Dead Bait

by Romana Baotic (ed. )

  Saw Drake for brunch again. What a wonderful man. I know it's wrong, even writing this feels traitorous, but I find him in my thoughts more every time I see him. Oh forgive me, Freddy, but life goes on, as you always used to say.

  “And this,” Penny said, jabbing at 16th July:

  I'm so excited. Had coffee with Drake this morning. He's going to show me something wonderful in the ocean tomorrow, something beautiful and exotic! I can't wait!

  “If you think we were sleeping with each other,” Drake began, “you're mistaken. I'm attracted to her – but then what man wouldn't be – and even if I'd tried my up-most to lure her to the bedroom, it would've been in vain. She talked about you and your father constantly. I had no idea she felt that way about me.” Which was the truth, and he felt a jab at his heart.

  “My father was a damn drunk,” she said. “If it wasn't for his selfishness, maybe she wouldn't have felt the need for this silly crush.” She was silent, her eyes shifting as if searching for words. Eventually, “Explain this exotic sight?”

  Drake sighed. “We often talked about nature and what beauty is still left in the world. Your mother loves to swim, and about a week before I last saw her, I took her out into the reef to see one of the pools.” He remembered the morning the police sent out a boat, watching from his living room as they passed over the entombed bones. But he knew how weak the tide was around this stretch, knew if anyone were to drown, they'd either get snagged up on the reef, or be back on the sands by sunrise – that was, of course, if you didn't happen to end up trapped in an underwater cave. He figured the police also knew this, must've informed Penny, so added, “Jenna swam like a fish, loved the pool's natural beauty, didn't stop talking about it.”

  “And this was the last time you saw her?”

  “No,” Drake was quick to reply, “like I said, about a week later, jogging.”

  Penny frowned. “It's strange she didn't log this wonderful experience you shared, don't you think? And if she'd lost her mind and fled – like half the bay is now saying – surely she'd have jotted something down?”

  Drake shrugged. “Hardly incriminating evidence. I knew she was lonely after your father's passing, to which I'm truly sorry, and I thought she'd gone away to visit you.” He needed the diary, needed to destroy it, make it disappear.

  “Well I think you know more than you're letting on. No one else has seen her since but you.”

  “She lived alone and I'm her neighbor. I can understand your suspicions, but it's really not that unusual.” Drake closed the diary, pulled it onto his half of the table. “Look,” he said, “how about I make us some coffee, see if I can trudge up everything we ever talked about, see if it will help in some way.”

  She looked defeated, her fight waning. She placed a hand over the diary, nodded solemnly.

  He lifted the coffee tray, hoping an idea would bloom by the time he returned – spilling coffee over the pages perhaps?

  As he headed for the kitchen, Penny politely coughed, and said, “Back in the Apple, whenever I see the ocean, it reminds me of mother. She taught me how to swim out here, took me out everyday as a kid.”

  Drake stopped so suddenly, the tray chinked and rattled.

  By the time he had everything under control, he was beaming, eyes full of joy. “Well if you want,” he said, “after coffee, perhaps you'd like to see this pool I showed your mother. It really is quite wonderful.”

  She pondered on this by tracing a finger across the diary.

  Finally, she looked up and smiled.

  As Drake headed for the kitchen, he consulted his diving watch, and thought, it's about time for brunch.

  Crawlies

  By David Dunwoody

  His wristwatch awoke him at four in the AM. He slipped quietly out of bed and into ice-cold jeans, pattering across the cabin floor on tip-toe searching in the dark for the rest of his clothes. Pulling on his raspy old windbreaker, the one he always wore; he carried his things out to the truck and sat them in the passenger seat. Double-checked the tackle box for that half-empty bottle of Jack. All the company he’d need on this Sunday morning.

  The drive to the lake was dead silent. Nothing came over the radio clear enough to listen to out here, out in this dark cleft of tree-shrouded dirt roads. In the bottom of the valley was the lake. His lake. He hadn’t been here in nearly twenty years, not since his father passed on; but his brother had been up recently and fixed the cabin up nice, so he’d decided to share it with his own family. Maybe establish a new tradition.

