Blue Sea Writers

Sergei Is Not Russian

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 12:00:00 Z

“They call me Sergei,” he said in rolling English like a baritone auditioning for the Mariinsky. “But I am not Russian.”

He grunted as she sank her elbow into the thin, flat muscle beneath his shoulder blade, sliding in deep with the greasy stink of Tiger Balm.

How did she know how to drill down on that one spot? The left that always gave him trouble. His shooting arm. Also his stabbing arm and punching arm. Though, he was pretty good with both limbs. Ambidexterity being an advantage for basketball players and killers alike. Not that he had a chance of being a basketball player. Too short. But he could have been an Olympic wrestler before the knee thing. That little problem of the money and the cracked knee cap. Still, who was left alive after that encounter? And it put him on his career path earlier than expected. Nothing like a little military dedovshchina to brutalise you into becoming a man.

“No?” She said and released her elbow, sending ripples of relief down his back. “But the newspapers say Russia.”

He grimaced. The muscle on his neck flared with plumes of pain.

Get a massage, Ximo said, make the muscles malleable again before getting in that tin-can of a boat to Algeria. The old Filipina cleaner down at the factory can do magic with her fingers, he said. She doesn’t care about Italian police warrants and Interpol Red Notices. Just money. Ximo had been right about the farmyard vet, discreetly rooting out the gunshot and stitching him up after Italy. So why not the massage?

But the old Filipina did read the morning papers, apparently.

“Newspapers lie,” he growled. “They sell stories to make money.”

“Berry true, sir,” she said in an accent thick as arnibal syrup.

Until this morning, nobody even knew he was here. Then the carabinieri got desperate. They put out a cash reward and sold the local papers a preposterous story about him being a murderous Russian agent. Front page news! An escapee from a Croatian prison. His old cellmates paid by the lie. 1000 push-ups and sit-ups every morning? Spetsnatz training, the papers said, as if they knew what that was. Russian special forces had given him an ‘almost inhuman discipline’ wrote one reporter, salivating over the details. He never ate red meat, another paper said, only vegetables like some kind of zealot. Still, he managed to put 5 guards into hospital when they tried to muscle him into solitary.

Okay, it wasn’t all lies. He did filch some old magazines from the library and pack them under his clothes. Worked pretty good as body armor against their batons. Until an electric current was jammed into his throat.

“Try to relax, sir,” she said. A ridiculous request. As if he could manually unwind the coiled spring deep inside him. She returned to kneading his neck.

Ximo was right. She was a good masseuse: Tender on the old injuries. Brutal on the gnarled knots of muscle.

Who was this monster the papers described in such lurid detail? That wasn’t him. He was no unkillable villain from a Hollywood movie. No psychotic murderer. He didn’t eat them like some ogre. He was no crazy serial killer in America preying on young boys. Certainly, he was not spying for Russia. If he had a patriotic bone in his body, he’d broken them all and left them behind in a stinking heap in Chechnya.

He was just doing his job. Albeit one with a highly specialised skill set in demand with certain oligarchs who supplied him with the necessary tools of the trade: weapons and passports.

“No, I am from Bulgaria,” he said. Did she know he was lying? Did it even matter? It was getting harder to keep track of which identity he was supposed to be using. Serbian, Hungarian, Moldovan and, of course, Russian. He shuffled through passports the way a croupier riffles through cards, always the same pallid and vacant face staring out.

“And I am not a killer like Russian spy idiots in England,” he added vehemently. “The poison. Novichok. ¿Sabes? So messy.”

He’d fallen into the habit of dropping Spanish into his sentences. A sure sign he’d been hiding out here too long. He turned his head to look back at her.

“Si,” she echoed in agreement, “So messy.”

She was focused on his lower back so all he could see was the top of her head. Just as well. She was not one of the pretty ones. Short and squat of some indeterminable age — but certainly not young — with fleshy hands that pummelled his muscles like meat mallets. She had a typically Asiatic face with a flat nose and wide nostrils as if she’d slipped out of the womb and landed on her face. Utterly unfuckable. But this was good. You can never trust the ones you want to fuck. Like Natalia.

Still, when the old Filipina had arrived, he frisked her down and emptied out her bag. Made a show of placing his gun on the bedside table. A Zastava CZ999. She watched him politely then laid out a Barca beach towel and connected a little speaker to her mobile phone. Tinkling piano music wafted out.

While she got the place ready, he sifted through the contents of her bag. A frayed wallet containing 20 Euros, a bus pass, and a photo of two brown smiling children. A zippered purse with tampons tucked inside. A jar of Tiger Balm and a glass dropper bottle decorated with lacy pink flowers. He checked the seals. Still intact.

