**The writing prompt was a visit to an aquarium**
The Aquarium
It was my first time at an aquarium, but this one was much different than I ever had imagined.
First of all, it appeared that we were in the fishbowl. Water surrounded us, and we had limited movement. The surroundings must have been made of sheer glass, but you couldn’t see it.
Let me backtrack a bit.
This was the maiden voyage on the exploratory excursion called the WTF, which stood for the Water Tracking Facts. The admission price was only a dollar. It supposedly was the first of its kind. Once you paid, you were placed in a room by yourself.
The room itself was about the size of a bedroom closet. When the door was closed behind me, everything went black.
You listened to instructions that somehow came into your head. My instructions were to take three steps forward. That seemed odd since when I entered the room, it didn’t seem like three steps in any direction was possible. I slowly stepped forward as instructed. Surprisingly, I didn’t bump into anything, and on my third step, I found myself in the enclosure I had mentioned in the beginning.
The ground I was standing on was solid earth, with plants and small trees around me. I began moving forward. There was no problem with my movement until I hit an invisible wall. Using my hand, I followed the wall around the enclosure until I reached my starting point.
Wherever I was, it was a circular domed area about twenty-five feet in diameter. I remind you that I could see no walls, but water and aquatic animals surrounded what was on the other side of the dome. None of the people I came with to this aquarium were with me. In addition, the door/closet I had passed through to get here had disappeared.
I could hear the sounds the aquatic animals were making outside, but I could not understand what they were saying. They seemed to be in family groupings: an adult whale, with some smaller ones with it, and a large school of fish with some bigger fish amongst them. I also saw something that looked like a human in a mermaid costume swimming from group to group, clearly speaking to them. How it breathed was beyond me.
I was bewildered. I called out to no one in particular that I had seen enough and would like to go home now, but I got no response.
At one point, I saw what appeared to be a window open relatively quickly, and some food was placed in one corner of the enclosure. I assume it was for me.
I started banging on the glass or whatever the wall was made of, hoping that someone outside would hear me.
Then, I saw the lights dim on both the outside and inside of the enclosure. Before the lights went out completely, a large manatee floated by and placed a sign in front of the enclosure.
That sign I could read. It read, “Human Zoo is closed until tomorrow.”
WTF!
