Finalist
Terrain.org fifteenth Annual Fiction Contest
We met on the cusp of summer season, these final sacred weeks earlier than the faculties unleash their vermin, pile them into their dad and mom’ Foresters and Path Blazers and migrate south for the season, to clog our seashores and pubs and comfy New England Principal Streets. I used to be renting slightly place half-hour’ stroll from the church I’d stopped attending the minute I moved out, a lot to my mom’s dismay. Picked up a gig tending bar at Captain Craig’s. Noticed her by way of these tall, oceanfront home windows, barefoot, neck bent like she misplaced one thing within the sand. Theft isn’t widespread right here, but it surely occurs. Folks lose wallets. Good Samaritans generally flip them in, sans money. Or telephones too gradual to promote.
I advised Craig I’d take an early lunch and shambled down the shore to fulfill her. She was sporting a type of lengthy shift attire she likes, apron pocket deep as her knees. Put her fingers in and clawed out fistfuls of shells, purple mussels and rosy scallops and vivid orange oysters and so, so many clamshells. They got here virtually alive in her grasp, skittered by way of her fingers like tiny, clattering animals. She’s a collector, she advised me, and no newbie. Grew up a mile from P-City and simply moved again to the Cape. Her identify is Kay.
I received’t say I used to be smitten. However I stayed down there previous my half-hour, listening to Kay speak about mollusks, how one can’t discover their indigo coloration anyplace else. The following night time she got here to me, laid all her treasures out alongside the bar and named them by the polish-chipped ideas of her fingers. Once more the night time after that. By no means ordered greater than a cranberry ginger ale or a root beer. She got here only for the pleasure of displaying me all I’d ever crunched over.
At shut we walked alongside the shore, the horizon a clear incision within the orange-fuchsia sky, bleeding black and glassy waves to our ankles. The setting solar lit her comfortable brown hair like hearth, a halo of it round her head. Kay didn’t catch me wanting. She wrapped her skirt to her knees and pinched a tiny patch of sundown out of the sand. A yellow, opalescent shell the dimensions of my thumbnail.
“A jingle shell.”
I requested why she referred to as it that. She cupped extra into my palm, fingers stuffed with clinking, glittering sky. We made a cavern of our fingers, held them to our ears, and shook. The shells jingled like Christmas bells, like Kay’s personal tinkling giggle.
“It’s best to see the remainder of my assortment,” she stated.
Kay lived in a one-bedroom bungalow on a seaside throughout city. Not the comfortable, shell-speckled stuff we sunk out toes into that night time. Her seaside was rocky, jagged as the home that jutted from its edge, wooden grey and sea-shorn. Inside, it’s scallops within the crown molding, mollusks within the mattress body. Shell-shaped soaps within the shell-shaped soapholder. Say it ten occasions quick in case you can.
Kay inherited the home years in the past from an ideal aunt who had been one thing of a legend on the town. A recognized spinster, a recluse, sometimes a witch. To Kay, an idol, a center finger of their household’s face with whom she shared a kinship past blood. I requested what she meant by that, the reply fathomless as these sea-deep eyes.
“I’m unsure what I’m doing right here,” I advised Kay. She sat cross-legged on the loveseat, pearly upholstery the colour of a pink scallop shell. Her arms robust and sun-freckled, lips the flavour of sea salt. It will need to have been a mistake. A fluke. I kissed her once more, simply to make certain. The shells rattled on their cabinets.
Within the morning, it was a one-time factor. A misunderstanding. She got here to Craig’s it doesn’t matter what I stated.
“Only a root beer,” she assured me. And so, it occurred once more.
“This time would be the final,” I advised myself, each time, till it wasn’t. The flimsy factor between us took form, concrete in its calcified flesh.
I heard it earlier than I noticed it: woke to the clack of its jaws round a tiny limpet balanced on the tip of Kay’s finger. It was the dimensions of a small snapping turtle and about the identical form, besides its spherical physique was not encased inside a single shell however a number of dozen. Moon shells wound in spirals over its attractive again, white scallop underbelly and purple mussel ft like flippers. Or clown footwear, too massive for its toddling, many-jointed appendages.
“Don’t contact it!” I warned. Kay fished one other miniscule shell from her assortment. The factor snatched it from her palm, crunched terribly between its jaws. Stored on crunching after it swallowed, shell-bits rattling by way of the brittle equipment of its guts.
“It’s hungry,” she stated.
“It may very well be harmful,” I stated.
Kay scratched her fingernails between the factor’s crevices. Its turret tail rattled in delight, again flippers thumping towards the espresso desk. “I don’t assume it’s going to harm us.”
The creature clacked its jaws.
“What ought to we do with it?” I requested. Kay stopped scratching and the factor went quiet. Widened its massive, yellow eyes. Golden jingle shells between clamshell eyelids, layers and layers of them, unfolding because it mounted its sights on the article of its adoration. I used to be hardly price a look. It needed Kay.