She rinsed a yellow wash cloth in the kitchen sink before rolling it neatly and placing it in the fridge. Then she cracked open the jar of Tiger Balm and scooped the jelly out with her fingers. She wiped the stinking balm in one palm and rubbed her hands together.

“Okay, pace down please,” she had gestured to the towel laid out on the bed. He hesitated, just for a moment, before easing his bulk down onto his belly.

“You know Bulgaria?” He said now, drowsy, her hands extruding the words out of his mouth.

“It is …” She was moving with care along his legs. “… near Italia?”

He laughed at her.

“No, it is near Russia! On the Black Sea.”

“Sorry,” She giggled, “I was not so good at school.”

“Bulgaria is a small country,” he said, “and poor. Not like Philippines. But still poor.”

“Yes, not much money,” she said, “but we work hard.”

He’d been defaulting to his Bulgarian identity recently. It was easier to keep straight. His father had lived in Bulgaria toward the end and he really did know the country. At least the beach in Burgas where his mother took him once to meet him and eat Eskimo ice cream bars, chocolate and cream dribbling over his pudgy fingers.

He’d told Natalia about this: the simple heaven of cracking a bite into the chocolate shell, the cold delicious shock of the ice cream, walking hand in hand with the silent, grizzled man he was apparently related to, this old Soviet soldier with ghosts in his eyes. Tora Bora, his mother said in explanation, as if he would somehow know Soviet military history. He hadn’t truly understood until he was older and the Americans chased Osama Bin Laden into those limestone tunnels and he saw pictures of the rusting hulk of Soviet tanks. Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires.

He told all this to Natalia because it was the closest he could come to telling her the full truth of who he was. But she didn’t really understand. She was too young even to remember the American invasion, much less why his father came back hollowed out and broken. And still, she betrayed him.

“You are not afraid of me, yes?” He said to the old Filipina with his eyes closed.

Why had he asked her that? Maybe because he remembered Natalia’s pleas before he lowered the gun to her head. Beautiful Natalia. Her black mascara running down her pale face. Where had she wanted to go? Fiji or Tahiti? The Maldives or Bora Bora? He didn’t even know where those places were but it meant flying and that was too dangerous. Too many questions at airports. Too many people wanted them dead or behind bars.

“No,” the old Filipina said, thumbing the soles of his feet. “I am not afraid, sir.”

“Good.”

Sardinia was supposed to be their retirement. A short hop from Split to Ancona, then the Civitavechia ferry like ordinary honeymooners with two crisp new passports in hand. Natalia in her gold bikini. He in a straw hat. But she wanted more. She wanted a yacht with a walk-in wardrobe of Prada and Chanel and he couldn’t afford that. Especially if he wasn’t working anymore. He’d stashed a hefty amount of cash, but not that much.

He tried to explain this to her. They needed to live quietly. They couldn’t just sail off into the sunset with an iceberg-sized yacht, leaving a trail of Louis Vuitton bobbing in their wake. They needed to disappear. Especially as a hitman running off with one of the boss’s girls.

But she didn’t listen. They argued. He lost his temper. Put a gun to her head, yes, but only to make her listen. He didn’t pull the trigger. He would never do that. But it was only a matter of time until they found them.

Now Natalia was at the bottom of the sea with her bikini and passport packed into her suitcase, helped along by a jagged block of concrete. Fish and crabs nibbling at her milky white body while he waited it out in dusty Teruel, eating greasy jamon and peppers with Ximo. His aging body pocked with gunshot wounds that were taking longer and longer to heal. He might be difficult to kill but it was not impossible, whatever the newspapers said.

“You are berry tense here.” The old Filipina knuckled a fist into his right buttock. “Your sciatic nerve.”

“Yes, stress from my work,” he said because it was true.

“Bad for your health,” she said. “You must take care.”

He smiled at her concern. He was starting to like her accent. No, Italy was not possible anymore. Nor Spain. But he wasn’t staying in godforsaken Algeria either.

“What is like, the Philippines?”

“Hot,” she said, “but cheap. Many many islands with beautiful beaches. Palawan. Boracay. Many coconut trees.”

“Boracay,” he repeated after her dreamily. “Sounds like a nice place.”

She tapped him on his shoulder. “Sir? Please turn, face-up.” Then she disappeared into the kitchen.

He rolled over to one side, feeling thick and sluggish. Despite all the spetsnaz discipline, he’d gotten fat. She came back holding the yellow washcloth.

“I put this on, yes?” Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her waggle the glass vial in her hand, “Lavender oil, okay?”

“Hmmm.”

“Relaxing, yes?.”

But also invigorating. The cold nubs of the terrycloth alive on his skin as a sweetish scent tickled his nose. The old Filipina had managed to unpick the knotted mess inside him. He inhaled and then let out a deep velvety sigh.

