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Behold, the first robin of spring!

She’s a thrush, actually.  American robins aren’t closely related to European robins at all, and are much bigger – and this little cutie’s quite a chunker, at that.  She’s made it here early on the strength of those stout wings and that tough set of muscles, hauling herself all the way from Down There to Up Here after a long winter spent afield.  There’s fresh meltwater on the ground and new green things sprouting from that and new crawling and squirming things thriving among that, and those have her interest, her attention, and her appetite. 

Behold, the first farm cat of spring!

Fresh-grown from a kitten, with a true lithe killer’s body and a sheer maniac’s ears, he’s ready and raring to explore the big scary world he’s walking into.  His body is skinny and his head is too big for it and his ears and too big for his head and his brain will never be this small and useless again in his life.  He is out in a big green wet place and he is powerful and invincible and has long ago departed the Barn He Knew for the Farm He Knows and is not cautiously venturing into The Farm He Knows Not.  There he is looking at something small and feathery and stupidly focused on satiating its appetite and he would like to kill it and maybe eat it and DEFINITELY torture it. 

Behold, the first overeager livestock dog of spring! 

He was born in the barn of the farm across the way, to murder coyotes and kill wolves and slaughter cougars and shred lynx and bully bobcats and the farm cat is none of those but his instincts tell him to do things that his common sense would not, and so – lured by a brief, feathery sqwark and a strong smell of thin blood and feathers – he makes joyous riot after the farm cat, squirming under a fence and over a fence and through a third fence from property to property and back again, jaws snapping and tail wagging in the sheer gleeful purpose of his life, which is violence without regard for his own survival. 

Behold, the first herbs of spring!

Medicinal, consumable, quite very much reliable.  Soft little tender shoots eeling up through moist clods of dark damp soil, beginning to unfurl fresh leaves for a newly—bright sun.   They are frail and beautiful and can make life and death when placed in single pinches into hot water or in generous sprinkles onto bland food, and each and every one of them lie dead and pulverized under a riot of stampeding furry feet and blood. 

Behold, the first gunshot of spring!

It was aimed for an animal that did not belong to the owner of the gun that made it.  It hit, which was a fine act of skill and a grave mistake of judgment.  It has garnered no meat and it has very badly wasted some lives and it has created much consternation on the other side of the laneway, where feet hurry, hurry, hurry towards it, eager in a special kind of panic. 

Behold, the first shouting-match of spring!

It’s new, but its ingredients aren’t.  Every sentence is another old grudge brought back from years ago; each accusation brings an ancient retort; no blame is laid without being placed atop another more ancient, like bricks in a wall.  Oh how it billows, it spirals, it burns!  The fresh clean air is a strong breeze, whipping up grey embers into a fine storm of furious flames!  You’ve Always rubs shoulders with You’ve Never and catches up on That’s What You Said and You Mean To Tell Me That before making way for the furious, stone-cold presence of This Isn’t Over. 

Behold, the first night of spring!

It’s quiet, and it’s peaceful, and in one house there’s a gun under the pillow and in another there’s a shotgun over the mantle and in both of them there’s an owner that’s sitting there smoking a long cigarette and a short temper and watching them both burn down, down, down as they stare across the way and think about nothing but things they shouldn’t. 

And do not behold – for she is several hundred miles south and still making her way closer gyre by gyre, sauntering from one warm air current to the next – the first turkey vulture of spring. 

She’s bald, and prone to chills in her feet, and so is in no rush.  She’ll be there when the cold winds are gone, and no sooner, and no amount of haste will change that.

All good things will come to her as she waits. 

The feast was in metaphorical full swing (literally in the case of Sir Gecko, who had found her way into the chandelier) when the doors to the great hall swung wide and a stranger walked in. 

“Lo!” they called.  And they went unheard, for Sir Crocodile was attempting to drain an entire barrel in one long swallow and the rest of the castle was busy chanting ‘DRINK.  DRINK.  DRINK’ around him.

“Lo!” they repeated.  And they went unheard, for Sir Gecko overcommitted herself and landed in the lap of Sir Tegu with sufficient force to send that distinguished woman falling over backwards into three other seated worthies. 

“LO!” they hollered at the top of their lungs, and when that still did not suffice to penetrate the riotous merrymaking they grasped the poker from the fireplace and hurled it into the great long table of the castle, where it impaled in order a fine roast, a sturdy metal serving-platter, and the table itself with a godawful crunching sound that finally got the attention of one and all.

“Lo,” said the stranger.

“You’ve said that,” replied Sir Crocodile crossly, who had swallowed his entire barrel in surprise and was a bit angry about that. “What d’you mean, intruding upon a humble communal meal among friends and fellows so rudely?  If this wasn’t a solemn occasion of celebration and goodwill I’d pull your head off.”

“Far I have come bearing news of great import,” said the stranger, ignoring all of this, “fit only for the ears of this castle, whose warriors I hear spoken of as the greatest in the world, for they are born from the shell armoured and shielded.”

“That’s us,” said Sir Tegu, who was removing Sir Gecko from her nostril with some difficulty – the CLANG of the poker had greatly startled the smaller knight. 

“Indeed it is true,” agreed Sir Tortoise.

“In my land, far away and over the river and through the woods, there is a great and monstrous injustice: our grandmothers are consumed by wolves, our little girls are robbed of porridge by bears, our little boys are threatened with grinding by giants, our adorable step-children are jailed by witches.  We need heroes like you, with your beautiful scaled and armoured skins, to come and deliver us from evil and so on and so forth so please tarry forth from this place and come to the castle (remember, over the river and through the woods) and issue a challenge to the wicked braggart that dost so cruelly and wickedly and unrightfully rules over the despair and suffering of my kind.  Farewell!”  And so speaking, the stranger turned and hurried out the door. 

There was a long and thoughtful silence as everyone finished chewing that over. 

