by Alan Baxter
“Working? I finished an hour ago.”
Troy pulled the phone from his ear, looked at the display. 6.02 pm. What the actual fuck? How did this keep happening? “Oh yeah, right,” he said. “Lost track of time.”
“Pub tonight? Missed you last night.”
Troy decided to play along with the lie he’d used earlier. “Yeah, must have eaten something bad, I was sick all night. Slept it off today though. See you about seven.” His stomach grumbled. He’d gone hours without eating again. “Might grab a bistro dinner, actually.”
Brendan laughed. “Friday night treat, eh? Why not. I’ll join you.”
“Cool.” Troy hung up and pulled himself off the couch, determinedly refusing to look at the tank. He caught a glimpse of a couple of his fish anyway as he turned. They seemed bloated, misshapen and awkward in the water. He made a small sound of despair, but kept his back to them by pure force of will. He went to the bathroom and washed, went to his bedroom and changed, then left the flat without a backward glance.
He walked slowly to the pub, enjoying the fresh air and exercise, but the summer heat was cloying. He walked everywhere, given his lack of car, but didn’t mind that. He’d taken lessons from his dad as a teenager and got his licence like everyone else. He took his test in Enden, not bothering to engage in the permanent debate about whether Enden or Monkton was the easier place to pass. But he’d never bought a car. The expense of one bothered him, and while he’d like the freedom, he lived and worked so locally it seemed unnecessary. Brendan had a car and was always happy to drive when they went further afield. Maybe Troy should get one soon. For some reason The Gulp suddenly felt a little claustrophobic. Some deep part of him had become agitated. He pushed the thoughts away, scratching at his palm, flexing his fingers. The whole hand felt swollen and stiff. The bumps across his palm stood a little higher, hard like tiny pebbles. His index finger throbbed, the last joint so swollen it wouldn’t bend at all.
It was only just after 6.30 so he walked past the pub and down to the harbourside, a need to see the ocean dragging him along. He stood on the cement path that curved around the bay, the squared-off harbour for boats to tie up off to his right, the lighthouse beyond that. The water shifted gently, lapped against the low wall in front of him. It was still light, would be for another hour or two yet, but the sun had dropped below the swell of land off to the west making everything soft and pastel. The brine smell and cry of gulls comforted him.
“Something lingers about you.”
Troy jumped at the scratchy sound of the old woman’s voice. He turned, the sea witch only a metre away, staring up at him with her face scrunched in... what? Disgust? She was tiny, barely four and half feet tall, older than the Bible, wrinkled like a ball sack. Her hair was white and thick, in wild disarray about her head as usual. She wore layer after layer of woollen clothes despite the heat. Troy was hot in shorts and t-shirt. He imagined she was stick-thin beneath all her clothes. She had three teeth, one top centre and two evenly spaced in the bottom of her wet, gummy jaw. No one knew her name or where she lived, and they all called her the sea witch, though not to her face. Troy assumed she was homeless, but she’d been around The Gulp forever. His dad said she was just as old and hanging around the harbour when he was a boy, but surely that wasn’t possible. Troy liked her well enough, saw her often when he came to fish, always said hello. He didn’t believe the stories about her, she was just a crazy old lady. He felt sorry for her more than anything.
“Lingers?” he said.
She stepped forward and grabbed his right wrist, turned his palm up before he could resist. One glimpse and she dropped it, danced a couple of steps backwards. “Put it back!”
He frowned. “What? Put what back?”
“Whatever it is you took from the sea. It needs to go back, right now. Take a boat, go out as far as you can. Weigh it down so it stays down!” Her voice rose in volume as she spoke, her rheumy grey eyes widening.
How did she know he’d taken something from the sea? “What are you talking about?”
“You know!” she said, narrowing her eyes and wagging one finger at him. “You know very well. Put it back!”
“No,” he said, and turned away.
As he walked back towards the pub, he heard her sigh. “So it begins,” she said. When he looked around she already had her back to him, shuffling away towards the lighthouse.