She was stretching his neck out like yeasty bread dough, working his body elastic and yielding. His memories of Natalia fading like the ice in her sweet umbrella drinks, drifting away like blooms of blood in seawater.

“Boracay … is like … Bora Bora …,” he murmured through the intoxicating scent of the washcloth. “… is like …Tora Bora … ¿Sabes?”

He frowned at the wrongness of the words. Bora Bora was palm trees and bikinis. Tora Bora was the emptiness in the eyes of an old Soviet soldier.

His eyes fluttered with belated realisation. He tried to tug the cloth away but his fingers had grown fat and fumbling. He only managed to pull the damp cloth off of one eye before his hand fell away.

“You are … not … from Philippines,” he said with great effort.

“No.” Her pleasant accent was gone now, fading like the contours of the room, his face sliding in disbelief.

He made a feeble reach for the gun but his hand just flapped by his side, like a fish flopping its life away. She had slid it away somewhere. He felt his leg kick but it seemed unconnected to him now. A thick tree trunk with a foot jerking uncontrollably beneath him. His body still fighting. Then the leg went limp and he felt a sharp sting on his neck.

“Do not make this messy, Sergei” she said, “I hate cleaning.”

A razor blade at his carotid. An old trick but a good one. Clever lady. Maybe she’d snuck it in the purse lining with the tampons. Idiot. He should have checked that more closely. And the sweet little bottle too.

But what wars did the Philippines have to make assassins like this? Women with pummelling fists and cold hearts. After all the things he’d seen, he marvelled at how little he knew.

“They … Ximo … he, they …Natalia…” His tongue was filling his mouth now as he stumbled over questions. Whatever he wanted to say, it was vitally important, critical, for him to know.

“I don’t know anything,” she said to him, “Just doing a job.”

Then she shushed him, like his mother on the long drive home, lying to him that there would be Eskimo ice creams with his father every summer. Lying like Natalia that it would all be okay, that no one would find them even though she’d left a trail of shiny breadcrumbs that lead straight to their bullet-ridden boat. Lying like that greedy puto Ximo.

“For … money,” he said finally.

She nodded.

Maybe this was retirement for people like him. The pension plan of paid assassins. This retreat into memory where he could, at least, respect this ugly woman with the flat nose. She did good work. Like him.

“Okay,” he said finally. He sounded heavy, slurred, and distant as if he was hearing himself underwater, sinking down to Natalia’s depths, at last. “this … this is… Bora Bora.”

“Bora Bora,” she said and shushed him one last time.

Swimming Lessons

Wed, 05 May 2021 12:05:00 Z

In the old Jakarta house, everyone had their place. My mother had the dining room for entertaining. The tv room was staked out by my father for football and the evening news. The kitchen belonged to Nur, the cook, and Yanto, the driver, presided over the garage. Elis, when she arrived, was relegated to the laundry and cleaning area. Budi had the yard to care for, including the pool, which was mine.

I used to swim in it every day, tearing off my sweaty school clothes and jumping in with just my underwear on. It was deceptively deep. Even full grown, my toes wouldn’t touch the bottom.

One of my cousins nearly drowned in that pool. He toppled backwards into the water during a vicious game of neighbourhood tag. Tagged, of course, by me. He could not swim and sank to the bottom like a stone.

I was the only child to afford actual swimming lessons. So, I dove in and hooked his waist with my arm. I struggled to bring him to the surface. He flailed his arms and legs, working against me.

When my hand broke through the water, I felt someone yank and hoist my body out.

I blinked away the chlorine. Budi was grinning at me. A white toothy smile.

“You saved him!” He said.

“You saved me,” I told him, annoyed to be rescued.

Budi pulled my cousin to a grassy spot under the guava tree. The boy was crying and hiccuping, vomiting water like a frog. How was so much possible in a single plunge?

A circle of children crowded around us, gawping with fish mouths.

“Move back!” I shouted at them. This was my house, my back yard, my pool.

Elis came running out in a panic. She was just a few months fresh from the village but already savvy to the politics of the household. Her hair was flying, black strands broken loose from her pins.

“What happened?” She draped a towel over my cousin’s shoulders.

“It’s nothing,” Budi said soothingly. He sat the boy up and patted his back. “Now, you are learning how to swim!”

Elis knew immediately who to blame. She swatted me with a soapy bra she had not yet finished washing.

“Aduh! Bandelnya!”

This was her favourite word for me: Bandel. Naughty, disobedient, but also hard-headed, which was true. I was the only child of her wealthy employers, spoiled and stubborn, always finding ways to make her life more difficult.

“You can’t tell Mama!” I said. It was an order.

“Why not?” She said, “If you were my child, I would hit you!”

We squared off. Me, thrusting out my skinny chest and she, glowering down at me, hands on her hips.

