Lampreys

by Alan Spencer

  “Let me introduce you to a very good friend of mine,” Mitch said. His voice was barely audible over the mesmerizing hum of aquarium pumps, and the hiss of billions of bubbles, bursting constantly on so many surfaces. Mitch set the jar containing the frantic minnow atop the aquarium hood. He was careful to place the vessel softly, and soundlessly, before withdrawing his hand. But the sacrificial offering did not go undetected. As if stirred from its slumber, a grotesque entity emerged from within the stacked rocks like a living bulge of intestines. It gathered its complicated and writhing mass atop the rock pile. Puffing and pulsating in a show of changing hues, it engaged its crowd of onlookers through slitted goat’s eyes. “Kids, meet Ursula.”

  Mitch lowered his bare arm into the water. A few of the teens gasped as the bulbous monster threw a heap of purplish coils around his arm, and dragged itself upon him. The tentacles tightened and released, changing grips, leaving little red circles on his skin, wherever the rows of suckers had seized hold. “Right now, Ursula is just greeting me in her weird octopus way. Each of her eight arms is equipped with its own brain, and each is loaded with tons of sensory receptors that not only can touch, but also can taste and smell. She’s just taking it all in, making sure that it’s really me, her old buddy.”

  As if satisfied with the data she’d sampled, Ursula slithered back down off his arm and studied the faces of each of the kids. It seemed to linger longest on the face of the kid in the green hoodie. “I think she finds you pretty interesting,” Mitch said, glancing over his shoulder, at the boy.

  “Why me?” the kid croaked.

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to say what might be going through her head, right now. They don’t think the same way that we do. What we do know is that an octopus is a highly intelligent, emotional, and even opinionated animal.”

  “How can an animal be opinionated?” the kid in the hoodie asked, popping his gum.

  “Well, there used to be a biologist who worked here, named Kelly. And, for whatever reason, Ursula decided that she hated her. Any time Kelly got too close to this tank, Ursula would rush to the top and spurt a jet a water right at her. She’s a pretty good shot. Kelly eventually left Florida for another opportunity, but a couple of summers later, she came back through Destin, and she decided to stop in here, to pay a visit. No sooner had she stepped into this room, Ursula rose to the top of her tank, and soaked her.” Mitch turned to the teens, and grinned. “And get this, Kelly had even colored and straightened her hair.”

  Mitch took the jar containing the minnow, and he lowered it down into the tank. He positioned it upright in the black gravel, and then he withdrew his hand. In an instant, Ursula was upon it. Flashing black and red, the seething mass of tentacles explored the jar from every angle, tumbling it over and over, testing surfaces, changing grips. Glimpses of the terrified minnow could occasionally be seen through the monster’s constricting coils.

  “What’s perhaps most impressive about Ursula, and all octopi, for that matter, is their ability to solve problems. We’ve tried all sorts of ways to keep her from getting to that fish, but she always manages to crack the code.” The great mollusk then flexed its whole body, turned a weird shade of purple. The jar came open with an audible pop, and a rising bubble of expelled air. From the center of Ursula’s restless mass came a chuff of minnow scales that settled to the gravel like a blizzard of silvery snow. The octopus then released its grip, and writhed back into its dreary tumulus with its eyes directed backwards, as if the creature trusted nobody. It left behind nothing but an empty mason jar, and a litter of minnow scales upon the gravel.

  From the front of the room came the jangle of bells, as someone else entered the visitor’s center. A heavyset man wearing the same khaki uniform as Mitch rounded the corner with a flushed and breathless expression. He took a moment to catch his breath, eyes bulging, before addressing Mitch in an urgent tone. “We need you down at the beach, right away.”

  “What’s the problem, Skip?”

  The panting man just shook his head and put his hands on his hips. “Dude, I’m afraid you’re going to have to see this one to believe it.”

  ###

  Sara’s jaw dropped open. Her chopsticks fell from her hand, clattering on the plate. She gaped down at the man with the dazzling ring. This was Collin, after all. He was impulsive, emotional. Not much of a planner. From the moment he first hit on her, from the opposite side of their gas pump, to his first phone call five minutes later, to their first lunch date, an hour after that … the guy always seemed to be rushing the next play. On one hand, she found it flattering. However, on the other, his doggedness could sometimes make her a little anxious. She wasn’t sure why.

  It was as if sometimes it seemed as though he unconsciously knew something that she didn’t. As if, he somehow intuited a shortage of time, and to compensate, everything needed to happen right this minute, right now-now-now. Maybe she was overthinking things, giving him more credit in the intuition department than he was due. But seriously, what guy thought the way Collin did--at least, beyond those first physical milestones in a relationship? And heck, what if it was intuition, and what if his intuition was right? What if this man kneeling before her in the middle of downtown Kansas City’s Ryuu Grill and Galley, bearing her ring, with that heart-melting look of hope in his eyes, actually possessed a deeper sort of awareness?