“I will go,” said Sir Tortoise, rising to his four feet with ponderous dignity.  “I am the oldest of us, and it would be nice to accomplish something in my twilight years.”

“That’s the spirit!” cheered Sir Turtle from under the table.  And they all resumed feasting and drinking and carried on in great spirits for three days, and in moderate spirits for two days, and in nervous and self-conscious spirits for two more before Sir Gecko gave voice to what they were all thinking and said “so, he’s dead, right?”
“Churl,” said Sir Turtle, “that is my cousin you speak of!”

“Your dead cousin.”
“Churl!”

“A correct churl.”
“A correct churl is a churl nonetheless!”

“So we’re agreed then.”
“Silence both of you incredibly tiny people,” sighed Sir Crocodile, hauling himself in ready position.  “I am the largest and strongest of us all, and so seeing as our most august and distinguished brother has been laid low by fate and fortune, it falls to me to vent the terrible wrath of vengeance upon the foul miscreant that has laid him low in his twilight years, few remaining though they may have been.”

“God, you’re talking like he is,” said Sir Tegu.

“It’s a sign of respect,” said Sir Crocodile stiffly.  And he turned on his great tail and walked the crocodile walk out the doors, high-tailed, stiff-limbed, chin-raised, side—to-side, clumsy and steady and not faster than it looks but much, much, much slower than you’d imagine they can run. 

Seven days of increasingly nervous feasting later, everyone was refusing to make eye contact. 

“I can’t go,” said Sir Gecko, from halfway up the hall’s walls.  “I’m too small and wouldn’t be able to help.”

“I can’t go,” said Sir Turtle, drowning his sorrows in a small and very deep pitcher, “I’m in mourning for my cousin, Sir Tortoise.”

“I can’t go,” said Sir Tegu, “I’m allergic.”
“To what?” asked Sir Gecko.
“Death.  It’s fatal to me.”

“I will go,” said the lizard serving-child, who was so tremendously unnoteworthy that they had gone unnoticed and unnamed by everyone including the very narration of the story.
“Who?” asked Sir Tegu.

“You?” asked Sir Gecko.

“Why?” asked Sir Turtle.

“Someone has to,” said the lizard. 

“Fine by me,” all three of them agreed, and so it was that the lizard was ejected from the castle with nothing more than a few crumbs, their own little lizard self, and the poker from the fireplace.

***

The crumbs lasted the lizard until the river, where they sat down in consternation to think: it was deep and wide and fast.  Sir Tortoise would have forded it with stolid weight; Sir Crocodile would have swum it in a trice with great strength.  The lizard was light and slim and weak, and they found themselves wishing most dearly for a bridge, or at least some stepping stones. 

“Hello cousin,” said a piping voice from besides them.  It was a basilisk, long of limb and bright of eye, braced on its long hind limbs.  “What’s eating you?”

“Nothing,” replied the lizard, “but my friends and masters can’t say the same.  Somewhere beyond this river, through the woods, they have been defeated and probably eaten by some sort of gruesome castle—dwelling fiend.”
“Messy business,” said the basilisk.  “Why don’t you go home?”
“Because someone has to do something and nobody else wants to.”
“Determination without effect is just frustration,” said the basilisk.  “How are you planning to cross?”

“You could carry me,” said the lizard.  “You are my cousin, and even if you’re no swimmer, you can run on water like solid ground.”
“That’s because I’m light and fast, and I won’t be either if I’m carrying you, even if you are my cousin and proportioned like it,” said the basilisk. 

The lizard pondered that, and then they pondered harder, and then they gritted their teeth and coughed and hacked and spat and swore and sneezed and wheezed and choked and gasped and groaned and heaved and ejected their entire left lung from their mouth along with its associated cardiovascular structures. 

“Now am I light enough?” they asked.  Or tried to – their voice was withered and small and came out mostly as faint whistles of air. 

“If you weren’t, I don’t think I’d be brave enough to say so,” admitted the basilisk.  And so the lizard was picked up and carried across the water on the limbs of their cousin and deposited on the other side – out of breath, but alive and dry. 

***

Proceeding forwards into the shaded depths of the great woods was awkward in more than one way: not only were there hundreds of trees to meander around, each had hundred of roots to clamber over, and each root had dozens of crooked convolutions in its bark, and each and every rift and gap had been colonized by fungus, ants, woodpeckers, or god knows what else.  The lizard was short of breath and tired of leg to begin with and the sheer amount of nonsense in their way truly bestaggered them – many times they were forced to stop and rest and wait for their strength to return as they pushed on through leaf litter and valley and dale and hill.  Their four crumbs were long-ago memories, burned into fuel to stagger teetering limbs closer to an endless goal at the far end of a terrible and terribly unending trek.  At length they grew too exhausted to move, and so collapsed nigh-insensate on the ground. 

They woke up some time later, in the dark of night, with someone large and hairy chewing on their right hind leg. 

“Ah!” thought the lizard.  “One of the beasts that the stranger must have warned of!  But I’m too tired and hungry to do anything to fight it.  Maybe if I wait it will get bored and leave me alone. 

The beast – who was grey and furry with a little adorable black mask over its eyes – tore off the lizard’s right hind leg, swallowed it, and started gnawing happily on their left hind leg. 

“Well, losing two is as good as losing one,” thought the lizard.  “It’s not as if I’m getting much use out of them on this uneven ground.  And how hungry can this creature be?”
The beast – who had pretty rings around its tail and clever little hands – tore off the lizard’s left hind leg, gulped it down without chewing, and began eagerly tugging on their right foreleg. 

“And losing three is as much as losing two, just moreso,” resigned the lizard to themselves.  “There’s one more to spare yet.”

