by Pip Adam
She should be with mammals. Humans made friends with dolphins. Whales. But the octopus was the first thing she had met that was bigger than her. It was going in the same direction. It swam away, then circled back and looked at her again with one of its eyes. It reached out an arm and worked it over Elodie’s skin, her arms, her chest, her face. Then it released its touch and turned and swam away. Whether it would eat her, or drown her, it was time to swim again. She would follow the octopus but only if it was going in the right direction. As soon as she stopped feeling the warmth growing she would stop and feel and change direction towards the warmth again.
She didn’t need the octopus, she just liked the way it moved. It was big, then small, taking up all the room, then none. She could sleep on the octopus. She was caught slightly in its wake. She worked her way closer and closer to the brown. It swept through the water, throwing its body into a star then hauling it in again with hardly any effort. Then it pulled itself into a smooth half and glided, like it was flying. Elodie watched it calm its way through the water, and she slowed her mind. Blew bubbles out her mouth, went to the surface evenly for air then returned again with full lungs and empty mind. She held her legs close together, began to move them from side to side, like her legs were a tail. Her muscles called out against it. There was a long muscle that ran from her hip to her ankle and it stung with every pass, but she kept going. Holding her arms at her side so she could engage her whole body. She moved much faster. The change in stroke helped, but she was sure the calm mind helped more. The octopus could see her. She was sure of it. Every time it pulled to the full extent of its squeeze and skinniness, Elodie was sure she was in its eye.
She found herself waiting to be seen. It reassured her she was still there. In the sea, going in the direction she needed to be going. She hoped Doug made it to shore. In the shape of this new stroke she hoped Doug made it to shore. The water was light where she swam. The sun cut into it when she dived down. It strobed as she and the octopus moved through it. Cut over the body of the octopus, lighting it in stripes, but the octopus swam through them like they weren’t there. Elodie wanted to stop, wanted to be in the light, which was exactly what would get her lost. This stopping in the light. She needed to follow the octopus. The octopus didn’t stop. The octopus kept going. She needed to keep going. She needed to keep her mind open and whole. All the other fish had gone. The octopus was by itself, except for Elodie.
Then something changed in the water. Something tightened between them. The octopus’s skin raised into a landscape of hills and valleys. Elodie couldn’t smell it and couldn’t see it, but something changed in her skin – told her the distance between them had changed. She could feel it somewhere. The octopus changed direction quickly, dived, and Elodie fought to keep up but it was on the shark before she could reach it. The shark was by itself. It was small and now Elodie saw what she had felt – it was struggling, swimming on only one flipper, slow. The octopus wrapped arms around the shark, holding against its struggle before Elodie could get there, but she was able to hold its tail from smashing. She held on and on and the octopus squeezed and squeezed, bit and poisoned. As the shark died, Elodie sank her teeth into it, ripping off a piece of flesh. The octopus reached out to take it out of her hands but Elodie hit it and screamed at it – a wall of noise and bubbles. The octopus looked at her through the whiteness of the rising air, and when her lungs were empty Elodie turned back to the meat and ate it. Her teeth weren’t as strong as the octopus’s, and she had to use her hands to pull the meat into small enough pieces for her to eat. Cycling her legs to keep herself under the surface. The octopus circled her, staring. Still eating the shark. Elodie reached out, struck out at the octopus, trying to get more of the shark, but the octopus batted her away with two arms and she knew if she kept it up she’d lose the meat she already had. So they were still, and watching each other eat under the water.
Elodie watched the octopus dismember the shark in its beak, cutting and grinding it. The octopus watched Elodie tear the meat into smaller pieces with her hands and push it into her mouth. Elodie looked at the meat in her hands. When she finished eating, then she could keep swimming. She wasn’t chewing much now, it was pointless, chewing with her flat back teeth wasn’t making the meat smaller or any easier to swallow. So she used her front teeth and her hands. She ripped the meat into the smallest pieces she could, pulling muscle fibre off in strings that she could swallow. She could rely on the acids of her stomach to squeeze out what she needed. She ate underwater. It was like the eating meant she didn’t need to breathe as much. The octopus finished the lion’s share of the shark before Elodie finished her morsel, then it moved far away and then came back fast. Elodie locked its eyes but didn’t move. At the last minute it swerved and passed her.
