Death by Water

by Alessandro Manzetti

  He walks along the planks, peering over the side to the black water. If there was an underwater ride, he’d at least see some kind of glowing light from below.

  One last ride, his mom said.

  Suddenly, his stomach aches empty and craves a corndog now. He doesn’t remember ever letting go of her hand while in line but he must’ve let go at some point and grabbed the hand of the clown who wasn’t really a clown—the man with the bad card trick who gave him the stupid invitation to see something that wasn’t even there.

  Mom had warned him to stay close and not to wander.

  Ian knew the park and could find his way around easily enough, but finding his mom would be like finding his dad’s body, which the people looking for him couldn’t do after he went over the cliff. Even if he found his mom, she’d be mad and they’d leave early. They wouldn’t ride the Ferris wheel as their last ride like she remembered doing with Dad. Ian only had nine tickets anyway because he dropped one. He holds them to the light, counting again to make sure.

  The placid water breaks, enveloping you as you ride the yellow cart beneath the surface. Round you go as the un-reflection of the Ferris wheel above glows through a watery blur. As you come round, you see them gathered on the pier. A woman and boy embrace and it feels like home.

  THE OLD WOMAN AND THE SEA

  by Marge Simon

  Mama stood boning fish in her kitchen. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. It left a trail of silver scales that matched the streaks in her hair. The bones were piled on faded newspapers she’d never read. She couldn’t see the tiny print, only the headline: FAMINE. But that was somewhere else, it had to be. There would always be plenty of fish. Her son James often said that, like his father before him. “Fish are like the news, something to get by on.”

  Where the famine was, she didn’t know. They had no close neighbors, no visitors. James always made sure to pay the bills, he was good with figures. All this was done by mail, though no postman had come for many days. James usually left his boots on the porch, but not this time. She dropped the knife when she saw his face.

  “Bad news?” James shook his head and slumped in a chair. He stared off at something distant. He’ll tell me when he’s ready, he always does, she told herself. Mama returned to the fish, arranged a row of neat fillets and covered them with a plate. There were a few potatoes left. They would do, if he had brought the shrimp. She didn’t want to bother him right then, but she had to ask. When she got no response, she touched his arm.

  “Don’t,” James pulled away. “They’re gone.” She heard this but didn’t understand. It was something bad, she knew that much. “I thought they were my friends, Mama.” He put his head on his arms. “They left us here to starve!”

  She clicked her tongue. “Then we’ll have to wait,” she said. “Can’t make chowder without shrimp. She paused to look over at him. “Your friends—they’re coming back, aren’t they?” James shook his head and covered his eyes.

  Mama wrapped the fish bones and scales in the last piece of newspaper. She thought about asking him to get more papers, but not now. No, now was the time for wine. She kept some old wine bottles in the cabinet under the sink. She selected one, wiped it off, and set it on the table. He looked up at her. She uncorked it and poured his mug to the brim. He pushed it away. Heaving a sigh, she picked it up and tasted it.

  “It is a good wine, son. You are not going to join me?”

  “Why should I, Mama? What’s to celebrate? We’re going to die, don’t you see?”

  That night, she fried the fillets and a few of the last potatoes. They ate in silence. James took the bottle and went outside to sit on the porch. He was still there in the morning, having dozed off. The bottle was empty.

  Mama baked two loaves of bread with the last of the flour. Thank goodness they had a gas stove. The electric hadn’t been working at all. She couldn’t remember how long ago it had stopped, but it didn’t really matter. They always went to bed early. Maybe James forgot to pay the bill last month. She kept meaning to mention it to him, but he didn’t seem to care if she was talking to him or not.

  After a lunch of bread and cheese, Mama brought out her Bible. “Listen to this, James. ‘Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets. And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.’—that was from Luke.” She stopped and looked at him over her glasses. His eyes were closed.

