The Tale of Levi Athan

The Tale of Levi Athan: Part 1

Levi Athan sat behind the vast expanse of his mahogany desk on a Tuesday morning. It was 9.15am, still 45 minutes until his first meeting of the day—plenty of time to have another cup of coffee and get his head in the game—he had to wrangle several resistant clients toward the merger he was planning.

He leaned back in the brown Italian leather of his executive chair and looked past the various awards he had received for innovative business practices, which hung proudly on the wall amid tasteful pieces of modern art, out the window. Levi's spacious corner office was on the top floor of an impressively modern steel and glass high-rise building that occupied prime beachfront real estate in the bustling downtown business district. It commanded an expansive view of the beach and was so close to the broad blue ocean beyond that Levi could smell the salt of the morning breeze through the thick plate-glass.

Levi yawned. His sleep the night before had been haunted by strange dreams, dreams of a crushing black darkness broken by trips to a vivid blue-green zone of warmth and comfort in a seemingly endless rhythmic cycle.

More coffee was definitely required Levi decided, and he reached his flipper out towards the intercom on the desk to call his secretary for a fresh cup.

That's odd—I don't recall having a flipper... Levi felt his brow wrinkle. The inexplicable flipper had no reason to be there and yet there it was, where his right arm should have been.

A preternatural sense of symmetry he'd had since childhood caused him to check the state of his other arm—it too now appeared to have become an appendage intended for aquatic propulsion. Levi studied his fins with great curiosity, they were long and thin and covered in a darkish grey skin that was exceedingly smooth. His gaze continued past his flippers to his body, which was also dark grey and smooth and seemed much rounder and hydrodynamically streamlined than he remembered prior to that morning.

But what really gave Levi pause was his tail—that was just too much—it protruded ridiculously from the chair he was perched on, the majestic lobes filling the space under the desk traditionally reserved for legs. Surely this must be some kind of fluke... But there was no denying that Levi was now equipped with a rather handsome and powerful-looking tail. Indeed, the tail waggled cheerfully as he looked at it, as though it were happy to have been discovered. How did I even get here this morning, Levi wondered, after considering the essential lack of pragmatic function his tail had in his current terrestrial position compared to the sturdy pair of legs he was sure he recalled having recently.

The entire situation was so absurd that he heaved a great sigh, which issued rather surprisingly from the blowhole on the top of his now rather bulbous and elongated head in a great cloud of steaming vapour. What would his clients think of his current condition?! In a wave of desperation bordering on abject panic, Levi flailed wildly at the intercom with his flippers until he was finally able to strike the red button which opened the line of communication between him and his secretary. He paused for a moment to collect himself and compose an opening statement that would not overly alarm his employee.

'Mmmmmmm-Eeeeeeeee-Ooooooo!' he ejaculated uncontrollably into the intercom's microphone.

'Sir...?' the reply was rendered tinny and hollow by the intercom's meagre speaker. In a last-ditch effort to regain some composure and maintain a vague semblance of professionality of conduct pertaining to interpersonal-communication between a superior and subordinate, Levi marshalled his vocal resources—which seemed to have attained a far greater range of frequency and resonance than he was used to.

'Mmmmmh—ah! Ahem... uh, Mmmm-iss Perkins...'

'Yes, sir?'

'Could you, by any chance—ahem! —inform me who is, ah, my 10 o'clock?'

'A mister Ahab sir.'

'Oh-ah, I, um, see. Yes. Better, um, cancel that Mmmmmm-iss Perkins.'

'But sir—he's already here...'

'No-ah, cancel the, um, meeting, I'm feeling rather under the, ah, water—weather—haha! Ahem! Under the, ah, weather...' Levi paused for a moment, '...who do I have after that?'

'A delegation from the Japanese Scientific Fishing Committee to discuss the funding you promised them, sir.'

'Ah-no... Cancel, um, cancel them all Mmmmm-Mmmmm—MISS! Miss Perkins, clear my entire, um, clear my entire day—in fact, clear my entire week. I'm not, um, feeling very... well. I need to take some, ah, time... Yes. Personal time.'

Levi released the intercom button, severing communications, and slumped back in his chair disconcerted by the implications his business dealings held for him personally in his current state. Indeed, certain business practices may have to reconsi—

But Levi's ethical musings were cut short by an almighty pounding on the wooden door which led from the reception area where Miss Perkins to the inner sanctum of his office.

'Levi Athan!' cried out a voice as rough and gnarled as a ship's hull encrusted with barnacles. 'Open up and reveal thyself Levi Athan—I know thee art in there!',

'Sir,' the intercom crackled into life with a message from Miss Perkins, 'Mister Ahab is demanding to see you—he seems to have become rather agitated by the cancellation of his meeting...'

'Yes, Mmmmmmmm-miss, ahem! Perkins, that has, um, that has already come to my, ah, attention,' Levi said as the door boomed again under a fresh rain of violent blows. 'Would you, ah, be so kind as to, um, tell him to... go away please?' Levi could hear Miss Perkins talking with Mister Ahab through the door—at first sternly demanding his exit from the building, and then at his refusal seeming to plead with him for something resembling sanity. But Ahab's monomania was such that he would not quit his terrible quest to gain funding for the revenge-based fishing expedition he was planning so easily, and Miss Perkins was forced to call the police to remove him from the premises.

45 odd minutes later, the police finally turned up and dragged Mister Ahab away for a detailed psychiatric assessment. He resisted manfully and struck out with his good leg, the other having been rent asunder in a minor commercial fishing accident while trolling for whitebait off the western archipelagos, venting his terrible rage at the door and crying out,

'From hell's heart I kick at thee...!'

As Ahab was being shepherded away by the police, he could still be heard shouting through the hallways with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken moose,

'Levi Athan! I'll chase thee to the ends of the earth—because I hate thee!' until his voice sank beyond hearing in the depths of the building.