The water formed a rip. It was going at such a speed and Elodie tumbled with it, but kept eating, ripping, pulling, swallowing, and then the meat was all gone and she swam to the surface. She breathed, and the cold, dry air hit her face and she realised she was more comfortable underwater, which was a reason to be happy, because there was a lot more underwater than there was air. Or at least air she could reach. The octopus brushed past her foot. It came up in front of her and pulled her with an arm. The octopus was right, it was time to go. Elodie’s face was cold again from the air. She felt for the warm water, the faraway warm water, and swam in that direction. It was murkier after the fight and there was still blood and flesh in the water, which Elodie sifted through her teeth and swallowed as she and the octopus swam. She wouldn’t need to eat again for a while. Every now and then she vomited into her mouth, then chewed the meat again and swallowed it. Her body knew what it was doing – some prehistoric part knew. She didn’t have the word for cold anymore. She searched through her mind but it was gone. She just had the body shape of it. The shake and the numbness, no words. What could she trade for words out here? Could she eat words?
She swam, the octopus in her vision. And the water got dark. It would rain soon and she would drink. She could see it every time she came to the surface for air. The heavying sky. Getting fuller, darker, greying to black in some places. Like it would fall. She dived down just as a wave broke heavily above her and for a moment she thought it was the start of the falling sky and she could see, through the sting and the fug ahead of her, that she could go deeper than the sky. That if it did fill to a point of collapse, she could dive away from it. She pushed her kick hard, as if to prove it. She was pushing against her own buoyancy. That was another enemy in this place. The way the air pulled her up. It was the fat in her. She needed the fat to stay warm, but it floated. The fat would pull her to the surface every time, unless she was deeper. There was a place, her bones knew it, where her buoyancy would shift, where she would be rewarded for her depth with sink. Where she would just sink without trying.
Suddenly she was tired. Her eyes, her head, and this is how it was for the next little while. The rhythm of the swim, the beat, beat of her arms, the kick of her legs. From her hips, sometimes from her knees and then she was somewhere else – a lounge, a café – drinking something, and suddenly she was awake in the water. It would rain soon, or the sun would go down. Time didn’t mean much here, but light did, and so did rain. Elodie was thirsty and awake again in some comfortable dry place and then awake again in the place she really was in. Then she fell even into that rhythm – the dreamed, the real, the dreamed, the real. Then she found there was extra propulsion in the switch.
Her lungs wouldn’t let her drown. The gasp for air would wake her up each time. The octopus circled back. The octopus would sleep, nestle down into something tiny, and sleep. Elodie couldn’t sleep like that. Not yet. Some part of her would need to stay awake. But surely some part of her could sleep while the other took care of living. Maybe these parts could take turns? So she carried on like this, each time waking up to darker and darker water. A smack of jellyfish was a metre away, then she was at the supermarket, then among the jellyfish, all around her,
none of them stinging. Then she was beside the sea – on the sand, then the jellyfish were behind her and the octopus was circling back again, nudging her back on track, nudging her towards the warmer currents, which she couldn’t feel now. Then she was on a bike. Was she younger? Or was it some imagined version of her now-self? Riding through Auckland Domain, the wind, the smell of trees.
Then she was against something hard. And again, and again. Then awake, in the ocean, caught up against something, her cheek banging gently into it every time the swell lifted and dropped. She felt it with her hand. It was dark. There had been no rain. The moon was out but smudged to a welt behind the clouds. What Elodie pushed against was like a wall. It was long and wood and dark in the dark water. Rough, splintering paint, splintering wood. It wasn’t huge, there was probably a way around it. She wiped her face again and went underwater but it was deep, and as wide as it was on the surface. Elodie looked up. It was high but it ended. She pulled herself along it for a few feet and found a handhold. There was a way around it, probably not for a couple of metres, but here was a handhold.