“Biarin,” Budi said in his usual calm. Leave it be. If bandel was Elis’ favorite word, biarin was Budi’s.

Elis threw him a warning look. Budi stood up and peered into the leaves of the guava tree. He reached up and plucked a single fruit. For days, he’d been watching it, waiting for the bright green skin to yellow, telling me it was not quite ripe enough. Now, he snapped the stem off and, with a wincing effort, cracked the fruit open. The flesh glistened a lurid pink studded with tiny yellow seeds. He handed it to my cousin.

“What is that going to do?” Elis demanded and I wanted to know too because, by rights, the fruit was mine.

Budi shrugged his sloping shoulders.

“Just giving him something sweet to eat,” he said.

“Nobody can tell Mama or Papi,” I said it again as if stating the words would make it true. Budi said nothing and I turned to Elis, nodding my head to make her say yes. She shook her head slowly. Realizing she was still holding my mother’s wet brassiere in her hand, she marched back to the laundry room.

I swore my cousin to secrecy. With a sewing needle, I punctured our index fingers and forced a drop of blood to well up. Then I mashed them together. A binding blood oath.

It didn’t work. The other kids told their cousins and friends who told their parents about this near-death experience. The tale grew in danger and drama until it wound its way around the neighbourhood back to my livid mother and father.

My parents rounded up the household. Budi and Elis but also Nur, who’d been at the market when it happened and Yanto who had been chauffeuring my parents. I peeked around the jamb of my bedroom door to watch.

Nur and Yanto looked bored. Older and more experienced, they assumed their roles as disinterested bystanders. Budi gazed at the tiled floor, shiny from mopping. Elis had her chin up but she looked like she might cry.

“What were you thinking?!” My mother’s voice jangled like the gold bracelets on her wrists. “You can’t be daydreaming,” she continued to berate Elis. “You have to pay attention. This isn’t the village where kids can play just anywhere!”

I was the one who invited all the kids over, shoving them past Eli’s protestations at the door, knowing full well that she couldn’t say no. Elis could have told my mother all this and she would be right. She said nothing.

My father tried to arbitrate. He pointed out that Budi had, in fact, saved us from drowning. And Elis had been focused on not destroying the delicate hand laundry, as per my mother’s complicated instructions for fine lingerie.

“Besides,” he said, “I think we know who invited all the kids over.”

I knew what was coming next.

Two weeks without TV. No friends or cousins allowed over to the house for a month. The punishment wasn’t so bad. I had expected worse. But I slammed the door to my room anyway.

After that, Budi constructed a small bamboo fence around the pool. He sang along to the radio while he worked. He never seemed unhappy to do a job, no matter how boring.

Elis cut her hair after the pool incident, though I wasn’t sure if the two were related. One day, she took a rubber band from the kitchen and lassoed it back. Then she sawed at the strands with a scissors until it detached easily, like the tail of a baby gecko.

“Here,” she said, handing it to me. Her hair was soft. I had never touched her hair before. It surprised me how smooth it was.

“What do we do with it?” I asked.

“Sell it,” she said and swiped it back from me. “Also, one more thing.”

“What?” I was suspicious but also excited at the possibility of intrigue and mischief.

“Teach me how to swim.” I agreed. Immediately.

Elis’ lopsided haircut made her even prettier. It showed off her elegant neck and long back. My mother worried about this.

“It’s bad luck,” she said to my grandmother.

We were in the new supermarket near our house. There was no intention to buy. Only to cluck at all the expensive imported food. We ran our fingers over tins of buttery sweets from England and green wine bottles from France. All displayed in spotless aisles, frosty with high velocity air-conditioning to protect these exotic treasures from the tropical heat.

“Do you think-“ My grandmother let the sentence hang for my sake. She knew I was listening. “Sometimes, these village girls-”

My ears swivelled for more details. But I kept my eyes zeroed in on a rainbow box of American breakfast cereal. I shook it vigorously to see how much was inside.

“No, it’s not that.” My mother fluttered her hand in exasperation.

“So, what’s the problem?” My grandmother asked.

“She’s not happy,” my mother said. “She wants things. She’ll run off and I’ll have to find someone else.”

“Ah,” my grandmother said, giving my mother a sidelong glance, “Basically, she’s not like Budi. Happy to do nothing.”

“Exactly,” My mother concluded, “That’s the problem.”

Elis chose a day when everyone was gone. My mother was at some women’s meeting. Nur had gone home to see her children. Yanto was taking the weekend off to spend time with his second wife. Budi was practicing his skill behind the wheel, driving my father to golf. We were alone in the house.

“Get your swimming suit on,” I told her. She laughed at me.

“I don’t have a swimming suit!”

“What are you going to swim in then?”