  “And here, listen to this from John where Jesus said to the fishermen, ‘Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.’ So they cast it, and it turned out they were not able to haul all of it in, because of so many fish. Well, son? You see how clear the good book makes things?” James remained as he was. Smoothing her apron, she knelt before him at eye level, shaking his arm for attention. “Now then, James, all you have to do is take the boat out again. Give it one more try, son. Have a little faith, for the Lord will provide.”

  James’ eyes flew open. “Get off my back, Mama! Screw your sweet Jesus! You quote that stuff at me—you have no idea what this means, do you? No fish left. Or if any are, they’re fucking polluted! Don’t you see, your God has forsaken you, me, probably the world—I don’t know. It’s like this all over, don’t you read the papers?”

  “We don’t have any news anymore, James. And besides, you know my poor weak eyes. I’m not good with reading, except for the Lord’s word.”

  “Yeah, and your Lord’s word is worth crap.” He sat up, digging around in his jeans. “Here, Mama, here’s the key! You think there’s fish in that goddamn ocean, you go find them yourself.” He flung the key at her. It bounced off the stove and onto the floor. Wordlessly she picked it up and placed it on the shelf by the door.

  The next day, he’d taken all the bottles from under the sink. Some were on the kitchen table. Two lay empty on the floor and he was passed out on the sofa. Her fish knife had slipped from his hand. There was a bloody stain on the rug and blood on his wrists.

  “James! What? Why—??” Mama checked his wrists, but the slashes weren’t as deep as they’d seemed. She washed and bandaged them while he moaned and mumbled nonsense. For her, it was unthinkably horrid—seeing him like this—her James, her honest, dependable son.

  Blinking back tears, Mama gripped the edge of the sink. Didn’t her own mama save her and her brother from a fire, so very long ago? She remembered it had to do with something her father had done. He was a drunk, that’s what her mama said. He died in that horrible blaze. After that, they’d moved to this little fishing village. Though times were hard, they’d managed to make ends meet without him. It was here that she’d met Samuel. Their son looked so much like his father. She’d had such hopes for her James, even though Sam died when he was just a child.

  She squared her shoulders and lifted her eyes. “Time to do something now! It is up to me, isn’t it? The Lord helps those who help themselves, as the good book says. There are plenty of fish out there, I know it, and I’ll prove it to him. That’ll bring him to his senses.”

  The hat her Samuel always wore was still on the same hook by the door. It was too big, but she pushed it down on her head anyway, saying a silent prayer. She’d take it out herself, the boat that James refused to use again. He’d been so proud of it from the start. He’d worked on the docks and saved every penny, doing outside jobs. He’d taken her out in it once, proudly showing her the dials with little needles that meant a gauge for gas and speed and some other things she couldn’t remember. He even let her have a try at the wheel. That was fun, like driving a car—though she never learned to do more than steer one, never got her license. No need, of course. This was a small town, the store was just down the road. Then he wanted her to try the throttle. He’d laughed when she was so fearful of pushing it up to a higher speed. This time she wouldn’t be afraid.

  Even though it was early morning, the air was heavy with heat. She noticed this because there used to be
a nice breeze blowing from the sea this time of year. But then, she didn’t get around outside for a walk like she used to. There was also an absence of gulls, which was puzzling, but she gave it little mind. It wasn’t far to the docks where the boat was moored. James was right about one thing, the other boats were gone. She smiled to herself. Of course they are gone, they are all away fishing. James had to be mistaken all along. Untying the boat was a struggle. She finally got it loose from its moorings and dropped the rope to climb aboard, banging her shins in the process.

  It wasn’t a large boat, but to her it appeared almost as long as their house. Maybe longer, she wasn’t sure. He’d painted a blue stripe around the sides, christened it Lady Luck with a bottle of wine. That was such an exciting day! They’d invited the neighbors and even bought a keg of beer to celebrate.

  James awoke at the sound of the motor turning over in the distance. His head was pounding. Scratching his chest, he got up for a glass of water. As he drank, he glanced out the window. He dropped the glass and bolted out the door. By the time he’d reached the dock, she’d remembered to pull out the choke and the engine caught. He grabbed the rapidly uncoiling rope she’d left on the dock and it whipped several times tautly around his arm. “Mama! Stop! There’s not enough gas!”

