Half the desk’s surface was covered in small random everyday objects and even a half-eaten cup of instant noodles complete with a pair of chopsticks sticking out of it, with the only thing that looked like it actually belonged there being a desktop PC. That PC at the moment was in the middle of running a game being played by a 22 year-old boy, whose deep blue eyes were concentrated hard on every in-game move, while he did his best to make fittingly humorous commentary during the gameplay through the mic on the headphones he wore over his dark unkempt hair.

The car he was driving unexpectedly slipped on a puddle of oil left behind by one of the opposing cars he was racing against, resulting in an out-of-control spin. This allowed an opponent car that was right on his tail to speed past his, but he had no intention to let it overtake him. Especially not when the finish line to the last lap of the championship was straight ahead.

“You’ll not get through me!” He shouted at the screen and immediately fired three bottle rockets he was saving for emergencies such as this at the car ahead of him while it was still within firing range. This attempt at a last minute save proved to be successful, and the car he had opened fire at was blasted off course to land upside down on the edge of the track.

“Fumble recovery!” The boy shouted with excitement and wasted no time speeding past the fallen car before it could flip itself back onto its wheels, and next second, he was past the finish line before all the other ones. “…and touchdown! And yeah, I don’t care if I’m using football terms in a RC car race, I just emerged victorious when I thought I couldn’t so please let me have this one!”

He then sat back proudly in his chair to watch the brief victory cutscene before announcing the end of today’s stream. “Three whole championship’s worth of gameplay at once, but the toughest is yet to come, therefore that’ll be saved for another time!” With that the webcam was shut off, and he once again sat back in his chair, this time to relax from all the intensity of the game just now.

It was then that he noticed the cup of noodles he had left unattended on one side of the desk, and he reached over to it to see if it was empty, as he couldn’t recall if he had finished them or not. Sure enough, what greeted his eyes was a wad of half a cup’s worth of soggy instant noodles that he had completely forgotten about in the excitement of his game.

“Oh goddamn it.” He muttered to himself and quickly snarfed them down, before hearing the front door open just as he was chewing up the last of the stuff. This sent him into a different kind of frenzy, one where he grabbed the items scattered all over his desk and hid them under the bedsheets and dropped the paper cup the noodles were in into the trash can by his feet.

Looking at the much cleaner state of his desk now, he thought, “Not too bad for an improvisation, I’ll deal with it later…” when his bedroom door opened to reveal a man standing in the doorway and saying, “You could’ve at least said hello to your ol’ man from where you were, Caleb.”

“Sorry dad, I was just wrapping up tonight’s stream when you came.” Caleb replied, then awkwardly added a very short “Hi.” With his hand in the air.

Snickering, Caleb’s father put his son’s hand down and asked, “Eaten dinner yet? And no need to ask me, I did on my way home.”

“Yeah, fixed myself a little something with what we got in the fridge.” Caleb muttered with a not very truthful sideways glance that went unnoticed by his father, much to his relief.

“Good to hear – you know I’m not against all that game streaming or whatever you do, but if you’re gonna do that the least you can do is eat something more than just whatever’s convenient to eat in front of the camera.” Said Caleb’s father, before pausing to glance at Caleb’s room and continued, “At least you remembered to tidy your desk like I told you to this morning.”

“Gotta have a clean space to play those games in, amirite?” Caleb shrugged, hoping to god his father wouldn’t step in and lift the bedsheets.

Thankfully he didn’t, as he just simply nodded in approval and left Caleb be, with his final words being, “Don’t stay up too late, now.” As he closed the bedroom door.

When he was sure his father was out of earshot, Caleb breathed a sigh of relief and proceeded to take out the things he hid under his bedsheets to put them away somewhere else. While he was doing that he noticed the empty cup he had thrown in the trash out of the corner of his eye. Only then did he realize the smell of noodles was filling the room.

“Miracle he didn’t smell that.” Caleb muttered, and opened the window for some non-noodle smelling air. He figured it would be best to dispose of the cup later, when his father went to bed.

As these thoughts crossed his mind, he heard his phone make a noise from behind him. Recognizing the noise as a text notification, he checked it to see it was Noel asking him if he could be available tomorrow evening, mentioning there was something she wanted to show him in person.

“You know I’m not going anywhere, so take that as a yes.” Caleb texted a reply. He wouldn’t know exactly why Noel would want to meet him during the evening as opposed to the more typical daytime hours until the next day, when she texted him on her way back home to tell him it was her first day on her new job, and so she wouldn’t be home until their promised time.

“You could have told me sooner about that, but good for you – so you’re finally getting a source of income of your own like myself.” He texted back.

“Yesterday evening I was busy preparing for today so sorry about that, and thanks.” Noel replied, before adding, “Don’t know if what you do could be a good comparison to what I started doing as of today though, the pay seems more promising than a month’s worth of your channel’s ad revenue.”

