Novel Kicks Fiction Friday: The Aquarium’s Night Shift

Welcome to Fiction Friday, our weekly flash fiction challenge.

Here’s how it works:

Set a timer for five minutes and start writing

Keep going for as long as you can once the timer goes off

No editing allowed—raw writing only

When you’re finished, feel free to share in the comments (but there’s no pressure)

Today’s Prompt: The Aquarium’s Night Shift – 

You’ve taken a job as the night curator at the city’s largest aquarium, a role no one else seems to want. Your responsibilities are straightforward: monitor the tanks, feed the fish, maintain water chemistry, and ensure the building’s security until morning staff arrives.

On your third night, you notice something impossible: the fish are communicating with each other in patterns that shift and repeat, growing more complex each hour. When you check the security footage, entire sections of the aquarium show no footage at all—just blank screens during specific time windows. The backup generator logs indicate the facility loses power every night at exactly 2:47 AM for seventeen minutes, yet the tanks remain illuminated.

Your predecessor’s employee locker is still untouched, containing detailed sketches of the tank layouts with symbols and annotations you don’t understand, and a note that reads simply: “Don’t interrupt the feeding. They’re not the ones eating.”

Tonight, you discover a door behind the massive coral reef tank that shouldn’t exist according to the building blueprints. Water is seeping from underneath it. And the fish are more agitated than you’ve ever seen them.

The morning staff won’t arrive for another six hours. What happens next?

Have fun.

by

Laura

I'm Laura. I started Novel Kicks back in 2009 as I wanted a place to discuss books and writing - two loves of my life. As someone who has anxiety, these two things give me, and I am sure countless others, a much needed escape.
There is a monthly book club, writing exercises, prompts, reviews, author interviews, competitions and guest posts. I cover many genres and I hope there is something for everyone.
I grew up by the sea in Dorset and currently live in Poole with my husband, Chris and three cats. I love writing and have a BA (Hons) in Creative Writing from Falmouth University. I am writing my first book. If only I could stop pressing delete. Chris has threatened to stop it from working. Haha.
I have always loved creative writing since I was in first school and would very much like to meet my teacher, Miss Sayers, to say thank you for all the encouragement she gave me then.
When not writing, I love reading, cats, Disney, singing (I can't sing but this doesn't stop me,) and falling into a good TV show or film. If I could step into any fictional world, it would be amongst the characters in ABC's Once Upon a Time.
I love reading many genres and discovering new authors.