In the long run, I took the creature to Captain Craig’s and set it down on the shore, the spot the place we met. Appeared nearly as good a spot as any to say goodbye. It pranced fortunately throughout the recent sand, tripping over its bumbling purple ft. But when I nudged it towards the water, it snapped its beak and scurried again to security. I left it sunning its shells on a tall grassy dune, and marched up the seaside to Craig’s. The factor should’ve seen me go, as a result of quickly sufficient it was scratching on the door.
“Awww,” cooed the women behind the hostess stand.
“Not on my bar,” Craig scolded from the kitchen. I scooped the creature right into a dish tub and left it with the dirties till Kay got here by. It glistened its tinkling eyes, and it had her.
“I’m taking Clack residence with me,” she stated.
“Don’t identify it,” I stated.
“Now we have to name it one thing,” she stated.
“Clack clack clack,” stated Clack.
On the home stuffed with shells, Kay slept by way of the clatter of Clack’s breath, like wind by way of a pile of previous bones. She’d let the factor into our mattress, curled her comfortable form round its inflexible physique. I needed to pry them aside to check it. Clack was no machine, no hoax. No matter organism had carved out its residence inside this eclectic assortment of calcium carbonate, I can inform you for sure, it was alive. To wrest a shell from its corpus was to make the factor cry in sharp, shuttering agony. The commotion woke Kay, who kicked me to the sofa.
“In case you’re a masochist, depart Clack out of it.”
“I didn’t imply to harm the factor,” I defined. I didn’t even make it bleed. After that night time, I misplaced the abdomen to attempt. By no means noticed flesh or breast or tongue or genital, nothing remotely mammalian from Clack. It ate shells and pissed sand and adopted Kay round the home like a love-drunk suitor, prefer it couldn’t survive with out her yellow reflection in its bulbous, tinkling eyes. Solely after I left, Kay stated, it grew anxious, stressed, waddled from room to room as if trying to find me.
I requested the women at Craig’s in the event that they’d ever seen something prefer it. They advised me Spring Break escapades and ex-boyfriends with unique tastes. I advised my highschool buddies too—those who stayed or nonetheless got here residence for summers. No higher luck. They took one have a look at Clack and shook their heads, not unkindly. Stammered out just a few “Critically?”s, and “Who would’ve guessed”s.
“I couldn’t make this factor up if I attempted,” I advised them.
“That’s for positive,” they stated.
“That is past me,” they stated.
“So long as you’re blissful, although.”
“What does happiness need to do with something?” I requested.
“In case you’re blissful, we’re blissful for you,” they simply saved saying.
She requested why I used to be so ashamed of all the things. I requested if she had any disgrace in any respect.
Kay’s buddies have been even worse. The few she had let Clack crawl into their laps. They’d ask to hand-feed him larger and greater shells as his lumpy physique expanded, first to the dimensions of a housecat, then a medium-sized canine. They didn’t thoughts if his boring periwinkle claws left white marks on their legs like Kay’s scratched-up hardwood.
“How will you act so regular?” I’d ask.
“Come to P-City this weekend,” they’d say. Or, “It’s best to lower your hair.” In all honesty, I got here to want Craig’s heavy brows and mumbled apprehensions.
“It’s unnatural,” he stated, when pressed, “however that’s none of my enterprise.”
“I do know it’s,” I advised him. I believe I’d’ve thanked him.
“No matter you do off the clock, that’s your online business,” stated Craig. “Simply don’t carry it in right here. And keep away from that woman.”
“This isn’t about Kay,” I attempted to clarify.
“She’s similar to the previous girl,” was all he would say. “However that’s none of my enterprise.”
My brother, the poet, thought it might all be some sort of metaphor.
“How might it’s a metaphor?” I requested, “It’s a dwelling factor. It’s proper right here in entrance of me.”
“Simply give it some thought,” he stated, “The shell as a house. The shell as safety. What do you want defending from?”
I hung up on him, then and there.
The worst was my mom. She noticed me and Kay strolling down the seaside, hand-in-hand, Clack shambling on forward. Handed us by with no phrase. I needed to run to catch her. She wouldn’t even let me clarify. Simply seemed me sq. within the eye and stated, “I’ll pray for you.” Then she saved on strolling.
“Why do you care what she thinks?” Kay requested.
“She’s my mom,” I stated.
“Clack goes the place we go. She’ll need to recover from it.”
“Why ought to she?” I needed to know. By that point, Clack had grown too cumbersome to remain in the home by himself. He wanted half a dozen walks a day, and by no means appeared content material with simply the considered one of us. After I left for Craig’s, Kay stated he’d paw the door and attempt to clamber by way of the home windows, whistling all of the whereas by way of his shells, a bone-chilling phantom of a Doberman’s whine. On the weekends Kay flew to her collectors’ conferences, he’d clatter to the bottom in a pile of his personal items and mope till she got here residence.
I attempted to persuade her that we might put a cease to this habits. We must always be capable of take a stroll or go to dinner with out Clack tailing us each step. Kay wouldn’t stand for it.
