Reef Mind, page 3
So many of me.
We float far, far away from the beach. The strange air helps with its supernatural buoyancy. The instinct is clear, consciousness shared but also commanding me. My personality pressed into service of the ocean’s will. I am the coral’s crop. My violation is the result of its anger and desire to reign supreme over lives that once dominated them.
I must find someone wounded and vulnerable. I must find that fertile soil, let the coral expand its territory, let it grow within a helpless life so that it may feed on the vividness of it.
A little girl, her hair in a nice plait. Hiking a wooded path with her parents. Refugees.
She scratches the side of her face.
Complains that her eye itches.
MATT
I TOOK A bottle of Tequila to Torrey Pines and camped out on a perch of rock overlooking what used to be the coast.
After a bout of uncontrollable weeping followed by headaches, I dropped the bottle off the edge and promised I wouldn’t drink again. I could see the coral from that height, and breathe a little easier. My fishing nets caught flying fish that drifted by my perch and my harpoon warded off bigger things.
I felt like a ghost haunting the abandoned trails, the information plaques rendered useless and sad, the natural wildlife absent. Even the greenery—the cactuses and brush—had started to die. Down below, the coral choked the trees, encasing them in a white limestone shell.
In the first few weeks, I moped in my tent, wondering why I was still alive. Other survivors—not many—had the same deadened look in their eyes. We were husks of our former selves, alone and pale and wandering. The man closest to my small camp was nonverbal. Whether due to present traumas or something lifelong, I do not know. He crouched outside a small cave, protective. He was so skinny that his cheeks looked hollow. Older, too, his hair pure white and past his shoulders.
I called him Sir to be polite, and then it became his name. I never saw Sir hunt for fish, and despite my reservations, I began to speak to him. I told him my name. I asked if he needed food. His black eyes widened at the sight of my net, full of my fresh catch. The winds had been good to me that day. I sat a good distance away and set a fire up and proceeded to gut and then roast a yellowtail. Sir crawled over and snatched pieces that I cut into small bites, which I laid atop a rock like a small offering.
This became my routine. The only human contact I’d had since Amanda . . . was taken from me. I was grateful to have something to do for someone else. I needed it. It was all to change again, after all. All joy a distraction in those days, a thing to be snatched.
The winds changed in the following weeks, and my catch grew smaller. I went to Sir, finally, in the evening as the sun started to set. All was awash in red and orange and gold. My shadow stretched long before me. I wondered if I should look for more survivors. It was common to hear voices sometimes, carried over the wind. I thought of suggesting this to my silent friend, when I realized that something was wrong.
Sir was standing in front of the cave, his eyes wide, as if I’d walked in on something inappropriate.
The shadow behind him moved, the dappled light catching the armored red shell of a gigantic crab. Sir let out a cry of fear, but his eyes were on me. I’d moved forward, harpoon in hand. I watched the old man throw himself onto the thing, clutching a red leg like a tree trunk he could barely encircle.
The flattened shelf of carapace atop the legs, what I would call the head, did not end in the protruding dark eyes typical of such a creature. Instead, the red shell possessed a soft underbelly of stretched skin, facial features marred but intact. The thin lips did not move, the eyes, wide set, were gray-green. They looked at me.
I understood then, the horror still fresh and piercing. This was someone Sir loved.
He kicked dirt at me. I dropped the harpoon. I tried to apologize, but it did not work. Sir retreated into the cave with the crab, and it was clear to me that I should not follow. Those claws could cut off my limbs, I was sure. Why tempt it?
A few days later, the cave was empty. I had scared off my only companion.
Alone. Again.
I do not know why people like me and Sir have been spared these mutations. Maybe things would be better if I’d gotten sick, too. If the coral would just take my body, then maybe I could resign myself to it all.
It is as if people like us have been chosen to suffer more.
***
In the days and weeks that followed, I did not go out. Without Sir to distract me, all I could think of was Amanda. I tried to focus on remembering her voice.
