Presumably only once he had milked the paintings for all they were worth, and who could blame him? She strolled over to stand beside this man, this visionary, gazing at the water. She wondered what it must be like to wear that gold net, curious to know if it really helped him share a shark’s worldview or if this was merely a touch of theatre, the recorded onscreen images providing all the inspiration he needed. One way or another, she determined to don that filigree cap herself and find out. She could hardly claim to be a reporter otherwise. Debra stifled a yawn, the long drive and the excitement of the evening catching up with her; best to go easy on the wine from now on.
Without speaking, Turner slowly put his arm around her. She tensed slightly despite herself but didn’t pull away. This was it: the seduction they’d been skirting around since her arrival. She didn’t mind and certainly had no intention of throwing away an opportunity like this by spurning him, so she tilted her head, meeting his lips with her own.
To her surprise the kiss was brief, over before it had properly begun. While she was still relaxing into the kiss, Turner pulled away and at the same time… pushed her. No gentle shove, this; caught completely off guard, she found herself flung forcefully out over the water, limbs flailing, wine glass flying from her hand as she fell towards the centre of the pool. Her shocked scream choked off as she hit and coldness enveloped her. She went down, sinking despite her best efforts not to, clawing at the water, dragging herself back towards the surface. Finally her face found air. ‘You bastard! Help me!’
He ignored her shouts, speaking in the same calm tones she’d heard emanate a hundred times from the TV screen. ‘The picture will be my masterpiece, the culmination of everything I’ve worked towards, and you will have made it possible. You asked what it’s to be called. I can tell you now: ‘Frenzy’.’
She struck out towards the side of the pool, kicking the water desperately, knowing that she wasn’t alone in here. Overarm; front crawl, a stroke she hadn’t used since uni. Sobs wracked her body but she refused to succumb to terror.
‘I’ve shared the shark’s perceptions in so many different moods,’ Turner continued, as if narrating his latest documentary. ‘But the most intense, the most glorious, is yet to come.’ He crouched down to pick up a pole from the lip of the pool. ‘Can you imagine the wonder of it, Debra? To share the emotions of the ocean’s greatest killer as it tears into another sentient being, snuffing out a life with every sense heightened and enflamed by crazed blood lust. To paint that…’
He reached out with the pole, jabbing at her, pushing her down and away.
‘You can’t do this, you can’t… For fuck’s sake… Help me!’
She was forced to stop swimming in order to fend off the pole, but it only caused her head to bob beneath the surface again. The edge of the pool was so close and there was still no sign of the shark. Maybe… ‘You’ll never get away with this!’ she screamed as she came up and kicked desperately towards the sanctuary promised by the edge.
‘Oh, but I will. The road back from here can be treacherous, especially at night and after a glass or two of wine. I’ll be devastated, of course, when the police report hauling your car from the sea at the foot of the cliff. Such a tragedy...’
The pole struck her again, hard against the left shoulder. Prodding, pushing.
‘Rejoice, Debra. You’re about to be intimately involved in my greatest work, just as I promised. You’ll be immortalised. I’ll even dedicate it to you.’
Sound ceased as the water engulfed her once more. A vast dark shape loomed out of the murk.
Feeding the Fish
Carol Borden
From: You Left Your Biscuit Behind
‘Aisha, Please feed my fish. —J.’ she read aloud. ‘Fucker,’ Aisha Murphy concluded. She had found the note slipped under her apartment door after her shift at the radiology clinic. ‘Fucker,’ she said, locking the door behind her. Jess DiAngelo owed her five hundred dollars. ‘Just a short-term loan,’ he said. ‘Be neighbourly,’ he said. Then Jess smiled. He seemed to think smiling was enough, and for the most part he was right. She had loaned him the money. When Aisha saw Jess’ empty space in the parking lot, she knew he and her money were gone.
