A Visit to the Dead Fish Lounge

Short fiction - Written June 2023

In the time that had passed since April, Josey had received, mulled over, and mentally prepared to accept an invitation. The invitation itself was printed on imitation Ancient Parchment, evidently dyed with a blend of coffee grounds and brown liquor and burned unsystematically around the edges with a bic lighter or some such miniature flame.

The first words printed on the 3x8 page were taken (as Josey discovered on poetryfoundation.org) from a 1920 TS Eliot poem. Beneath that, abruptly, appeared the words “MR. JOSEY JONES” in block letters, centered on the page, and followed by something along the lines of “you are invited … sixteenth day of the sixth month … [yadda yadda yadda] ... great honor … particularly selected for your qualities of [this that and the other] ... [blah blah blah] ... please retain this information along with the address and time printed … in your mind and your mind only … please go so far as to [destroy it] … once you’ve [committed its contents to memory] … no written or spoken mention of … our mysterious and potent Order … [we cannot emphasize enough] the importance of silence and discretion.”

As June 16th approached, it crossed his mind that he should at least let someone know where he would be. That would make sense, practically speaking. If he began acting differently after accepting the invitation, this change would be of interest, theoretically. If it was all a prank, as he cautiously suspected it might be, then at least, by disobeying their most firm request, he would be able to say he didn’t completely fall for it. And if he never returned, whisked away on a grand adventure, murdered, or kidnapped into slavery, then at least someone would know where it had all gone wrong (or right).

But, after all, he destroyed the card, mentioned it to no one, and memorized the date and address, as he’d been instructed. Not out of obedience or fear of the consequences, mostly out of self-pity. Who was there to tell? Who would believe him? Who would care? These types of thoughts, sometimes depressing, sometimes liberating, were the thoughts of a man who had nothing to lose.

On the afternoon of June 16th, he prepared to attend an appointment with an Order that had called him “Mr”; An Order that wanted something to do with him in particular; An Order that had referred to itself, seemingly unironically, as “potent”. He got his affairs in order and hid all his belongings as he would if he was going away for many months. If, when he got back, everything was not where he had left it, well, he’d start a new pile. It wouldn’t be the first time.

On his walk to the address he had memorized, which was on a street he had walked down many times before, Josey became convinced that the invitation was the setup to a sick joke at his expense.

“You think we want bum, warted fucks in our mysterious and potent Order?” he imagined them jeering. “No. We don’t want gullible lunks like you.”

“But I’m not those things,” he practiced saying. “I had a strong feeling this was all a joke. Believe me, I get it. I’m in on it, too. I envisioned this exact conversation on the walk over.”

The invitation had specified “first floor.” It had listed the floor number after the building number and street name. Then, after the word “floor” there had been an asterisk, which, when followed, led the reader to a footnote, which read, “make sure you ask the first person you see inside the building to direct you to the first floor.”

The building was made of brick. The address he was looking for corresponded to a small doorway, tucked back about 5 feet from the sidewalk, sandwiched between a Subway storefront and a grubby Korean-fusion restaurant called “Yummi Burritos.” Josey told himself he’d like to eat there someday, if he made it out of this meeting alive.

To the right of the unmarked door, on the brick wall, was a directory that made no mention of floor numbers, just numbers 375-385, each with a name beside it, such as “Humphrey” or “Bartholomew.” The invitation had not mentioned anything about being buzzed in.

Josey tried the door. It was unlocked, so he let himself in.

The door he entered was of perfectly standard door proportions, about 8 feet tall and 3 feet wide. Inside, he found a long, rectangular room. 120 feet from the door he had just opened, there was a corresponding door of the exact same size, centered directly between two 21 foot lengths of carpeted, blue wall, lacking decoration of any sort. Upon closing the door, Josey saw that the wall on his side of the room was the same. Between the two portals, spanning the length of the room, was a red rug (3 feet across, matching perfectly to the foot of each door) with limited but tasteful oriental embroidery along the edges. On one side of the rug, to Josey’s left, there were booths and tables. To the right, spanning the full extent of the room, there was an elegant marble bar lined with swiveling barstools, topped with all sorts of ordinary barclutter, such as ashtrays, bowls of cherries, cash registers, stacks of coasters, and two evenly spaced goblets of decorative pears. Behind the bar was one extremely long shelf, holding many unmarked and, by the looks of them, non-repeating bottles of liquor. There were floor to ceiling, end to end mirrors behind the bar and behind the tables. Thus, for 120 feet, you could look at one side or the other and see the pattern repeated onwards into the mirrors’ horizon: bar, rug, tables, tables, rug, bar, bar, rug, etc. The only decoration, if you didn’t count the shelf of bottles, was an ovular mahogany plaque with a 16 inch rainbow trout attached to it.

