Peter Markus: The Fish and the Not Fish

Girl came out, to see us, to be with us, with two cups held in her girl hands.

Steam rose up from these two cups and curled up round Girl’s face.

For you, Girl told us.

Drink, she said, and she held out to us her two hands.

We each of us took from Girl’s hands a cup and raised it up to our lips.

What is this? one of us asked.

One of us said, It smells like death.

It is, Girl said.

And just like this, Girl turned back to be Death.

You tricked us, we hissed at Death.

We spit back out what was in our mouths.

You’re the ones who kissed me, Death said to this.

When Death said this to us, Death crinched up his dead lips.

Why don’t you boys give old Death here one more kiss?

Death shut his dead eyes tight and leaned in close to kiss us.

When he did, us boys, we ran back to our house.

Girl was back in her bed.

She was dead.

We kissed Girl right on her girl lips but she just stayed right where she was.

We did not want to dig a hole in the ground to have to put Girl down in it.

So what we did with Girl was this.

We let Girl lay dead in her bed.

Then we went to where the fire was and we took two sticks and stuck them in the fire till the fire lit up both of these sticks.

Then we went round the house and we touched these two sticks to the things in this house — the wood of the walls, the hay of our beds — that we both of us knew would burn good.

The bed that Girl lay dead in, this bed burned best of all.

We stood in the house and watched the fire rise up to take Girl in it till the smoke got too thick for us to see.

We walked out through the fire, with our hands on our eyes, and we walked back out to the woods.

The sun was up and on the rise now.

The moon was gone in the new day’s light.

We heard a bird, though we could not see it, sing out twice.

We heard too the hiss of fire.

We turned back one last time to take a last look back at our house as it got burned up.

When we looked back, what we saw was Death.

Death stood out back in the back of our house with a grin on his fat death face.

The fat on Death’s fat face made Death’s eyes look like two holes filled up with smoke.

There was a fire that burned in Death’s dead head.

There was a fire that burned in Death’s big fat gut.

Death held his big fat gut with his big fat hands and he laughed the laugh of Death.

The laugh of Death was like the sound that a dog makes when you take it by its tail and pull back on it hard to get it to come.

Death’s fat face got twice as fat when Death’s mouth cracked in half with the sound of this death laugh.

Then Death walked in, through the fire, in through the house, and ate up all that was left.