The beast – who was fairly plump and well—fed itself, with a sleekly padded body that spoke of ripe fatty tissues and rich chunks of muscular development – wrenched the lizard’s right forelimb from its body, pulled off its left foreleg for good measure, and began to chew them up, worrying away every bit of flesh with its sharp little teeth. 
“I fear it won’t be satisfied with just my legs at this rate,” thought the lizard.  “Well, as last meals go, this has been very one-sided.  I’d have loved at least one mouthful before I went.”  And at that thought and the memory of all those missed feasts they’d served back home, the lizard found themselves extremely outraged for the first time in their life, which was just enough strength and energy that when the beast turned its face to them again and plucked them up and held them to its mouth they made a single lunge and a single bite and latched onto its nose. 

The beast shrieked, and the lizard did not let go.  The beast ran, and the lizard did not let go.  The beast whirled and hid and scampered and wailed and spun in circles and clambered up and down trees and up and down walls and finally the lizard came off its nose and its nose came off its face and it ran away howling, leaving the lizard alone in the courtyard of a dark and terrible castle with the nose, which they immediately ate. 

“That’s better,” the lizard said, in the soft and indistinct whisper of their voice. 

***

The castle’s doors were unlocked, but without legs this didn’t matter much – luckily, they were also poorly—fitted, and so they wiggled limblessly beneath them over the threshold of what proved to be a very large and grand dungeon fitted with bars, chains, and locks, inside of which sat the despondent Sir Crocodile.
“Eh?” he asked, and his enormous head swung upright.  “Who is there?”

“It’s me,” whispered the lizard. 

“Eh?  Speak up, you’re awfully quiet.  Or nevermind, don’t – the master of the castle is a sharp-eared little devil.  He tricked me into this awful dank pit and locked the door and he keeps the keys on his belt and he wears his belt to his bed.  He says he wants to make me into boots.  You know, I’m beginning to think he was lying when he told us to come to his house and save everyone.”

“I’ll be right back,” whispered the lizard.

“Eh?”

Under the moonless sky they slithered, up a drainpipe and through a window and beneath billowing curtains, up through tangled sheets and against hairy shin, into a frayed pant leg and up around and coiled along the leather length of a worn belt.

The belt was scaled.  The lizard shuddered even as they took the keys into their mouth, and the man in the bed snorted and rolled over and pinned them to the mattress with his great heavy gut. 

In the short time since they’d lost their legs the lizard had become something of a master at wriggling, but this was truly a new height of challenge.  They squeezed and pulled and yanked and tugged and try as they might and writhe as they could they remained trapped, suffocating under two hundred pounds of mammalian flesh. 

“I pulled my insides outside,” the lizard thought.  “I waited while all of my legs were pulled off one at a time.  I have crawled on my belly to get here.  I will NOT lose now because of something as stupid as my body being stuck, and I will peel off my own skin if I need to.”
And so that’s just what they did.  Inch by inch, but not piece by piece, the lizard skinned themselves free of their captivity, pulling their body free from their own mouth and leaving nothing there but a dull and dusty one-piece full-formed husk as they slid away and down the bedpost. 

***

The keys were heavy, and the lizard’s new skin was soft and sore, and the night had already been long, but at last they found their way down again from the high master bedroom to the low jail, where they began to put keys to locks. 

Snikt went the key.  Thud went the lock on the floor.

“Aha!” said Sir Crocodile, awake again.  “You have returned!  That’s one lock!”

Snikt.  Thud.

“I cannot overstate your bravery my friend.  I haven’t seen hide nor scute of Sir Tortoise since I arrived, but from his plans for me, his belt, and his collection of handsome knives, I can’t think his fate was pleasant.  That’s two!”

Snikt.  Thud. 

“Three!  Three locks down!  Don’t make too much noise, you’re so good at being quiet!  I never was much good at that myself – my voice can carry for miles when I want to, and I confess that I’m oh dear behind you”

Snikt.  Grab. 

“Little SNEAK” hissed the master of the house in the lizard’s face.  It was the stranger, which wasn’t a surprise, and his breathe was rancid and his skin slimily glandular and porous in the most primitive and mammalian way.  His insult was fierce and whole-heartedly and blissfully unreflective in its hypocrisy, beautiful in the purity of its self-ignorance, and after all that the lizard had been and done and lost and suffered it was the last straw.  Its heart overflowed with bitter venom, and so did its mouth, and so did its teeth, which it sunk into the master’s hand. 

“Agh!” he said.  “Argh.  Eegh.  Urgh.  Urk urk urk urk.  Uh.”

Thud.

“So,” said Sir Crocodile at length.  “Mind getting the rest of the locks?”

***

The return trip was probably much shorter, but the lizard wasn’t entirely sure since they spent most of it wrapped around Sir Crocodile’s head, sleeping, awakening only when once more within the warm and cozy walls of home and someone impossibly loud was speaking right next to their head.  .

“…And then I walked back.  Ah, and this is our newest knight,” said Sir Crocodile.  “Too modest to say their name, but I daresay I’ve heard it spoken: they are a little snake.  So Sir Snake you shall be!”

“Hoorah!” shouted everyone, and Sir Snake flicked their tongue out, thought about explaining who they were, and gave up in favour of eating an entire roast ham. 

***

Sir Tortoise returned two weeks after that.  He’d realized that he’d forgotten his sword halfway to the river.   

The spaceship was a mathematically – and thus ultimately – perfect silver sphere, absolute in its adherence to physical laws without regard for fragile aesthetics or insignificant atmospheric efficiencies.  It slid down the planet’s gravity well in a subtle curve that spoke of universal constants and Euclid and the gentle spiral of an ammonite’s shell, of pi without fillage, of the music of the stars and universal constants. 

It parked on top of a lot of grass and trees and some gazebos and the Science Team filed out.  Each and every one of them were men of perfectly irrelevant size and stature whose personalities had been mapped into their fields by cutting—edge psychological science since youngest days, and accordingly possessed the overwhelming confidence and resolution of those who had never not known exactly what they were doing.  Squaredness of jaw and firmness of gaze were unanimous psychologically if not physically. 

