Static has been buzzing chronically in Elica’s head lately. Whenever her sister, Carol, asks about her wedding in two months, Elica doesn’t know what to say, despite having dreamed of this since she was a little girl. Today she chooses to escape her responsibilities and go kayaking on a lake over an hour away from the house where her fiance, Lewis, expects her to cook, clean, bring him anything he needs, and so on. As she drives, she ruminates on the words they had thrown at each other last night, wondering who was right about what they owed to each other. 

Elica lugs her kayak off the top of her car and over to the lake’s edge. Once on the water, the rhythm of her paddle eases her into a therapeutic trance. The sun’s warmth melts the tension in her neck and shoulders. As the blue expanse cradles her, she wishes she never had to leave. 

Out of the corner of her eye, a flash of white seizes Elica’s attention. A large white fish with pink eyes floats just below the surface, staring intently at Elica. She leans towards it, entranced by this strange fish, much larger than any fish she had ever seen. For an intimate moment, Elica and the fish hold each other’s gaze. Then, the fish abruptly flips around and descends hurriedly into the depths of the lake. Like a leash attached to Elica’s heart, without thinking she dives after the fish, stretching her arms in front of her face to break the water. 

The fish’s tail fin is a distant white flicker in the darkness. As Elica swims deeper into the cold water, her surroundings begin to change. Kitchen cabinets like the ones from her childhood home appear around her as a tunnel. Elica reaches out her fingers to brush against a smooth knob and realizes that she is no longer swimming, but falling. The white fish is nowhere in sight. 

Suddenly, Elica lands on a plush stool at a table much like the black jack table where she had spent most of her time at her bachelorette party. Across from her in the dealer’s seat sits a huge octopus, eyeing her in the same way the dealer at the casino had when Elica was still glued to the table well into the early hours of the morning. Automatically, she slides a chip forward. The octopus deals out the cards. Elica receives a six of clubs and seven of diamonds. Adrenaline begins to tickle her nervous system. Instead of playing it safe, she pushes another chip forward and holds up her index finger to signal that she wants to double down. The octopus slides her the Queen of Hearts. 

“You bust,” the octopus says in a deep voice. 

A swarm of bubbles erupts from Elica’s mouth as she throws up her cards. The octopus stares at her indifferently. Elica feels a strange sense of deja vu, like she had thrown this tantrum before, likely at her own bachelorette party after enough alcohol blocked new memories from forming. A drink spontaneously appears on the table with “Drink Me” written neatly beneath the rim. Elica does not remember anything being written on the other half dozen vodka cranberries she had consumed that night. Still, she downs it in three gulps.

Instead of being dragged out of the building by security like how her night had ended at her bachelorette party, Elica begins shrinking rapidly. She is now barely big enough to cover the button at the center of the stool. The octopus hovers over her and says, “It’s time for you to see her now.”

“See who?” Elica demands, her voice high pitched and squeaky. 

“The Queen,” the octopus answers.

The white fish with pink eyes swoops out from behind the octopus and swiftly scoops Elica up in its mouth. The darkness is so brief that Elica barely has a moment to register her disorientation before she is tumbling into the light again. 

Mahogany railings bordering the area indicate some kind of courtroom. There are no walls, only the murky bottom of the lake stretching out into darkness. A school of bass floats in the jury box. Behind Elica, the spectating area is half filled with an audience of fish and turtles. There are no tables for lawyers, only Elica standing at the center of it all, fighting feelings of intimidation from her towering surroundings. The white fish swims to the front of the room next to where the Queen sits upon a large throne with her red hair floating around her head like an aura. Her black robes are covered in bright red hearts. Her feline eyes measure Elica with slit-shaped pupils, the only part of her that does not appear human.

“Where am I?” Elica asks.

“Stop!” the Queen bellows. “You will speak when spoken to in this Court of Hearts.”

Well that answers my question, Elica thinks.

“You are accused of concealing your heart from your fiance. How do you plead?” the Queen announces. 

“Not guilty!” Elica insists.

The Queen’s smile is unnaturally wide and devoid of warmth.

“Bring forth the prosecution,” the Queen declares.

The white fish opens its mouth and releases a large bubble. Within the bubble there is a projection of black and white TV static for a moment before an image comes into focus. Elica recognizes it instantly. It’s her first date with Lewis in their college dining hall. She hadn’t been too impressed with him, but he was persistent. The scene fades to a montage of their first six months together, when Lewis had charmed her with chivalry and romance. After their first big fight, Lewis told her he loved her for the first time, erasing all of the tension from their disagreement. Elica watches her joyful younger self and feels an ache in her heart. The rest of their first year together had been bliss. The bubble flashes through their various adventures; meeting his family, theme park dates, camping under the stars. Elica wants to pause and relish the nostalgia. Instead, the montage plays on.

In their second year of dating, Lewis began to more frequently snap and criticize Elica. Then he would apologize, blame it on the stress of school and things would be fine for a few days. Until he did it again. Soon it became normal for Lewis to exude negativity around Elica. Nothing she did could cheer him up, like he was committed to his bad mood. She couldn’t understand why a man who claimed to love her seemed so unhappy in her company. Elica blamed herself, especially when she watched him sharing warmth with everyone else the way he used to do with her. 

Elica looks down.  

“Pay attention!” the Queen snaps. 

Elica looks up again, bracing herself for what she knows she’s about to watch.

In the bubble, Elica confides in one of her close friends that she is considering breaking things off with Lewis. She was so sure it was the right thing to do. However, as if sensing he was about to lose her, Lewis proposed in the most romantic way, with rose petals and candles and wine. Tears glimmered in his eyes when he asked the question, and Elica was so overcome with emotion that she couldn’t imagine saying no. She convinced herself that she was wrong and everything would be different now. 

