literature

The Cuttlefish Behind the Wall

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What was I doing in Space? Not just regular outer-space, but this place, Space, where they had sent men into the atmosphere in years past. Where those very men send their kids to play astronaut for the Summer. Where the buildings are pink and blue, and your nostrils sting from salt-and-fallout-laden winds.
I walk to the shore, where I was called, and sat down on a bed on the beach. Soon enough, a pretty cephalopod crawled up and sat next to me.
Not too close, mind you. There were at least two salmon-lengths between us.
She was one I'd seen before. The history suggested this would be a disaster, but I've been more headstrong about more certain doom than this and have come out on top, so I proceeded.
She lolled about out in front where anyone could see her. She said, "Come closer, you look like fun."
So I did.
I danced (quite horribly, I'll admit) with her, but neither of us cared too much.
She grabbed my arm, pulled me into a toy store, then she pulled me onto her roof, and I could have went on like that indefinitely.
We had no secrets from each other, but were meant to keep one from everyone else.
I held her tight, and she turned fully into a cuttlefish, but that just made me try harder to keep her there.
Out of nowhere, a hippo, a macaque, and a goldfish were insulting me. One cut me with a dull pocket knife.
I turned livid, turned red, and dropped her on the ground. She turned a shade of bluish, greenish, blackish, red, and hid behind a short, wooden wall. She hid from me.
I tried to speak to her through the cracks, but she spit ink in my ears when I listened for a reply. When I tried to look through to see what she was doing over there, she did the same to my eyes.
I threw a rock tied to a note over the wall and sat with my back against it.
She threw it back and we yelled at each other for a little while, she, with a beak full of 'how-dare-yous', me, reduced to begging for another chance. All the while I sit with my back agaisnt this wall. We both grew quiet.
She wrapped around the wall and pushed me away, avoiding eye contact.
I turned and looked back and saw her crying purple, inky tears from ballpoint tear ducts.
I cried myself, but didn't want anyone to see, I was, after all, raised as Cain.
I took a few steps back to the wall, but she told me, "No." Not in angry way, it would seem, but in a way that seemed to imply she was pinned down by betrayal.
I turned and walked away, lamenting that which could have been, leaving the wounded cuttlefish to her own devices.
I walked hundreds of miles back home. I stayed there. On the way, I ran into other fantastic beasts that distracted me briefly, but my thoughts would always gravitate back to the non-euclidean shore in Space where I danced with that wriggling mass of confusion, and beauty, and distrust. Where a wall was erected to keep me out and distance was applied so I could no longer obsess over tearing the wall down.
Since then, I've seen a walrus (who needed help, but could not help me), a pigeon (that flitted back and forth and was constantly somewhere else), a bulldog (which could not cope with ANYTHING without biting something), a vulture-mouse (which I assure you is as dirty and horrible as it sounds), a hedgehog (she was staunchly anti-choice, I kicked her into a ditch), and only the zebra has come close. Walking through her geometric jungle is something like the beach of Space, but not quite.
The wall appeared in my front yard. I saw an eye looking at me through the cracks. I asked her a question, but don't remember what.
She did not answer. She just kept looking at me.
I wanted to look back, but the zebra wanted to go for a walk.
More on Jack and his endless torture. All the while this is going on, he has forgotten where his body is, who put it there, and why.
© 2013 - 2024 jdlovecraft
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