Midian Unmade

by Joseph Nassise

  The Jordans were gone the next day. Mrs. Jordan had wanted to take the cat, but Leroy made himself scarce, and eventually they left without him, which made Mr. Jordan happy. He blamed the cat for the flea bites on his ankles. Later, when the balm had done its work, he would wonder why he was staying up late and didn’t like to go outside in the daylight when he’d always been a morning person. He would blame it on the decadence of Costa Rica.

  And me? Oh, so proud, I put out the call on the wind, and the Nightbreed answered, their tom-toms beating in my brain. Since I know they’ve always been more comfortable beneath something, I’ve left the door to the crawl space open. Once in that dank and musty darkness, they will pick their spots, huddle, and wait for further instructions.

  WRETCHED

  Edward Brauer

  “You keep looking over my shoulder, Chuckles. Getting me edgy.” Owen shoved a lightly seared piece of bonito into his mouth.

  “Don’t nitpick him, darling,” said Lydia, tapping Owen on his arm. “Charlie can look wherever he wants,” she said, emphasizing my name.

  “Just keeping an eye on our old mate over there.” I pointed across the bay to the rocks, where the fisherman I’d been watching danced with his rod. Owen, Lydia, and Shannon twisted in their seats for a look.

  Our boat was a good distance away, but we could see that there was something wrong with him. He wore a black raincoat with the hood drawn over—covering his face—but occasionally he’d twist toward us as he cast his line and we’d get a flash of something pink and haggard hiding in the veil.

  We watched him move for a minute. There was a romance to it, like a martial art. He stood unshifting as the ocean drew back its strength and came at him, again and again.

  Owen scoffed and turned back. “It’s his own fault if a wave gets him,” he said. His fork was pointed at me and he shook it for a moment, twiddling his fingers on his chin. Then he shrugged and returned to his fish.

  The three of us adults were very hungover and slumped about in our seats, the sun and the white of the deck glaring off our sunglasses.

  “Dad, you know I hate fish,” said Shannon, arms crossed over her lunch.

  “Just eat it, it’s good for you,” grunted Owen.

  “No! I swear I’ll vomit if I do!”

  “Then that’s your problem!”

  “Sweetie, go and make yourself a Vegemite sandwich,” said Lydia, trying to fix Owen a stern look.

  “Yeah great,” said Shannon, slinking off to her bunk bed, which was right beneath my own.

  We’d each had it rough the night before. Owen and Lydia, full of booze and holiday fervor, had gone at each other in the bedroom like they were getting paid for it. I’d escaped to the farthest edge of the boat and sat there with my legs over the edge, strangling the neck of a port bottle. Poor Shannon—too young to drink—had run out of batteries on her iPad and could only lie there and wait for it all to end.

  “I tell you, Chuckles, if you ever have kids you should raise them in a tougher part of the world. That little sh…” He glanced at Lydia. “That kid has no idea what doing it hard is like. She’s just like this damn country. Young and spoiled.”

  I grunted. Owen was a painful a man to debate with.

  I’d traveled the world when he and Lydia first became an item, disappearing for five years in the hope that it would all blow over by the time I got back. All through Europe and Asia, civilization was inescapable, its roads and buildings dotting the continents like a pepper spill.

  People thought of Rome or the Taj Mahal as ancient places, tiptoeing about them with this puppy-dumb sanctity in their eyes. But what’s a few hundred years of human civilization, compared to the millions of years of jungle that came before? Only when I got away from all the people and the concrete and deep into the beastly wild could I feel in the presence of something truly ancient.

  I realized, riding a train somewhere between Berlin and Madrid, that most of the country I came from was still enveloped by that oldest of kingdoms. It still breathed, rustled, and screeched all around us. Even the Illawarra coast that sat as the backdrop to our brunch—not a hundred kilometers from Sydney—was a looming entanglement that could contain all manner of creatures in its gums and ferns. It was anything but young.

  “What do you say, Chuckles? It’s past midday.” Owen was brandishing two bottles of draft, their tops already popped off. It was the last thing I was craving, but I accepted.