Shortly after the engagement, Lewis bought a house. Not the one with the cute attic in the city that Elica had liked, rather he chose the cookie-cutter new-build in a suburb far away from anyone she knew. Once in that house, Elica felt more like an indentured servant than Lewis’s equal partner. He constantly reminded her that since his contribution was financial stability, her role was to maintain the home. Elica had always hated cleaning, but she didn’t know how to argue with Lewis’s logic. He never seemed to understand her point of view. 

The final scene in the bubble is from their most recent interaction, last night when Lewis yelled at Elica for leaving dirty dishes in the sink. She claimed she was too tired after cooking and promised to finish the dishes in the morning. Lewis began the rant about her role as his future wife that Elica had heard a dozen times now. This time however, Elica didn’t let him finish telling her how she was supposed to cook and clean for him. When she cut him off saying that she wasn’t going to wash the damn dishes tonight, Lewis exploded. He called her ungrateful and lazy, then stormed upstairs and slammed the bedroom door. Elica slept on the couch. 

The bubble pops, leaving Elica with a heavy knot in her stomach.

“What do you have to say?” the Queen asks Elica.

“This is ridiculous,” Elica says. “Why are you judging my relationship?”

“I am not judging your relationship, I am judging you. The issue here is that you do not seem to fully accept being treated so low,” the Queen explains.

“Well of course not! That’s crazy,” Elica counters.

“Is it? Because you’ve accepted it for a long time. Now if you are to be betrothed to this man, you can’t go changing your mind about how you are to be treated.”

“I’ve never accepted being treated low,” Elica insists in a squeaky voice.

“Oh really?” the Queen’s eyes light up and her smile stretches to her ears. “It’s time for your final trial then.”

The Queen stands up and begins to grow in size. The court room fades away, everything disappearing except for Elica and the Queen. Walls appear around them, with carpet and furniture filling the room. It’s all vaguely familiar to Elica, as everything falls into place she realizes she is in the living room of her mom’s house. The furniture is proportionate to the Queen, whose robes have transformed to jeans and a t-shirt. Elica is still small, barely reaching the Queen’s ankle, and she watches with horror as the Queen’s face morphs to that of her estranged mother. 

Elica’s heart is beating fast. Carol, seven years old in this current situation, trudges into the room, looking anxiously down at Elica and then at their mother. 

“Let’s play the messy game,” the Queen/her mom suggests in her mother’s shrill voice.

Elica’s stomach drops. Her mother’s ‘games’ were always a form of punishment for a mistake too slight for young Elica to comprehend. She looks up as her gigantic mother starts knocking picture frames off the fireplace mantle. Elica dives out of the way, her small size putting her at risk for being smashed by the falling items, not at all different from how it had been in her childhood. Her mother makes her way to the bookcase and pulls out a whole row of books, cackling manically. She finds toys in a bin and tosses them on the floor, screaming “Clean up time!”

Carol is crying, as she usually was, because she, like Elica, truly felt that she had done something to deserve this. As Elica continues to duck for cover, she looks up at her mother and notices the Queen’s cat eyes. She remembers what the Queen had said about accepting being treated low, and realizes that this is where it had all started. At twenty years old, Elica recognizes that the way her mother treated her when she was five was not a reflection of her own merit. She had always deserved better.

As a glass vase shatters on the floor, Elica screams in her squeaky voice, “Stop! Enough!”

Her mother stops and turns, glaring at Elica. 

“What did you say?” she growls.

“You need to stop, Mom,” Elica declares. As the words leave her mouth, she begins to grow bigger.

“How dare you! You have no idea what it’s like to be your mother, now clean up this room this instant!” her mother howls.

“We don’t have to clean up your mess,” Elica continues, her voice settling at her regular octave as she takes Carol’s small hand.

Carol watches with awe. Elica stands eye to eye with her mother. 

“This is not love and we are not playing your games anymore,” Elica asserts.

Her mother’s face flashes the Queen’s too wide smile. From behind her, the white fish bursts out and barrels towards Elica. It hits her square in the chest and everything goes black.

Lake water explodes out of Elica’s mouth. She coughs violently and gasps for air, curling onto her side.

“There you go,” someone says. 

Elica blinks in the daylight as she catches her breath. Three people are looking worriedly at her, one of them appears to be a park ranger, the other two seem to be fishermen.

“What happened?” Elica croaks as she sits up.

“Take it nice and slow,” the park rangers advises. “You were unconscious for a few minutes. You’re lucky you weren’t far from shore and these gentlemen saw you go under.”

“You saved my life?” Elica asks, noticing that the fishermen are dripping wet. “Wow, thank you.”

“No problem, kid. We’re glad you’re ok,” one of the fishermen says with a nod.

“Is there anyone we can call? You need to visit a hospital right away,” the park ranger says. 

Lewis is the first person to pop in Elica’s mind, followed by an immediate feeling of revulsion. 

“I’ll call my sister,” Elica says.

The next few hours are a blur. Elica rides in an ambulance to the hospital, where Carol meets her as soon as she can. 

“Oh my god, Elica, are you ok?” Carol cries as she hugs her sister tight.

“Yeah, I’m ok,” Elica sighs. 

“Where is Lewis?” Carol asks.

Elica shakes her head.

“I think I’m done with Lewis,” Elica admits.

Carol smiles with relief. 

“How did you decide that?” Carol asks.

Elica shrugs.

“I realized I’ve been asleep for a long time, not fully living in my life,” Elica explains.

Carol hugs Elica again and says, “Well I’m glad you woke up.”