Day Twenty Five : Billingsgate - Fish & Chips

Billingsgate

Definition: 

coarsely abusive language

From its beginnings during the time of the Roman occupation, the Billingsgate fish market in London,
England, has been notorious for the crude language that has resounded through its stalls

Despite the fact that Ye Olde London Town has been sunk beneath the waves of a radioactive ocean
for generation after generation - since the time the polar ice caps melted and the nuclear war radiated
basically everything it could get it’s wrathful apocalyptic hands on, Billingsgate Fish Market was as
rowdy as ever. 

True, the stalls themselves had long since dissolved in the acidic brilliantly sparkling greeny purple
and crystal clear sea water. If you got a drop of that on your hands and it’d burn straight through to the
bone in seconds. I’d know people to cut off their own hands the instant it splashed them, just to avoid
the risk of the water entering the bloodstream and poisoning your entire body, leaving you to die by
inches in horrible and torturous agony. 

Those who could afford it wore full hazmat outfits. You could always tell who had the money one
market days by how customised and stylish their suits were.The young bloods of the gentry aimed to
be particularly fashionable and insisted on helmets that would allow them to keep their hats on. This,
of course, led to some rather odd shaped helmets and suits - particularly when you took into
consideration the ladies who insisted on keeping their bustles on. I’d always thought market day must
seem particularly bizarre to any visiting aliens. All those boats with strange figures aboard - not even
that much noise as everything was transmitted over the radio waves, seeing as it was hard on the
throat to try and scream through the thick cover of your helmet in order to be heard. Plus it was very
undignified.

Then, on the other end of the scale, were those utter rarietys, the natural fishermen. Born and raised
on the waves of the toxic sea, they had adapted more and more with every generation to the toxic
embrace of their mistress the sea. 

More often than not, they were stripped to the waist, showing off their muscles from their hard labour
and the intrinsic acid burn tattoos that covered their upper bodies and arms, detailing which tribe they
were from, their ancestor’s deeds and their own personal achievements.  Rumour had it that the
children of the fisherman tribe, at birth, were subjected to their blood being deliberately poisoned to
see from the start if they could withstand the harsh upbringing and living conditions of the tribe. If the
drops from slashed sea water burned them, I couldn't tell. With the amount of decorative acid burns
covering their body, what was one more pinprick amongst thousands?

Still, they were so graceful on their small skiffs, so light on their feet that it was almost like they and
they boats were dancing across the surface of the water like ballroom partners, that it was almost
impossible to imagine them being splashed by a stray wave - surely they would just elegantly sidestep
it, another move in their endless and constant dance. 

Of course, everyone else regarded the fisherman as being bat shit crazy, why else would you
voluntarily live on a poisonous sea, but no one dared to say this to their face. After all, it was the
fishermen who would take centre stage at the market today, in place of the long dead stall owners,
and no others could even attempt to manage that feat.

I’d heard, in long ago fairytales, that once upon a time fish used to be as big as your hand. Some
people even kept a variety of them in their home as decorative pets - or go to big parks, turned into a
pretend sea, just to look at them. 

Sometimes, it’s really hard to believe that fairy tales are supposed to have a nugget of truth in them.

Fish smaller than your hand, smaller than your finger even. Really? At least the tale of an old man
breaking into your home on the same night every year was slightly more realistic. 

BIllingsgate was just about the only place in this part of the now wrecked world where you could still
eat fish. It was still an incredible rarity due to the almost impossible tasks of a) capturing them and
b) detoxifying them. Many of the elites chefs had undergone super special training to prepare the fish,
but only the fisherman had the capability and skills to actually subdue them.

Shadows moved through the submerged columns way down below (now nice and shiny and clean,
the acid having scoured all the polluted dirt and filth off of them years and years before). The
fisherman tensed and began to weave their graceful way, along and far above the submerged streets
below. 

Those of us with a nervous disposition immediately turned on their noise blocking headphones (these
had become mandatory for anyone who failed the simple, initial entrance test to London Town. This
was after a young lady, so overcome with the situation, had fainted, nearly capsizing the small boat
her and her fellow ladies were on and coming close to tipping the entire lot of them in the water. Only
the quick thinking actions of a nearby fisherman had saved their lives. The sister of the one who had
fainted had become so enamoured of her handsome saviour with his charming (her words) tattoos
that she had renounced her family name, title and lands and instead eloped with him for a life on the
rolling waves. It had been the most delicious (and romantic - not even the hardest of hearts could
deny that) scandal for many a season. It had only been topped by the discovery that a group of ladies,
ostensibly part of a society approved book club, had, in fact, not been reading sensible, ladylike prose
but had instead taught themselves multiple survival and farming skills and had set off into the
wilderness at a brisk jog (read: run since some of them had arranged marriages that their parents
were not happy about them jilting) to explore what this ruined world had to offer. One of them wanted
to be an architect! Another a biologist! In public of course, all the other ladies were appropriately
appalled. I sincerely doubted they thought the same in private though.)

