Excerpt from Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Alternately, if I choose to breach the door, I have reign of the hallway and the main tank. A more robust menu. But it comes at a price: First, I must invest several minutes on the process of opening the door on the way out. Then, because the door is heavy and will not remain ajar on its own, I must spend several minutes reopening it on my return.

Why don't you prop the door?

Well, obviously.

I did prop the door, once. With the stool below my tank. With those extra minutes of freedom, I pillaged a bucket of fresh halibut chunks left by Terry under the hatch of the main tank. (Presumably, the halibut chunks were meant to be breakfast for the sharks the following morning. But the dim-witted sharks hardly know day from night. No regrets there.)

Under this illusion of leisure, it was almost a pleasant evening. Perhaps the most enjoyable time I've had since I was taken captive. But upon return, I discovered something that, to this day, I cannot comprehend: by some sleight, the stool had failed to hold the door.

Lesson: I cannot trust a propped door.

By the time I worked it open, I was failing. The Consequences were in full effect.

My limbs moved slowly, and my vision blurred. My mantle became heavy and lolled toward the floor. Through the haze I could see my flesh had paled to a flat shade of brownish gray.

As I crawled across the pump room, the floor no longer felt cold. No surface registered any temperature. Somehow, my clumsy suckers fumbled me up the glass.

I worked my tentacles and mantle through the gap. Partway through, I paused, hovering over the surface. My tentacles were completely numb, devoid of any sensation.

For a moment, I considered this option. Nothing was something. What might lie on the other side of life?

As the water took me in, I returned. My sight sharpened to the familiar trappings of my tank. I coiled a tentacle around the pump and replaced it, closing the gap. Color crept back into my flesh as I poked an arm through the crack to screw the housing into place. My mantle trailed through the cold water as I swam, strong and swift, to my den behind the rock. My gut, crammed full of halibut, ached pleasantly.

Afterward, as I rested in my den, my three hearts throbbed. The dull pulse of dumb relief. A base instinct triggered by a surprise victory over death. I suppose it might be how a cockle feels having buried itself in the sand under the snap of my beak. Beating the odds, as you humans might say.

The Consequences. That is not the only time I have experienced them. There have been other occasions where I have pushed the boundaries of my freedom. But I have never again attempted to rely on those extra few minutes by propping that door.

Surely I do not need to explain that Terry does not know about the gap. No one but me knows about the gap. And, as I would like to keep it this way, I will thank you in advance for your discretion.

You asked. I answered.

That is how I do it.

Excerpted from Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. Copyright © 2022 by Shelby Van Pelt. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.