them here, here, and don’t forget the secret one around the back over here. Now, the building itself is shaped like a pill. It has three floors, two of which are restricted to employees only. The center floor is where most of the aquatic experience takes place for customers-- all the tanks are located on this floor, as well as the fun games for the kids. The bottom floor is where the aquarium keeps its foods and medicines and particular cleaning supplies to maintain everything. The top floor has all the offices and break rooms. First off, on the center floor, we have Terry’s tank. They rarely take Terry out of her tank on account of her becoming… violent, so we might want to keep that in mind.”

Fern jumped in, “Maybe she’ll understand we're saving her and not attack.”

A sigh of stress left Sky’s nose, “I certainly hope so. Have you seen what a mad octopus can do to someone’s face? Let’s just say it’s terrible.”

Fern pointed to a large green circle on the blueprint, “I'm assuming this is her tank.”

“Unfortunately, you’re right. Our friend’s cage is placed dead center in the enemy territory. We’ll have to be sneaky.”

“What if we create a diversion,” Fern said, “We could bring everyone to the front door, or even to the parking lot, if we say there is a fire.”

“Well, what if instead of the fire, we distract everyone with something beautiful and… and less illegal.”

Fern slapped Sky’s arm jokingly, “You’re worried about getting in trouble over screaming fire in a crowded area, and not stealing the aquarium’s octopus?”

“Saving, not stealing, and all I'm saying is we want to avoid all the attention that that would draw. I'm sure it would work, but the stakes are higher, and perhaps that’s something to avoid.”

Fern rolled their eyes, perked a single sharp brow, “I was just saying, a diversion is something we need to distract everyone. It can’t be too big and blow our cover immediately, and we have to get everyone to look at us, or at least one of us…” Fern strunched their face in thought, “what if I disguise myself as someone important, like a celebrity.”

Sky nodded in suspicious agreement. They stood from the couch and walked a few lengths to give themself a better view of Fern. Sky put their hands up to frame their beautiful partner, look objectively at their face. “You know what,” they said, “I would say you could pull off a clean Jon Bellion. Throw some pads on your arms, a bit of beard make-up. Wow! The more I think about it, you don’t even have to change your voice too much! I bet you could even sing a few of his songs for people if they wanted and still blow them away. What do you think?”

Fern chewed it over, “I think you’re right, but if I have to wear a disques, so do you. We’re both screwed if they get you on camera snooping around where you’re not supposed to be.”

“True.” This idea scared Sky, they had never worn clothes outside of those which were expected of them. They clenched their jaw, studied their shoes. “How do you suppose I disguise myself?”

Fern took to squinting, examining their partner’s body with an eye trained for aesthetics. They rubbed Sky’s fuzzy head. Ran a finger down their cheek, along their forehead and lips. “Hmm…” they thought adioably, tapping an index on their chin. “Since you’re not distracting anyone, we should avoid making you look like someone famous. Maybe, since you typically present masculinly, you could just dress more afaminite. I doubt anyone would be able to point you out on camera.”

Sky emanated. They put out a sense of fear into the air. Fern, noticing the encroaching sadness of their partner, their queer fear approaching on the horrizone like the intestinal nature of distant storm clouds.

Fern slid close, took their partner’s hand, “hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to do it alone.”

Sky stirred, put their head into Fern’s nape, “I know. I guess I’m just afraid people will make fun of me.”

“Oh honey, what for?”

“For not presenting how they expect me too.”

“Are you changing how you look for them, or for Terry?”

“For Terry.”

Fern rubbed Sky’s back, “ and besides, you’ll look great in whatever you chose to wear. I’m more concerned with people liking what you wear too much and wanting to follow you around.” Together they laughed softly, and Sky came out from hiding in Fern’s nape, and they kissed and hugged tenderly. Together they sketched an excellent plan to save their new friend Terry. The first step was to dive deep, and be brave.

***

It was noon, a Thursday. The sky was rather dark out. There were many purplish clouds filling the firmament, and they all let down a steady drizzle of cold rain onto Fern’s lavender Mini Cooper. Sky and them waited in the aquarium parking lot, watching the rain slide down the windshield, silent. They were both nervous. They both thought their dress was slightly uncomfortable, slightly ill-fitted for their frames. Fern wore black slacks, shiny dress shoes, a beard, a binder, a white button-up, and some brown suspenders. They wore a zip up coat with no hood. Sky wore a dirty blonde wig with a wide sun hat. They wore a naturally colored handkerchief hemmed dress which ballooned at the sleeves. Tan, thin thread sandals, with toes painted light blue.

Sky reached over, grabbed Fern’s hand, “Are you ready?”

Fern took a deep breath, closed their eyes, “Yeah, I think so.”