It proved to be a mistake. That was what haunted me, especially at night. I could hear it. It was a singsong tune, the one she’d used when she was in the mood for sex. I’d wake up hard, and then remember that I was alone and in hell.
The problem was, when I dreamed, I became convinced it was her. That conviction blurred reality, and eventually I started sleepwalking. I’d leave the safety of my tent and walk the trails, and only wake up when a sharp wind would shock me. I was always headed in the direction of the beach, that coral city thriving with mutated looking things. Half-human half coral grotesqueries. Scuttling, crablike legs with human torsos. I tried not to look closely, nor did I study their industry. If I kept my head down and walked at a steady pace they took no notice. Or perhaps, no interest.
Maybe the coral was studying me the whole time. A lone survivor that it could use, somehow, to work its way into the human ecosystem more thoroughly.
I’m not proud of what I did.
It was in the evening when I was at my most vulnerable. Amanda’s voice again, the sing-song tune. I was awake this time. Donning wool fisherman’s slacks and thick rubber boots—to avoid the crown of thorns starfish lining the ground—I grabbed my harpoon, ready to find the mimic and kill it.I reminded myself that my wife was gone. The voice was not real. It was mocking me. It was a grotesque joke, a profane thing. My Amanda couldn’t say anything at all, at the end.
I recited this litany of grievances all the way down to the place where the beach used to be, ducking under arches of interlaced limestone structures. I’ve always thought that corals were beautiful. Calcium carbonate skeletons teeming with life and color, huge sea fans as large as umbrellas and detailed like lace. I walked through it like a forest, the fish in the air as loud as any birds. The babbling, clicking, and sometimes low moans that sound like roars usually warn of lionfish, a danger to avoid. But that night the noises were unthreatening, as if the fish were getting out of my way.
Bellybutton pressed to my spine, I kept on with caution, not trusting the calm around me. The darkening sky lit up the coral structures with a psychedelic fluorescence, pink and green and violet light bedazzling the columns I passed and the shelves that rose like stacked plates. Emperor shrimp marched past me, living up to their name. I came to a clearing past the branching black coral, the long and spiny limbs parting to reveal the source of my wife’s voice.
She was standing amid small, bush-like structures that came up to her knees, branches flat and bumpy, like a field of cauliflower. Their dome-like shapes had ridges that reminded me of the wrinkles on a human brain.
Amanda. Not-Amanda. White as a coral skeleton, and naked. Amanda if her body had been cast in a mold for a retail store mannequin. The freckles on her arms were gone. Her hair, usually curly and wild, was slicked back and stiff. Her mouth was open, singing her come-hither song. At the sight of me, her eyes glittered like marbles.
The shape of her was right, but none of the details. She didn’t blink. But the curve of her hips, her breasts, the shoulders, the tip of her nose, all of it begged for closer examination. How could this be? My imagination dipped into a memory of red lace on pale skin, my lips hot against the cool flesh below her belly button. Her thighs spreading open and then clenching around me.
Not-Amanda beckoned me with her hand. A thrill went through me. That’s not your wife, you idiot. I was already walking to her, a tightness in my pants that grew hard. She pressed into me then, her cool grip on my wrist, guiding my hand over her breast. Her skin was cold to the touch, her breath on my face like the smell of a salty wave on a hot day. The little noises she made were exactly as I remembered them, and I sunk down as if in deep seawater with her rocking against me.
At some point, I let myself believe it was her. I must have. The coral had taken her away and then given her back. That doesn’t make any sense, I know. It made sense until the end, lying beside one another in post-coital satisfaction. Translucent tentacles the width of hair slithered up from the cauliflower coral bushes underneath us. I realized I could feel the prickle of their touch against my back, a few pinpricks at first that turned into a swarm of wasps. I sat up with a yelp as if from a dream. The tendrils had burrowed into my skin; I could feel their twitching even if I couldn’t see them. They were all over Amanda, too, but she did not resist them. Her skin crawled, the threads writing under it, boiling it like wax. They coiled around her head, slithered down her chest—she cracked apart and dissolved into the ground. I remember her eyeball bouncing on the end of a string, her fingers twitching as they were lassoed and torn off before being gobbled up by the coral.