  My one job for the entire trip was to be Owen’s friend—the guy he could bitch and moan to when his wife and daughter got him hot under the collar. Lydia had begged me to come along so that it would be someone she knew instead of one of Owen’s regular asshole mates, and I’d agreed as a favor to her.

  It was a simple enough gig. It just needed a lot of booze.

  * * *

  “Come play Uno, sweetie,” Lydia said, giving Shannon a hopeful smile. The kid rolled her eyes and went back to staring at the roof of her bunk bed. I was impressed by how long she could do that.

  “She thinks we’re lame, sitting here enjoying ourselves the way we do,” said Owen, taking a big slug of beer and placing it between his knees so it didn’t go flying off with the next wave.

  The sky had darkened as the afternoon wore on, accompanied by an angry swell. Our vessel rode harmlessly over the lumps of ocean that moved underneath it, but below deck was chaos. We’d stumbled all over the place in a half-drunk tidying frenzy, getting everything strapped down and behind a cupboard door before the rocking of the vessel sent more crockery and food flying everywhere.

  I’d watched Lydia grabbing for the Vegemite jar Shannon had used earlier, a plate held against her small breasts, laughing so hard she had to sit against a wall and regain herself. A moment before I could turn away she’d noticed me staring.

  We’d tidied the rest of the cabin in silence.

  “Draw two, bubble-butt,” said Owen, dumping a blue card onto the pile and leering at his wife.

  “Sorry, Charlie,” she said, biting her bottom lip and putting another draw two on top of his.

  “Ah…” I began as I took four cards from the pile, not really knowing what witty thing I hoped to spit out—but not having to in the end, because we heard screaming coming from outside.

  Owen and I exchanged a glance before I was on my feet and pulling myself up the stairs to the deck. Behind me I heard him swear as he dragged himself out of his seat to follow.

  Rain spotted my shirt as I ducked outside and made for the bow railing, securing it in my hands as the boat rolled over a large wave and tilted, pulling me backward.

  Again I heard someone cry out; the beginning of the word “help,” muted by submergence. I looked to the choppy water but couldn’t see anything.

  The boat tilted as a wave picked it up again, pushing me against the railing and sending Owen crashing into it, his hands scrabbling for grip until we hit the next crest and evened out. It was then that we saw a human arm rising up out of the water, the body it belonged to instantly recognizable.

  It was the fisherman I’d been watching earlier that day, garbed still in his black raincoat. Only a strong current could have dragged him this far out, and it looked as though he was on the verge of succumbing to his misfortune. His motions were feeble and his head—a pink spot in the dark blue—gulped just above the water.

  Owen looked to me with wide eyes, his mouth puckered and eyebrows wrinkled.

  “Life jackets?” I said. “Where are your life jackets?”

  His frown suggested that he couldn’t remember. Lydia, though, had had greater foresight than either of us, appearing at the stairs with three of them tucked under her arm as another wave tilted the boat.

  “Charlie!” she called out to me, bowling the life jackets across the deck.

  I was struck for a moment then, by her pathological tragedy. With no time to think she’d known exactly who the better of us was. But in the day-to-day world of boredom and festering neurosis, she’d been compelled by
her dumb blood to choose Owen.

  I slid my arms into the life jacket’s holes and didn’t bother to clip it up, grabbing the second one that Lydia had tossed me and leaping over the railing into the surf.

  My vision was blurred as I came up, the veil of salt water burning my eyes. I was already swimming overarm as I hit the surface, my clothes dragging in the water and the second life jacket clamped in my teeth. The sea splashed my face and I could scarcely make out a thing.

  I almost ran into him, disguised as he was by that black raincoat. He responded to my presence in a manner contrary to the typical thrashings of a drowning man, relaxing and allowing me to take his wrist and guide it toward the life jacket I’d been carrying. He nodded when he felt it and hugged it to his chest.

  “Swim with me!” I yelled, grabbing him by the scruff of his raincoat and turning my back to the boat.

  Getting back to the boat was an arduous journey. My kicks were blunted by the joggers I was still wearing and the waves remained fast and frequent. Despite the buoyancy of our jackets we went through them instead of over, coming up with stinging eyes and salty mouths.