Sky leaned to the window, looked out. There were only a few people outside, a family or two. The kids ran in circles on the grass just before the door while a small, brown haired tour guide tended to the adults. The guide was very enthusiastic when opening the door, redirecting the rambunctious young ones inside. Sky could see, while the door was open, that the aquarium appeared to be nearly full of young people.

“Uhm.” They said incredulously, “I think we may have a problem.”

Fern struggled to see out their window, “What’s that? What’s the problem?”

“I think the aquarium’s full.”

Fern shook their head, “So what?”

“So what?” Sky’s voice was shrill, high pitched.

“The plan doesn’t change right? We still have to distract everyone and free the octopus.”

Sky scrunched their face, frustrated with their partner’s bravery. “You’re right.” They said, searching themselves once more before grabbing the car door handle. “Let’s do this.”

The two left the car swiftly, with a whip of their garments in chilly air. Fern put on a firm ballcap to conceal their face. Sky pulled down their sun hat. They held hands, and Sky took the door, opening up a world of warm fishy smells. There was another thing too that struck their senses: all those people Sky saw from the parking lot, they were all young Afab people, no older than fifteen. Each of them wore a uniform. The uniform was bland, checkered, and dull. They all had on gray knee high skirts, visible leggings, and black dress shoes.

Fern laughed slightly to themself.

Sky, ennervered by all the moving bodies, “what’s so funny?”

“I think this just got a little easier for us.”

“Why’s that?”

Fern walked in, “just follow my move.”

No one paid any mind to the two. Everyone was very busy watching the young ones, making sure they didn’t do anything uncouth. The shaperoans looked just as scared as Sky did, except they were all following around a group of young kids with their hands pushing gently on their backs, saying, “this way, this way”.

Soon Sky relaxed a bit. The two stopped at a little table with a map taped to its surface. It told them where they were in the building with a large star, and it said where all the fish were tanks laid in the building. Sky pointed to the tank in the center of the building, shook their head. “That’s it, lets go check on it before we start,” they said.

“Alright’ and they swiftly went off to their destination, swimming between excited kids and frustrated adults just looking for the restroom.

Terry’s tank changed since Fern and Sky saw it last on their TV. Someone had gone through the trouble of decorating the tank, inside and out. Previously, the internals of the tank were bare, nothing but a small hidey hole Terry called home, a bed of sand thrown across the floor, and finger smudged glass to encapsulate it all. It was a very depressing place, but now, the tank appeared to be closer to an oceanic creature’s comfiest dream. The sand was full, golden, riddled with tiny shells and lively microbes and gelly weeds reaching their green fingers up to the sky. The tiny hidey hole was transformed into an eclectic array of coral and large rocks and bits of old plane. On the outside of the tank were paper streamers in bright pinks and yellows and oranges, and they all had small affirmations for the octopus written in a child’s hand.

The two walked around the tank, silently examining it up and down, reading the little misspelled notes. Once they walked the circumference of the tank, the Keeper appeared with a rag over his shoulder and a squirt bottle in hand. He was wiping away all the smudges left by the kids. Sky, noticing the Keeper, stopped dead in their tracks, grabbed Fern’s arm, and gestured over to the man putting his shoulder into a particularly stubborn booger adhered to the glass. With each rotation of his arm, the Keeper’s keys jangled like the sturn walk of a cowboy.

“look, it’s him,” Sky whispered.

Fern nodded, “He’s distracted right now, lets go the other way before he looks up.”

“Yeah, we should check out the door to the basement. We’ll need one of their mobile holding tanks for Terry and some food for the trip.”

Fern and Sky walked quickly away from the Keeper down a flight of stairs, and toward two big swinging doors in the back. The doors read in bold red letters, “employees only”. Hesitant Fern pushed the door open slightly, peered into the room with their head alone, and popped back, looking to Sky below the brim of their ballcap. “I don't think there is anyone in there. The room seems empty, wanna snoop?”

Sky breathed deeply, “uh, yeah. Let’s be quick though. I don’t want to ruin everything over being escorted out for trespassing.”

Looking both ways, the two got low and snuck into the backroom. It really was empty. The aquarium, being a low income business, had very few staff. The room itself appeared to be well kept, highly organized with an astute eye for arranging. All the similar colored items were on one spot of the wall, arranged based on height. On another wall were pictures of the Keeper and his sick, weak looking father. There were at least twenty pictures, most of which were from a private hospital room, with his father laying in bed smiling, and the Keeper leaning in to pose with their faces touching at the cheek. The photos were pinned in a long line, with the first one being of the Keeper as a young adult, and the final being the worn, calloused man he was now, but not at the hospital like all the others. The final photo was of the Keeper and his father, but his father wasn’t smiling in his sick bed, but blissfully placid within his white satin laced coffin.