  Or, maybe this was just Collin being Collin.

  “I will,” Sara replied, falling into Collin’s arms, just as a teppanyaki chef summoned a great plume of fire, prompting a perfectly timed cheer throughout the restaurant. He kissed her, and he told her that her breath smelled like sushi, but that he loved her anyway. And he did. Sara knew that much to be true. He showed it every day in both big and little ways. No one had ever loved Sara as well as Collin did. Plus, he was the first guy she’d ever dated who she knew she could trust completely. Collin hid nothing from anybody, because he never had anything to hide. He was an open book, and it was a good book. “I love you too. So, so much.”

  They’d not even finished their tableside embrace before a host with the keenest eye and the most impeccable sense of timing swept up to their table with a chilled bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses. He singlehandedly popped the cork right into the palm of his hand, as though he’d practiced this maneuver a thousand times. Before the bottle had a chance to foam, he’d filled both their flutes overflowing with froth, and then he turned to make an announcement of their engagement. His toast to their love, and to their future together, brought about an uproarious applause that made the both of them blush. Laughing, they obliged their onlookers with a delicate clink of their flutes, and a sip of the cloying fizz. Their host congratulated them again, before slipping respectfully away.

  Collin removed the engagement ring from the velvet box and slipped it onto Sara’s finger. “Is it the right hand?” he asked, hesitating, with the ring halfway down her finger.

  “No, that’s my left hand,” Sara replied, with a smile, “and the left one is the correct one.”

  “It’s supposed to be a little big,” Collin said, allowing a nervous chuckle, “because you have to take it back into the store and they, you know, resize it exactly to fit your finger. I guess they cut a chunk out of the band, or something, and then weld it back together.”

  Sara tried her best not to laugh at his endearing innocence. “You’re doing fine, babe.”

  “Thanks.” Collin sighed, and leaned back in his seat, smiling. He picked up his napkin and blotted his forehead. “I’ve never done this before, you know.”

  “Are you scared yet?”

  “Scared? No way.” Collin leaned forward, kissed her again, and then smiled. His face was flushed. “This is exactly right. I’ve never been happier, never more excited.”

  Sara beamed across the table at her fiancé. Not her boyfriend. Her fiancé! This was the man with whom she was going to spend the rest of her life, raise a family, and grow old. The guy from the other side of the gas
pump. The whole thing just seemed so surreal. So fast. It was almost—dare she say, flippant? No. If it hadn’t felt right, she wouldn’t have accepted his proposal. There was no such thing as flippant, when a match is just right. “So, who should we call first?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sara furrowed her brow at him. “What do you mean, what do I mean, silly? Who are we going to call first to announce our engagement? My mom or yours?”

  Collin picked up his napkin again. He smeared his face in the white linen folds. When he reappeared, seconds later, it looked to Sara as though he had aged five years. “I don’t know,” he replied. He reached for the champagne flute, then apparently changed his mind, and went instead for the glass of ice water. He took a few drinks and leaned back in his chair, staring intently down into the cluster of ice cubes. The color of his face waned from the flush of excitement to a rather sickly pallor.

  “Are you okay?” Sara asked.

  “I’m just, not really feeling so good all of a sudden.” Collin’s glassy gaze swept around the restaurant. His knee began to jiggle.

  “Aw, babe …” Sara placed her hand lovingly atop his, but he abruptly pulled his hand away from her. “You probably just got yourself all worked up over everything.”

  “Maybe.” Desperation clouded Collin’s face.

  Sara glanced down at Collin’s half-eaten steak and lobster tail. “You don’t have a shellfish allergy, do you?”

  “No, I’ve eaten lobster plenty of times.”

  “Well, I’ve heard that it can just come on, all of a sudden, even if you’ve eaten it before. My cousin had eaten oysters lots of times, but when she and her husband went down to the French Quarter, they ordered this huge platter of raw—”

  “Would you please?”

  “Sorry … maybe it’s the prospect of a lifetime with me that isn’t settling so well.”

  Collin squirmed, pulling at his collar. “I think I just need to get to a restroom.”

  “You want to go home?”

  “I don’t think I can wait that long.”

  Sara rose in her seat and looked around the room. “It looks like they’re over there, beside the bar.”

  Collin rose from chair. He dropped his napkin on the table, and clenched his fists. “Could you—could you get the check if they come around?”

  “Yeah-yeah,” Sara replied. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “I’m going to be sick.” Collin extracted his wallet and keys and placed them on the table. “Get the check. Meet me out in the car.” Pushing in his chair, Collin then turned in the direction of the sushi bar. He took three ungainly steps, and then collapsed onto the restaurant floor.

  Deep Devotion is available from Amazon here