Standing on Fishes
By Hannah Horcha
Paul walks like he has a right: headfirst, physicality second, puritanical all the way. His footsteps sink shallowly yet firmly into silt, as if the earth’s hard pith lay only inches beneath his feet. And when westward winds blow him to the shore, the lake gleams off him like an amuse-bouche for the cold.
From afar, I watch him through the window of our beach house. He moves through the panes, distant in the glass, red on grey, and beautiful under the sepia cast of rain clouds. When his toes reach the dock’s weathered edge, the white water reaches for his ankles to tempt him with its depth. Still, he stands steady on the brim. Meanwhile, I stand sore from yesterday’s pain.
Fish caught in Paul’s deadeye tangle in his lines. He reels them in over and over, letting them breathe dry gasps of air through their gills before returning them to the shoal. Silver light shines from the bodies in his hands. He cradles them as they lose their senses, until his grasp tightens on their throats to silence the screams bubbling inside. They thrash to punish him for sinning, but if I only had him in my arms, I would bait and tackle him down deep to make things truly right.
The water roils red with enmity, but I can only save myself. Breath scratches through every bruised vein, and my body sweats helplessly for a pitiful fix of skin on skin. Bitter memories burn my mind’s eye and stoke my desperation for closeness. Just a slipping glimpse of his about-face would hook me all over again, and I would rasp out the words: Baby, sweetie, honey. I would beg him: Hold me, hold me, hold me.
But a god to me is not enough. His apotheosis continues as he tramples the maidenhairs back home, to dominate me one more time. The two hundred yards between us suppress the prejudice, and I look down on him. In the glass, backlit by the faint sky, my petechiae skin appears beside him. My cheeks are pink from passion, his are pink from ice.
I shut the curtains on the love and trust between us. Our wingless affection dies on the sea cliffs where I begged him to release me. When I catch sight of the purple handprints which cuff my wrists, a revenant tremble shudders through and reminds me of the dread. Even then, I only wanted him to hold me right.
Clouds descend near the concrete to trap me in the gloom, and the splintered wind stings coldly when I open the door to the curb. Storm eaves obscure the way through. But my arms breach the shadows, and the car lights flood the dark. I take the driver’s seat and let the petrichor steep the headroom with its perfume.
Rivulets wash down the windshield and dry on my arms. I watch him run after me in the rearview, one foot on each side of the double lines. He sinks into the wake of yellow streams behind me. The ramshackle house behind us sinks farther still. He positions himself in the middle of the road, upright in the lens of my mirror’s glass. Reaching for me through steel, the ghost of his clutches leaves a vestige of the struggle on my neck.
I go headlong towards the incandescence of my low beams. He is a wisp beyond me and a memory on my body. The clammy film between the leather and my thighs burns hot on the sore spots. I drive into the storm’s eye for reprieve and wait for earth’s centrifuge to float the water to the surface. Droplets spring from the pores: I’m bone-dry and bloodless.
THE END
Author Bio: Hannah Horcha is an aspiring writer based in Austin, Texas.