Grace Krilanovich - The Orange Eats Creeps

I shook my head and thought, “Too many words.”

I get the sinking feeling that I’m gonna be here forever . I traced into the sky: f-o-r-e-v-e-r… In this world, there’s no edge, no junctions or seams, just endless rounded corners — the sanded contours of hell —

Summer ticks away What have you been up to lately? they all asked her, poking their heads into view as she sat scrunched on the sidewalk. She turned squinting into the sun and inertly replied, “nothing,” then slowly lost consciousness until they all walked away. Kim’s rule of thumb, as I took it to heart was, “don’t think hard, think deep.” It carried over into every facet of my life… We receded to the edges of life. Concerned only with seams, borders, rims, outskirts, we took refuge in these places. Where actual life became real. We hid inside you —

A dish of salt and cat food sat at the mouth of the cave, the crystallized remnants of some kibble left out a long time ago for some neighborhood animals. Where had they been? Did anyone notice that all of the raccoons and cats in town have disappeared? Uneaten saltwater kibble in dishes all over town — something tremendously suspect had occurred.

Close by, a coven of “witches” stirred a cauldron of wax on the beach. Their sea rituals consisted of nights and days spent without sleep. Grabbing at whatever was meant to keep them awake. This particular afternoon: wax.

All tribes convened on the beach. It was usually dark enough so that no one could really see anyone else’s markings too clearly. This beach was not like others. It looked to have been visited, like a shopping mall came by and shook out its clothes on the sand and all the little mites fell out and crawled away. The beach is a public place, like a park. Some are fancier than others, some more policed. This one seemed to cushion the bodies from all walks of life, providing shelter for all kinds of itchy semi-legal activities. The peasants have gutted the palace of the old regime and now lie sleeping in piles of shavings in every crevice. The beach offered precious few places to hide so inhabitants pulled in partitions from various sources, erecting shelter in recognizable shapes from all over town. I walked until I thought I passed all the people to where it was just sand again. I felt my body fusing with a man I loved — only I didn’t know him. He held me at arm’s length and it drove me crazy. Why couldn’t I just walk away? What had he gotten from me that I needed so bad I couldn’t leave without? I didn’t even recognize myself anymore.

Crunchy ropes of red kelp wrapped around the tree trunks — a mass of many-legged seething shells crossed leaves and twigs from one bank of foam to another. Snakes slipped quietly from leaf-mulch gruel into foam at the place where the banks dissolved into water and traced a path to the bottom of the ocean. This world is black. Shiny black water filled with salt and many stones, hard leaves cracking into many pieces — swirl of twigs and salty foam. Seahawk nest fibers floating and sticking to tree trunks. It’s all over now. The hawk dips silently into the foam and skims forth a sea snake with its jaws held steady open and — lunge. Bite. Who falls? — dies?

I gathered slivers of white soap out of a grey-water runoff into a rough basket. Gathered flower seeds off of the hill, scraping grasses into tightly woven disc-like baskets. All along the beach reed tents stood next to giant piles of stones and mussel shells. Steam came out of holes in the sand and rocks hid baskets full of salty flowers.

I pounded piles of flowers and roots with a mortar stone and pestle and dumped it into a hole in the sand lined with fern leaves.Fern leaf juice leeched out into the sand. And I felt something in common with the sand as I sucked fern juice into my mouth, chewing on the briny poultice. Fire pits in the sand. Piles of charred flowers. Sea salt, seeds roasted in baskets of coals. A mountain of mussel shells as high as a tree blowing up in angelic clouds of razor dust in the offshore wind. Seagulls approached with seeds for eyes; I whipped stems at the sea birds.

Piles of shells. Flakes of barnacles caked underfoot. Seeds made shapes at the bottom of baskets. Reed mats twisted under piles of coals. I pierced tufted beads of chamomile with small rabbit bones. Rabbit bones clanked in the fire. Pits in the sand filled with cooking rocks, ashes — and rabbit bones. Rabbits rustled at the edges of the grass. I blew into my fist like the sound of a cornered rabbit and all around huge bulging eyes rushed to the edge of the bush.

Foxes woke up from their long winter sleep at the sound of the cornered rabbit across the clearing. Across the beach cornered embers spit themselves against the sides of pits dug in the sand, charring perforations in the fern leaves lining the pit.

A young boy/man appeared before me, long blond hair of the warriors of the lumber town squats to the north. I recognized his kind. The rough Pendleton jacket reeking of polluted coffee. He stood solidly upright, as his kind tended to do, but he was eyeing me with a perplexing look that I didn’t recognize, like it shifted so fast my eyes couldn’t gather focus and hold it even though I fixed his gaze. It was as if it was oscillating between two sides of a coin. I wasn’t sure if I could “master” him, and it churned my stomach. He got closer and appeared to have no legitimate business on this part of the beach. “What are you doing?” Just kicking stuff around. He approached me and his voice was slight and forgettable. He settled on a big flat rock, staring at the empty space behind me, hair blowing slightly in the wind. That killed me. I had never seen such a ludicrous head of hair as this: long and blond like a babe’s but unkempt, neglected and dusty like a man’s. Is this a lumber town thing or what? He was more than a little pasty. But then again this wasn’t a beach that ever really saw the sun. I stared hard. He was pointy, underfed, but still big and unwieldy with light, unfocused eyes that looked like he might be legally blind.

He pounced, fastening himself to me; he brought me to the ground. Sand got everywhere, most of it came from him. “Who are you? What are you doing on the beach?” “No,” he kissed me. The boy/man seemed to appear out of coordinates fastened to my animal mind. He seemed assembled out of my own fractured territory of desire. There he was, bounding out of this landscape fully formed, his coat of armor strong but spongy, punctured in all the right places to let his poison flows of love seep out and stain me. He acted like he already knew me. The more he talked the less I listened and pretty soon I discovered that he adored me; he swept in and I felt him hanging right in front of my face, a trick fog stinging my face and clouding my mind. I didn’t know him. I felt him take my lips — he may well have been touching them with his eyes. He gathered my mouth and sighed inaudibly, I felt it rattle my teeth. He sighed and said I want you, I want you —

His flesh felt like it was suffering. I could taste it on him, the mortification of the only one left alive… He was so young. He was on top of me and out of the corner of my eye I spied a crappy shed and wished I could be inside as he abruptly stopped and shifted away from me. He moved around agitated and perched, catlike, with his eyes fixed to the horizon. He stretched out in the last swallow of sunlight on a large flat rock in front of me. “You cannot be comfortable there,” I said. “But I am.” His body smelled of salt and laundry detergent, fairly consistent with every other man under thirty I had ever been with. Do you know who I am? I asked, Why did you choose me?… He gathered me up in his arms and turned me to face him. He kissed me. “I’m in love with you, I’ve been watching you from far away. I followed you here.” I choked on a lump in my throat and was getting ready to cry. My heart soaked through my shirt. “Please tell me you understand,” he said. “I don’t know.” He kissed me he nipped and sucked at my throat, “Please tell me it’s okay.” “I don’t know if it’s okay… who are you? Where did you come from? Do you live here on the beach?” I felt like I was folding in on myself, seven times, half, half, half, and tightened when I found I couldn’t fold any smaller. I lay frozen, my hand moving over his body, shifting, conflicted, unsettled. I felt the sand locked in his hair. I shook it but it stayed. “Were you born here?” I asked. He kissed me, “No but I will die here — ”I will die here with you.