She looked behind her at the empty yard then pulled her t-shirt up over her head. She wriggled the black work pants off her hips and laid them at the side of the pool. Her bra was pointy and padded, lacy but cheap, puckering in all the wrong places. A poor imitation of my mother’s fine silk that Elis was at such pains to clean. She took one ginger step into the water.

“It’s cold!” With each step, she giggled, as though the water had icy, effervescent fingers tickling her toes.

This was a different Elis from the one that did the laundry, scowling and throttling the clothes in the grey soapy lather. This Elis smiled with pleasure as she submerged her body into the blue chill of the pool.

“Now what?” She said and looked up at me.

Her fingers gripped white at the pool’s edge but her face was flushed with exhilaration.

“Your legs should be like a frog’s,” I explained in my best imitation of the swimming coach at the sports club. I even had a whistle looped around my neck. “Move your arms up and out in a circle.”

At first, she bobbed up and down in a convoluted dog paddle. But as she gained confidence, she developed her own stroke — half frog, half dog —that propelled her from one cut corner to the other. She learned to float, the water lapping at her smooth belly. Then, slowly, she started doing short laps the width of the pool, always when the rest of the household was gone.

I don’t know for how long Budi watched our swimming lessons. I only realized he was there when she had begun to swim the length of the pool. He was squatting at the far corner of the garden, half hidden by the ginger flowers. All I saw, at first, was the orange ember of his lit cigarette, a twist of smoke trailing up into the air. He was not smiling, only gazing at Elis as she swam smoothly through the water, perfecting her stroke.

“Budi is watching,” I whispered to her when she had returned to my end of the pool.

“I know,” she said, “Biarin aja.” Leave him be.

She swam one more lap. A prolonged and leisurely round, as if the pull of Budi’s gaze slowed her down. Then, she drew herself out and towelled off. She didn’t bother putting her clothes back on. I watched as she walked back to her room, back straight, clothes in one hand and the towel wrapped around her hips.

“I knew she was bad luck,” my mother told my father after dinner. Nur had cooked roast chicken with Brussels sprouts, a rare delicacy that my father ate with gusto but that I did not appreciate. I had boycotted the meal entirely and now my stomach grumbled in complaint, despite cradling a mug of consolation Ovaltine.

We were huddled around the tv set, our private time as a family inside the house. On the street corner outside, I could hear Budi laughing. Out with his friends drinking coffee or squatting down to share a bowl of noodles with Elis. I wanted to be out there slurping down salty broth and chewy noodles, hunkered down between them as they gossiped. But I also wanted to be inside, snuggled into the sofa with my parents.

“Some people think it’s good luck,” my father said mildly.

“What money do they have?” She snapped at him. “How will they raise a child? Can you imagine Budi as a father? Sleepy Budi? And Elis is practically a kid herself!”

“Budi always plays with me,” I offered up and then added, “Also, Elis is not a kid at all. She never plays with me.”

My mother emitted a brittle laugh.

“There’s more to parenthood than hosting tea parties by the pool.”

She seemed about to say something else but caught it before it escaped her lips.

“I’m just worried,” she said finally.

“Well, if Budi gets his license,” my father said gazing at the tv, “He can find work as a driver.”

“And Elis?”

“I think she’ll be fine,” he said.

The answer did not seem to satisfy my mother. She huffed at him and returned to leafing through her glossy magazine.

The motorcycle was second hand but barely used, a shiny red.

“Where did you get the money?” I asked Elis.

“My hair,” she said, “and some money I saved up.”

I struggled to conceive of how much hair was worth, how much money had exchanged hands for her soft strands.

Their plans were set. After a driving test and some under the table cash to speed things up, Budi had gotten his driver’s license. They did not have enough for a car yet. But Elis had a plan. She knew someone back home who could rent them a car. Budi could drive to earn money until they could afford their own.

I wanted to give Elis something for the baby, but my mother told me money was the best. A few nights before they left, when her belly was starting to swell, I gave her a box wrapped in pink paper.

“What is it?” She pulled it out of the box: a swimming suit, as blue as the ceramic pool tiles. She thanked me and kissed me on the forehead.

“There is a river where the children swim back home at the village,” she said. “You could swim there.”

“You mean, you could swim?” I said, “When you were small like me?”

“Not like you,” she said and touched my face.

I wanted to cry and tell her not to go. She didn’t need to have children. She had me! But that wasn’t right, I knew, and saying that would only prove how stubborn and spoiled I really was. Bandel. It’s not my fault, I wanted to tell her, I can’t help it.

They left on the motorcycle. My father shook Budi’s hand and gave him a hefty manila envelope of money. My mother snuck an extra bundle of notes in when she thought no-one was looking.

Budi gathered me up into one last hug and I cried in his arms. Elis had to pry me away. Then she made me promise to visit.

“Swear on it,” she said. But I never did visit.