He ordered a chicken schnitty with chips and salad in Clooney’s, his hunger clawing with a vengeance. He took the table number then moved around to the bar and ordered a beer from Chrissy.
“You okay?” she asked as she poured. “You look pale.”
He shrugged. “Had a bit of a stomach bug last night. Maybe that’s it.”
“Nothing a few beers can’t cure, hey?” She had one eyebrow raised, sarcasm heavy in her voice.
She was so beautiful, Troy was among many who admired her. But none would ever suggest anything, knowing her thing with her dad. She certainly wasn’t the type of family he wanted. Family made him think of the egg again. He smiled softly. “We’ll see, I guess,” he said, and went to find a table.
He said hello to Mark on the way past, the man’s facial scars slowly turning from pink to white as the months passed. They would always be visible though, giving him a permanently fierce expression. Chicks might dig scars, Troy thought, but not that level of disfigurement, poor bastard. Barry wasn’t in it yet, but probably would be soon. Troy glanced around for Barry’s mum, but couldn’t spot her. It always paid to keep an eye on that violent bitch and her friends. Trev and a couple of others stood chatting nearby.
“Missed you last night,” Trev said with a grin. “Too embarrassed by your terrible catch to come in?”
“Get fucked,” Troy said, trying to be humorous, but his heart wasn’t in it.
“Touchy fucker,” Trev said, then turned back to his friends.
Troy found a table and sat down. Brendan arrived a moment later. He was tall and skinny, a good-looking guy, but didn’t spare a glimpse for Chrissy while she poured his beer. He’d never been with a girl to Troy’s knowledge, and they’d been mates a long time. But it was also something Brendan seemed entirely unconcerned about. Troy could never decide if Bren was gay and ignoring it, or asexual, or what. And it didn’t seem to bother Brendan so Troy didn’t worry about it either. His mate was happy, that’s all that mattered.
“You order food?” Brendan asked, putting his beer on the table.
“Yeah. Schnitty.” Troy pointed at the table number.
“Cool. Reckon I’ll have one too.” He went to turn away, then paused, frowned. “You okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You look pale. Bit drawn or something.”
“I’m fine. Had a bug, remember?”
Brendan nodded, went to order his food.
Troy sat trying to ignore his roaring stomach. A few sips of beer had made him lightheaded, he was so hungry. Brendan returned, put his order number in its little stand on the table next to Troy’s.
“So, what’s new?”
“Same old shit,” Troy said with a grin. He felt distracted, found himself thinking of the egg in his tank at home. A powerful urge to return to it pulled at him.
They made small talk, but Troy was preoccupied. Brendan was going on about some work thing. Troy’s hand throbbed. He kept it on his lap under the table but glanced down and saw it had swollen even further. The whole thing looked like a rubber glove someone had blown up like a balloon. It itched interminably.
His food arrived and he downed his beer, then said, “You wanna get a round in as my dinner’s here? I’ll get the next one.”
“Sure.”
When Bren got up and went to the bar, Troy quickly used both hands to cut his schnitzel into bite-sized pieces, fumbling awkwardly with the knife in his fat fingers. By the time Brendan returned, Troy’s swollen hand was back under the table and he ate with just a fork. Brendan frowned when he put the beers down, but said nothi
ng. His chicken schnitzel with mash and vegies arrived and they sat quietly, enjoying each other’s company and their food.
Some sense of normalcy returned as the meal hit Troy’s stomach, but the itch in his hand didn’t ease, nor the drag at his chest that seemed to draw him back towards home. He imagined it felt like this when parents had a new baby and went out, leaving the child with a babysitter. An anxiety of abdicated responsibility.
“You know what, mate,” he said to Brendan. “I think that bug knocked me about more than I realised. I thought a good feed would fix me up, but I don’t think it did.”
“You do look a bit peaky.” Brendan’s eyes were narrow in concern.
“Sorry, man, I owe you a beer. But next time, yeah?”
“Sure. You gonna be okay?”
Troy smiled, but it felt fake even to him. “Yeah. I reckon I just need to sleep it off.”