Aisha tossed her hoody on the couch. Then pulled open the drawer in the little end table by the door. It stuck. Aisha pulled harder and the door jerked open. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ she muttered. She shoved her old address book and a box of latex gloves aside and grabbed a lucky cat keychain with a single key. She went back out into the hall, walked four doors down, across the hall and let herself into Jess’ apartment. He had left the overhead light on. The apartment still had the original carpeting--moss green and vaguely quilted. There was a burnt orange naugahyde booth right by the door across from a little kitchen. Refrigerator, sink, stove, and very little counter space was standard in all the units. He had a flat screen tv on the far wall. And between a couple of couches, there was a long, low wooden coffee table. In the centre of the table was a box for the tv remotes and a rectangular glass fish tank holding only a blue and scarlet betta and three red guppies swimming in a nearly empty world with no gravel or decorations, just the air pump and a filter. Jess had that betta since before she moved into the complex two years ago. A long time for a fish. Jess had told her the guppies were female ‘albino reds’ and had gone into a long explanation of the various colours of guppies. He wanted to introduce some kind of shark. He liked the idea of something deadly living in a small tank. Aisha never understood how he could care so much for his fish, but never name them. He said when the time came to flush them, it hurt less if the fish were nameless. She looked around for any sign Jess might be coming back. He had left his underwear drawer open in the bedroom. She slid the drawer shut. At least he had taken the garbage out. Nothing in the refrigerator. Jess was gone, probably for good. She walked over to the fish tank. There was a shaker beside the tank. She shook a little food in the water and watched as the fish swam up and their tiny mouths opened. There was another note folded beside the tank.
‘Brine shrimp is in the freezer. --J.’
Aisha opened the freezer and saw a flat package of brine shrimp, neatly divided into cubes. She pulled the package out and stopped. There, resting on top of a bag of frozen corn niblets, was a small hand. The hand reminded her of the opossum paws the police sometimes brought to the radiology clinic thinking they had found baby hands. But this hand was bigger and she was pretty sure it was not a paw.
‘Dammit.’ She slid the brine shrimp back into the freezer and shut the door. Then she walked back to her own place, leaving the lights as they were.
The next day, Jess’ parking spot was still empty. She didn’t like the feeling she had that Jess had deliberately left the apartment lights on to make it seem like he was still home. Aisha fed the fish and turned out his lights. The switch made a loud click, a small finality, like a bone snapped in the wall. Aisha walked back to her apartment knowing she would inherit some new fish. She did not want pets. She did not need anything else dying on her. She had enough of that with her job. All the patients she joked with while illuminating their broken interiors. When she had started, she liked lighting the dark places within, catching hidden broken things that could be fixed. She had become an x-ray technician because she didn’t want to deal with the messiness of soft tissue. But what she saw inside people was just as messy. She saw the spills of tissue and fluid, the broken parts, the silent invasion. What she saw lately were endless, abyssal depths.
The third day after he left, Aisha came home late. It was Friday and Aisha had gone out for dinner to celebrate a co-worker’s move to Florida. He said there was more work and better hours there. She had one of the fancier margaritas, the kind she could not make with her blender, and they sat on the patio watching the sun set, pink and coral clouds floating in watery blue. She tried not to think about the hand. When she got home, there was a bright green compact car parke
d in his spot. Jess would not have gotten a new car, especially not one that colour green. He was too attached. His fish were nameless, but he had named his old beater, ‘Quint.’ Besides, as far as she could tell, Jess was broke. He worked in a pet store, cleaning fish tanks and selling bags of veterinarian-approved kibble, Aisha doubted that brought in a lot of cash.
Aisha walked up the stairs to the second floor and down the hall to his apartment. She felt watched. She heard the click of a latch behind her. When she looked in the security mirror, the hall was empty. She laced her keys through her fingers in her hoody pocket and walked almost soundlessly in the white trainers she wore at work. There was a mark above his door that hadn’t been there before. It looked almost like an eye. When she opened Jess’ door, she half expected someone to be standing in his living room waiting for her. But there were only the fish. Red and blue stains moving through the tank. Aisha decided to move the fish to her apartment, maybe even name them. He could come and get them if he wanted them back. And he could give her an explanation. And pay back the money she loaned him a week ago. And apologise. ‘Fucker,’ she muttered.