  Of course, his wife had let the boy bring the Xbox. So much for tradition. He’d fish alone while his son got fatter and paler, and the missus looked for outlet malls within driving distance.

  Balls to that. He enjoyed the thought of quiet solitude. Just him and Jack and the water. He’d bring his catch home and fix up a nice dinner, give the boy some fish that didn’t come in a frozen battered stick and maybe share some stories of the day’s adventure. Maybe next time he’d get the boy to come out with him.

  He had a Styrofoam container of nightcrawlers with him, but he remembered that his dad had always stopped by a local bait shop on the way to the lake. Who knew, maybe it’d still be there. It was.

  He parked in the gravel lot and walked into the brightly-lit store. The smell of moist earth and sweetness entered his nostrils. Worms in the back, two aisles of lures and pellet bait. Slim pickings, but he figured these guys had the market cornered.

  “Heading to the lake this morning?” croaked a voice. He looked up to see an old man perched behind the register, a scruffy smile on his face, fingers hitched in his overalls. Jesus, was it the same guy from twenty years ago? Probably.

  “Yessir,” he replied. The man, whose nametag said CARL, nodded and said, “Those fish – the good ones – cotton to a particular type of bait. You don’t want to mess with any of that.” He waved dismissively at the aisles.

  “Your first time?” Carl asked. The fisherman shook his head. “Nope, but it’s been a real long time. Dad used to take me and my brother out every summer. I know he always stopped by here, but I don’t know what bait he used.”

  “Well, if he was worth his salt, and I expect he was; then he used these.” Carl held up a small plastic jar filled with murky water.

  The fisherman leaned close. “What are they?”

  Then it emerged from the darkness, pressing its pale underbelly against the side of the jar, tiny legs writhing. Some sort of water millipede? Looked long and segmented. It squirmed against the plastic and the fisherman’s stomach turned a little.

  “These are the only way to go,” Carl said with a toothy smile. “Two dollars for a dozen. Well worth it.”

  “And you just hook ‘em?” The fisherman grimaced a bit at the thought of pushing a hook through one of the insects. He’d gotten used to worms, but these were fat, meaty things nearly as thick as his pinky.

  Well, what the hell. He bought two jars.

  He didn’t even like having them in the car with him – the plastic containers jostling in the passenger seat, wedged between the seat and the tackle box but sloshing nonetheless, offering the occasional glimpse of a coiled black thing. They had black shells on their segments. Nasty little faceless things. He wasn’t sure why they seemed so different from worms, but they were. They had those tiny legs and probably moved like the lightning. Couldn’t risk dropping one. Jesus. The thought of a millipede moving, serpentine, across the floor of the rowboat and onto his boot made him kick involuntarily. Why was he so freaked out? Just a bug. Bait.

  He got out onto the water at about five, an hour before sunrise, and drifted quietly into the middle of the lake. A tiny halogen flashlight illuminated the contents of the open tackle box. He took a swig of Jack, then contemplated a jar of millipedes. Water millipedes. It would probably kick around a helluva lot more than a spiked worm. Fish would definitely go for it. Larger fish.

  “Okay, Carl,” he muttered, and unscrewed the lid.

  How was he s
upposed to get a hold of one? Just grab it with his fingers? Did they bite or anything? That was the problem with these buggers. He had no idea what they could do. They were like alien insects. His stomach knotted up as he replaced the lid on the jar and threaded a hook. Brand new pole. His dad’s old boat and tackle box too, but he’d had to get a new pole. He’d ordered it online at the office, showing the pics off to his friends. They were gonna be expecting pics of big fat fish frying on the old cabin stove come Monday. “You’re gonna get it,” he whispered, taking hold of the hook and grabbing that damnable jar again. “You’re gonna get it.”

  Okay. Hunched over, he opened the jar in the halogen light and dipped the hook into the black water, as if inviting one of the dozen to hop onto the hook for him.