By then I was screaming, and I scrambled away backwards on my naked ass, and then ran barefoot all the way back to my tent.
Not before scraping up my legs to shit and fainting twice in the thick air. I caught a few nasty bruises. An outdoor circular security mirror showed me my back, which looked like it had broken out in some sort of pox. Red freckles. The sting wore off and became numb.
The coral had defeated me. I curled up in my sleeping bag and wept, finally ensnared by the monstrosity I’d tried to avoid. It was like it knew me now, had finally noticed me. Amanda’s smiling skull was behind my eyelids.
MATT
I GET IT, I guess. You’re here because you were able to trick me.
I tied you down because you navigate the air the way a swimmer does water. I’ve killed flying fish with clubs and deft harpoon shots, but I think I need to be more methodical with you. Your rocky skin will not be undone by simple coral fragging methods, I’m sure.
Your neck fits in the open V of my heavy-duty shears. I use them to press your head against a rock. Your expression remains placid. I’d love a daughter, wouldn’t I? I see this thing of stone and flower, your small limbs, your curly hair. Is my blood in there, or are you bloodless and cold?
You’re not a person. You’re not a person and I am going to close these shears around your neck until it cracks. I have to kill you. You are a trick. A lie made material.
I’m not sorry.
***
Meeting you was one of the most horrific experiences of my life.
A week after Sir ran off, the wind changed, and fish were in short supply. I had to leave my tent and hunt, which I was not used to. I skipped meals. Mollusks and clams were scarce. I scrounged and crawled along the ground for anything. But someone else, I decided, had to be hunting there. And they were taking more than they needed. I packed up my tent to find a better spot, after three months of stagnation. Perhaps this was best. I hadn’t heard Amanda’s voice again, but leaving my camp felt, in part, like a new start.
My clothing had grown to hang from my thinning frame. My canteen was empty.
The voices seemed like a hallucination at first, so it was the smell that stopped me. Cigarette smoke. No mistaking it. More voices next, all low and baritone, masculine to my ear. Military, maybe? The small of my back tightened.
“Reubens! You take last watch.”
“Yessir, that perimeter is going nowhere.”
To my left, noisy footsteps. Then, a young kid, clean shaven and blonde, stubbed a cigarette on a sea fan. He put his cap on and turned, and that was when he saw me.
I was made to put my hands on my head, to kneel on the ground while they surrounded me. They took my backpack, my tent. No guns on them, of course, but they had other instruments. Most of them wore fatigues and riot gear. They referred to themselves as a troop, with a chain of command, but I could not confirm that they were actual military. One of those militia groups, I think. An amalgamation of people with dreams of violent glory, reduced to more primitive structures.
The campsite was brightly lit by a large fire. The troop had cleared the area around them, the ground unnaturally bare. Their sunburned and scarred leader was only ever called “Sarge.” He took my things, seeming disgusted by my lack of food. And then ordered me to work.
They were fragging corals, using hacksaws and bone cutters to remove growth. They tossed columns and shelves over the cliffside, cheering as they broke and cracked on the way down, clouds of stony dust rising in plumes. I wasn’t given a mask and the work sent me into coughing fits, the dust agitating my lungs. The troop’s goal was to expand their perimeter and establish a permanent camp for themselves. I was fodder for this goal. I was fed only enough to keep moving.
They’d overfished the area, as I’d suspected. Days after I was pressed into service, they complained about the smaller rations. I saw them dig up the last of their supply of fish, deep in the ground packed in salt.
The hunger gnawed at the camp.
Made people reckless.
***
I awoke very early—due to my hunger pains. The sun only an orange outline on the dark horizon. My stomach growled and clawed away at my insides. The air felt thick and hot. I got off my cot and realized that someone was cooking, the heat of a fire sending up blurry waves that distorted the landscape. The smell of something roasting brought beads of saliva to my tongue. A sweet aroma, something meaty, juicy. Lobster?