She looked to one side, then the other, and thought of the way it went down. The boat was small. She could see the end of it on either side, it didn’t sit that deep in the water. There were nets on the side of it wound up so they looked like buoys – the type they used for mussel farming. Elodie knew nothing about mussel farming, she’d seen something on TV. The swell kept pushing her against the boat. It was rough and scratched her each time she rubbed past it. Sometimes the waves would lift her high and drop her a long way, so she would scrape the whole side of her arm. Her skin was so weak now. Every time the sea threw her, she found her way back to the handhold.
She hadn’t wanted to leave the water again. She was worried that if she did she’d lose the gains she’d made. On ground the changes might revert, her terrestrial body might submerge them. Submerge the new hold of her lungs. The new point of her feet. Her eyes were working better underwater but her skin was collapsing. Softening, opening up. Under the blisters, the openness of her flesh would be better in the water. The other fish, the octopus, the rays, the jellyfish, were slippery, mucusy, she was sure if her skin opened up it would be better in the end. Above the handhold, she was sure there was another, and another. If she climbed the boat, would her skin dry out again? She wiped her face again and looked again at the way the boat had an end on either side of her. An end she could easily swim to.
She leant her ear to the wood. There was no noise inside at all. No engine, no noise of people. The octopus was back. Elodie needed to move on. It grabbed her with two of its arms. Elodie peeled them off and it headed away from her again. Out to sea, and down. If she met anyone on the boat she could kill them. She was not afraid of the octopus or the shark or the dog and she was not afraid of anything or anyone she would find here.
She decided.
She could walk straight across the deck to the other side. In a straight line, as if it was any other barrier. Like she was climbing a mountain. The boat was so quiet.
Her skin was dissolving away. Her legs hurt. Her breathing would surely run out. The boat rocked towards her, away from her. Then she felt the octopus again, coming towards her very quickly, so fast, and it ran into her, slamming the air out of her lungs. It reached for her with more of its arms, wound and wound and wound, and pulled her down. It reached for the boat to anchor itself but it didn’t find purchase. Elodie pulled her knees up and rolled, head over heels, again and again. The octopus flushed white and raised up its skin. Elodie didn’t know it in the wash of bubbles, but she kept somersaulting and was thrown back against the boat. She stopped, dizzy, and waited for the float in her to pull her to the surface. She was cold. She found another handhold on the side of the boat – a place where the wood had worn away. Then she reached up. The octopus was almost on her again, and her foot went to the original handhold as the tide lifted her up and then she fell again, and again. The octopus reached for her, grabbing at her, stronger, brighter, rougher. But Elodie was out of the water now and the octopus hated the air. It loosened its grip and swam away. Elodie pulled herself up again, and this time found foot, hand, foot, hand, until she was at the nets. And it was easy – she was over the side and unmarine again. Lying on a hard surface that ended. Pushed into it, panting at the sky.
She was still. She smiled, laughed. The things she wanted, minutes ago, she didn’t want anymore. She wanted to sail the boat back to land, have a shower, get dressed. She could ring Carla. Ring her and apologise. Say she’d been ill. The enormity of what she’d done held her down on the deck, on her back. The octopus reached up the side of the boat again. Elodie wasn’t laughing anymore. She’d been crazy to get in the water. Maybe she did want to die? Maybe this was elaborate? Maybe this was the moment where she could come to her senses and turn around. Maybe this was her waking up. Some kind of divine intervention. She felt her stomach. Her skin felt paper-thin – like it would rip if she breathed too deeply. How would she get home? She let her head fall to one side, laid her forearm over her eyes, then moved it slowly away.