When I go back home now, the swimming pool looks so much smaller and forlorn. Dark stripes of dirt drift on the bottom. My mother wants to sell the house and swap it for a high-rise apartment.

“Easier to maintain,” she says, “without all the help.”

Yanto went to work for the Japanese embassy and has fathered three more kids with the second wife. Nur is back home in the village to take care of her many grandkids.

“She was getting old anyway,” she says.

“What about Budi?” I ask, “And Elis?”

“I hear that Budi’s still driving,” she says. “Apparently, Elis runs a small fleet of trucks. It’s good money.”

I want to ask if they had a girl or a boy, maybe two or three kids now, like Yanto. I am too afraid, too ashamed, that I have not grown beyond the spoiled child I was.

I prefer to dream of them living in a house by the river. Their children swimming freely, bubbling with laughter at the muddy water tickling their toes.

The Body in the Living Room

Sun, 28 Feb 2021 12:00:00 Z

How to dispose of it?

I’m not squeamish.

Obviously.

I killed him.

I've thought about chopping him up but the logistics are something awful. Blood splatters everywhere. There’s not enough bleach in the world to get that kind of stain out.

Dissolving him in acid would be most convenient. But even if I did get a tub full of hydrochloric acid (hydrofluoric? Should have paid more attention in chemistry), how to get rid of the body sludge? No way he could be flushed out without causing the mother of all drain clogs!

Look at him. The way his belly builds upon itself, a quivering mound of unused energy and everlasting dissatisfaction. His body moulded to the shape of his overstuffed lounger. His left hand tucked into his waistband like he’s holstering some casual weapon. The tv remote still tight in the grip of his other hand.

The only witnesses to his death are his emptied beer cans, punched in the gut and doubled over on the table, neatly ordered in a single file.

Yes, I killed him. But when the police come, they will find no murder weapon. Just me and my big mouth. My voice weaponized. An auditory bone saw to his skull.

I didn’t want him to die, at first. I loved him, after all. I tried to make myself small, tiptoeing around the house in soundless, fluffy slippers, speaking in that respectfully hushed voice. I refrained from asking sensitive questions that might set off the tripwires in that minefield that is time and money. Never enough of both.

The problem, apparently, was my ‘tone’. I could never get the teeth out of my nasty tone, he said.

After a while, I gave up trying. I got loud. If I kept complaining, I’d be the death of him, he said. So, I got louder still.

And by God, he was right!

This morning, he shouldered past me to get to the coffee machine. He can’t think —much less listen to his wife — without caffeine.

“It’s like you’re shredding my brain with the cheese grater.” Those were his words.

All I’d said was: Good morning! How’d you sleep and all that. Let him know I have to run some errands today after work, so I won’t be cooking dinner.

“You’re killing me,” He said and wiped at a stain that stretched down his chest. “I’m literally leaking brain fluid now.”

“That’s the beer that dribbled out of your mouth last night.”

It was a smart remark, I admit. But grounded in fact and said a little louder than my usual under-the-breath muttering. It sailed out of my mouth before I had time to stop it.

He wheeled around and glared at me. So angry, his eyes were vibrating in their sockets. When I saw that — those quivering orbs, red-veined and bulging, — I knew I could kill him.

“You wanna go there?” He clenched his jaw and curled his hand into a fist.

It’s funny how time slows down at certain critical junctions in your life. He’d asked me a question. So, I gave serious thought on how to answer, scrupulously weighing my words.

“Yeah,” I said, finger to chin like I’d just decided between a vanilla malt milkshake or a hot-fudge sundae. “Yeah, I think I do.”

It was not a fair fight.

He’d told me exactly how to kill him, after all.

I had no shame in using every weapon at my disposal: Volume. Annunciation. Alliteration. Hyperbole. Metaphor and Simile. Onomatopoeia and Rhyme!

And, of course, my infamous ‘Tone’.

The sentences snapped around him like whips, closing around his wrists. His pummelling fists were useless against this assault of verbiage, battering up against him, relentless. When his head began to droop and his shoulders sagged, I knew I had him up against the ropes. To finish him off, I let my sharpest words fly, cleaving into him with all the weight and power of a seasoned butcher.

It was a churning, bloody mess. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had nothing on me and my 'tone’.

Oh, it cost me.

But it was worth it.

When it was done, he staggered into the living room, apparently unaware that his brain had been put through the meat grinder of my mouth.

Now, his corpse is slumped in the recliner, eternally tuned to the sports channel.

But this puts me in a quandary.

How to get rid of the body?

The Man With The Killer Rabbit

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 12:10:00 Z

Her left knee was creaky and sore, the new running shoes still stiff, but she liked the feel of the rubber cleats biting into the earth and the color: red. Warming up, she left the jogging path and headed into the forest, less-crowded and softer underfoot.