  Owen was waiting at the back of the boat, pacing like a hound in a yard. He pulled me up by the wrist, calling me a stupid bastard.

  Then it was the fisherman’s turn. We each extended a hand to him and he reached up to us.

  As we took his wrists and pulled, a gust of wind got underneath the hood of his raincoat, flipping it open. The face that had been hidden underneath was, I knew at that moment, the most awful thing either of us had ever seen. As we hauled him aboard he let out a scream so wet and animal that we nearly let go of him then and there.

  God help us, though, we didn’t.

  * * *

  The sun had fully set behind the escarpment and with it had gone the full force of the ocean. In the darkness outside, ripples lapped soft against the hull.

  My wet clothes were stretched out in front of the heater in Owen and Lydia’s room, next to the old rags that the fisherman had been wearing under his raincoat. The raincoat itself he’d patted down with a towel and put straight back on.

  Gideon Skillet was his name.

  He chewed the fish we’d served him like a cow chewing cud, the flaking skin around his jaw folding and stretching as it worked its circles; small flecks of skin detaching themselves and floating into his lap.

  The man was a dermatological nightmare. Where his skin wasn’t scaly and flaking, it was marked with jagged fissures and heaving boils that were either scabbed over or oozing with congealed blood. I thought of the tectonic maps we’d studied, long ago in geography class at school. Gideon Skillet’s face was how I imagined the crust of the earth would look if we stripped away all the water, soil, and rock and were left with shifting plates atop a molten ball.

  He apologized to us in a crackling old English voice for screaming when we’d hauled him in. “The shoulders get awful crook if you pull on them,” he said, tapping himself where it had hurt and baring incomplete rows of browned teeth.

  He was an ancient man. A widow of decades now, married again to the sea like so many woolly-haired geriatrics before him. His locale was a tiny beachside community nearby called Burning Palms.

  We knew of the place, though never suspected anyone lived there full time. It was one of those weekend retreat destinations that regular visitors preferred to keep hushed about. No roads led to or through—it was only accessible by boat or a long hike down the escarpment. I couldn’t even remember having seen power lines or a generator among those few salty cabins.

  “So Gideon,” said Owen, now into his fifth scotch, “the fuck is an old bloke like you doing rock fishing?”

  Gideon chuckled, showing those terrible teeth again. “Long time looking at the lid, Captain.”

  He would punctuate a sentence by keeping eye contact with whoever he was addressing until they’d looked away, and he did this now with Owen, who flinched.

  We exchanged glances while our guest busied himself with removing a bone from his fish. He had a remarkable dexterity when he did this—sawing around the tiny bone with the serrated tip of his steak knife and flicking it out of the meat with one swift gesture when he was done.

  Shannon was staring at him from her spot on the bottom bunk bed, frowning. He became aware of her as he chewed, turning to her and poking out his purple and white tongue, bringing his thumb to his nose and wiggling his scabby fingers. She smiled weakly in response and flopped backward onto the bed again. He chuckled and returned to his fish.

  Lydia fixed Owen with a wide-eyed stare. He mouthed What? at her, then looked at me and shook his head, downing the rest of his scotch.

  “I’m afraid we can’t drop you home in the dark,” said Owen. “We didn’t really plan for this eventuality when we left. But we’ll put some sheets down and you can make the most of the couch.” He referred to the built-in bench that ran along one side of the table. It was padded but short—the sort of place I could have easily crashed on during my twenties, but wouldn’t dream of using now. “We’ll get you home first thing tomorrow.”

  “You’re all very kind,” said Gideon, staring us down in turn as he spoke. “Samaritans at sea. The rarest. Very kind.” He chewed, smiled.

  * * *

  I dreamed that the ocean breathed as it smashed against the cliff faces; a lusty breath that came from its deepest throat.

  When I woke, Gideon Skillet was there by the bunk bed I shared with Shannon, breathing hoarse and lusty as the sea had breathed in my dream, staring at Shannon’s bunk beneath me and rocking his pelvis.