Caleb knew she was joking about that part from the way she had added goofy-faced emojis next to the text, so in response he said, “Rome wasn’t built in a day, y’know – so you just wait till the day Markiplier will be eating his heart out at the very sight of my channel :P” to which Noel jokingly replied again, “I’ll find myself a way to age as slowly as possible to live to see that day come.”

Some more playful banter through texts later Noel finally arrived home, prompting Caleb to head right over. When he got there he was greeted by Noel letting him inside with a sandwich in one hand, and upon being asked what that was for she simply replied, “Dinner.”

“Really?” Caleb said, smirking with slight disbelief.

Noel smirked back at him. “You’re not one to say something like that, Mr. Ramen Noodle; I’ve seen the way you eat during your gameplay videos.”

Caleb laughed and shook his head. “Man, we really should learn how to cook for ourselves, shouldn’t we? Imagine if our friends over in college could see us now, how pathetic would we look to them?”

Noel laughed along and nodded in agreement, but deep down their thoughts went beyond just joking around with each other over the matter. Neither of them heard a lot from the friends they had graduated high school with ever since they went away for college – presumably because they were so busy with class assignments and such – but from the way their parents as well as their friends’ parents talked with one another, how they were doing was a far different story from their own. From making themselves at home in their dorms and making all new friends to remembering every single bit of work they needed to do for classes and/or exam preparations, their friends seemed to be doing very much fine on their own. Things that Noel and Caleb couldn’t imagine themselves doing without messing up when they still couldn’t fix a proper meal to eat.

However, they weren’t meeting up together to discuss such heavy matters. Caleb decided to get their minds out of them first by clearing his throat and piping up, “So your shift ends sometime around when you have dinner?”

Noel nodded, adding, “Or later than that if there’s too many people to serve, but I don’t look forward to that ever happening anytime soon.”

“I’d rather it not happen at all.” Caleb said. “Not just for the obvious reasons, but just this morning I was watching the news and they mentioned something about four teenagers disappearing from the beach near here while playing around with fireworks. All that was left of them were the fireworks as well as several pairs of pants that were torn to shreds when the police came to the scene to investigate. Whatever happened to those kids I don’t want it to happen to you while on your way home, seeing how late you work, and also because you have to walk distances since you don’t have a car of your own yet.” He was seen blushing a bit and scratching the back of his head awkwardly as he said this, but to his relief Noel didn’t notice anything from this.

“Don’t worry, I only pass through populated areas when I go to places.” Noel replied reassuringly. “Never isolated places like that beach during nighttime. Potential criminal activity aside, areas like those just freak me out enough to make me wanna stay away from them.”

“I suggest you still be on your guard when coming home from work.” Caleb muttered, and Noel patted him on the shoulder for extra reassurance before changing the subject to what Caleb was here for in the first place. “Anyway, about what I wanted to show you…” She then led him over to the tank in the living room to point out the silver turtle, still at the bottom of the tank and now staring at both of them.

Needless to say Caleb had a lot of questions about the turtle, and Noel was patient enough to answer them all. During all that she took a moment to pour fish food into the tank again, which the two fish and the turtle – mostly the latter – almost instantly gobbled up before resuming their typical underwater behavior.

“How long do you think this thing can last inside this tank?” Caleb asked. “Hopefully you can alert the right people about it very soon.”

“It’s not like a task like that’s gonna take up a good several weeks or something, so I’m mostly confident that it’ll stay alive before we hand it over to the right hands.” Noel replied.

“I see.” Caleb nodded. He kept staring with interest at the turtle through the glass, and it stared right back. “It’s still a wonder how an animal can have a color like this. This isn’t even a case of one being an albino, this here is a totally different color than that.”

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“We can only find out when it’s in the right hands.” Noel said, also staring at the turtle.

Caleb smirked again and joked, “Imagine if this turned out to be some sort of wild new mutation in marine life and you were the first person to discover it.” And then doing his best impressions of Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward in a reference to Tremors, added, “You could get in People Magazine… or hell, National Geographic!”

Noel laughed, knowing how much of a huge fan Caleb was of the particular 90’s creature feature. “Don’t get your hopes up. Besides, I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle that much attention. That seems more like a thing for you, my dear Markiplier wannabe.” She replied.

This sparked another series of their typical playful banter between them, and they both had a good time with each other’s company until it was time for Caleb to head back home. Neither of them noticed during all that time how the silver turtle continued to stare at them until Caleb left, almost in a tragic way as if it felt sorry for them for whatever reason.

* * *

Early next morning, a fishing boat was seen leaving from the docks of the city to catch the early fish out at sea. For a while the boat made its way across the water until it was far away enough from land for the fishermen to begin fishing. Holding all the essential fishing equipment in their hands, they exited the cabin and went right to work.