Other than the fish, Josey Jones was alone in the room.

Boldly, he plopped himself onto a stool at the bar and started into thinking and waiting. Unless they went by the European system of numbering floors beginning at 0, this would likely be the first floor. Since there was no one yet to be seen who he could ask, the best thing, surely, would be to wait. He was still somewhat early and not completely convinced he should be here anyway.

He took a stemless cherry from the bowl and swallowed it whole. No pit. It was one of those bright red, formerly canned cherries found only in ice cream parlors and bars such as this one. Mendocino? Macciano? Something like that.

From slightly beneath, ahead, and to the left of him, he heard the clomping of hard-soled shoes on wooden floors. Presently, a woman’s head emerged one chunk at a time above the bar, as if she was playing that trick one can play in which, beginning in a crouched position behind an occlusion, you walk forward, squatting less and less with each step, until you are standing up all the way, giving the impression that you had just ascended a staircase or, done in reverse, descended one. Forgetting himself for a moment out of delight, Josey hoisted his torso over the bar and peeked at the floor on the left side, where he found, in fact, a flight of stairs descending into unknowable (or, at least, unseeable) corridors and, presumably, kitchens, storage closets, and important meeting rooms. The woman behind the bar, who was now more than just the-top-of-a-head but not quite a full body, made no mention Josey’s tactlessness, but for a moment it seemed she was readying herself to have to yank him back up and over the bar if he tucked and rolled over it and made a break towards the staircase.

But he did not. He returned to his seat and asked, “Is this the first floor?”

“No, this is the third floor,” she replied. Josey was prepared to accept this statement as sarcasm, deserved derision for his stupid question, but her words were spoken in earnest. She produced, from underneath the bar, a wooden shim or doorstop attached to a silver ring, which was attached to a metal skeleton key. She handed it to Josey, gestured towards the back door, and waited for him to begin his walk down the long, red rug before heading back down the stairs.

Josey did as she indicated.

On the wooden keychain, the word “Cowboys” was engraved or laser-printed, along with a humorous drawing of a man (or boy, as it may be) sitting on a toilet, covering his privates with a ten gallon hat, holding a lasso in the air with his free hand, and wearing nothing but knee high cowboy boots.

He returned to the center of the room. From his position, centered between the two mirrors, the room appeared much wider than it was long. In fact, because of the mirrors and the point their infinitely repeating reflections of the room receded into, it looked roughly proportionally as wide as it truly was long. As if it was turned 90 degrees and magnified. Thus, if it was truly 120x45, it became, at Josey’s vantage point, 120x320. It was impossible to pin down exactly how far away the infinite series of rooms created by the mirrors went. Physically, they didn’t “go” anywhere at all. Neither did Josey have any special ability to approximate the lengths of walls or rooms created by parallel mirrors. It was only a feeling, that the proportions of the room remained constant between reality and appearance. In that way, Josey felt comfortable in the room, despite the cold effect engendered by its decor.

About two thirds of his way down the red rug that would lead him beyond the far door, beneath the barroom, and towards his pre-ordained appointment, Josey Jones considered, for the first time, the full implication of what it would mean for the Order to be exactly as it presented itself. For one thing, it takes abundant resources and impressive foresight to maintain such well-curated ambiguity. The invitation had made its way into his hands, had mentioned his full name (in block letters, no less), had brought him this far, and, still, he had no clue what he was in for.

This was not the type of cheap thrill you hear about pulled off by some kid in baggy shorts and a baseball cap grounded from fortnite and reddit for crashing his parents car. If it was something like that: explain the lady behind the bar. Explain the mirrors on the walls.

No benevolent friend of his was waiting behind the second door with an assortment of loved-ones, once-promising acquaintances, and long-lost family prepared to yell, “Surprise! We love you after all! We promise never to let another 15 years pass without remembering you’re still out there, somewhere!”