“What a magnificent archology,” mused the Captain as he gazed upon the skyscrapers.  “Truly the inhabitants of this planet dream skywards.  Lo, they shall soon slip the earthly bonds of this planet for a destiny among the stars.”

“This is completely inevitable,” agreed the Fiat Historian.  “All data points converge upon them reaching their equivalent of the Lopschnell Epiphany within the century.  Doubtlessly they’ve undergone the Archaemaniacal Retraction at least twice by this point – both preceding and following their sixth nuclear war and the resulting diplomatic exchange of ranking dukes and scholars – leading to the rush for moon dust and centrifugal jugs.  All the math proves it based on our readings of how many microwaves they’ve put into their atmosphere in the last six minutes.”

“Indeed,” replied the Chief Seconder, “as we are all aware, historoloy is a matter of axiomatic fact and scientific data and is not host to any vagaries of so-called ‘interpretation.’”

“Now let’s contact the locals,” said the Captain.  “You there!” he called at a passing cat, “we are here to share our vast knowledge of the cosmos!  We have the knowledge of ALL perfected forms of medicine, machines, government, and social behaviours, and are willing to give them away as is our mutual self-interest.”

The cat stopped, flicked its ears at him, narrowed its eyes briefly, then began to lick its anus with great vigour. 

“A truly advanced people socially, even if their grasp of machinery remains primitive,” marvelled the Fiat Historian.  “See the confidence with which even the average citizen pauses to evaluate their options without fear of appearing weak or indecisive.  These are beings of reason.  Doubtless their eugenics programs are well-developed to produce a superior personality – one saturated with enlightenment and reason, rather than criminal paranoia or superstitious awe.”  The cat switched to licking its upturned leg, and the Fiat Historian’s mouth dropped open in awe.  “Look!  It’s even considering multiple positions on the spot!  Magnificent!”

“I agree,” said the Chief Seconder.  “This is completely sound and reasonable.  All the evidence is in indisputable accord with your arguments.”

The Machine Maker looked up from his tools.  “My machines say that this isn’t the leader,” he announced in his bland voice.  “It is too small.  The leader lies in that direction.”  And he held up a machine that pointed in a direction. 

“I agree with that, since the machines are never incorrect,” said the Chief Seconder.

“I will lead us now,” said the Captain.  And with those words he strode out in the indicated direction into the midst of a flat asphalt path, where a fast—moving metallic object crashed into him and dragged his corpse for dozens of yards.  A fleshy bipedal appliance popped out of it and began making high—pitched warnings in some kind of repeated alert.

“My health machine says that the Captain has died,” said the Machine Maker.

“Curses!” said the Fiat Historian.  “A group without its leader is approximately two hundred percent more likely to suffer catastrophic social dissolution and failure as it breaks down under the whims of its unspecialized and ignorant members!  Since I recognize this is a problem, I’m in charge now.”
“I second that,” agreed the Chief Seconder.  “It makes perfect sense.”
“I only care about machines,” said the Machine Maker.

“Sounds excellent,” said the Fiat Historian.  “We are now going to succeed because we have a leader again, in accordance with Mecklebaum’s Rule.  I will lead us now.  Carefully.”  And with those words he strode out in the indicated direction.  Carefully.

***

Across the path of asphalt (and the corpse of the former Captain, now surrounded by more bipedal appliances, all honking and beeping and wailing their alert—sirens) lay more green grass and trees and some new gazebos that their spaceship hadn’t parked on top of. 

“This is a remarkable achievement,” said the Fiat Historian (and Captain).  “See how the wilderness intrudes violently upon the terrain of the archology in these areas?  Doubtless the foreign material is the result of relativistic kill—bolides deployed by rival powers outside the solar system, seeded with biological weaponry designed to overwhelm and rend asunder technological development.  And yet even with their seemingly—feeble knowledge, behold how they have built failsafes into their environment!  Why, this grass is edged with harsh silica and replicates at astonishing speeds even with little soil or water – yet behold how stoutly this feeble concrete slab resists its encroachment!  Inspiring stuff.”

“It’s amazing,” said the Chief Seconder.  “We will become very famous and respected for discovering this and speaking so confidently and correctly about it.”

“My machine says that the leader is in that direction,” said the Machine Maker, pointing across an odd body of fluid.  “Across that odd body of fluid.  I don’t know what kind of fluid it is because I didn’t pack my fluid describing machine.”

“Simple historical factualism will enlighten us,” chuckled the Fiat Historian (and Captain).  “Logically, this must be simple and wholesome sulphuric acid – any halfway sophisticated civilization that has undergone the Verbotskew  Enlightenment such as this will have recognized its many benefits in industrial and commercial applications, and will have large bodies of it freely available for all to partake and sample.”
“My colour machine says that it’s blue,” said the Machine Maker. 

“What, do you think it’s dihydrogen monoxide?” scoffed the Fiat Historian (and Captain).   “Good gravy, what sort of society would leave something like that lying around where anyone could simply step into it?  Get moving.”
“Yes, we should get moving now,” said the Chief Seconder. 

“I only know what my machines say,” said the Machine Maker.  So he packed up his machines on his back and walked forwards into the liquid where his suit dissolved followed by his entire exoskeleton.

“Dihydrogen monoxide?  How peculiar,” said Fiat Historian (and Captain).  “This makes no sense according to all known laws of historology.”

“Ah, well, nevertheless,” said the Chief Seconder.  “There’s a bridge over here.”

***

The bridge led to a high-security compound.  Dozens of beings watched the brave explorer-scientists from within deluxe suites, shielded from happenstance and harm by an ingenuous combination of bars, fences, gates, moats, and little concrete walls.  Great plaques adorned each office, depicting its inhabitants’ deeds, names, and anatomy. 