As she started to close the door, someone shoved it into her, shoving her into the apartment. Aisha swung around and smashed her key-laced fist hard into a man’s throat. The man dropped into Jess’ booth. He was slight, with lank hair combed back from his face. His hair, his suit and his shoes? were the same rusty brown. He had thinning eyebrows, a very small nose and an almost lipless mouth. Pale and sweating profusely, he grabbed his throat, eyes tightly closed, and croaked. Another man shouldered his way in. He was white, possibly in his sixties, with a round face and a fringe of grey hair. He wore a blue and white striped seersucker suit with a black bow tie. He held one of his hands up and kept the other in his suit pocket. He arranged his face into a smile under a slightly protuberant, misted eyes.
‘Oh, pardon us, ma’am, we did not mean to alarm you. I am Mr. Bass and my colleague is Mr. Pike. We are looking for Mr. Jess DiAngelo. He has something of ours. Perhaps he left a message,’ Mr. Bass’ smile remained fixed as he lowered his hand. Aisha worried about the hand he kept in his jacket pocket. She had seen gunshot-related fractures. If it were a low velocity gun, it would hurt like hell but her prognosis would be good.
‘The only message he’s left is to feed his fish.’ She pointed at the four fish swimming in their empty tank. ‘So I’m being neighbourly and I’m feeding his fish.’
‘Is that the note there on the table? The one he left you to feed his fish?’ Mr. Bass moved a little further into the apartment. ‘You must be quite close to Mr. DiAngelo if he leaves you notes in his locked apartment.’
‘No, that note is about brine shrimp. The one about feeding his fish he slid under my door.’
Mr. Bass smiled more broadly, showing perfectly square teeth. ‘Could we possibly impose on you to see this note?’
‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t tell random assholes where I live.’
‘Mr. Bass, this person uses foul language,’ the other man said in a thin, nasal voice. He had the same protuberant, misted eyes as Mr. Bass. Cataracts, maybe? Possibly something congenital, Aisha thought.
‘We have obviously gotten off on the wrong foot, miss?’ He trailed off waiting for her to supply her name.
‘Ishmael. Call me, Ishmael.’
The lipless man frowned as he rubbed his throat. His face did not wrinkle at all, but when he grimaced he showed pointed teeth. ‘He must file them,’ Aisha thought faintly.
‘Now, now, Mr. Pike, our new friend is merely joking.’ Mr. Bass continued to smile fixedly at her, though he spoke to the lipless man. Neither man seemed to blink. Aisha adjusted her grip on her keys. They felt slick with something more than sweat. It felt thick, like the lubricating gel they used at the clinic sometimes.
Mr. Bass picked up the note off the table. ‘Do you believe there is life elsewhere, perhaps some form of alien life? Perhaps even here on our planet?’
‘I suppose so.’ Mr. Bass was farther in the apartment now than her, but Mr. Pike was between her and the door still.
‘But you have no proof?’
‘I’m an x-ray tech, not an astrophysicist. What proof would I have?’
‘Privately funded organisations have used x-rays in the search for sentient non-human life, some have even explored the ocean’s depths.’
‘I use x-rays to discover if old folks have fractured their hips.’
‘So you didn’t find anything unusual here?’
‘There’s nothing here.’ Aisha flung up her hands, keys and all. ‘Jess is such a cheapass. He didn’t even get his fish enrichment features like a treasure chest or a scuba diver. Not even coloured gravel. Just a plain, glass tank, for fuck’s sake. You think anything around here is of value?’
‘You have a potty mouth, miss,’ Mr. Pike said firmly. ‘Unseemly.’
‘Mister, I haven’t even started. You know who I see a lot of every day at work? The Greatest Generation. I see them when they are not happy and have fractures and mysterious lumps. And they learned to swear something fierce serving in the armed forces and on factory floors building the arsenal of democracy.’
Mr. Pike returned to frowning. ‘So there was no message,’ Mr. Bass continued as if nothing had been said. ‘Perhaps Mr. DiAngelo left something in your care other than these lovely specimens. Perhaps something in a green leather case?’
‘All he left is brine shrimp.’ She went to the freezer for the block of shrimp. She doubted she could fool them with the keys again, but the block of shrimp was two pounds and she had a pretty good swing from her softball days. Mr. Bass and Mr. Pike watched her, one smiling and one frowning in a terrible parody of tragicomedy.
