Always Here (an excerpt)

by Julian Ramirez ‘21

White-olive skin glistened jaundice under a vanity’s mirror incandescent bulbs. His fingers worked the area around his ribs, stretching the skin taut until bones, thin like a fish’s, bulged through. 

Red slits separated each rib. His pointer and middle finger palpated the fleshy gill filaments that extended between each pair of skin flaps, six on each side of his body. He turned on the second light switch and stepped his bare foot up onto the counter; his toes were nearly immobile, ensconced in a thick webbing of fresh skin. A layered pattern of almost-green cycloid scales disrupted the skin on his shins, blood oozing through hair and flesh. He dropped his leg off the counter and leaned into the mirror, a shadow of blood left to sit on the faux porcelain. His dark brown eyes appeared to bulge out of their lids, a strange, spherical lens pushing past the folds of skin. The machine-like thud of footsteps raced up the stairs and stopped by the door. 

A fist began jackhammering on the door. “Stop cranking it already!” Rald yelled. “We’re going in the river, let’s go!”

Silo stared at his disfigured shape in the mirror and pulled a baggy hoodie over his body. 

His roommate, in briefs, looked small from his view on the house’s back porch, diminished by the long expanse of green lawn and brown river. 

Rald turned his head at the sound of crunching grass. 

“You’re not wearing that in the river, are ya guy?” he asked.

Silo shrugged. “Might be cold.”

“I really think you’ll get colder if you keep it on, yanno, cotton retains water—”

“I’m wearing it.”

Rald relented and threw his hands in the air. “Hey, what’s that?” gesturing to Silo’s shins. 

Silo looked down and back up, unconcerned, and shrugged again. “Got too drunk and banged my leg.”

“That’s so you.” 

“We gonna do this thing?” Silo, tired of the attention, redirected theirs. 

Single file, they descended the steep embankment, the prickles of leaves stabbing underfoot. They stood single file on the brown dirt mud and stared into the racing murk. 

“One…Two-three” Rald yelled, and jumped in. Silo took his time, entering after a pause. 

Rald shot out of the water like a tulip, his hair brown plaster against his bulbous head. 

Silo’s baggy hoodie dragged him down among the reeds and stones. He opened his eyes, shocked to find himself in a bed of siltless water. It hurt to breathe. He twisted his body and pulled his hoodie up around his shoulders, freeing his gills under the water. Pure oxygen shot into his body and propelled him in a kick of bubbles around his roommate. Water rushed over him, its icy breath a much-needed release as he tumbled and spun through the water, bubbles leaving his mouth with each aquatic laugh. He saw a pair of legs rush towards him and planted his feet, standing, grinning. 

Rald’s eyes were wild, his skin shades of blue and purple. 

“What the hell!” Rald yelped. “You could’ve drowned down there!”
“That was really nice,” Silo said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Rald said. “Dangerous to give in to every pleasure.”

Silo gave him another shrug. “I think it’s fine. It’s a fear of what comes after that pleasure that’s dangerous.”

“What, so the fear of OD’ing on heroin is worse than actually OD’ing on heroin?”

Silo’s face fell and he turned to walk inside. What’d he do to make Rald mad?

“Fire tonight with the girls, don’t forget!” Rald called to his back. He thought he heard (felt?) Rald mumble something else and quickened his step.

Orange flames bloomed out of the ground and ate at the colored cardboard, their tongues turned slightly green as chemicals burned into the air. Rald sat on his heels, feeding cardboard and bits of kindling into the fire while Silo dragged a lighter over and under the materials, pausing every once in a while so the flame would catch. Wooden pallets sat atop the cardboard and twigs, their soft yellow undersides beginning to blacken as flames started to lick their undersides.

“Thanks so much for doing this, guys!” 

The boys turned and caught sight of their neighbors emerging from the darkness. They weren’t sure who had spoken.

“Yeah, no problem, glad you all could come over!” 