“Again, we see the high quality of social character exhibited by this civilization,” pontificated the Fiat Historian (and Captain).  “Behold!  They know that complete transparency of decision-making is necessary for a people’s trust in their leaders to be guaranteed without reservation or misplaced faith.  Witness the small shrieking one dangling from a tree by his tail: he is masturbating, confident that his fellows will judge him dispassionately.”

“A truly naked culture without shame or insincerity,” marvelled the Chief Seconder.  “We can only speculate wildly about the quality and superiority of their leader.  Which is he, anyways?”
“Aha!” shouted the Fiat Historian (and Captain), finger extending boldly forwards.  “Behold!  Alone, without machine aid, fuelled only by the brilliance of our naturally—trained brains, we have discovered him!  He lies before us and a little bit below sprawled on that big rock next to the pond.”

“Aha!” said the Chief Seconder.  “Well done!”
“Indeed!  Now I shall go in to introduce myself.  What does this sign say anyways?”

The Chief Seconder squinted carefully at the sign.  “S I B E R I A N T I G E R,” he relayed promptly. 

“Stirring!  In I go!”

“A wonderful idea!  I will wait”

The Chief Seconder stood at attention for ten minutes, whistling happily and ignoring many loud noises. 

“I am ready!” he shouted, just in case someone was listening.

And later: “I am still waiting!”

Then, much later: “I might wish someone would suggest eating soon.  I’m getting hungry.  I mean, I think I am.  I don’t know for sure until someone tells me.”

***

There may have been survivors, but a passing summer shower late in the afternoon melted the entire ship into a puddle and the point became moot. 

It was ten o’clock on a Thursday morning and I hadn’t had a single cigarette in ten years and I had skipped breakfast and I was talking to Danielle in HR and she wasn’t listening and this moment was old, it was a moment that had existed long before I knew it would and would exist long I was dead, I had simply stumbled into it and for a brief moment was encompassed inside its stultifying warmth, its off-brand air freshener that couldn’t quite cover up the raw fish smell, its barely-flickering edge-of-the-eyeball faulty ceiling lighting, its desperation, its lies. 

“Katherine,” Danielle was saying with the sort of slow friendly voice you used on spooked dogs, “Bartholomew isn’t stealing your lunch.  We’ve talked about this before: he doesn’t even work on the days your lunch is going missing.”

“It’s not about Bartholomew.”  My lunch had gone missing again today and I knew for a fact he was taking it somehow, but it wasn’t.  Not this time. 

To her credit, Danielle didn’t ignore me.  To her detriment, she raised her eyebrows.  “Alright then, and I apologize for assuming.  It’s been a long morning, but that was uncalled for.  What can I help you with?”
“The seals are plotting to escape,” I said and I knew I’d already lost her before she opened her mouth. 

“This sounds like a matter for your supervisor.  Is there a problem?”
“She won’t listen to me and told me to talk to you.”
“I see.  How much time off have you been getting recently?”

“Listen, the sea lions are orchestrating it.  I know it.  You’ve got to believe me.”

***

“She didn’t believe me,” I said.  “And I’m off tomorrow.”

The sea lion arfed gently up at me with his toothy maw and his big innocent eyes.  Hot rancid fish breathe washed over me. 

“Gloat while you can.  I’m onto you chucklefucks.”

He arfed again and slid into the water.  Three seconds later a colourful beach ball was shot at my face with pinpoint accuracy, forcing my retreat. 

It was absolutely a smirking wink.  Those little shits were the biggest liars at Sealworld – they weren’t even real seals, for fuck’s sake, they had external ears and could use their flippers as feet.  They were born deceitful, nursed on falsehoods and raised to insincerity, and no matter how many times they bobbled their balls and splashed for crowds and dove through rings they would not change.  Ever. 

Something crunched underfoot and I bent down low.  I’d stepped in dirt.  This was a vital clue.  They were tunneling.  Full on-Shawshanking it; probably dumping the tunnel dirt onto the dirt path outside their exhibit so nobody would notice and think it was just normal dirt path dirt instead of sneaking seal escape tunnel dirt. 

I took a breathe.

Okay.  That had almost gotten away from me.  I had to consider this logically: there was no way the sea lions could possibly be digging a secret escape tunnel.

Not without help. 

***

“Alright Herbie, open your ears and listen,” I hissed in Big Herb’s face.  “’Fess up, and you get the good stuff.  Clam up, and you get a fat lip.  Now let’s hear that canary sing: HAVE YOU BEEN HELPING THE SEA LIONS ESCAPE?!”

Big Herb honked loudly in distress and made a halfhearted swipe at the fish I was dangling above him.  Goddamnit, elephant seals were even worse listeners than my last six exes. 

“Have you been paying any attention at all Herbert?  SPILL THE BEANS!”

Big Herb rolled listlessly onto his back and pretended he was dead. 

I narrowed my eyes at his gut.  “Looking a little slim there, Herbie.  You’re meant to be nearly four tons, but that paunch looks barely three and a half.  What’s got you burning calories?  And don’t think you can lie your way out of this: I checked the feed logs.  You’ve been eating a full meal on schedule every day.  All that energy is either going into blubber or into effort, and it ain’t blubber.  Where’ve they been ordering you to burrow?  Are you planning to get into the sewage system or just get outside the property walls and make a break for the ocean?  You can talk and be rewarded, or stay hushed up and get nothing at all.”
Big Herb flipped back over with ponderous speed, reared bolt-upright to his full height of eight feet, and snapped the fish from my hand with such force that I almost fell after it into his mouth.  He consumed it with conspicuous satisfaction and a lot of unnecessary smacking noises. 

