The Gulp

by Alan Baxter

  The line snagged again and Troy spat curses. Definitely caught up on something inanimate this time. He tugged and wound the reel, but it wouldn’t give. He slipped the knife from his belt, about to cut the line and his losses, but thoughts of sea life tangled in discarded fishing line passed by his mind’s eye. A lot of the old boys didn’t care, they thought themselves above the welfare of the ocean, but Troy had a respect for it. He fished for sport, certainly, but he fished for his dinner too. There was purpose to it, man in nature, sustaining himself. He didn’t believe in that process causing unnecessary suffering. He slipped the knife back and decided to try a little longer to reel in.

  He wound and leaned the rod up and back. The rod bent, the line seemed to stretch, then as he was about to quit, a little movement. He hauled again. And again. Little by little, the line came back to him, but reluctantly. It seemed to be dragging something heavy along with it.

  “Fucking kelp,” Troy muttered, picturing a great wad of the thick plant being drawn along the seabed. But he didn’t want to leave line in the water if he could help it, so he kept up the effort.

  He flicked a glance over his shoulder and saw Trevor watching. “Fucken cut it, ya drongo!” Trev yelled.

  “Worry about your own self,” Troy called back.

  He heard the man’s guttural laughing as Trev lit a cigarette and crouched by his tackle box, baiting up.

  It took ten minutes and with every passing second, the urge to keep pulling in grew stronger. Maybe his earlier sense hadn’t been wishful thinking. A deep yearning ached in his chest, a strangely primal need to see whatever this was caught on his line. With every wind, he thought less and less that it was anything as simple as kelp. On some deep level, it called to him. Troy had a sensation that whatever he’d hooked badly needed to come ashore. It needed his help.

  It was a strange and slightly disconcerting train of thought, but he couldn’t help picturing whatever it was as though it had limbs that reached, stretched for him like a child asking for a hug.

  Finally, he saw something causing a shallow wake at the end of his line and he took a couple of steps down the rock, careful not to get too close to the wet and slippery edge. His father’s lessons were burned in. As the bundle of whatever it was got closer, Troy realised it was incredibly heavy for its size. It wasn’t kelp, but some dark, slick seaweed of a kind he didn’t recognise. Thin, flat leaves with blisters all over that seemed like bubbles, pressing out in translucent bulges. Each blister was fluid-filled, seawater he presumed, but it seemed thicker the way it moved. Troy reached down and grabbed hold of the mass, hauled it up onto the rock beside his feet. It was warm despite the cool water sluicing off it. Too warm, like a living thing. A warm-blooded thing. A sensation of need rose from it and Troy stopped, stood back a pace or two in discomfort. The feeling was strong, too much.

  “No, no,” he whispered to himself. “This isn’t...” What? His face was twisted in involuntary concern, almost disgust.

  Despite his concern, he was drawn back to it. He dropped his rod beside himself and stood looking down. “The fuck is it?”

  He crouched again, slipping his knife out, planning to cut the line and kick the weird, hot seaweed ball back into the water. But as he got closer again he saw the weed wasn’t a solid ball, but wrapped around something else. He used the razor-sharp edge of his green-handled knife to slice away some of the suppurating weed, and revealed a hard, leathery, but transparent curve of some mass inside. This was generating the heat and Troy immediately felt an overwhelming urge to take care of it. Nurture it. Some part of his mind rebelled at the thought, but that was buried by the urgency with which his heartbeat and his breath shallowed. This was something special, something unique and valuable and necessary.

  A shadow seemed to shift slightly inside it. He pressed at it with one forefinger and the surface gave, but only a little, like pushing against the arm of a leather couch. Except this thing was thicker-skinned, harder. And hot. His fingertip tingled.

  He sliced away more of the blistered weed and revealed the entirety of it. About twenty-five, maybe thirty centimetres long, two-thirds as wide, a rough lozenge shape, tapering to edges with short hooks and curls of the same clear, thick, tough substance. His hook had slipped through the bubbled weed and caught in one of these, and he carefully worked it free. Where the point had punctured the small frond, a viscous clear liquid leaked. Frowning, he gently pressed the pad of his index finger against the wound, and held it there for a moment, unable to resist the urge to salve its hurt. When he took his finger away, the wound had stuck together and stopped leaking, barely noticeable any more. His fingertip tingled more, almost burned, where the stuff had touched his skin.