A hush fell over the fishermen and well all tensed. 

Suddenly, from below a torrent of giant, vibrantly multicoloured fish leap out from beneath us, rocking
our boats violently, splashing toxic seawater everywhere. Most of us already had over special acid
rain umbrellas up against the inevitable backsplash, i could see husbands pulling their bulky (hazmat
suits over bustles and hats remember) close to themselves (well, closer anyway) under the somewhat
relative safety of the umbrellas. 

The fish was vicious, grizzled looking things with dead white eyes, scars up and down them from
previous battles and mouths full of spiky, needle like teeth. They dash and lunged around us, flying
high into the sky as they used their fins to swim the ocean air as easily as they did its water. The
fishermen were rushing about, jumping from boat to boat, some leaped high into the air, doing their
best to hook a fish with a long pole designed for this, or throwing nets to entangle them. Others
watched and waited, following the twists and turns of the shoal with their eyes, waiting to pounce on
one as soon as it approached to enter the water again. 

One spectacular individual had leapt aboard one, sitting astride it even as we, the onlookers, saw the
smoke rising from his trousers as the acid water fought to burn through the specially treated material.
Despite the fish bucking and twisting beneath him, trying to throw him off, he was repeatedly hacking
at the beast below him, weakening it so that started to falter away from the shoal. His crew mates
below were following his every move, plotting his trajectory so that should the fish succumb and fall or
should he be thrown from its back, they would be there to catch him before he tumbled into the deadly
water below. 

As one, the fish opened their mouths. A shiver ran through the watching crowd. Some even put their
hands over their ears (which was pointless as they were wearing helmets and couldn’t even reach
their own earlobes).

Out of the mouths of the fish, a torrent of abuse and foul language poured out, literally staining the air
blue with the vulgarity of their language. I don’t know what the people of those past times did to fish,
but whatever it was, apparently it was enough to turn their hatred hereditary. 

They cursed and spat and swore and made lewd comments about the dignity and fidelity of the
fishermen’s mothers. They insulted their looks, their manhood, their ability as lovers, their worth, their
skills - everything they could, they tore apart with their words. 

It was not only limited to the fishermen either, any onlooker there that they saw was fair game. 

You might wonder why people would make the effort to attend a highly dangerous display in savage
surroundings, just to be insulted by a bunch of extremely scary fish. However, it was a spectacle to
see, the fisherman dancing between these beasts with such a disparity between the sheer beauty of
their scales (despite the ugly scars and scary eyes and mouth, you could not help but be awed by the
colourful beauty of their scales as they danced about in the  sunshine permeating the sea air) and the
utter trash that came out of their mouth. It was, truly, a sight to behold. 

Some also said it added to the flavour - a sense of vicious delight at eating the thing that so badly tried
to shame you in public only hours before. 

Some very, very, very quiet rumours also said that not everything the fish said was slander and
generic, disgusting insults. That sometimes, in the midst of all the jeering ruckus, an individual fish
might say something that was very, very true. If you were lucky and were in the right place to hear it. I
didn’t know if this was true, but at the many markets I had attended, I always notice at least several
government agents scattered against the crowd. Maybe they were simply sightseers or maybe they
gave credence to the rumours. I had not yet made up my mind. 

The fish had begun to silence their mocking - a clear sign they were about to retire for the day. The
fishermen danced about furiously and, after the last fish had neatly dived back through the surface of
the water, they had managed to catch about four fish - an impressive result indeed. The rodeo
fisherman, I noticed, had managed to bring his down and was currently laughing about with his
crewmates, showing them the inside of his badly singed, and in some places burnt through, trousers.
It hadn’t seemed to bother him any, judging by how vigorously he was telling his story. 

One of the fish had been caught quite close to my own little dingy, and I rowed it a little closer out of
curiosity. The fish still had some life in it but it was fading fast, it was thrashing weakly against the nets
that held it entangled to the boat. 

As I pulled up next to it, it suddenly froze and swiveled it’s dead white corpse eye to look at me. If a fish
can smile, I swear it gave me the most savage, tooth filled grin I have ever had the displeasure of
seeing.

“You were right you know.” it let out in a dry, weedy husk of a voice. “It was him.” The light died from
its eyes and it fell, completely dead and limp against the side of the boat.

Unable to suppress the rising horror inside of me, I leant over the side of my dingy and threw up into
the toxic waters below, the acid already dissolving the contents of my stomach as I watched.

I guess I finally had the answer i didn’t want.