Rald’s voice bounced as he greeted them, and Silo frowned. They’d only just arrived, and he was already being excluded from the group. He yearned to go into his room and examine his gills in the mirror, get lost in their flaps and flesh and forget that he wasn’t wanted. 

“Hi, Silo,” Sarah stood over him.

“Oh, hi,” he said, standing up and brushing his hands off on his pants. “I feel like it’s been a while.” He knew that it had been a while. 

(cont.)

“It’s funny how far away someone can feel, even when they’re right next door.”

“Yeah, well. How’s your aunt doing?”

“Oh, she’s fine. I mean. More or less. I think my mom and cousins are struggling more than she is. It’s tough to see someone you love and care about go through that.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

Sarah’s eyes widened. 

“My uncle was a fish.”

“Oh?”
Silo nodded gravely. “Aye. And his uncle before him.”
“That’s an awfully diagonal lineage you’ve got there.” She took a sip of her drink. “Isn’t Rald working with some support group for Aquamen?”

Silo felt a drop rattle his stomach. “You guys talk?”

Sarah looked at him. 

“Oh.”

The flames hissed as they met wet cardboard under the pallets.

“Anyway,” Sarah said, “I think he’s working social media. For the Awareness of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy for Semi-Aquatic Men.”

Silo stared at Rald, feeling a sort of cold warmth in his legs. “I’m surprised he didn’t tell me.”

“Omigod, Silo,” Sarah stuttered, her mouth working to make words, pointing at his leg. “Look!” 

A flame crawled up Silo’s leg, eating away at his pants and revealing layers of scales underneath. He slapped and clawed at the pant leg, but the flame gnawed its way up towards him, he knew what this meant, he turned and sprinted towards the water, heat tickling and pinching his leg and stinging his scales underneath the charred fabric. Screams from the girls chased him, and he threw himself up and over the blooming weeds, parasitic with the greenish brown glow of late summer, until he splashed and sank into the release of the murky water.

He woke up on the riverbank, completely nude. Rald’s flyrod lay next to him, alongside an apparatus that pumped water from the river into his gills. He felt a majority of his scales slowly pulling their way back into his body, settling just beneath his skin’s surface. 

“What happened?” he blinked.

“You went fully aquatic,” Rald whispered, placing a hand on his shoulder and disconnecting the pumps from his abdomen. 

“I’d like to be alone.” He saw nothing but the dark, clouded sky.

Grass crunched as footsteps receded into the distance. Sarah stood by the riverbank, staring into the murky water. She walked towards him and sat down.

“I didn’t know.”

He nodded. 

“I wish I’d known.”

A breeze ruffled the plants, swaying them from side to side. 

“I just can’t tell people about this… I’m scared. There’s a block in my brain when the words should come out.”

“Yeah, but… it’s me. You know about my aunt. I get this.”

“I know but… it’s still embarrassing. I don’t want to be rejected because of it. I don’t want you to reject me because of it.”

Sarah shook her head. “You shouldn’t be... you’re still the same person. They say, what, almost 10% of the population turns into one of the ten animals, subtly or overtly?”

He sighed and stared at his webbed toes.

“It’s kinda cool,” she said. “You’re like a superhero.”

He snorted. 

“Would you wanna go get a drink a sometime? Talk about this more?” She rested her hand on his thigh.

He stared into her eyes, searching. He pushed himself up. “I don’t think we should. I mean, I’d love to. But I need to figure this out for myself. If I involve you… this is all just going to happen again. I’ll never get myself out of it. I think… I think I need to be alone. For a little white, at least.”

“Ok, Silo.” Sarah stood up. “But I’m always here. Rald is always here. You’re not alone, yanno. You don’t have to be alone.”

He stood up, his legs shaky, and walked towards the river, tenderly placing each foot on the soft ground. She stood next to him, the two staring into the water.

His pants were snagged on a stick in the shallows, buffeting against the current. Before he could reach down to grab them the piece of wood snapped. They watched his pants, half-burned and stretched, bob down the river before they were sucked into the darkness. He smiled.