No. This was the real deal. Or it was the cops. But the cops wouldn’t use such elaborate trickery. Would they?

Josey reached the far door. Facing towards it, the room behind him no longer seemed, in his memory, an infinitely repeating sequence of banquet halls, but became what it was: just one underlit and sparsely decorated barroom. Mirrors lose some of their power when confined to memory.

He tried the key. It did not fit. There was no hole, in fact, in which it could fit. He opened his mouth to protest but knew not to turn back to the woman at the bar. She would be gone, of course. She must have sized him up, decided he was unworthy, given him the men’s restroom key instead. She couldn't bring herself to tell him directly that he didn't meet the Order's standards, so she gave him this runaround and slipped away.

And, of course, it was all one big weeding out process.

Countless cards were printed, treated, left blank after the poem but before the invitation. Then, every combination of names they could think of was filled into the blank cards. Cards were held for years until the person who matched the name was tracked down. How many times had he given out his first and last name over the past months? Far too many. At the coat check on free day at the Natural History Museum; when signing up for a chick-fil-a members’ rewards account; when trying to build trust with Microsoft’s new chatbot. Someone had found him, sifted through thousands of pre-made invitations, and matched face to card. “Josey Jones. We got one.” Then: the natural process of elimination. A vast majority, surely, would never show up. Only the most gullible or the most committed would make it to the door. A small number would start pressing buttons on the intercom and get shewed away by voices on the other end. Some would make it in the front door, get spooked, and split. Those who made it to the barstool, like Josey, represented the top of the crop and the bottom of the barrel. Those who truly belonged in the Order, per their commitment, and those who had so little going for them that they had nothing better to do than follow a whim past the point when they should have turned back. The woman from the bottom of the stairs was in charge of separating the wheat from the chaff. She had the ability to sense worthiness by the look in a candidate’s eye, by the way they demanded to be shown to the first floor. To those who belonged, she gave the key to the far door. To people like Josey, she gave the key to the little boy’s room. (From there, who knew how many trials awaited, each trickier than the last? Maybe it was a blessing that he would be spared the harder tasks that could serve only to demean or endanger him. If anything, the woman behind the bar had evaluated him aptly.) Josey knew a rejection when he saw one. It wasn’t the first time. Nor, he was sure, would it be the last.

For good measure, he tried the door handle. It was unlocked.

“Just because you’re handed a key,” Josey reminded himself, “Doesn’t mean the first door you see will be locked.”

The door at the end of the mirrored room opened outwards. Not a centimeter beyond the threshold, the floor and ceiling veered sharply downwards, in parallel, creating a tunnel angled nearly 60 degrees below horizontal. The floor was made of a series of connected metal plates like a treadmill or airport terminal people-mover. It was stationary when he opened the door, but as soon as Josey stepped aboard, it whirred into motion and swept him away down the dark tunnel.

And dark, it was. The further he was taken from the mirrored room, the less the 3x8 door he’d left open illuminated the tunnel. The door receded from his view in the same way that the dead fish on the wall behind the bar receded, the further one looked into the tunnel created by the mirrors in the room above.

Luckily, the shoes he’d worn that day had enviable soles which maintained traction with the toothed escalator surface, despite the steep decline. If he were to overcome the inertia of stability and fall forward and down, tumbling through the long, angled tube, it would not be because of his shoes. He would have to do it on his own accord. And still, standing on a downward slope as you’re moved forward is not easy on the ankles.

As the light from the door above slipped away and flickered out, he began to notice a light at the bottom of his tunnel, growing at the same rate the light above him had evaporated. For about 3 minutes between losing the first light and really gaining any visibility from the second, he was in near perfect darkness. During this time, he began playing with angles precariously. Did it make more sense to stand upright, perpendicular to the walkway, or somewhere in between? Which way was perfectly opposite to gravity, anyway? In the dark it was hard to tell. Josey became aware of the danger of overswaying one way or the other. It was beginning to seem more likely that he’d end up on his face or butt before his ride ended. For a minute he surfed the escalator, widening his stance and moving his center of weight forward or backward as needed. Eventually, he decided that squatting would maximize stability still further. In the dark, all this safety maneuvering seemed acceptable. It dawned on him, though, that seen in the light or, say, by a hidden heat-sensing camera trained to him, he would look ridiculous, especially considering he was in the process of being recruited by a mysterious and potent Order. But, he decided, it was better to take stable and strange stances than to slide to the bottom head first and come face-to-face with the Order bloody and bruised.