She saw the rabbit first, white and fluffy, large with floppy ears. It sniffed at the air then looked up with startled pink-rimmed eyes. Around its neck, a black collar tethered up to the man’s hand.

“Do you have a dog?” The man said in a petulant tone, “You have to leash him. I’ve got a rabbit.”

He wore a buckskin jacket and jeans, so neatly ironed that a white seam ran down the front of each leg. His hair was set in a thick, plasticine gel. Horn-rimmed glasses framed his face.

“Don’t have a dog,” she said.

She recognized him now. This man liked to take the bunny out on the lawn by the playground. Kids would abandon their play — mid-swing! — to squat down and pet the rabbit. Oh, how she envied their young and lubricated knees! They fed the animal morsels from their snack-boxes: gnawed carrot sticks and mangled leaves of lettuce, uneaten sandwich rinds.

The rabbit, she conceded, was a good gimmick.

She’d often sat there with her own strawberry licorice sticks wondering why the man seemed so familiar. Now she knew.

She bent down to pet the animal and winced at the sharp twinge in her knee. The man jerked at the leash and the rabbit hopped nervously back toward him. She picked up a thick and gnarled branch from the forest floor and used it to brace herself, lighten the load on her bad knee. She leaned upon the stick, as though settling in for a long conversation.

“Is that a killer rabbit?” she asked.

“It’s a Holland Lop-Ear,” he said primly. “Do I know you?”

She chewed at the inside of her cheek. A bad habit she’d developed when she’d first met him. When he was shaggier and toothier, she was pink-cheeked and smooth-skinned and utterly naive.

“Once upon a time,” she said, “but I got old.”

He stiffened. A neck tendon spasmed under his skin.

“I hadn’t realized,” he said. “Nice shoes. Red suits you.”

“Didn’t it always?” She smiled at him. “You cleaned up nicely! The glasses, the hair. The shave! Almost didn’t recognize you.”

His eyes darted around the crowding trees of the forest. It was getting dark. He scooped up the rabbit and retreated a step.

“And the bunny!” She continued, “Gingerbread houses just don’t cut it anymore.” She sighed. “Kids. So jaded by the YouTube. But cutesy animals, always a winner.”

“We settled this a long time ago, Red.” He said.

“Did we?” The question hung in the twilight alongside the curling vapors of her warm breath in the cold air.

“You lived to tell the tale, clearly,” he said, then jutted his chin out. “I was the one left for dead! Dragged through the mud. My future destroyed. After you, I couldn’t even get my hands on three little pigs!”

As the moon peeked through the trees, she could just make out the white tips of his canine teeth, a shadow of thick black hair poking through his long, shaved chin.

He took a deep breath and composed himself, drawing up to his full height.

“But. As you can see, I’ve changed,” he said. “Completely.”

“And yet, the appetite remains.” She shrugged. “I suppose it depends on which version of events you read. Disney took some liberties.”

He seemed to relax at this, as though they had come to some understanding. He allowed himself a sharp-toothed smile.

“What are you doing in this neck of the woods anyway, Red?” He said with more confidence now, stroking the fur on his flop-eared rabbit. “Why’d you stray from the path this time?”

Something about that sneering look on his face. His pressed clothes and tidy jacket. The coiffed hair and stylish spectacles. None of this could disguise his predator’s grin. He would never change.

She stared at her red running shoes and tried to keep her voice level, controlled.

“What do you think happens to little girls who get eaten by wolves?” she said, “What do you think they become?”

His face contorted into a confused frown but he didn’t have time to answer. She was fast for an old lady and she used both her arms to swing. The tree branch connected to his head, knocking off his glasses and cracking through his skull. His gelled hair, however, remained unruffled. The rabbit leapt from his arms and she caught it with one hand.

“A little fatter and younger is better for my health,” she said to the rabbit as she dragged the body home. “More collagen for the knees.”

As they got closer, the eaves of sugar icing twinkled in the moonlight and she smiled at the warm glow of her gingerbread home.

“But it’s wolf meat I prefer. Of the big and bad variety, of course,” she said. “Such a treat for an old witch like me!”

Because Jellyfish Are Immortal

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 12:00:00 Z

She swam with swift, confident strokes through a murky green sea. It drifted on the water. A white plastic bag, a piece of human garbage tossed into the ocean. She plunged her hand into the wave.

It grabbed hold of her arm. It did not hurt, sting or burn. But the sheer physicality of it surprised her, as though the sea itself was shaking her hand in ecstatic, violent greeting.

She kicked back to shore.

“Jellyfish,” she said to her father between gulps of air. “A jellyfish stung me.”

She described the suspect: White and cloudy, big as a basketball, floating on top of a wave.

They turned to look at the water. What did they expect to see? What punishment could they possible mete out?