There was a body under the awning of the bridge, on its side. Most of its skin was gone. It had no eyes and its clothes were rags. Elodie rolled to face it, then lifted herself up onto her elbow, resting her head in her palm, like she was a teenager in an American movie about the 1950s. ‘Do you think Randy likes me? Like, “like me” likes me?’ The body rocked with the movement of the boat, but it was so completely lifeless. It looked closer to food than a person. Everything it had been was gone. Everything it had hoped for. The only purpose it served now lay in the material of what was left. It was object, weight, space. Elodie looked behind her, then around. There were another three bodies on the boat. All fallen, in various stages of breaking down, various stages of undress. All the mouths fallen open, most of the eyes were gone, some of the hair was left. Elodie looked up and saw a flag, also ripped to bits. It was clear that if she wanted it, the boat was hers. She could throw the bodies overboard. She could do that. They didn’t mean anything, anymore. This was just the waste, just what we leave behind. The octopus probably wouldn’t even eat it. The bodies were old. She looked from one to the other. They all looked the same. She looked at her own arm. All of them looked the same. She couldn’t tell how old the bodies were, only assumed they were men because generally, in the world, she knew it was men who went out like this. Men who left home. Men. Or boys. Boys would also leave home for wild adventures. Women stayed home and were raped. Elodie laughed again. Raped for real, but also raped by jobs and raped by money and raped by the need to be skinny.
Elodie wasn’t skinny. She’d never been skinny. It was the thing that upset everyone the most. That she was fat. That she dared to take up the space she took up. That she came into dressing rooms and salons and said ‘Hi’ with her head held up. It irked them so badly. Like she was hiding some secret. The secret to the golden goose. The secret that was keeping them employed and happy and rich. If everyone thought they were okay, then how would they keep making money? She didn’t care. She liked the bony girls just as much as the fat ones. The thing that fucked them off most, especially Tommy, was that he still wanted to fuck her. Maybe he wanted to fuck her so he could put her back in her place. So she would realise she needed to be smaller. If her body wouldn’t be smaller, then he needed to bring it down a tone or two. She needed to stop being so goddamn big.
The bodies on the ship were small. In some places only their bones remained. In some places their skin had slipped completely off. In others it stayed, held tight. There seemed to be no logic to where it fell and where it stayed but Elodie knew that there was, that this was uninterrupted nature – cause and effect.
The octopus hit the boat again.
Elodie did not want to be a body like this. The water was teeming with life. But up here, in the dry, on the overly buoyant, there was nothing but death. She walked to the side of the boat, looked back one last time, and dived into the water. The sting of
it electrified her skin. The octopus was waiting, suspicious, and as he circled close, Elodie smashed him in the nose, because now she knew he was a man, but that didn’t matter here. He was different from her, and that was what mattered. Here she needed to be big. Bigger than him. He swam away and then came back again and when she was ready she followed him to the place they were going. To the place where everything ends up, where everything starts again. Where she would start again. Not in some symbolic way, but for real, just like Carla had promised – build a new house, build a new life and wait for everyone else to come.
Elodie stopped swimming for a moment and surfaced and looked back at the fishing boat. As the image of the deck played over in her mind, she was sure she’d seen it. She wiped her face, blowing hard, sharp and short so water flew from her mouth. She looked at the boat. She wanted it. She looked at her hands and the skin raking off her wrists, it was possible she needed it, possible she wouldn’t get there if she didn’t have it. She’d solved the food, the breathing, she didn’t want to be undone by her wretchedly weak skin. She shouted, ‘Hold on,’ to the octopus, at the water, to the sky, to the version of her that was already swimming towards the horizon, and swam back towards the boat.
It was the first time she’d gone backwards. She was swimming against her own current. A small part of her was scared that if she got on the boat again it would be too much for her, she’d stay there. In her head she imagined the octopus thinking the same thing. But the octopus didn’t think like that. The octopus didn’t care what she did. The octopus was keeping her in his sight because he knew how dangerous humans could be. And how delicious, Elodie thought. Assumed. Even being on the boat for a short time had started the big machine of her mind again. Like it was driving in the safety of above water. Like it was in a house, under a roof, behind walls with wood or brick or steel between it and the elements. Her mind had lapsed, after the time on the boat, into thinking there would be more time on boats. That somewhere there was a house waiting for her. A small bungalow with something other than raw fish meat and ocean dirt. Her mind was thinking about what the octopus was thinking about, so really Elodie was at her most vulnerable, because she was thinking and projecting that thought onto everything – she’d forgotten her body and the sea and the way things worked. The octopus could get her now, but then, head down, freestyle arms circling over and over, Elodie hit the boat.
