I Think of the Octopus by Antonio Hopson
In my neighborhood, you are a soft fish . . .
And the moon pulls at your blood, quickening your pulse. Eyes watch you from above and below, waiting. To hide your soft flesh, you slip under a rock, a peace of kelp, a rotting animal’s corpse, your small brain paranoid over eyes you cannot see. Murderers, liars, sex fiends and lunatics - my neighborhood is filled with them.
There is the octopus, crouching, sliding, hiding, murder on his mind; excited by your breath, he is hungry. In the dying light of day, the stinging cells of the anemones glow orange; armed with poison and patience - they wait. There is the starfish - slow but treacherous. With his tube feet he’ll rip a hole into your skin large enough to insert his stomach, digesting you alive. A loving mate entices you with perfumes cast on the cold current, you fallow - you die, your flesh used for the incubation of eggs.
Me-Quaw-Muoks beach is but a short walk from my home, and when I am thirsty for blood, I go there to watch the tide pools.
Like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie gone “live”, there are no “outtakes”. In the “tranquil” world of a tide pool, violence is a way of life.
For beachcombing, the swollen tides of the equinox are best. When the sun and moon have combined to pull the sea away from land, intertidal marine organisms are forced to live closer together. Crevasses, dips and holes hold pools of life left behind by the tide. “The tide waits for no one,” it is said.
At night, when troubled by some troubling thing, I walk to my beach. From the slope of its shores comes a barrage of waves; stumbling, rumbling over the cobble stones. They talk: “Swoosh, swoosh,” they say to me. In the sky dyed velvet, Venus watches Orion, and the moon is jealous. Each star shines off the smooth water in reflection, shimmering slightly, blurred like a mirage. To watch like the voyeur, I bring with me a flash light; the beam is a tiny sun.
I spy an anxious crab, his claw reaching out at my sun like a threatening boxer. But at first chance, scurrying backwards, it slips under a rock. “You’re not so tough.” I whisper. In the same tide pool is an old beer bottle, chipped and scratched, its label long ago washed away. In it, perhaps, I will find a baby octopus. Secluded in a bottle’s dimensions, the intelligent invertebrates find safety in being alone. I peer inside but find only sand. In the distance I hear the lonely barking of a sea lion gone stag.
To watch a tide pool is to watch my world. The lying colors of the scuttle fish, the waiting anemone, the predatory moon snail and its victim the clam, together in a tide pool each rely on one another to form a dynamic balance. Like yin needs yang, some life is violent, some passive.
I walk home, hole in my shoe, and pass an iron fence; its spikes point up like the crab’s oversized claws. The black metal battlements surround a small Victorian home, all of its windows darkened, except one. I think of the octopus.
Antonio lives in Seattle, WA. He has published a number of short stories in both print and electronic format, including Andrei Codrescu’s Exquisite Corpse Magazine, Lost Magazine and Farmhouse Journal. His current project is a novel addressing the harms of discrimination, hitchhiking, bank-robbery, andfalse divinity. To see more of his work, go to www.antoniohopson.com.