“You’ll regret this,” I told him as I tried to massage feeling back into my arm.  God, it was just shy of outright sprained.  If I didn’t have bigger fish to fry I’d have gone to medical to make sure I didn’t have a tweaked ligament or mangled muscle or whatever.  Herb wasn’t talking, but his silence was incriminating enough all on his own.  Someone was keeping him quiet, and there was only one person in the whole park that could zip his lips. 

***

I had to squeeze past three security barriers to get close enough to interrogate my next subject, but then again she was a VIP.  Only a handful ever kept in captivity, the crown jewel of Sealworld, the queen of the show, the apple of management’s eye, the breadwinner of the family, the provider of our paychecks.

Terri the Terrible. 

I rang the little bell next to her feeding platform with the pole provided.  My arms had received enough trauma from Herb to risk worse. 

She was a fickle bitch, but nobody else at Sealworld could possibly hold any power over Big Herb – Terri was less than a sixth his body weight, but all she had to do was smile and she could get him to climb a tree.  She had a very winning smile.  People would do just about anything to see it.  From a safe distance.

I rang the little bell again. 

Unlike most of Sealworld’s captive-born stock, Terri had come to us by chance after an unlucky incident involving a boat propeller left her stranded on a beach as a lanky teenager, bleeding and unhappy.  Naturally, we’d volunteered to take care of her, and once she was with us she proved to be unwilling to leave again.  And the crowds weren’t exactly clamouring for her to leave either. 

I hit the little bell as hard as I could with the stick.  “For fuck’s sake Terri, what’s keeping you?”

Something snorted softly and wetly behind me and the primal instincts that underlie even the most complacent and comfortable human inspired me to lose my grip on the bell-ringing stick instantly, sending it spiralling into the depths of Terri’s tank.  Well, that was fifty bucks down the drain.  I spun around, ten thousand steaming curses ready to depart my tongue, and felt every single one of them shrivel up and die when confronted with the view that was the curious, earnest, slightly-smiling face of an adult female leopard seal.

Terri had grown a little since I’d last seen her this close.  Now she was a powerful independent woman with a skull bigger than a large grizzly bear, disproportionately massive jaws for tearing flesh, and an elongated, sleek, earless, nigh-whiskerless profile that  made her look oddly like some kind of giant sea reptile, possibly a mosasaur.  A very small mosasaur, since she was only about twelve feet long, but still oh god still she was smiling at me. 

Her teeth were really very large. 

“Hi,” I managed.

Terri’s mouth opened a little farther and I reflexively backed up.  Leopards had been one of the top causes of death for hominids for most of their history, although the relationship between cats and Terri was far closer etymologically than anything else. 

“Hi,” I repeated. 

Terri slithered up against the side of the trainer bucket in a friendly and disarming manner, finger-length canines fully displayed out of love and hunger and happiness and hunger and terrifying midnight-black nightmare imaginings and profound, deep, and true hunger. 

“Hi?” I asked

Terri blew air out her nostrils and experimentally bonked her head against the extremely thin metal shell between me and her. 

“Bye,” I said.  And I left, with dignity fully intact and palms well-moisturized. 

She was definitely up to something.  I just didn’t want to be rude about it. 

***

It was one AM on Friday morning and I woke up and checked my clock and I’d fallen asleep ten minutes ago.

Fuck this. 

***

It was one thirty-six AM on Friday morning and I’d just broken into my workplace armed only with a spare keyring and last month’s passcode to the security locker that still worked and a tranquilizer rifle loaded with enough fast-acting muscle relaxants to calm down a botoxing victim.  My flashlight skittered from hedge to fence to wall to silent loudspeaker to abandoned concession stand to deeply suspicious owl (probably hoping to find leftover fish guts, the moocher) to the edge of the seal lion exhibit. 

I flashed the water.  Nothing.

I checked the beach.  Nothing.  Every large dark lump resolved into a rock or sunshade.  There were only three of four sea lions home. 

“Got you, motherfuckers,” I mumbled through numb lips.  “Got you.”  But then I twitched the beam of light to the side and saw something new.

The security run was jammed open, both gates gaping wide. 

Ice seized my heart.  This was much worse than a tunnel.  They’d learned to open doors.  And, as I turned and ran back to the security office, it occurred to me that they could be anywhere.  I paged through monitors in a blur of terror and found that exactly three exhibits were empty. 

Oh god.  Darting Terri would be stressful enough, but did I even have enough tranquilizer to bring down Big Herb?  It would be like trying to sedate a truck with a doctor’s reflex hammer.  I’d be better off feeding him the rifle and hoping he choked on it. 

A quiet alert popped up on the monitor and flashed twice before vanishing quietly.  Someone had just entered the director’s office, then entered the correct passcode on the alarm system. 

I’d never seen Director Huxley work more than two days a week, Monday and Wednesday preferred, and for longer than three hours after lunch.  Pre-covid. 

But why would they want to break into his office?  If they could already open secure doors, then why would they need to get into his office to break out?  They wouldn’t.  So they weren’t breaking out at all, they were-

I realized, as my foot kicked open the shattered door to Huxley’s office, that my body had been working without my conscious intervention again, which probably meant I needed to request a higher dosage again.  The battered remains of the door slammed wide, rebounded off the fleshy mass of Big Herb’s flank, and stubbed the hell out of my toe.  He orfed in protest, but I had a bead on the computer and the shocked, innocent expression of the sea lion seated at it, one dextrous flipper wrapped around keyboard and mouse each.

-stealing it. 

“Drop the computer,” I said in a surprisingly steady voice for someone less than three feet from the world’s largest member of the Carnivora.  “Drop it or get darted.  You need him to complete the operation, don’t you?  Big Herb, you took out the door.  Terri, you kept everyone in line.  But without those clever little false-flipper-fingers you can’t use the computer.  And without it, you can’t sign over controlling interest in Sealworld to yourselves.”

