the center, where, I figured, stomach acid, or whatever fish use to digest (is it rocks? no, I believe that’s chickens that get pebbles in their craw), would be our final destination.
Seven for the soup.
Dinner served.
A little later that day it would be out the ole sphincter, blown through the asshole into the deeps, an acid- pocked bus full of skeletons.
If that much was left.
Just so much fish shit.
But, I was saying about the lights, and now we come to them again. So, we’re jetting along through the guts and into the stomach, hanging onto the seats, drenched in water, not quite drowned, but in a position that we in the business of being swallowed by fish like to call, seriously wet, and then – SQUIRT – right out into The light.
A muddled light, I might mention, as if shown through thick wax paper, but it was light. The bus came down with a smack, right side up (thank goodness), and the water in the bus sloshed back and forth across us, and the light shining through the windows, piercing the water that was now almost to the ceiling, burned our eyes.
Water fled from the bus the same way it had come in. Only took a matter of minutes before it was to the point where we could stand in the seats and have the water about our waists. At that point it slowed its drain. The windows, though lit up with light, also were splattered with all manner of dark business I would rather not consider, and so was the floor of our bus. There were even small fish flapping about, and I found leeches clinging to my body like day commuters grasping the handholds on a subway car.
All our food supplies were ruined, soaked up with that water, and possibly the water and fuel were fucked too, depending on how well the corks held in the containers. But, at that moment in time, that didn’t seem like a big concern.
Steve dove under the water and worked the bus door, and it came open. The water rushed out, and so did Steve, Grace, Cory, and Jim. Homer, Reba, and I clung to seats and waited for it to wash away.
Then we too slipped and slid along the sopped floor of the bus and out into the lights.
They hung from long cables at the summit of the fish, which was pretty far up there, dear hearts. And the fish itself was like a great aircraft hangar in size, but its sides heaved, and the meat and bones moved with the pressure of its breathing. In the sides of the fish were great pockets cut into the meat, and in the holes of this meat, high up, we could see people. On both sides of the fish, extending back for a goodly distance, as far as we could see before the rows of lights played out and there was only darkness.
Occasionally, as I observed, I’d see a spark emit from the fish’s insides, pop out like a firefly, crackle like cellophane. There were a few metallic ladders on wheels and runners, like in a great library. The ladders were narrow, but they went high up. Down into the dark spot at the tail of the fish, where the lights played out, my eyes adjusted enough I could see there was a pile of cars, both old and new, and one small airplane. All of this was mounded up together in what could almost be called a wad. The paint was off the cars for the most part, and there were holes in the metal, like termites the size of motorcycles had been at work.
Our bus was resting on a grid, long and flat with drainage holes all through it. The grid began at the pulsating gut gap that had launched us here, and a sewage aroma came from that gap as it irised open and closed. We wobbled slightly, not having gained our sea legs, as the great fish propelled itself through the depths. Beneath the grid, I could see a boiling green mess that gave off a fart odor that blended with the special smell that puffed out of the sphincter. The catfish that had swum before us lay flapping on the grillwork, its mouth opening and closing as it gasped for water.
People in the meat caves started down the ladders. There were a lot of them. Some wore rags, but most were raw and wet looking, covered in fish blood, their hair matted. Many were covered in puckered scars.
As they came down to see us, Steve said, “You know, I caught many a catfish in my lifetime-well, not that many, I suck as a fisherman-but, I never found no folks inside of one. Or any lighting equipment.”
“How about old cars or airplanes?” Homer asked.
“Nope,” Steve said. “None of those either.”
Grace said, “I just hope the natives are friendly.”
6
“How y’all doin’,” a big naked man said. He was holding his limp dick in one hand like it was a symbol of authority, and there was enough there to look authoritative. I was glad I was clothed, otherwise I would have been mucho big-assed embarrassed. A wiener like that belonged in some kind of museum, or maybe peeking out from under a circus tent in the snake section.
As an added note, a leech hung off his left thigh in a decorative way.
“I don’t know we ought to welcome you or not, seeing as how I figure you weren’t just driving through. But, I reckon some kind of howdy is in order, so, Howdy, goddamnit.”
He opened his mouth in a big grin at this comment, and showed us just how many teeth he was missing.
Men and women, and even one child, were amongst the crowd. I guess there must have been fifty or so. A number of them leaped on the large catfish that had washed in ahead of us, and with fists and bone clubs they were carrying, they beat it about the head until it stopped thrashing.
The naked man never even looked at this business. He just kept twiddling with his dick.
“That’s some cannon you got there,” Grace said to the naked man, “but I don’t know I like it pointed at me. And, now that I mention it, it seems to be a larger cannon than a moment ago.”
“I just try and display a little at a time,” the naked man said. “I don’t want to scare nobody… You look so good.”
“Thank you,” Grace said. “I try to take care of myself.”
“And you look good too,” the naked man said to Reba.
“You’re hurting my feelings,” Steve said. “I just had a hell of a bath, and no good words about me?”
The naked man grinned. “I’m down here much longer, and you’ll start looking pretty good too. My name is Bjoe. It’s really Billy Joe, but everyone called me B. Joe, so I just shortened it to Bjoe, one word. I could tell you all kinds of fascinating things about me and my life, but I think you probably got other interests.”
“That’s the truth,” Homer said. “Where the fuck are we?”
“Why, silly,” said Bjoe, “you’re inside a giant catfish.”
“As Steve here said,” I said jerking a thumb at Steve, “I’ve never seen a catfish like this. How come it’s got all this rigging? The lights and such? The caves up there in the meat?”
“Sometimes,” Bjoe said, “I think about it and my head hurts.”
“I feel sick to my stomach,” Homer said. He turned from us and vomited onto the grillwork. We all stood there watching it leak through the holes, down into the bubbling mess below.
“You got a mite of sea sickness,” Bjoe said. “Had that myself at first. No telling how long I had it. We can’t tell one day from another down here. Not even false days. I mean, they’re ain’t no real light, just them bulbs. And there ain’t no night. Ain’t nobody wants to turn off the light. There’s some dark up in them caves we cut into the meat, and there’s dark down there past them wrecked cars and such, but, hell, you don’t want to go down there. There’s things on the other side of them cars you wouldn’t like to meet in a dark fish ass.”
“Things?” Cory said.
“We don’t know what they are, but they’re fucked up and goofydoofy.”
“Goofydoofy?” Grace said.
“Yeah. They don’t like the light though. You see, they was here before the lights.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I just reckon it. Well, I kind of know some things, but it’s a long story.”
“Got a feeling we ain’t gonna be catching no train or nothing,” Steve said, “so, we ought to hear it.”
“You will,” Bjoe said, dropping his flesh hammer so that it flopped against his thigh like a paleeel. “But first thing we got to do is eat. Got to eat when you can eat. We’ll show you the ropes, since I figure you’re gonna be