  A millipede surfaced, body rolling over, legs prone. He recoiled. Okay, okay. Just do it. Shit. He jammed his thumb and forefinger into the jar and pinched them together. A fat millipede wriggled around his thumb, legs brushing his skin. He gagged and lifted the thing from the jar. God, it was big! Bigger than he’d even imagined. Its front end waved in the air. Faceless face turning toward the fisherman. Shit, shit, shit. He gritted his teeth and plunged the hook between two segmented plates.

  A little bubble of pale juice burped from the underside of the millipede. It stiffened, then its back end started struggling madly, scraping over the flesh of his thumb. He let go of it and watched the vile thing squirm on the hook. “There,” he said, sighing, setting the bait and hook on the rowboat’s other seat and screwing the lid tight on the jar. “There. God.”

  He finally made his first cast at five-thirty.

  It wasn’t too cold out here. At least that’s what Jack told him. He took another drink and smiled. With the warmth of the liquor in his belly, a feeling of nostalgia washed over him. He imagined his dad on that other seat, paying more attention to the boys’ lines than his, whispering jokes and sipping from his own bottle. He’d only ever drank while fishing. Not so for his son - no sir, but at least this morning he had en excuse. Honoring the old man’s memory. He raised the bottle in salute. In the halogen light, he saw a millipede writhing inside.

  “Jesus Christ!” He hollered, and hurled the entire bottle into the water. “Holy god damn shit!” His stomach turned over. He wanted to retch but cold terror gripped him, freezing up his insides. He snatched the flashlight from the tackle box and turned it toward the floor.

  One of the jars was open. The one he hadn’t touched. It was open, and by God it was empty. Jesus, they were out. They were out and he couldn’t see a single one. They’d slipped into the crevices and the shadows, and—

  He stood up with an anguished cry and started kicking his legs. He shook the legs of his jeans, stomped his boots and very nearly fell out of the boat – and he didn’t feel a damn thing. Where were they? He imagined them coiled around his boot laces, disguising themselves...or moving too gently for him to feel up the back of his jacket, whispering over the fabric of his t-shirt...he yanked off the windbreaker and balled it up in his trembling fists. He was still swearing, spitting profanities under his breath as he clawed at his chest and back in search of the things. Where in the hell were they?

  He bent over and panned the light along the walls of the boat. They were simply gone. Maybe they’d escaped into the water. Sure. Sure. They’d gone home. Good riddance. Let them be food for the fish, hooks or not – so long as the miserable beasts were gone.

  He looked at the other jar.

  How had they gotten out?

  Despite himself, he imagined it: the millipedes inside the lid of the jar, wrapped around one another, legs clenched tight as they turned their bodies and somehow unscrewed the thing. No, no, no! Carl just hadn’t put the lid on tight enough – that’s all. It had popped off by itself. Never mind that he had checked it ten times during the drive to the lake. It had just popped off. That was all.

  He threw the jar overboard anyway.

  Reeling in his line, he found that the one millipede he’d used was gone as well. Great. Fine. Hell with it.

  He rowed ashore and got the nightcrawlers from the truck.

  *

  The look on the boy’s face was worth all of it. When he came home at noon with a string of long, flopping bass hanging from his hand, the kid actually ran out of the cabin to greet him. He followed his dad inside and watched him clean the fish, learning about their anatomy and about family traditions. But he didn’t hear one thing about millipedes - not one damn word.

  His wife had to unpack the big skillet. These babies were bigger than he’d expected, seven fat ones – and he’d caught them all using good old worms. His son helped him select spices while the stovetop warmed up.

  He placed the first fish, skinned and gutted, in the skillet. The sound of frying started up immediately and he closed his eyes and inhaled the scent.

  “Dad!” the boy exclaimed. “What are those?”

  He looked down.

  They were wriggling out of the fish - tearing fissures in its flesh while squirming straight up like charmed snakes, legs wriggling…

  Millipedes.

  He knocked the skillet into the wall and screamed. His son stumbled back in shock.

  “What is it?” the wife called. He grabbed the overturned skillet by the handle and shook the fish out. It splattered on the floor. Millipedes tore free and shot out like darts, hiding underneath the sink and stove.