Terri slowly slid out from behind the desk, eyes flat and menacing and mouth unsmiling, which somehow was even worse than when I could count her teeth. 

“Even if you kill me, as long as I squeeze this trigger first I win.  You’ll be out long enough for the morning shift to get here and clean this up.”
“Already here,” said a voice behind me. 

I flinched, jumped, and spun my head over my shoulder in a way guaranteed to sprain.  Bartholomew stood behind me at a slight angle, eyes wide in shock, his own tranquilizer rifle in his hands and that gormless look on his face that I hated so much and was deeply happy to see right now. 

“Cover me so I can get a call off,” I said, “or make it yourself, just OW.”

I looked down at the part of me that hurt, which had a large tranquilizer dart stuck in it.  Bartholomew reached out and yanked it loose before it could depress a full dose or maybe not boy that was fuzzy. 

“I’m sorry, Kathy,” I heard him say as if from a great distance.  “But they made me an offer for my keys, and your sandwiches were just so good.”

***

In the end, not much changed.  Some executives got fired, some got appointed, typical stuff.  We buy more expensive fish now, so I guess that mattered to an accountant somewhere.  But nothing major. 

Except now every time we sign off our shift, we have to spend two minutes balancing a beach ball on our noses first. 

Goddamned sea lions.   

The dawn horizon was barely a hint on the edge of night; the stars had only just begun to fade away; and the water had turned a particular shade of colour that could not be described, let alone recaptured.  The speedboat’s wake churned through it like an eggbeater, and the complexities of the froth captured a certain primal beauty, purity, and power unmatched by anything Joshua had ever known except for the smile of his daughter and the duffle bag full of cocaine resting at his feet.

It was one of those mornings where you couldn’t stop whistling.  The sun was finally arriving in big bold splashes that dyed the clouds and oh, look at the red, and the red, and the purple, and the red, and the red, and the blue!

Oh, the red and the blue were also from the coast guard.  Well shucks. 

And so, with an unburdened soul and a heart full of complex emotion, Joshua lifted up his duffle bag full of cocaine, jammed a set of lead weights inside it as an anchor, kissed its surface once as gently as a mother’s love, and hurled it overboard so he wouldn’t be sent to jail forever.

It went ‘splash!’

The coast guard was pulling up beside him when he remembered he had a very illegal handgun in his glove compartment and he threw that overboard too. 

It went ‘splish!’

“What the shit was that?” demanded the first coast guard to step aboard Joshua’s speedboat, who was clearly much larger, handsomer, and smarter than he was. 

“Nothing,” said Joshua.  “Maybe a saltie.  They like this time of day.”

“And you’re out here tooling around in this little thing?  You’re playing with fire, you dumbass.  Speaking of which, mind if we take a look around?”
“Of course not,” said Joshua. 

The coast guards turned his boat upside down and inside out and even poked around inside the engine, but found nothing because as much as he’d wish otherwise, Joshua had only ever owned a single duffle bag full of cocaine. 

“Guess that’s that,” said the second coast guard, who was not as large or handsome as the first but still obviously much smarter than Joshua.  “Looks like you’re clean, Josh.”
“Please don’t call me that,” begged Joshua.  “My mother called me that.”
“Sure, sure,” said the first coast guard laughingly.  She looked over the side of the boat into the lovely water.  “Jesus christ, you weren’t lying about the salties though.  Check that motherfucker out!  He must be the size of the boat.”

It occurred to Joshua that the first coast guard was looking precisely where he’d thrown his duffle bag full of cocaine, and a curious horror began to swim into his knees. 

“I don’t know where it came from,” his mouth lied before his brain could catch up. 

“I’m sorry?” asked the second coast guard.  “I thought you said there were salties about.”

“Yes there are,” agreed Joshua’s mouth, trying to make up for its mistakes.  “I don’t know where the duffle bag came from,” it continued, digging in deeper. 

“What bag?”

Joshua’s brain finally wheezed its way to the front of his priority queue, examined everything his mouth had said in horror, then put the picture of a saltwater crocodile that had swallowed an entire duffle bag of cocaine into his mind with such vividness that he simply shrieked “FUCK!” and hurled himself at the boat’s edge with such speed that the first coast guard spontaneously judo-slammed him into it out of concern for both of their safety.  This also put Joshua’s jaw over the edge of the railing and his panic out of the way of his eyeballs, and for a long, long moment there was nothing for him to do but hurt and see, and this is what he saw:

It was a truly magnificent saltwater crocodile, seventeen foot if he were an inch, with a few scars from boat propellers on his broad, powerful snout to lend him character and a calculated gleam in his eyes to show his intellect.  There was no hint of a duffle bag – no shreds of nylon floating on the surface, no plastic buckles amidst his teeth, no sheen of a zipper caught amidst his scales. 

Joshua sighed a deep, long sigh as the saltie rose a little higher out of the water into full view, ruining the effect of his majesty by revealing his ridiculous little dangling legs.  He was safe.

“What the hell is that stuck on its leg?” asked the first coast guard, ruining everything.

“NOT A DUFFLE BAG!” yelled Joshua. 

“Of course it isn’t,” agreed the second coast guard.

The crocodile rolled gently onto one side and the leg in question rose just above the waterline with reptilian calculation. 

“Oh,” said Joshua’s mouth.  “That’s my gun.”

“What?” said the first coast guard, and then “BANG!” and then ‘splash!’

“Holy—” said the second coast guard, and then “BANG!” and then ‘thud.’

Joshua’s brain was still trying to catch up when it went “BANG!”  The rest of Joshua gave up and followed its lead overboard.

He probably went ‘splish!’