  He picked the thing up, marvelling at its weight. It had to be at least five kilos, which given its size seemed incongruous, tricky to hold in one hand as he carried his rod in the other. As the early sun lanced across it, he saw inside. A tight mass of some kind, hundreds, maybe thousands of intertwined pili or flagellum that shifted slightly, languidly. This was a living thing. No, he corrected himself. This would be a living thing. It was an egg, surely. But a massive one. Even the biggest sharks laid eggs a fraction of this size, and this wasn’t a shark egg, though it had similarities to some he’d seen. And even egg wasn’t quite description enough, the way it yearned. It was in part a child too, an infant in desperate need.

  Troy looked around, suddenly anxious that no one see him. This was his, and his alone. His to care for. A couple of steps down the rocks had taken him out of Trev’s eyeline, so that was good. No one else around. Time was getting on, he would be late for work, but this was worth it.

  He hurried back up to his gear and slipped the egg into his large, plastic catch bag with the two bream. “Sorry, it’s not a very dignified way to carry you,” he whispered to it. It occurred to him briefly that talking to the thing was kind of crazy, but it didn’t feel wrong. His urge to take care of it, to be there for it, was overwhelming. He paused, looking at the lumpen catch bag. He should throw it back, it was too much. An image of launching a surprised and terrified child out into the waves washed over his mind and he balked.

  “No, no, I won’t,” he told it. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

  The nerves returned, but they were excitement now, a need to do the right thing.

  He wiped his hand on his jeans, his palm tingling where he’d held the egg. The finger he’d pressed to the small hook wound still burned slightly. He looked, but saw nothing on his skin, no marks.

  He packed quickly and started back up the rocks.

  “Quitting time?” Trevor called.

  “Gotta go to work. You?”

  “Nah, day off. Catch anything?”

  “Couple of bream. You?”

  Trevor shrugged. “Not really. But there’s time. Clooney’s tonight?”

  Troy nodded. “See you there.”

  He clambered back up the rocks, rod in one hand, tackle box in the other, catch bag heavy over his shoulder.

  When he got home, he had a plan. Not much of one, but enough for the moment. He had a 95-litre fish tank on the dresser in his lounge room. His flat was small, one-bedroom, bathroom, open space for kitchen and lounge, but it was his. One good thing about The Gulp, rent was low because no one wanted to live there. His parents had fronted him the bond and his job at Turner’s paid enough to live on his own.

  The dresser next to the TV along one wall held a bunch of junk but was mainly a place for his tank. He kept a simple community aquarium of tropical fish, mostly guppies, platys, and tetras and a few Corydoras catfish. It was a simple pleasure, a pretty, watery ecosystem in his tiny house. It was freshwater, not salt, but he knew somehow that would be okay. The egg needed to stay wet and warm, that was all.

  He put his gear down in the hallway by the front door, went to the kitchen corner and put the two bream in the fridge. He’d clean them later. Then he carried the catch bag over to the fish tank. He slid aside one half of the glass c
overing under the bright LED light bar and carefully slipped the egg from the bag into the water.

  The fish started zooming around, expecting food as they always did whenever the lid was moved. Proof, as far as Troy was concerned, that the whole three second memory thing was bullshit. Fish, even little tropical ones like this, were smarter than people gave them credit for.

  The egg sank to the bottom and sat on the variegated tan, brown and black gravel, leaning back against a curve of driftwood that decorated that end of the tank. He had a small stand of vallisneria along the back of the tank, a tall thin, flat-leaved plant. The aquarium store in Enden always labelled it ‘vallis/eel grass’. It was excellent in tropical tanks, hardy, easy to keep, pretty to look at. It was pressed back a little as the egg settled against the driftwood, but otherwise the introduction of the large, unusual item seemed to have no adverse effects. Any salt on it would hopefully get cleaned up by the filter without hurting his fish. The egg seemed to glow slightly, no doubt the thick translucency of its skin catching and reflecting the aquarium light. It was beautiful. The fish circled it, searched it, then moved quickly away. They gathered up the other end of the tank, all seeming to agree at once to keep their distance. Troy smiled. More proof they were smart, being cautious about a new introduction to the tank. Although they were usually more curious than that.