  “God Damn!” he screamed. He turned to the fish filled cooler on the counter. He ripped the lid off and looked down into a teeming bed of long black things, and lost it.

  Running outside with the cooler, he threw its contents into the woods. He heard them crawling through the grass. He doubled over and vomited.

  “Honey!” his wife cried from the porch. She almost sounded more annoyed than worried. Why not? He’d just tossed dinner into the trees.

  “Bugs,” he coughed, wiping his lips on the back of his hand. “Bugs in the fish. Bugs.” He didn’t intend to say one more word. He marched past her into the cabin and emptied a can of insect spray into every dark corner of the kitchen.

  The fumes were overpowering. They had to drive into town for dinner. He insisted on burgers.

  *

  The millipedes...they must have been some kind of water parasite. And it wasn’t the fish that were crazy for them – no, it was quite the opposite, he suspected, after giving it a lot of thought. They probably swam into the fishes’ mouths and laid their eggs in their guts. So the things coming out of the frying meat had been hatchlings that were forced from their home. He spent most of dinner with his hands pressed to his face, just muttering. The boy and his wife were silent.

  When they got back to the cabin, he went to the bathroom and locked the door. Then he took a long shower.

  His family had spent every summer up here eating those fish. He slouched under the water and shook his head. Better not to think about it. But he was going to have to call his brother. Or maybe he’d just burn the cabin to the ground. He sighed and let it wash away. Just go away - I don’t ever want to think about this again...God, the nightmares I’m gonna have.

  He got out and toweled off slowly. Needed to drive back into town and get another bottle of Jack. She’d understand. The boy had told her everything; his nine-year-old imagination turned it into a scene from a horror movie, although that wasn’t really much of a stretch.

  Sitting on the toilet, he pressed his hands to his face again and groaned. Parasites.

  Something tickled his buttocks. He shifted and tried to think about something else.

  It entered him.

  He stood up and clenched his ass with a cry. He could feel it wriggling inside him, tiny legs scrabbling inside his colon – then his bowels loosened against his will and he moaned as he felt it sliding further in.

  His abdomen was on fire. He fell to the floor and rolled onto his back. It protruded from between his legs, half of it still inside the toilet – it had to be at least two feet long, and was as
thick as his thumb. The millipede waved its hundred tiny feet back and forth in hideous rapture as it burrowed deeper.

  He was screaming. His wife was beating on the door. He reached up to the sink and raked his hand across it, knocking everything to the floor. Toothpaste, brush, her manicure set – he grabbed the cuticle scissors and let out a long, horrible wail as he felt it pulling itself deeper into his intestines. Its back end flopped out of the toilet bowl with a splash and landed on the floor. It turned and writhed and pushed into him.

  He stabbed the scissors into it. Pus-like guts coughed out of the ruptured belly of the thing. He sliced into its flesh with the scissors and pried its rubbery body apart with a snap.

  The severed half of the millipede thrashed mindlessly on the bathroom floor.

  The rest vanished up inside him.

  Jungle Rot

  By Steve Lowe

  The fishermen that peopled the village refused to call it a crocodile. Roland Munro was convinced that it was, in fact, a croc based on their descriptions, but they would only call it “Quái vật,” which, loosely translated, meant “mythical monster”.

  Roland sat cross-legged on a dirt floor opposite a spindly old man who couldn’t have weighed more than 90 pounds in the middle of a monsoon. The old man’s forearms were smooth as glass and bore the familiar scarring common to napalm survivors. Roland knew of napalm’s effects all too well. During the first month of his first tour in Vietnam, he had helped transport casualties hit by an errant drop from an F-4, only to have layers of molten skin slide off the bodies and hang in his hands, draped across his fingers. That was his introduction to the U.S. Army’s most ridiculous of phrases, “friendly fire”.

  The old fisherman’s left eye was gone and a thick, white scar streaked across the empty hole from forehead to cheekbone. The dry, wrinkled socket expanded and contracted and quivered with the rest his body as he described the attack he witnessed. “Quái vật đã mọc lên Từ Sâu và nuốt Con trai của Tôi Toàn bộ,” he spluttered.