Two fishermen stood by the edge with fishing rods cast out, while two others were busying themselves with a large net that they were lowering into the water with an automatic system of pulleys at the back of the boat. And then of course came the waiting, the most tedious yet important part of fishing. For a while nobody did anything other than focus on the water or exchange some small talk to ease themselves of boredom.

Then the moment of stillness was over. The two fishermen with the fishing rods suddenly felt their strings tug strongly and quickly tried to reel in whatever had taken the bait. But it wasn’t as easy as any of them thought it would be, as the tugs they were feeling were so much more stronger than what they felt from any other fish before. If they didn’t know better, they almost would have thought they were trying to reel in a very big shark.

But it wasn’t typical of sharks to be attracted to bait meant for smaller fish, which is why the fishermen started to realize something was off. And it wasn’t like they could do anything about it either, for the tugging on the strings became stronger and stronger still, until the two of them could handle it no longer and their grips on the rods broke loose, sending them splashing into the water and out of sight. Little did they know at that very brief moment that losing their fishing equipment was going to be the least of their worries, because not even ten seconds had passed after this unexpected turn of events before an even bigger turn of events took place.

The whole net hanging from the boat’s pulleys started to tug downwards. It didn’t matter how hard the fishermen tried to reel it back up, the net just wouldn’t listen to them and only continued to tug down into the water. Pretty soon, the whole back of the boat was tipping closer to the water’s surface while the front was being lifted out of it and into the air. The fishermen eventually gave up on trying to deal with the net and held onto the deck for dear life as the boat tipped more and more, until one hard yank on the net fully tipped the boat over with a great splash and everyone on board fell off, plummeting into the water and out of sight.

Nobody who fell in resurfaced. The boat slowly sank and disappeared.

Meanwhile back on land in the city, everyone was in the middle of carrying on with their usual daily routine, completely oblivious to what was happening out at sea. But even if so much as a single soul did know, nothing could prepare anyone for what awaited next.

* * *

Another day, another workday – that was what went through Noel’s mind during her walk up the street towards the restaurant where she was recently employed. She passed the level crossing on her way there and right now was waiting for the red light to turn green at a crosswalk.

As she stood waiting on the sidewalk with a few others, she glanced at all the cars nearby and couldn’t help but think to herself what it would be like to drive a car on the road for real and not just for lessons; in the case of the latter there was a specifically laid path for her to take with no detours allowed, whereas with the former she was practically free within the rules of the road.

“I’ll just keep practicing with the family car for now.” Noel thought to herself. “And be as careful as possible to avoid causing accidents… eek, I don’t even wanna think about accidents on the road.”

Just as she was thinking this, she glanced at the traffic lights above the road turn from red to green. Normally what would follow was for all the stopped cars to get moving, but for some weird reason, as Noel noticed, they never did. Rather, they all remained halted in the road for longer than they should have, until all the drivers and passengers inside came out in unison.

Noel stared at this bizarre sight of everyone abandoning their cars, all at the same time, no less, wondering what was going on. It was then she also noticed everyone on the sidewalks were acting just as weirdly; they had all stopped dead in their tracks, even those who weren’t waiting in front of crosswalks. And before Noel had the time to say, “What the hell?” all the people began walking in a single direction, also in unison, like a crowd of robots.

It wasn’t just the behavior that made Noel make such a comparison. There was a certain look in all their eyes that didn’t seem right. Like something completely different and otherworldly had taken place beneath everyone’s eyes, making them look all blank and glassy as they continued to move towards lord knows where. The lights were on but nobody appeared to be home.

Well, almost nobody – Noel was the only person on the entire street as far as she could see who was still herself. Even as more blank-staring people exited the surrounding buildings to join everyone else mindlessly marching off in a single direction, Noel tried to make sense of the situation by following the crowd and speaking loudly into their ears while waving her hands in their faces, “Hey! Hello? Can anybody hear me? What’s going on? I’m talking to you! Somebody please answer!”

But she might as well have tried to get the attention of a brick wall, because not a single person she tried to, how could she even put it, snap out of whatever was affecting them didn’t do anything other than continue to look forward and keep walking. Noel even tried slapping one of them across the face as a last resort, and the result was the same.

Noel went from utterly confused to scared over what this could all be about. What on earth had gotten into people’s heads for this to happen, and where were they going with such emotionless determination? And while the fact that she wasn’t affected with the rest ought to presumably be a good thing considering how terrifying this happening was coming across, trying to make sense of the reason for that right now was a whole other level of bewildering confusion.

Despite this, Noel felt like she had to know where things were heading with this. She was scared from not knowing anything about any of this, and the mystery was driving her insane. That same feeling kept urging her to at the very least find out where, or towards what, the people were going, because the fear of being left in the dark during such an unexplainable phenomenon was too agonizing for her to handle.

