Cambrian

By Flo Fitzpatrick

He unfurls like a deckchair, rising, from the sand up through the water, peeling his frame from off itself, unsheathing calcium. The white prising the white apart, he stretches every nook and rift, and rifts to craters too. The layer, to the left of the femur, so slight and translucent, leaving the marrow beneath so naked —no, that was just my double vision. And it’s milky, sticky; the ball and socket writhes against a slipstream, it’s coming from beyond the reef. Who sent that? I think I can see Selma through the bubbles, or her little arms, or her little arms in the bubbles, and all the others… Otto, there, at the bottom of the group, dragging his little arms against Alvin’s spongy forehead. Sleeping. Not anymore. Otto. Always the joker. But how is it that he bobs so quickly up and down, and carrying the whole
shoal with him? Carrying me, maybe –my chest is fizzing now– ?

and floating up, filling the bell, hot-air balloon. Body cadence, free fall, murky blue,
sinkhole…

It’s passing over now, but I’m still in flight. It was just me, me in the wave. Otto and Selma are specks in the distance. Heading towards the South, if that’s the Rugose bed. Disappearing into the reef. The reef is disappearing, it’s sliding out of vision, rightwards, away, it doesn’t feel like I’d turned three hundred and sixty degrees, and yet the little horns on the left… eyes… it’s just Ambrose. It’s just just Ambrose wielding his many spikes, he’ll take my eyes out with those one day. But not today; he slithers by, and I feel the surface beneath me. I’m back on the floor. It feels somewhat softer than usual. But just a second and it starts to shake, and I’m not ready for the plates to fight and push and pull again, why can’t they settle down
or wait? Yet no, they’re sliding, abrasive, dragging themselves out from beneath me,
unearthing themselves, five of them, five sandy knolls … and its just Carmen, Carmen on the sea floor, casting scorn towards me with her narrowing eyes. As she scuttles away I feel myself touch the gritty blanket (the real one). I didn’t realise she was lurking there; her sprawled limbs were buried in the sediment. She’s already crawled away towards some other undisturbed crevice, and I am alone.

Until I’m not, and he is sprouting cylinders below the hip, and as they grow two bulges protrude, symmetrically, from the end. They looks smooth and round. And just below, there’s something else, but its just the same – I think it’s just the same? – a mirror reflection maybe, of the bulge, but no, it can’t be; these ones aren’t quite so spherical, but they are still growing. But the cylinder splits this time, and a thin beam on the inner side leaves a fissure between it and its thicker counterpart, thick and white. It’s the same on the other side, and it’s still going. It’s widening, the cylinder, forming another bulge, but this bulge isn’t round either, but a little
convex, branching out and pulling itself back in, at a sharp angle. There’s something moving underneath, the finest of pins, lots of pins! They’re all shooting out from the not-bulge, like a sweeping brush, or a brush if it was a drill, because he’s going down, down, plunging far below, and it’s that hollowed-out cave in my eyeline now, the smooth top of his head, and that’s Jason’s scaly body plunging too, where are they both going?

No, its me. Again. I glance around for the source of the current, but I can hardly see a thing. I wonder if it was Selma. If it was, she’s passed by now, because it’s getting still again, and I can feel myself coming back down through the water. Jason and the smooth head rise up like a lift. Jason swims off.

I don’t remember when Jason appeared on the scene. I think the Brachiopods moved in first, I think we testified Jason’s arrival together. I remember the curvature of his orange tail, we hadn’t seen much like that before. But rigidity like this, I’ve had to wait until today to witness, I can see the cylinders again, and nebulous purple through the cleaves, now this is new… but it’s just I don’t know who, my pupils are clouds, and the white taints the white.

He has more pins, bubbles too, an urchin I think, a current brews maybe, or not. The purple is leaving, why is Jason upside down? The snails are on the ceiling and they shouldn’t be, I’m sure they’ve never been, but I only saw them first last week, what do I know? They keep themselves to themselves, they never come to chase the plankton through the coral, that one’s swaying. I need to sit down. I can’t, those aren’t my legs, those that start to settle, the dance abates. But all I know is blue and white, and lifts. He bends his cylinders, the bulge revolves, he re-extends them back, and that’s the current I presaged, Jason says I don’t have the knack but I do. I’m sinking southeast, I’ve lost the other knack. Selma will laugh at me and my useless body. I could find a sheltered spot, the clefts in his head would do nicely. Or they would, if he still had a head, but his cylinders stretch on for miles and miles, and the pins rocket away above my head, thin like the horse-shoe crabs, we’ve only gone and lost the clefts, and everything as he takes off.

The hollow cave swathed in navy-dark, that closes in upon itself, my lids are but a shroud. How many years have passed if any?

Flo writes from the north of England, and particularly likes exploring experimental and hybrid literature. Her work has been published in ‘Bending Genres Journal’, ‘Fixator press’ and ‘Magazine 1’.