  He glanced at his watch. 8.28am. “Shit!” He had two minutes to get to work. He was going to be late. He closed up the fish tank and ran out the door.

  He got a stern talking to for being late as he stood sweating on the factory floor, but no official warning. Troy was, after all, a diligent and reliable employee. He was rarely late, always did good work, was always polite and agreeable. But despite the lack of reprimand, he was distracted all day. He did his work, went to the fish and chip takeaway just down the road for lunch and mechanically ate a basic serve. The whole time all he could think about was the egg in his tank back home. What was it? Why did it fill him with such... longing? He had a hard time pinning down exactly how he felt other than the overwhelming need to nurture it. At one point he found himself thinking of Cindy Panko again, or more specifically what he’d hoped for with Cindy. Family. Real family.

  When he got home, he went straight to the tank. Things had changed a bit. All his fish, some fifteen or so, were still up the far end away from the egg. The vallis growing behind it had twisted a little and small marks marred the smooth surface of the long flat leaves. Looking closer he saw the marks were tiny bumps, like pinprick blisters. He remembered the weed the egg had been wrapped up in when he caught it. Was this tropical plant going the same way? No matter, as long as the egg was safe.

  And it was. Smooth, gently glowing with reflected light, the myriad tendrils inside languidly writhing. The pinkie finger-sized hooks and curls of the outer edges of the egg lay relaxed in the water, shifting ever so slightly in the soft current from the filter. Waves of rainbow iridescence rippled across it, mesmerising in their beauty.

  He glanced at his right hand, the one he’d held the egg in. It still itched, the index fingertip still burned. He saw tiny marks on the pad of his finger, minuscule bumps like gooseflesh. He pressed at it with his thumb, but there was no pain. The itch across his palm was distant, not really much to worry about. He dropped his hands and stared at the hypnotic beauty of the thing he’d caught, glistening under the aquarium light.

  Troy startled when his phone rang. As he pulled it from his pocket to answer he caught sight of the time. Just after 9pm. He’d sat for nearly four hours staring into his tank, but it only felt like minutes. His stomach rumbled with hunger. The call was from his mother.

  “Hey, Mum.”

  “How are you, darling?”

  “Just fine, thanks. You?”

  “Oh, you know. I’m still alive, ha ha.” She did that a lot. Not a laugh but saying the words “ha ha” like they were punctuation.

  Troy didn’t have anything to say, just stared at the egg with the phone pressed to his ear.

  “Anyway,” his mum said after a moment. “Lunch on Sunday, your brother and sister are both coming, Dad’ll be there, of course. Can you come?”

  Far out, Christmas had only been a few weeks ago, and she was gathering the family again already? “Yeah, sure. What’s the occasion?”

  “Oh, Troy, does there need to be a reason? We’re a family.”

  Family. He smiled at his egg. “Yeah, of course. Okay. I’ll see you about noon on Sunday.”

  She was saying something else as he took the phone from his ear and hit the End Call button. Absently, knowing he was likely to forget, he tapped ‘Lunch noon’ into his calendar for Sunday and set an alarm for 1 Hour Before Event.

  His stomach roiled again and he realised he still hadn’t eaten. His phone was still in his hand. The time said 11.15pm.

  “What the fuck?”

  Troy tore his gaze form the tank and turned his back. A sensation of loss and longing gusted through him, but his mind also cleared a little. Hunger dragged at him. Refusing to look back at the fish tank, he walked into the kitchen corner and put together a cheese and ham jaffle. Quick and easy. He stood at the counter and ate it with his back still to the egg.