‘‘Sea Monkeys,’ Harold von Braunhut named them. Brine shrimp eggs were sold in paper packets illustrated with images of the sea monkeys living in underwater cities,’ Mr. Bass said.
‘That so?’ She shoved the hand under the corn niblets and closed the freezer door behind her. The brine shrimp in her left hand. The keys still laced through her right hand.
‘Perhaps if I had a look around while my companion catches his breath.’
‘I’m not the landlord, but what you see is what he left. If he left a message for you, he must’ve left it somewhere else.’
‘He might have at that. This apartment is not particularly secure.’
‘All kinds of people wandering in,’ Aisha said.
‘Yes, yes, indeed. Mr. Bass gestured and Mr. Pike, still massaging his throat, stood up. There were blue lines now, along the sides of his neck.
‘If you see Jess DiAngelo, tell him Mr. Bass and Mr. Pike are looking for him and that there is still time to work out a mutually beneficial arrangement.’
‘What arrangement is that?’
‘Oh he’ll know.’ Mr. Bass waved his hands conspiratorially.
‘Alright, but I don’t think he’s coming back.’
The older man smiled more widely and gestured towards the door. ‘After you, Ms. Ishmael,’ he said.
‘After you, if you don’t mind.’
‘Oh, dear, yes, one must be careful of strangers these days,’ Mr. Bass said. ‘A great shame that we live in a world with so little reason to trust one another. Mr. Pike and I will go first. I am certain we can find you if we require further assistance.’ They watched Aisha turn the key in the lock, but she had turned it the wrong direction, keeping the door unlatched.
Mr. Bass and Mr. Pike continued on their way. She walked over to the stairwell window and watched them exit the building and walk over to the bright green car. After they pulled out, she dropped the brine shrimp on her kitchen counter and pulled out a pair of latex gloves from the box in the end table drawer. When the clinic had switched to hypoallergenic gloves, she had taken the box home. Aisha was a great believer in the usefulness of disposable gloves. Even if the men were ju
st driving around the block and coming back, she figured she had at least a few minutes. She ran back to Jess’ apartment, dropped the hand in a sandwich bag and shoved it in her hoody pocket. She listened just inside his door for a moment before getting the tank. Then she locked Jess’ door for real.
Back in her apartment, with the door locked and the chain on, Aisha iced her hand. She stared at the fish. The fish opened and closed their mouths. Their fins furled and unfurled. The fish zipped around when she dropped a cube of brine shrimp in the tank. ‘I’m going to get you guys some sand, the coloured kind, and a treasure chest,’ she told them. ‘You deserve better.’
Aisha pulled on a fresh pair of latex gloves and took the hand from the freezer. She left it in the sandwich bag. The hand was approximately twelve centimetres from the tip of the longest finger to the remaining wrist. There appeared to be excess folds of skin connecting the fingers. The skin was bluish grey, lighter on the palm. It might have been cyanotic, but the resilience of the hand surprised her. The tissue was firm and recovered quickly when she pressed her thumb into the back of the hand. The bone bent in her hands. The cut at the wrist had been clean, but skin had completely grown over the wound post-amputation. It was perfectly covered with no bone, tendons or muscle visible, and no sign of suturing or even scarring. Slightly less disturbing to Aisha, the finger tips were scorched. The nail beds had narrow, thick nails cut or burned to the quick. Aisha was puzzled. The hand was not dry enough to light. The fingers did not feel like they had been treated. There was no smell of accelerant, though she did not inhale too deeply. Aisha sighed. ‘Christ, Jess, what did you leave me?’
The next morning, Aisha called in to work and arranged for the weekend off. Her boss was not happy, but her co-worker was right. There was lots of work elsewhere. She went downstairs and forced her own small mailbox key into Jess’ mailbox on the side of the building. Her key worked. Jess had some takeout menus, coupons, a bill for the previous tenant and a postcard with a picture of a leaping marlin, an orange and a palm tree above the caption, framed in bamboo, ‘Florida.’ And the date of the art was 1963. It was yellowed and creased, the kind vintage of postcard sold by Salvation Army or used bookstores. It could be from anywhere. ‘Fuck it,’ she said. ‘What’s a little more tampering with the mail?’
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