Abruptly, the moving ground leveled out. The change put him on his heels for a moment, but, thanks to his strong, squatted base of balance, he remained upright.

Abruptly after that, the escalator halted. This change toppled him. 

He had gained a slight awareness of the light at the bottom of the tunnel sometime during his experiments with equilibrium, and at multiple times upon turning back, he’d thought he’d lost the light from above. But now he knew, on this flat platform, that this was the point in which there was no remaining light for him to see things by. Each dot of light above and below was only visible if you turned your head slightly away from it, and noticed it out of your periphery. As if, to acknowledge it was to remind your brain that it wasn’t there.

For a minute, awaiting instruction or the presence of a representative of the Order, Josey Jones sat on the ground, with elbows on knees, as if he’d known to ride down that way from the beginning. When this plan bore no results, he started scooting around with arms extended, in search of a wall, button, door, or keyhole.

As he groped at the air like a baby fascinated by a hanging mobile, a voice overhead said, “Level 2. All debarking parties do so now.” The voice allowed one half-second window for riders to heed its command and then the moving floor kicked back into motion.

This time, he knew how to ride it. And with light from below instead of above, the second leg of his journey was much more manageable.

In fact, he was beginning to enjoy this whole rigamarole. He has always had a penchant for puzzles. Although, while he felt he’d been puzzling his way through the whole experience, he realized he hadn’t actually passed any tests, per se, or moved any stones onto any special platforms thus unlocking any previously hidden physical contraptions he could use to his benefit. He had one key, which, so far, did not unlock any door. The invitation, the intercom, the proportions of the barroom, a stop at the second floor on the escalator. None of these really asked anything of him other than to stay the course. Every trial he had faced, come to think of it, had been a trial of the mind. What’s more, each one had been imposed on him by his own expectations and doubts. No action had been required so far, other than to keep moving forwards and do as instructed. It was like riding a roller-coaster in that way. His mind was grappling to protect him from what it perceived as threats, and yet, he was strapped in and there was nothing he could do. The ride would continue no matter what he thought of it.

Reflecting on the competent hands that had brought him this far, a great faith in the Order washed over him. 

As he neared the bottom, he saw that the light of the first floor emanated from a single lamp, on a small table, at the bottom of the conveyor belt he was riding. When he got to the bottom, the escalator terminated. He stepped off onto solid ground for the first time in what felt like weeks. He approached the lamp. It did not flicker or grow brighter or give any hint as to where he should go. It was only a lamp. It was not for him to look for clues in.

But to his left, there was a short hallway, not 3 feet long, with a door at the end. To his right, the same.

At last, a test. Right or Left, the world’s most ancient test, some might say.

Although, now that he noticed the labels on the doors, he realized it was a much simpler test than that (or at least a different one). The two doors were labeled “Cowboys” and “Cowgirls”, respectively.

Despite no discernable country or western theme in any other part of the building so far, here, at the bottom of a long, dark tunnel, were these confounding words. Was the Order a cowhand union? Who just so happened to rent space at this labyrinth of a building? Surely not. For all the labels people had used on Josey, he’d never been confused for a cowboy. The Order knew what it was doing. It wouldn’t have invited him if it was for Cowboys and Cowgirls only.

Holding the key that said “Cowboys”, Josey considered, for a moment, which door to try it on. The Order had never suggested he do one thing and expected him to do the opposite. Then again, it’d never given him two options to choose from before. They might be pulling the old switcheroo on him. A little reverse psychology to keep things interesting.

In the end, he chose to try the door that said “Cowboys” because he figured it had the benefit of being the straightforward choice as well as the double reverse psychology option. A zero-cross, single-cross, and double-cross are all common. Anything three levels of deceit or higher is just excessive. The “Cowboy” door was what they’d expect him to choose and what they’d never expect him to choose.

Also, he reasoned, if he chose “Cowgirls” and it turned out to be a women’s restroom after all, this might have been grounds for sideways glances from any potentially old-fashioned members of the Order.