There too, in the corner of the backroom, was a cot with a single pillow and thin green wool blanket. Below the cot was a pair of slippers and a book thicker than a dictionary. It was on the emotions of octopuses and dolphins, two very intelligent oceanic creatures.

Fern and Sky sluthed through the room, searching quietly, without readched hands and wriggling fingers. Eventually, they happened upon the mobile tank. It was in a far left closet, beneath an old weaved blanket thrown over its mass, below hung button ups and suits and fancy hats. It was Sky who happened upon it, and gestured to bring their love to come close and examine the tank together. But, when all was apparently good and quiet, the subtle sound of someone coming down the stairs struck their ears. The walked coughed hard, stopped their descent to remedy their struggle with a rubbing of their chest and slowing of their breath. Sky and Fern could hear their breath, how it sounded as if an oily paper bag were to be inflated and deflated, its sides sticking to one another and bringing about an awful snapping and popping.

Scared, Sky and Fern quickly hid in the closet, peeking between the thin cracks of the wall and closet door. The Keeper entered, belabored by his allment. He walked over to a sink installed in the wall, its pipes exposed and rusted, posoline chipped. He washed his face, coughed painfully, and poured himself a glass of water, took some medicine from behind the mirror above the sink.

The Keeper walked over to the line of photos, touched one softly with the edge of his index finger. He sat on his cot, rubbed his face, ran his fingers through his jet black hair. He was sweating. He then laid back on the cot and reached down to the book with one hand and brought it up and began reading it on his side, the bulk of the book laying on the bed. He was more than halfway through it.

Fern and Sky, seeing the Keeper settle himself in, felt trapped. There was no way out but the doors they had entered, and the Keeper would not like seeing strangers hiding in his closet. He would surely call the police. So, they anxiously waited for a miracle, and it came. Only ten minutes passed with the Keeper reading before an alarm sounded on his walkie. A higher pitched voice told him, “Hey, you might want to see this. Terry’s playing.” And he shot out of bed as if no illness had previously struck his lungs and ran out the room, hooting and hollering with excitement.

Fern and Sky looked to each other. They waited for all to be silent and left the closet, confused.

“What just happened?” Fern asked, scratching their forehead contemplation.

“I...I guess Terry’s playing” Sky was unsure of their statement, “should we go look?”

Fern agreed hesitantly, “I mean, if they’re not miserable…”

Sky tapped their lip, “We have to leave here anyways to save them.”

Fern nodded,grabbed Sky’s hand, “Yeah, you’re right.”

All the young people gathered around Terry’s tank, pressed against the glass. On top of the tank, on a platform fixed to its side, the Keeper stood heroically, proud of his achievements. Inside the tank, the once shy Terry was now extraordinarily unabashed by all the watching eyes. She was throwing shells high into the water and catching them. She got bored of juggling and began cartwheeling back and forth. She was nothing like a plastic bag.

The Keeper was given a headset microphone by the brown haired tour guide, and he began to speak eloquently to the crowd who all went silent, opened their ears.

“My friends, I’m so happy to share this moment with you all. It has been many years coming-- trails beyond what anyone should face-- but here we are, celebrating my dear friend Terry’s happiness. You see, many of you don’t know this, but Terry and I have known each other for years, longer than I’ve known any man or woman outside of my family. Though we are separate creatures, our stories are the same. Just like me, her family was taken from them by disease. I watched it happen as a young boy, unable to do anything for them due to my lack of understanding. I watched them all parish, all but one. This struck me to my core, as at that time, my own family was being destroyed, with nothing for me to do but watch. But! As time has shown, our stories are not tragedies, so do not shed a single tear for me or my friend, for if it wasn’t for our previous circumstances, I would not be in the position I am to take care of her.” In the end, it was the Keeper who cried first, his lip quivering at the last word of his sentence. He wiped the tear away, looked down at the water, down to Terry who sat at its surface, listening to him speak. The Keeper smiled, used his sleeve to dry himself once more, only to have Terry playfully blast a steady stream of water onto his face. This brought about a rowdy nature from the Keeper, who without hesitation, lept down into the tank to begin wrestling the ten legged Terry. The octopus tied him up with half of her legs and used one tentacle to pick his nose. The keeper looked at home, as if he were in combat with his sibling and not an enemy.

Sky and Fern cried, they were both sensitive to sappy stories. They held each other's hands and walked to exist to escape the cheers from the crowd.

“I don’t think we should take Terry anymore,” Sky said. “We might have jumped the gun a bit and assumed a little more than we should have.”

Fern gave a half smile, “Yeah. I think we would do more harm than good separating them from each other. It seems like they need one another.”

Hands intertwined, Sky and Fern walked back to the car.

“You know,” Fern said, unlocking the car, “you look really cute in that dress.”