Like a man in a dream, I stumbled through the camp to the source, feeling weak and wisp-thin. It wasn’t lobster, but my nose was close. Crab meat. Nearest me, three men were stooped over one large and red leg. They’d cracked open the shell and were scooping out the shiny white meat. There was so much of it that they weren’t paying attention to rations. I crawled over like an animal approaching a trough. The first bites were rich and sweet. My hands became slick with grease.
Someone made a joke about the lack of lemons and butter. Laughter rippled, going on and on, reaching hysterical notes, until I realized that someone was actually screaming. I did not recognize the voice. There was no way I could have, you understand. It sent the blood from my face. There I was, a hunk of meat wadded in my cheek, looking across the feeding hordes, the fire, the spits roasting crab legs, to a thin old man with tied hands. Howling at the sky.
I spat. Gagged.
“Somebody shut him up,” one of the men said.
I weaved around bodies and landed on my knees when I got past the fire. Tears blurred my eyes. “Sir? Sir?” I took his shoulders, but he twisted from me, body contorted in agony.
I blubbered. I told him I was sorry, so sorry. I wished I could vomit.
I wished I were dead.
On my knees, I lowered my forehead to the ground. Sir’s howling continued.
A pair of boots stopped by my ear. I looked up at Reubens, chewing at a piece of crabmeat stuck to the end of his large bowie knife. “You know this nut?” He nudged me with the side of his foot when I didn’t answer right away.
“I think we’re eating a person.” I said. Then, in case he didn’t hear: “This crab isn’t what it seems.”
Reubens licked his fingers, holstered his knife. “Tastes like a crab. No ‘seeming’ about it.”
“It’s a person,” I insisted.
“Not anymore it isn’t. You ate some too, fireman. Don’t be so high and mighty.”
My mouth was a silent ‘o’ of shock. Reubens moved forward and swung his leg. His boot landed right in Sir’s middle. The old man’s voice choked off after an abrupt exhalation. I started forward and was overcome with light-headedness, my strength and agility sapped by hunger. My eyes blurred again. I started to crawl forward when I saw Reubens plunge his bowie knife at Sir’s chest.
The knife’s point made a strange noise; like a woodpecker beak hitting oak. I saw Reubens flinch, and then he took hold of Sir’s arm and pulled him forward, inspecting. His teeth bared in some sort of amused realization. “Look at that.” I couldn’t see anything. I struggled to my feet as three men from the troop answered Reuben’s summons. They made disconcerted noises.
“What is that?”
“What’s happening to him?”
“It’s mighty convenient.” Reubens said. “You, get the rope! Secure legs and arms, I think. Don’t want him crawling off.”
I only stood there, confused and outraged, my heartbeat in my ears. They tied Sir down so that he could not wander away. When the men were done they went back to their duties, to feasting by the fire. I dared to creep forward after and noticed that Reubens didn’t seem to mind. His eyes glinted, as if in on a joke.
Sir’s belly was bright red. I assumed a terrible sunburn until I got closer. The morning light shone off it like armor. Shell. It was hardened shell. His fleshy arms ended in clawlike appendages, fingers fused together with the thumbs separate. They looked flaccid, tender. His head was bent to the ground, not looking at me. I began to shake.
Reubens called to me: “We’ll be eating good for a while.”
***
I tried not to eat. But I eventually did. I had to. There was nothing. Nothing at all edible, and no other creatures near the camp. I considered running away, but my weakness made me dependent. I doubted I’d have made it a few miles before passing out. The human body can’t move without calories. They meant to work me to death, I think.
The shell of the crab had been dismantled and the parts propped on a rock, a macabre battle trophy. The troop had cleaned it out, rationing the rest of the meat.
Sir changed a little bit every day. He never acknowledged me, but I sat by him anyway as his eyes grew further apart and his lips stretched thin and shut. He had always been nonverbal, but the sense I had of his silence changed after a few weeks. Instead of intelligent curiosity a dumb apathy replaced him. I could no longer sit there. I could no longer think about it.