He tried the key in the door. Bingo. He entered the bathroom and looked around. Pretty standard stuff, really. 3 stalls, 8 urinals. Must be a lot of pissers in the Order. No mirrors at the sinks, though. Doing his due diligence, he checked each stall (empty) and each faucet (functional). The only thing potentially out of the ordinary, which Josey noticed only after trying to squeeze out some dribble into each of the urinals, was an emergency exit sign  just above the door, with an arrow pointing “up”. 

Now, Josey knew there were a few schools of thought when it came to arrows. He’d thought about it before. Some arrows pointed “up” and meant to indicate that the person was to go forwards. This sort of made sense because there was no way to draw an arrow depicting depth on a 2-dimensional sign surface. “Onwards and Upwards!” one could imagine these forward/up arrows suggesting.

There were a few issues with arrows like this though. One being, the same didn’t apply for “backwards”. An arrow pointing “down” would never be read to mean “back up”. In this case, if the exit sign meant to indicate that the door to the bathroom was the door that should be used in the case of an emergency, a “down” arrow would very clearly mean “forwards” because it would be pointing straight at the door it meant for you to exit through. So, there was clearly something off about a system in which both an “up” arrow and a “down” arrow suggest the exact same type of movement. If the “up” arrow meant to indicate that the exit was through the door beneath it, one could see where a viewer of the sign might get confused.

The other way of reading arrows though, said that an “up” arrow means “go up”. Josey preferred this interpretation.

In this instance, though, even if “up” meant “up”, there was still some ambiguity. Of course, two floors beneath ground level, the exit would naturally be “up” from where the sign was. If the sign meant to say, “in the case of an emergency get yourself back up to ground level,” it would be good advice, though not very helpful.

Then, there was the most literal interpretation of them all: the sign meant to indicate that a person wishing to exit should climb up to the ceiling, push up on a ceiling panel and tunnel their way through the walls of the building back out to safety.

Josey did so.

It wasn’t a difficult journey, nor a short one. After crawling above the Cowboys’ bathroom for 10 or so crawl paces, he came upon a ladder, which then led him to a walkway, another ladder, a couple crawl-spaces, something like a slide (or chute), another ladder, a storage room,  a spiraling staircase, and finally a metal hallway that pooped him out three blocks away from the address he’d started at that morning.

“Fascinating,” Josey thought.

He waited there, on the sidewalk, for three hours. He sat down and looked at everyone who passed him on the street, wondering if any of them belonged to the Order. People threw pennies at his feet, which he left where they landed. He didn’t need pity or money, he needed to be given another task to mull over, figure out. He was, by now, a toy soldier, only interested in being used as a pawn by the great Player (or Players) of whatever game they wanted him for. He needed to be deployed on another tour of duty, so to speak. He felt that he knew what he should be doing. He was never meant to be “left to his own devices”, to “choose his own adventure”. He needed a series of simple riddles to work through and arrows to follow, to the best of his abilities. Not only was it fun, he was good at it! The Order had found a willing and able participant in their various tasks and chores.

So he waited there on the sidewalk, keeping his eye out for a representative or spokesperson in disguise, who would throw a hood over his head and take him to another mysterious building to navigate or give him a set of instructions along the lines of “your mission, should you choose to accept it…” 

None came.

He went about his business, then. Went back and recovered his belongings. Went through his days looking out for long tunnels. He was no longer scared of heights, depths, or distances. To him, now, the longer the distance, the greater the promise of mental gymnastics. The more unusual a situation, the greater the opportunity for an Order-like event. If he had the chance, he decided, he would spend the rest of his time distracting himself by following trivial paths and proving his worth by not getting lost. He began seeing puzzles and signs in such minutiae as the duration of a traffic light or the number of cars that passed under it when it turned green. He counted everything, educated himself in combinatorics and numerology, and studied history in search of relevant dates, events, and secret societies. He became incredibly qualified to work in many related fields, but none were quite exactly as straightforward yet stimulating as the Order had been, for the brief time he spent in it.

He waited years for another invitation, which would say something along the lines of, “Congratulations. As you know, you passed our first test that morning so many years ago. You have now passed our second, much more vital test, which we call The Interregnum. We have been watching you to see how you would conduct yourself in the years since your initial recruitment. You have remained a committed devotee of the Order, regardless of the complete radio silence we imposed on you. Well done. It is only through faith in the complete absence of evidence that we can tell who the Real Ones are. You may now join our Order, at long last. You deserve it.”

No such second invitation ever came.