  But Mama was on a mission now. She didn’t hear his screams as he was yanked into the water. Eyes on the horizon, she swung the Lady Luck around, jammed it down full throttle. The craft seemed to be pulling to the right, so it was a struggle to make it stay on course, but she put all her strength into keeping it from reeling sideways. By and by, she hit a current that compensated some. She realized then that she was very thirsty. Water! She’d forgotten to bring any fresh water. Well, the Lord would surely provide.

  A few minutes later, she remembered she’d not brought bait, or set the lines out. She muttered to herself, fanning her face with Samuel’s hat. Noon came and went.

  “Oh yes, my Samuel—your dear father, James—he was such a fine man. Hah! Ran off with our pastor’s daughter, that little hussy! Of course, I never told you about it, James. The shame of it. A braggart and a fool he was! Well, I’ll show him. I’ll show you too, son! I can do this.”

  The heat of the sun pounding down steadily for hours was making her head fuzzy, and she was so terribly thirsty. Besides that, the throttle was still up at full, but the boat wouldn’t go any faster. Something must be wrong. Finally she looked around, thinking the boat had snagged on something. She noticed the line, though it did appear more like a rope—maybe she had set a line and forgotten?—but it was taut to the right side of the boat.

  The Lord has answered her prayers. It must be a big fish—a huge fish, enough to feed them for days! She could salt it down and it will stay edible, she knew how to do that. Setting the throttle to idle, she pulled in the rope. It took all her strength, drawing it hand over hand, but at last she saw what was caught on the rope. It was a dreadful thing. The face was contorted, mouth open, eyes wide—one leg skinned and dangling, the other wasn’t there at all.

  Mama cradled his head in her lap. She hummed a lullaby, the one that was his favorite as a baby. All the while, a single fin made circles around the boat. She spotted it and pushed his lifeless shoulders up.

  “You see that, James? I told you there were fish in the sea, but you wouldn’t believe. I told you to have faith. Just look out there! The Lord provides.”

  The motor coughed and sputtered a bit before it died.

  IN THE DREAMTIME OF LADY RESURRECTION

  by Caitlín R. Kiernan

  How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?

  —Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley (October 15th, 1831)

  “Wake up,” she whispers, as ever she is always whispering with those demanding, ashen lips, but I do not open my eyes. I do not wake up, as she has bidden me to do, but, instead, lie drifting in this amniotic moment, unwilling to move one instant forward and incapable of retreating by even the scant breadth of a single second. For now, there is only now; yet, even so, an infinity stretches all around, haunted by dim shapes and half-glimpsed phantasmagoria, and if I named this time and place, I might name it Pluto or Orcus or Dis Pater. But never would I name it purgatorial, for here there are no purging flames, nor trials of final purification from venial transgressions. I have not arrived here by any shade of damnation and await no deliverance, but scud gently through Pre-Adamite seas, and so might I name this wide pacific realm Womb, the uterus common to all that which has ever risen squirming from mere insensate earth. I might name it Mother. I might best call it nothing at all, for a name may only lessen and constrain this inconceivable vastness.

  “Wake up now,” she whispers, but I shall rather seek these deeper currents.

  No longer can I distinguish that which is without from that which is within. In ocher and loden green and malachite dusks do I dissolve and somehow still retain this flesh and this unbeating heart and this blood grown cold and stagnant in my veins. Even as I slip free, I am constrained, and in the eel-grass shadows do I descry her desperate, damned form bending low above this warm and salty sea where she has lain me down. She is Heaven, her milky skin is star-pierced through a thousand, thousand times to spill forth droplets of the dazzling light which is but one half of her unspeakable art. She would have me think it the totality, as though a dead woman is blind merely because her eyes remain shut. Long did I suspect the whole of her. When I breathed and had occasion to walk beneath the sun and moon, even then did I harbour my suspicions and guess at the blackness fastidiously concealed within that blinding glare. And here, at this moment, she is to me as naked as in the hour of her birth, and no guise nor glamour would ever hide from me that perpetual evening of her soul. At this moment, all and everything is laid bare. I am gutted like a gasping fish, and she is flayed by revelation.