He passed a couple of his Turner’s colleagues coming in as he went out.
“Thought you were off sick?” one said.
“I was. Thought I was better, but I’m not. Going home again.”
“See you Monday?”
“Hope so!”
He hurried away up Tanning Street. Besides the burning itch in his swollen hand, and the discomfort of the tightened skin, he did actually feel much better for the feed and the couple of beers. He just needed to get back to his egg.
As he reached the opposite corner of the block, where the Victorian pub stood, he saw Cindy Panko heading towards him. On her own. He wondered where Al Chang was. Maybe she was going to meet him. He felt a lurch of longing in his gut, remembered the many times they’d enjoyed each other’s bodies. But she was no good, certainly no good for him. She wasn’t made of family stuff. The egg at home exerted a greater pull on him than Cindy’s body now. Some distant part of his mind suggested maybe that wasn’t right. Maybe that was fucking weird. But he didn’t care.
“Hey, Troyyy,” she said, dragging out the sound of his name.
She had a great figure, long shiny brown hair and big eyes. Her skin was always creamy. “Hey,” he said cautiously, pausing. The urge to get back to his egg intensified.
“Where you going?” she asked.
“Heading home.”
“It’s not even 8 o’clock.”
He shrugged. He didn’t owe her an explanation.
“Wanna have a drink with me?” she asked. She pointed to the Vic. “We could go in there if you don’t want to be in Clooney’s tonight.”
“What about Al?”
Her face twisted into something nasty. “What about him?”
“Like that is it?”
“Al Chang can get fucked. But by someone else from now on.”
“So you come crawling back to me, that it?” The words were harsh and out before he realised he was going to say them.
Instead of being hurt, she grinned impishly. “I like it when you’re angry.”
“I’m going home.” He stepped around her and started to walk away, but she fell into step beside him.
“How about I come too?”
“What?”
“Let’s fuck, Troy. Come on. And you’ve got some grog at home, I’m sure. Let’s get pissed and fuck.”
He couldn’t ignore the stir in his groin at her words, but the drag in him intensified again. His egg needed him. Family first. “No. Fuck off, Cindy.”
She stopped, eyes wide. “Well fuck you too, shitcunt!” she spat.
He heard her Dunlop Volleys slapping the pavement as she marched away from him. He didn’t look back, kept walking.
When he got back to his flat, he went straight to the tank. The plants were all swollen with numerous blisters and darkening towards black. They looked oily. The fish were unrecognisable. Bloated and contorted, yet somehow alive, here a gasping mouth, there a gaping gill. Eyes bulged from strange positions on the crooked scales, fins were feathered or gathered into bizarre points, protruding at random from their confused bodies. They bobbed and rolled in the water, tumbled occasionally by the current from the filter pushing cleaned water back into the tank from the top. They no longer avoided the egg, either through disinclination or inability he wasn’t sure. They drifted and flexed feebly in the water, seemingly blind and lost to their fate. He didn’t mind.
But the egg, oh, that was magnificent. It had grown, now filling a little over half the length of the tank, about the size of a rectangular couch cushion. Its surface glowed, more than a reflection of the LED light bar, definitely some internal iridescence, rainbowing its surface. The myriad tendrils inside writhed lazily.
Troy’s sense of urgency, of longing, eased immediately. He was where he needed to be, caring for this. His hand itched and pulsed, but despite that warning, maybe even invited by it, he desperately wanted to touch the egg again. To hold it.
He suddenly felt encumbered by his clothes. Hurrying to the bedroom, he stripped off, left his clothes in a pile on the floor, and returned to his tank. Naked, he slid the glass covering aside and reached in. The warm water was a balm to his swollen, itching skin. He couldn’t lift the egg easily in one hand, but he got his puffy palm under it and hoisted it up out of the water, then pressed it against his chest, cradled in the crook of his elbow. He kept his left hand away from it, some part of him realising he might need better use of that hand, despite being right-handed.
The egg was warm, almost hot, and pulsed with life. It emanated a kind of peace and a kind of vibrancy simultaneously. It felt right, pressed against his flesh. He would protect this thing. Nothing else mattered.