  He desperately wanted to look again, but a sense of disquiet tugged at him. He resisted the urge and went into the bathroom, showered, brushed his teeth, and then crossed the hall to his bedroom, all the time ignoring the lounge room behind him. He fell into bed, scratching absently at his right palm, and exhaustion swept over him.

  He had the dream again. The one with the slippery, black beach, the red, gaping sky, the things falling. He’d had it on and off his whole life. He felt like it meant something, but he wasn’t sure what. He always mostly forgot the details on waking. His phone alarm went off at 4.30am, still set from the day before. He rolled over, looked at it for a moment, then ended it. Reset it for 7.30. He’d skip fishing for today.

  It seemed only moments later that it went off again, and he sat up in bed with a groan.

  “At least it’s Friday,” he muttered.

  He staggered into the front room and went to the kitchenette in the corner, started coffee. He realised he was avoiding looking at his tank, but that was okay. He needed coffee first, and more food. He crunched Vegemite toast as the percolator coughed and spluttered on the stovetop, then he poured the coffee and finally turned to look at the egg.

  Immediately the sense of wonder filled him again, the urge to nurture. Mug cupped in both hands, he went and sat on the arm of the armchair beside the tank, the closest he could get and still sit down. The egg glowed, it seemed to exude contentment. The vallis plant all along the back still had those small blisters, only larger. The normally tall, flat leaves seemed to sag and curl slightly. He noticed the fish were still gathered up the other end and they all looked... odd. The guppies and tetras were humped, like their spines had arched upwards. The swam a little listlessly, gills wide, mouths working harder than usual. The small catfish, usually industrious little creatures always vacuuming at the gravel with their bristly noses, drifted a little lacklustre. Their usual colour was muted, pale.

  Was the egg poisoning them somehow? Troy pulled out all his test kits, adding drops of the relevant chemicals to small glass vials of water from the tank. pH level, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate. It all came up good. He was as diligent with his fishkeeping as he was with everything else in life and prided himself on the health of his pets.

  He frowned. Why were they so... affected?

  He did a twenty-five per cent or so water change just in case and added a little conditioner to the new water he put in to avoid any pH shock. Then he did a dose of Melafix, a general antibacterial. He did a maintenance dose once a week on Mondays anyway, but another one wouldn’t hurt. He usually dosed the tank for three straight days whenever he put new fish in, so he supposed the addition of the beautiful egg counted the same.

  Satisfied he’d done all he could, he sat watching again. His phone rang. As he tapped to
answer, his eye caught the display. 9.30am and Boyd calling. His boss, and he was an hour late.

  He quickly put some gravel into his voice. “Hello?”

  “You planning on coming to work today? I was generous yesterday, but you were only ten minutes late then.”

  “I’m really sorry, Boyd. I’m sick as a dog today. I meant to call you earlier, but must have passed out again.”

  Boyd’s voice softened immediately. “You okay? I mean, you need help?”

  “No, thanks. Maybe something I ate? I’ve been up all night. I’m really sorry, man. I’ll be there Monday.”

  “Okay, well take care. Go to the doctor if you don’t improve.”

  “I will.”

  “Call if you need a lift or something.”

  Troy smiled. Boyd Turner was a good guy. He’d taken over the factory when his father retired, keeping it in the family. The man was only about forty-five but managed that rare combination of being one of the lads and a respectable elder. Troy hated to let him down. “I can walk to Tanning Street Medical Centre in a few minutes if I need to. Thanks though.”

  “Okay,” Boyd said. “Well, you take care and I’ll see you on Monday.”

  “See you then.”

  He hung up and saw his phone battery was low. He moved to the couch where a charger cable lay along the arm, always ready, and plugged it in. His palm itched and he looked at it, saw the same bumpy flesh across it as he’d noticed on the fingertip before. The finger had become more misshapen, the bumps pressing together to make his fingertip appear swollen and irregular. The burning had intensified, his hand stiff and tingly when he clenched it. Weird, he thought, as he watched the egg.

  It was his phone that distracted him again a few minutes later, this time Brendan Testa calling. Troy’s best friend since high school and an all-around good guy. “Yo, Bren. What’s up? You not working?”