  She whispers to me, and I float across endless plains of primordial silt and gaping hadopelagic chasms where sometimes I sense the awful minds of other sleepers, ancient before the coming of time, waiting alone in sunken temples and drowned sepulchers. Below me lies the gray and glairy mass of Professor Huxley’s Bathybius haeckelii, the boundless, wriggling sheet of Urschleim that encircles all the globe. Here and there do I catch sight of the bleached skeletons of mighty whales and ichthyosauria, their bones gnawed raw by centuries and millennia and aeons, by the busy proboscides of nameless invertebrata. The struts of a Leviathan’s ribcage rise from the gloom like a cathedral’s vaulted roof, and a startled retinue of spiny crabs wave threatful pincers that I might not forget I am the intruder. For this I would forget, and forswear that tattered life she stole and now so labours to restore, were that choice only mine to make.

  I know this is no ocean, and I know there is no firmament set out over me. But I am sinking, all the same, spiraling down with infinite slowness toward some unimaginable beginning or conclusion (as though there is a difference between the two). And you watch on worriedly, and yet always that devouring curiosity to defuse any fear or regret. Your hands wander impatiently across copper coils and spark tungsten filaments, tap upon sluggish dials and tug so slightly at the rubber tubes that enter and exit me as though I have sprouted a bouquet of umbilici. You mind the gate and the road back, and so I turn away and would not see your pale, exhausted face.

  With a glass dropper, you taint my pool with poisonous tinctures of quicksilver and iodine, meaning to shock me back into a discarded shell.

  And I misstep, then, some fraction of a footfall this way or that, and now somehow I have not yet felt the snip that divided me from me. I sit naked on a wooden stool near Der Ocean auf dem Tische, the great vivarium tank you have fashioned from iron and plate glass and marble.

  You will be my goldfish, you laugh. You will be my newt. What better part could you ever play, my dear?

  You kiss my bare shoulders and my lips, and I taste brandy on your tongue. You hold my breasts cupped in your hands and tease my nipples with your teeth. An
d I know none of this is misdirection to put my mind at ease, but rather your delight in changes to come. The experiment is your bacchanal, and the mad glint in your eyes would shame any maenad or rutting satyr. I have no delusions regarding what is soon to come. I am the sacrifice, and it matters little or none at all whether the altar you have raised is to Science or Dionysus.

  “Oh, if I could stand in your place,” you sigh, and again your lips brush mine. “If I could see what you will see and feel what you will feel!”

  “I will be your eyes,” I say, echoing myself. “I will be your curious, probing hands.” These might be wedding vows that we exchange. These might be the last words of the condemned on the morning of her execution.

  “Yes, you shall, but I would make this journey myself, and have need of no surrogate.” Then and now, I wonder in secret if you mean everything you say. It is easy to declare envy when there is no likelihood of exchanging places. “Where you go, my love, all go in due time, but you may be the first ever to return and report to the living what she has witnessed there.”

  You kneel before me, as if in awe or gratitude, and your head settles upon my lap. I touch your golden hair with fingers that have scarcely begun to feel the tingling and chill, the numbness that will consume me soon enough. You kindly offered to place the lethal preparation in a cup of something sweet that I would not taste its bitterness, but I told you how I preferred to know my executioner and would not have his grim face so pleasantly hooded. I took it in a single acrid spoonful, and now we wait, and I touch your golden hair.

  “When I was a girl,” I begin, then must pause to lick my dry lips.

  “You have told me this story already.”

  “I would have you hear it once more. Am I not accorded some last indulgence before the stroll to the gallows?”