Life was difficult for Syd the Squid with Synaesthesia.

Well, first of all, why spell it Syd, when it would have been so much easier to spell it Sid, since, you know, squid? It would have looked so much better. Some gangly human female named him Sydni, though he’d never admit it. She kept him in a tank installed in the room she used for partying and lounging and screaming. She pretty much just pointed him out to guests, when she’d show off feeding him. Luckily she almost always had people over, or else he probably would have starved. After he became more gauche than glam, she donated Syd to an aquarium. Probably got a pretty big tax write off. And it was there that Syd discovered his affliction.

Synaesthesia, if you don’t know, is a condition where you get different senses cross-wired. Like you associate smells with colors or sounds with tastes. Syd’s was the kind where he saw a color and heard a sound. He first noticed it when the aquarium moved a few pieces of coral into his tank to liven the place up. Every time he swam by, the red one sounded like a deep bass thumping, and the blue one sounded like a high tweeting noise. Which was weird. Did he always have this thing, but he never noticed it till now, because lights were always flashing at the house, and music was always playing? Or did he develop it? Can you catch synaesthesia?

After Syd didn’t get along too well with most of the other fish they tried to introduce to him – they were all so loudly colored, so he had trouble with listening, so he tended to get into fights – he got paired with Martellus, a mantis shrimp. Which are basically the most vibrantly colored little crawling rainbows that exist. Ah, cruel fate. Turns out, though, there are lots of colors Syd couldn’t even see. Ultraviolet indigoes and x-ray blacks and orange infrareds. Martellus’ eyes were about as good as they come. Imagine having synaesthesia and having to sort through all that stuff all the time, like Martellus did.

Huh. Things can always get worse, I guess.