With the need to be on time for work no longer a priority, Noel ended up following the blank-eyed crowd to their destination, which turned out to be the seaside. There, even more incomprehensible sights awaited.

The entire area, as far as Noel’s eyesight would allow her to see, from the beaches to the docks, were filled with countless people with the same mindless expressions on their faces, moving in unison towards one thing, and one thing only; the water. Once the people at the very front reached the edge of solid land, the walking stopped all at once.

“Sweet Jesus, is this really happening before me?” Noel muttered to herself in a trembling voice. It almost looked as if every person in the city had made their way here for who knows what. And speaking of that very ‘what’, even after everything Noel had witnessed so far, nothing could prepare her for the thing that happened next.

All at once everywhere around Noel, people fell down onto the ground, nearly tripping up Noel herself as well. When she straightened herself back up to see what was causing this new chaos she had to slap herself in the face to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating.

Every person in sight were now on the ground with no legs. Instead, long sleek fish tailfins covered in scales of various different colors were flapping about flexibly in various directions, while whatever everyone had been wearing beneath their hips were ripped to pieces.

Noel couldn’t even give herself the time to think how any of this could make any sense. Panicking just as much as everyone else, she looked down at her own legs to see if they too were changing into a scaly fish tailfin.

They weren’t. They stayed just the same as they always had. But this did nothing to relax Noel’s nerves. She looked back at all the newly changed people to see them now either crawling or throwing themselves into the water, the glassy looks in their eyes still completely unchanged.

That was Noel’s cue to get the hell out of there. Whatever was happening around her, it was far from pleasant, and she was not going to be in the middle of it if she didn’t want something nasty to happen to her too. So she ran back the way she came, with one destination in mind; home.

On her way she had to keep looking down to make sure her own legs weren’t turning into a tailfin like everyone else’s, because everywhere she looked she could only see people with tailfins where their legs should have been. Not being able to run, walk, or even stand, they were all sprawled out on the ground, but that still didn’t stop the ones who had a bit more distance between them and the shore from continuing to crawl all the way over to the water, where they all vanished from sight under the surface.

“I’m still okay, I’m still okay…” Noel thought repeatedly, which was the least she could do to maintain focused as opposed to just loosing it completely and let her mind go crazy from the sheer madness of every person in sight becoming what… mermaids and mermen? That was the best Noel could describe the situation, assuming everyone could also breathe underwater from the way they were all behaving after the changes.

Screw thinking about what was causing this whole thing, Noel was so terrified by now all she wanted to do was get back home before she too got hit by this chaos one way or another. If everyone else was transformed like this at the same time, she figured it was only a matter of time before her legs too would be gone. Hell, she was lucky to be even running for this long as far as she was concerned.

And speaking of legs, it was getting rather hard for Noel to keep up with her running because by now so many people were crawling around on the ground dragging their tailfins behind them. She couldn’t even make sure to watch whether her feet were trampling pavement or flesh, nor did she have any intention to waste a single second in doing so while she got out of there.

Fortunately for Noel, the further she got away from the seaside, the less bodies there were on the ground. So by the time the apartment she lived in came into sight, she found herself being able to run at full speed towards it without hassle. But even the apartment wasn’t safe from the disaster that had struck, from the looks of it.

It was still intact for sure, with no signs of danger like damages or fires. The residents, on the other hand, were also affected by the bizarre phenomenon and were all over the ground in front of the apartment or the inner hallways with their legs replaced with tailfins.

Noel stopped to catch her breath as she was all out of it from the running she’d been doing, all while being unable to do anything but stare at the pandemonium before her. Then her rapidly beating heart felt like it leapt into her throat for a moment when she felt a hand grab at her leg.

“Argh!” She screamed and looked down to see one of her apartment neighbors crawling across the ground using only his arms while his tailfin dragged uselessly behind him. He had grabbed Noel by the leg in his attempt to propel himself forward, seemingly without a single care or awareness to anything else around him.

In a scared and desperate last resort that even she didn’t know what made her do it, Noel shouted down at the neighbor, “What are you all even doing right now?! What’s this all about?!”

Of course, he acted like he didn’t even hear Noel, only continuing to crawl forward so that he, along with all the other changed folks, could make it to the water.

“Can they even breathe outside of water? Is that why they’re so desperate to go into the sea?” Noel asked herself internally. The thought of having to watch all of these people suffocate to death due to lack of water was haunting as all hell, as if she hadn’t seen enough hell already on her way here.

It didn’t seem like it, seeing how everyone appeared to be very clearly huffing air in between their heavy panting from dragging themselves across the ground only with their arms. But Noel wasn’t reassured by this at all. It didn’t change the fact that something was very badly wrong, and that she had absolutely no idea what that wrong something was.

The only word Noel had for what she was seeing and feeling from all the chaos was this: Madness.