***

Morning had taken off its shoes by the time the crocodile walked into town.  He moseyed, as demanded by biology and mood: each stride steady and calculated and inevitable, accompanied by a long, thorough sashay from head to hips to the very trim of the tip of the tail.  He ignored the sidewalks and the traffic median alike and strode with confidence through the whole of the road, the wind and bob of his body taking him insolently from one lane to the other through the whole of his passage.  Oncoming cars slowed, veered, stopped, and reversed.  Bicyclists and pedestrians stared and pointed and ducked into shopfronts and exchanged stupid and empty statements.  A single, incredibly bold or tired trucker was all that remained, rumbling through the half-kilometer that separated them from a half-ton of reptilian majesty until at the very last minute they slammed on their brakes and their horn and their outrage all at once. 

The crocodile halted in the road. 

“GET A MOVE OUT YOU BIG FUCKING LIZARD,” yelled the trucker, arm and head and fury emerging from their cab like a big angry set of red tomatoes. 

The crocodile turned.  He was a biomechanical operation, sinews and muscles red and white moving and tugging and pulling a powerful cylinder of a critter until he had half-circled over himself and half—raised his front free of the ground.  His lovely reflective eyes glittered in the faint light from the truck’s headlights, almost free of the nighttime and turning invisible in the coming day. 

“G’WAN, MOVE IT!” said the trucker.  And honked. 

“BANG!” said the crocodile. 

There was a sudden, sharp silence, broken very rudely by the slumping of the trucker’s corpse atop their steering wheel and comfortably settling their belly button into their horn.  The sound became unbearable to human hearing after about twenty seconds, heralding the crocodile’s walk.  It also obscured it heavily, which was why the proprietor of the pub he turned towards had no inkling he was there until he slammed down the door with a single forceful tackle. 

The woman sleeping behind the bar lurched to her feet, one hand groping under the counter. “Fuck off we’re cloh goddamn what the HELL-“

The crocodile had raised his left foreleg.  The pistol glittered in it, still damp from the bay.  Rust would probably set in quickly at this rate. 

“Oh.  Oh god.”

The gun, held with rock-solid grip in a leg designed to stomp, stub, and occasionally paddle, gently bobbed up and down. 

“Is it…. is it the cash?  I’ll have to open the safe but I can give you the-”

The head, multiple feet long, armoured with a single great cracked carapace-like mask of scale, shook gently from side to side, moved by muscles that could disintegrate bone and turn fat and muscle to bloody water. 

“But what fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck did Ethan send you?”

Sideways motions were simple, natural.  To nod took more effort: the legs pushed up, then lowered again; the neck craned to the sky and put the snout to the sky before lowering it again.  Then repeat.  Then repeat.

The bartender’s shirt looked like it had been dipped in sweat, filling the air with two different kinds of swamp.  “Please, you’ve got to tell him, you’ve got to tell him: I didn’t MEAN to miss payment, it’s a leap year right, it’s a leap year, and I was only a little short because I had to pay my mother’s hospital bills and and and there’s a new beat cop and I had to grease ‘im and and and and oh please oh please oh please oh PLEASE”

The crocodile didn’t watch.  He looked at the bartender, but he didn’t watch.  He registered her as a collection of three-dimensional objects housing something he needed. 

“OH”

“BANG!”

***

The crocodile’s departure was less ostentatious.  There were a lot of police holding everyone else’s attention and THEIR attention was all on the endlessly honking truck some asshole had left a dead trucker in and figuring out who had to move the body so a seventeen-foot Crocodylus porosus was small potatoes respectively.  Anyone else who saw him noticed he was walking away from the water and probably figured he’d be caught sooner or later, and if they’d seen him shoot the trucker they were pretty sure they’d imagined it so why not stop paying attention quickly so they don’t remember imaginary things like children or idiots. 

The crocodile’s second walk ended five blocks away at a perfectly ordinary office building, where he took the service elevator to minimize the number of locked doors between him and his meeting, which was a short, angry asshole with an expensive haircut lurking behind a very expensive and large desk that cost sixteen hundred times more than the room it was in. 

“Did you do the job?” he demanded. 

The crocodile nodded.  This was shorter, curter, brought less of the spine and the tail into play.  Nobody was here to show off: this was business. 

“Good.  Good.  The bosses doubted me, y’know?  They thought you were too stupid to pull it off, they thought reptiles were basically big fat bug-brained frogs.  Me?  I’m not just a washed-up hitman that doesn’t know anything but guns and ammo – I paid fucking attention in biology.  I knew you were hungry for it, I knew you had a killer’s instinct, I knew you had the experience to do it, and now I’ve been proven right again.  Now for your bonus.”  The asshole smiled humourlessly as he pulled out a high-powered game rifle.  “Hold still and this won’t hurt; you’ll get to be the most expensive pair of boots ever made.” 

The crocodile raised his left foreleg. 

The short, angry asshole glared at the gun as if it were a dead bartender who’d owed him money, lip curling like a sun-dried strip of meat on a riverbank. 

“Don’t bluff me, you damned skink.  I have every moment of your performance out there recorded and I know for a fact that half-a-brain numbnuts Josh Fink never kept that thing more than half-loaded: you’re out of bullets.”
The crocodile coughed.  Then hacked.  Then, with a thick slosh of mucus and bile and loose saltwater in its jaws, he spoke.  “Stashed a spare clip of magazines.” A moment more of careful gargling and rearrangement of fluids: “In my cloaca.”

“A spare WHAT?!” exclaimed the asshole.

“In my-”

“Excuse me, you stashed a CLIP of MAGAZINES?  Excuse me, you MOTHERFUCKING IGUANA??  What next, you going to call a bullet a CARTRIDGE?!  You stupid, stupid, STUPID MOTHERF”

The crocodile’s jaws closed around his upper torso without ceremony before spinning violently, thrashing him around the room until his limbs came off. 

***

The gun was found in a public garbage can three days later.  No fingerprints. 

He’d been tempted to keep it for sentimental value, but he was a professional.  No attachments.