“I’m not such as you. I don’t perceive how one can conceal a lot of your self from the individuals who love you. It kills me.”
I requested what the hell that was imagined to imply. Why she couldn’t drop this monstrosity for 3 hours and have a traditional night time, simply as soon as. She requested why I used to be so ashamed of all the things. I requested if she had any disgrace in any respect. The storm gathering behind Kay’s eyes broke, spilled down her cheeks like rain, and for the primary and solely time, she requested me to go away.
I used to be so deaf to the sound of clattering shells, I didn’t even discover Clack behind me till we have been virtually again at my previous condominium. The place was in sadder form than I remembered, dusty and rot-smelling from no matter had gone unhealthy within the fridge. Clack’s massive physique fumbled by way of the house, scuffing his shells on the doorframes. I advised him he might keep one night time, then I used to be bringing him again to Kay’s. He wagged his shell-braided tail and clambered up onto my twin mattress. I made him a mattress of paper buying baggage on the ground of my closet.
Within the morning, Kay was gone. Her home windows have been darkish past their shell-laden sills, silver Crosstrek lacking from the driveway. Every week glided by with no phrase. Then two. Her absence gaped, a slow-healing wound. I picked up further shifts at Craig’s. Made peace with my mom, endured the deluge of her buddies’ single sons. Began going to church once more. None of it might rinse the ideas of Kay from my thoughts. I pictured her pacing some faraway shore, hair all aflame, smock gown rolled as much as her knees, filling its pockets with shells.
Clack grew torpid with the shortage of her. Resigned himself to whine from the closet or underneath my mattress. I’d stroll the seaside after work, weigh my pockets stuffed with snacks for him to munch, then decide at, ultimately ignore fully. He was shedding shells sooner than he would eat them, leaving scattered items of himself round my condominium. By the tip of summer season, he not often ever bothered to raise his head.
We don’t get a lot of an autumn on the Cape. The coolness rolls in from the east across the finish of September, and it’s all bitter salt winds and snowdrifts till Might. The vacationers flip their COEXIST-stickered tails, flee again to their heat metropolis lights. We natives bunker down with our street salts and tire chains and lock our lonely hearts away.
That’s when Kay reappeared, simply earlier than the season took a flip for the actually depressing. I noticed her automotive at Cease & Store. Puttered across the car parking zone till she floated out on a breath of sea air, cardigan-wrapped, arms stuffed with paper buying baggage, hers and her companions’. A spike-haired punk by the identify of Victoria. I requested if we might speak.
“Now’s not the very best time,” she stated, “but it surely was good seeing you.”
“It’s about Clack,” I stated, “Aren’t you even going to ask about him?” However she was already climbing into her Crosstrek.
I discovered him deep behind my closet that night time. He wouldn’t contact the shells I introduced him, however his tail nonetheless thumped when he noticed me, yellow eyes on mine. I cupped his gaunt, brittle face in my fingers.
“We don’t want her,” I advised him. “We’re alright. We will do that on our personal.”
Nonetheless, he wouldn’t eat.
Every week or so later, I got here residence from my first date with the good younger man my mom had been advocating for. After I tried to coax Clack into just a few bites of dinner, he didn’t stir. Not a single motion, hardly a sound however the faintest breath wheezing by way of his shells. I scooped him into my arms and half his physique fell away, what’s left little greater than the day he discovered us. Solely these yellow eyes opened after I lifted him, tinked shut as I swept him out onto the road, operating sooner than I knew my legs might carry us.
Kay’s bed room gentle glowed golden from the tough seaside as I scampered to her door. Knocked and knocked till she opened, hair all mussed by an invisible breeze, to ask what I assumed I used to be doing there.
“Assist me,” I begged.
“You need to go. I’m with Vicki now.”
I stated I’d depart if she took Clack. Confirmed her the state of him. She stated she’s sorry, so sorry, she wished she might assist.
“Why can’t you?” I requested.
“Oh, Hannah,” she stated, dabbing at her tear-freckled cheeks, “he was by no means mine to maintain.”
She went inside and shut the door. I stayed on the porch as she and Victoria paced the home, crouched within the indigo shadows of their silhouettes. The waves rose and mounted the rocky shore, rolling within the rhythm of Clack’s weak however ceaseless breaths. I cradled him within the criminal of my arm, stroked his lumpy backbone, and for the primary time, I felt a fluttering, feather-light timbre. It might have been my creativeness, the phantom echo of my very own pulse. I turned his physique over in my palms.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Someplace behind the shell on the middle of Clack’s stomach beat a fractured coronary heart. I pressed his tiny, brittle physique to my chest, and wept. Thump-thump, he drummed. A wordless affirmation. I’m alive. I’m alive.
A. C. Silva is an rising author of fiction and nonfiction. She is presently pursuing her MFA in Inventive Writing at Virginia Tech, the place she is engaged on a debut novel and assortment of quick tales. In recent times, her work has appeared in Qu Literary Journal, Add to Cart Journal, The Bangalore Assessment, and elsewhere.
Header photograph courtesy Pixabay.