He hugged the egg to him for a long time, unaware of exactly how long, but eventually the weight became too much, pulling at him. His breathing had turned to shallow gasps, his heart raced, and the egg itself yearned for water.
He quickly returned it to the tank. All inside his arm and across his chest was stippled with little bumps, already the skin stretching to a translucence that showed liquid inside. Troy felt as if he’d had the best sex of his life, spent and exhausted and exhilarated. All this time wanting a family and he had it all in this one beautiful thing. Paradoxically, both child and lover, something to care for and something to be with, a family in rainbow beauty. It transcended family, made a mockery of the concept of a couple producing offspring. It was all things combined into one and it wanted him.
He stumbled backwards to the couch and sat, staring at the thing he loved, unaware and unconcerned as hours drifted by.
At some later point, hunger roused him. He staggered into the kitchen and tried to find something to eat, but he hadn’t shopped in a while, and nothing was especially obvious. He found a pack of bacon in the fridge and tore it open, ate the fatty strips of meat raw and cold. Some potatoes sat in the vegetable crisper and he took one, crunched it like an apple. Taste, texture didn’t matter, he simply needed sustenance.
With his back to his beloved family in the tank he realised he was exhausted. He knew self-care was an important part of any relationship. He needed sleep. The egg was safe in the water, so he went through into the bedroom. He saw himself in the mirrored sliding door of his wardrobe. Naked and lean, a handsome enough man. But his arm and torso distracted him. Across the upper right side of his chest and shoulder, and all along his right arm, his skin was rippled like a burn scar. He moved closer. Not rippled but stippled. A mass of liquid-filled blisters, each about the size of half a grape, pushing up from this skin, blurring together in places. They itched, the skin over them both semi-translucent and darkening to an off brown colour against his usual pale pink. Not brown, he thought, something deeper. Maybe a shade towards purple, like a stormy sky. He pressed gingerly at one of the lumps with the index finger of his left hand. It felt hardened, but still flexible. A strange gift from the egg, but family changed a person, after all. Family meant becoming something bigger than oneself, greater than the sum of parts.
He crawled into bed and slept.
He dreamed again of the rent sky, glowing red, the creatures
falling. They rained over the ocean and over the bush behind the slick, black beach. The heavy clouds rolled and swelled, lightning crackled. He heard an unearthly siren sound that seemed to echo across the entire sky. And he sensed something beyond the sky, beyond the mammoth red celestial wound. Some presence outside his comprehension, older, vaster than he could imagine. It was pleased with him.
He woke to his phone ringing.
He untangled himself from the bedclothes and realised it wasn’t a call, but the alarm tone. Was it time for work? What day was it? The phone was in his pants pocket on the floor, and he fumbled it out with his left hand, his right arm stiff and unresponsive.
Mum lunch noon
It all came back. It was Sunday. Wait, hadn’t he gone to the pub on Friday night? Then come home? Cindy telling him to fuck off. What happened to Saturday? He rolled onto the floor and sat up, looked at himself in the mirrored sliding door.
His entire right arm and shoulder, and down to his hand, was swollen and lumpen, almost one thickened mass. The purpling of the skin had deepened, the fluid-filled blisters larger, like half golf balls now. More had pushed into each other and merged, occasionally making a kind of swollen number eight shape where two were partially combined, some in strings of four or five.
The itching continued but had a delicious heat underneath it. He daren’t scratch for fear of bursting a pustule, but gently slapping at the skin with his left hand felt almost orgasmic. He tried to flex his right arm and though it was stiff it moved a little, the shift of the muscles under the corrupted flesh was a deeply satisfying discomfort. Troy smiled at himself.
Then he remembered the phone. One hour. If he didn’t show up for the family lunch, they would ask questions, they might even come around. It would be far easier to go along, then not have to see them again for weeks, than try to wriggle out of it now. He glanced towards the door, imagining his egg beyond. If he went to see it, he would never drag himself away. Family meant responsibility. Get dressed and slip out, see the egg after lunch.