“We could eat it,” her brother said.

Eat it? The ghostly tentacles would wriggle in her stomach.

“You might need to pee on this.” Her father inspected the red pinpricks forming on her arm.

“I’ll do it!” Her brother’s hand shot up in the air and her stomach curdled. What would it take to pee up her own arm?

“Vinegar,” her father said. His face was placid as he turned her arm left and right. “Go get that squeezee bottle from the fish and chips,” he said to her brother.

The boy sprinted back, kicking up tiny bullets of sand that studded their backs.

A man in shorts ambled over.

“The white ones?” He shrugged. “Common as fleas here. She’ll be fine.”

This bored dismissal from a complete stranger diminished her. This could be an emergency, a freak accident requiring a dramatic helicopter rescue!

Her brother jogged back with a maroon bottle in hand. Her father dribbled a bit of the liquid on her wrist. It did not feel better or worse.

“Ah, what the hell,” he said and squirted half the bottle on her arm.

In a few hours, the red tracks bubbled into white-capped blisters. The itching was unbearable, burning through layers of skin. She was not vomiting, though. Her breathing was clear and calm. No fever and her heartbeat was stubbornly steady.

There would be no helicopter rush to the hospital. Just a grisly fascination with the volcanic pustules erupting from her skin.

“Toxins rising to the surface,“ her brother said from the back of the car like a meteorologist tracking a dangerous storm. “Presenting cloudy white. Alien-like ectoplasm.”

“Shut. Up.” she said.

“Subject appears increasingly agitated.”

“I said: Shut up!”

“Keep it down,” their father said from the driver’s seat. “Or you’re both out.”

They were quiet for a time, staring out the windows. Her skin throbbed with the need to be scratched. She sat on her hands to keep from flying into a nail-tearing frenzy.

“You’re leaking,” her brother said, after a while.

She looked down. One of the blisters had popped, oozing a clear yellow liquid.

“Would you look at that,” their dad said once they were home.

She had her arm extended under the glare of the desk lamp. Her brother gripped a magnifying glass and peered at the watering blisters.

“Jellyfish are immortal,” their father said, flipping through a photo book of marine life. “Some of them, anyway. They re-aggregate their cells, aging backwards into polyps. Baby jellies. Then they grow back into a near exact copy of the adult jellyfish.”

“So gross,” her brother said, prodding at one of her tiny boils with a fresh cotton swab. “So cool.”

‘Re-aggregate’ was a new word to her and she struggled to grasp the meaning.

“Cellular transdifferentiation.” Their dad flipped the book around. “Isn’t nature amazing?”

A majestic purple Man’o’War sprawled across the page, its tentacles trailing in the black water.

How old was it? A hundred years? A thousand? A million? Were jellyfish cells now swimming in her bloodstream? Would they ‘re-aggregate’ her body into something different, strange and novel?

She had punched it in the gut, right in its ocean home. What arrogance to mistake this incredible creature for a flimsy plastic bag! Changing her cell structure seemed a permissible punishment.

“Vinegar,” her father said. “Can neutralize the venom.”

“So, I’m not going to die?” She asked.

“Not today, hun.”

Now, the red weals on her left arm itch and burn like a thousand fire ants marching under her skin.

“Ringworm?” Her husband asks. She shakes her head. “Allergies? Never had anything like this?”

“No.” She runs the tap over her arm. “It’s a weird symptom. But it’s the virus. I know it.”

“Then go see a doctor already.”

She gives no reply, just lets the cool water give her some relief.

It takes her two weeks to make the call, after several nights of sifting through symptoms online: Evaporating taste and smell. Frostbitten toes. Skyrocketing fever. Oxygen-starved lungs.

The doctor wears a white hazmat suit quartered by impermeable blue seams. With a practiced twist, he turns her arm left then right to inspect the spreading colony of welts.

“Fever?” he asks.

She shakes her head.

“Fatigue?”

“Not really.”

She doesn’t know how to articulate the unshakeable feeling that baby jellies are waking up inside her. Decades-old polyps nosing for a foothold to re-aggregate her cells and claim her at last.

“Hives,” The doctor concludes. He scribbles down a prescription while a tall nurse with a heavy hand steps in and sinks a shot of steroids into her backside.

“Don’t I need to take the test?” She says, “For the virus?”

“Why?” The doctor says. “No fever. No shortness of breath.”

“Then I’m fine? I’m in the clear?”

“Take the medicine,” he says with a wave of his hand. ”Come back if it gets worse.”

How does she explain the rippling laughter of ghostly white arms swimming inside her?

When she gets home, her husband watches as she swabs a tissue soaked in alcohol over her phone.

“So, in your expert medical opinion,” he finally says. “Are we going to die?”

“Yes,” she says. “But not today.”