  She woke and screamed, instantly rousing me out of my confusion. When she ran out of breath, she inhaled deep and screamed again.

  I threw off the covers and leaped out of bed in my pajamas, left heel twisting slightly as I landed.

  Gideon held his hands up and backed away. His pelvis continued to rock. “No harm meant at all sir, nothing to fear,” he said.

  Owen erupted naked from the cabin he shared with Lydia, his half-erect penis bouncing around like a dredged-up fish. He seized Gideon Skillet by the front of the raincoat and hurled him to the ground.

  The old man went sprawling backward into the cabin, his arms and legs flailing in the air.

  “A misunderstanding,” he was saying as he scrambled to his feet. “Misunderstanding is all, and all will be cleared up.”

  “You’re too right it will. Get the hell out of here.”

  “Oh, yes Captain,” he said, flashing Owen a smile before he turned to climb the stairs.

  “Get into bed with your mother,” Owen said to Shannon. She nodded, her eyes wide. She moved slowly, her blanket wrapped around her. From within I could hear Lydia. “It’s okay, sweetie, come here, it’s okay. What happened? What happened, Owen?”

  “Shut up and stay in there. Me and Charlie are going to sort this out.”

  After quickly scanning the kitchen for something to wear, Owen wrapped a towel around his waist and went up the stairs after Gideon. I followed a few paces behind, conscious in that moment of not having his ass too close to my face.

  Outside, the air was quiet and the world was colored by that dimness that comes in the hour before dawn. Owen held Gideon by the front of his jacket and had backed him right up to the edge of the stern railing.

  “What the fuck was he doing to my daughter, Charlie?”

  I held back a few paces and patted the top pocket of my pajamas, knowing there wouldn’t be a cigarette there. “I don’t think he touched her. He was just kind of standing there panting when I woke up.”

  “An old man’s got to catch his breath sometime, Captain,” said Gideon, both his scabby hands caressing Owen’s balled fist. I felt on the verge of throwing up.

  “Was he catching his breath?” Owen turned his head to look at me. Over his shoulder, Gideon was staring at me, too. “Come on Charlie. Speak up.”

  “I think he might be a pervert, Owen. He was kind of … humping the air as well.”


  Owen’s head snapped back to face the fisherman, his index finger hovering right underneath the man’s nose. Spittle flew from his lips. “What the fuck, old man? That’s my daughter!”

  “And what quarrel if she is then?” All at once, Gideon’s sincerity vanished. His teeth savaged the air as he spoke and his top lip twitched between words. “Can’t a man long for the forbidden sea on your vessel, Captain?”

  “The sea? What are you talking about?”

  Owen was holding the man over the edge of the railing, both hands gripping the front of his raincoat.

  “I think we need to take a step back here, Cap … er … Owen,” I said. “Let’s just get him to shore and work it out from there.”

  Gideon winked at me from over Owen’s shoulder, revealing a scab on his eyelid.

  “I’m talking, Captain, about the young, young sea between your daughter’s legs,” he said. “What a fresh salt!”

  Owen drew back his fist and hit the man, three times in the face. The frail old body shook with each blow, flopping about in Owen’s grip. The crunching of brittle bones filled the morning.

  Then Owen shoved him over the railing and into the water.

  “Oh no,” I said, darting forward to the edge as the splash came.

  Owen put the back of his hand to my chest and we watched the ripples clear. Gideon’s body was about a foot below the surface, staring up at us and smiling, still. Blood had darkened the water around his head and his face looked shattered, as if all the cracks and boils had erupted at once. His raincoat rippled around him like the boneless fins of a ray, its edges bleeding a black smoke. A spasm went through the coat and it billowed up at us.

  Then he sank into the deep.

  * * *

  I stood at the front of the boat as water rushed underneath, the midmorning sun cooking one side of my face. I took big, burning gulps of whiskey in place of the cigarette I was craving.

  Nobody was talking. Lydia was sitting at the table inside, clutching at a royal-family tabloid magazine with white fingers. Shannon had locked herself in the bathroom and answered every knock with silence.