“Aw, man. I have an aunt Iris.”
This causes me to cackle wickedly, like one of Shakespeare’s witches. “Probably not anymore!”
When the hurlyburly’s done. When the battle is lost and won.
I push the paper aside and slap the dead octopus down onto the cutting board. It lands with a moist and meaty splat. I pry my cleaver loose and bring it down hard on one of the arms, cutting off a good three inches.
The octopus screams.
Fair is foul and foul is fair: hover through the fog and the filthy air.
I toss the arm piece to Lily and it lands on the floor with a wet slap. Lily finds it almost instantly and gobbles it up with one bite.
“Stop! Stop! Stop! Are you crazy?”
I think about my new mantra. “Not crazy enough!” I pry the cleaver free of the cutting board and bring it down again, trimming a few inches off another arm.
“EGAD!” the octopus gargles with horror. I toss more of the dead octopus to Lily, who seems to be enjoying this as much as I am.
“I’m sorry, is this bothering you?” I ask the octopus, faking concern.
“Of course it’s bothering me! Oh, gah! I can actually taste it through her skull.” The octopus is turning green. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
I shrug. “Be glad it’s only your aunt.”
Cleaver. CHOP. Toss a bite to Lily.
“What do you mean?”
I grab the cleaver and crouch low to look the octopus in the eye. Lily continues to cooperate by licking the floor where the octopus bits have landed. With her head bowed, the octopus and I are face-to-face, eye-to-eye. Mano a mano. I hold the cleaver an inch from his face.
“Make no mistake, octopus. You leave tonight. You leave tonight or I will rent a boat and I swear to god, I will trawl the oceans with a fucking net until I catch everyone you love.” The octopus looks up at me like I wouldn’t dare. “And then I will come back here and I will chop them up and I will feed them to my dog and you can taste their stinking flesh.”
To drive my point home, I stand up and firm my grip around the cleaver.
WHOMP!
“Your mother!” I toss a piece of octopus to Lily and she catches it before it hits the ground.
WHOMP!
Another piece. “Your father!” This one hits the floor with a splat and Lily is on it in seconds.
WHOMP!
“Your brother!”
“I don’t have a brother!”
I snarl.
WHOMP!
“Your sister!”
“Stop it!”
“You got a wife? I’ve got all day! How about it, Lily—do you like this game?”
YES! CHEWY! HAPPINESS! MORE! SALTY! MEAT! FOR! LILY! PLEASE!
“Okay, okay, okay! You’ve made your point.”
“You’ll leave?” I wave the cleaver ominously in front of him.
“You said I have until tonight.” The octopus remains sly to the very end.
Did I say that? I don’t remember what I said. I’ll have to find out if blinding rage—murderous rage—is a natural part of grief. Is it normal for me in this stage to want to make my enemies suffer, or have I gone irreparably too far?
I lock eyes with the octopus and tug at my shirtsleeve.
“What?” he asks.
I roll up the sleeve to slowly reveal my tattoo. Eight octopus arms hang from my bicep, and I can feel the octopus’s eyes growing bigger. I pull up my shirt even farther, revealing Kal’s work from the bottom up in dramatic fashion. Finally my shirtsleeve is up near my shoulder and my entire tattoo is revealed: a dachshund standing triumphantly on the head of an octopus.
“This is good-bye, you sonofabitch.”
I flex, making sure the octopus drinks it in before striking the cleaver down on the cutting board with such force it shatters the board in two.
“I AM THE OCTOPUS NOW!”
The Pelagic Zone
The Law for the Wolves (continued)
When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle,
and neither will go from the trail,
Lie down till the leaders have spoken;
it may be fair words shall prevail.
When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack,
ye must fight him alone and afar,
Lest others take part in the quarrel,
and the Pack be diminished by war.
—Rudyard Kipling
Fishful Thinking
I have been preparing and packing for days, meticulously checking off items and tasks on a half dozen carefully constructed lists. Lily is still asleep when I zip the last of our bags closed; they lie stacked in a pile by the bedroom door, dwarfing Lily and maybe even me, waiting to be carried, first to the car and then onto our waiting ship. The supplies are daunting; there’s no telling how long we’ll be gone, how dangerous our voyage will be. Trent (despite his suggestion that I need to stop playing the octopus’s game) has warned me that I am running from an obvious fate, and I understand his concern for us: This is a dangerous undertaking. I, on the other hand, feel like I’m in control for the very first time since this whole ordeal began.
I drink in the sight of my sweet gosling resting peacefully in the feathered nest of our bed’s duvet. It’s almost enough to make me want to crawl back under the covers with her. It has been two days since the octopus left. Without fanfare or goodbyes, he just fled in the night. Disappeared, just as he promised he would when I fed Lily her gruesome meal. Without our unwanted visitor, it feels like we are in the calm eye of a storm. The waters are still and the winds have subsided and there’s great beauty in the fragile peace, despite the promise of the storm soon to rage again.
Asleep like this, whiskered cheeks puffing with each gentle breath, Lily reminds me of her puppy
