Away we went, faster and faster, propelled into the pitch dark moist nowhere toward the nucleus of the Lord of the Fishes.
5
One thing you don’t expect inside a fish is light.
Soon there would be other things unexpected. But, for the moment, let’s just consider the light.
Lights actually.
A row of them.
But let’s not jump too far ahead.
Let’s roll back and talk back and go up the throat of the fish, and let me tell you how we came down.
We came down in a stink, baby. The water nearly filled the bus. We bumped our heads on the ceiling, and the water smelled bad, and there were things in the water, and the bus went fast, and then it slowed. There was a feeling like being a mole in a water hose. And somehow I knew we were in some piece of gut, making our way to the center, where, I figured, stomach acid, or whatever fish use to digest (is it rocks? no, I believe that’s chickens that get pebbles in their craw), would be our final destination.
Seven for the soup.
Dinner served.
A little later that day it would be out the ole sphincter, blown through the asshole into the deeps, an acid-pocked bus full of skeletons.
If that much was left.
Just so much fish shit.
But, I was saying about the lights, and now we come to them again. So, we’re jetting along through the guts and into the stomach, hanging onto the seats, drenched in water, not quite drowned, but in a position that we in the business of being swallowed by fish like to call, seriously wet, and then—
—SQUIRT—
—right out into—
The light.
A muddled light, I might mention, as if shown through thick wax paper, but it was light. The bus came down with a smack, right side up (thank goodness), and the water in the bus sloshed back and forth across us, and the light shining through the windows, piercing the water that was now almost to the ceiling, burned our eyes.
Water fled from the bus the same way it had come in. Only took a matter of minutes before it was to the point where we could stand in the seats and have the water about our waists. At that point it slowed its drain. The windows, though lit up with light, also were splattered with all manner of dark business I would rather not consider, and so was the floor of our bus. There were even small fish flapping about, and I found leeches clinging to my body like day commuters grasping the handholds on a subway car.
All our food supplies were ruined, soaked up with that water, and possibly the water and fuel were fucked too, depending on how well the corks held in the containers. But, at that moment in time, that didn’t seem like a big concern.
Steve dove under the water and worked the bus door, and it came open. The water rushed out, and so did Steve, Grace, Cory, and Jim. Homer, Reba, and I clung to seats and waited for it to wash away.
Then we too slipped and slid along the sopped floor of the bus and out into the lights.
They hung from long cables at the summit of the fish, which was pretty far up there, dear hearts. And the fish itself was like a great aircraft hangar in size, but its sides heaved, and the meat and bones moved with the pressure of its breathing. In the sides of the fish were great pockets cut into the meat, and in the holes of this meat, high up, we could see people. On both sides of the fish, extending back for a goodly distance, as far as we could see before the rows of lights played out and there was only darkness.
Occasionally, as I observed, I’d see a spark emit from the fish’s insides, pop out like a firefly, crackle like cellophane. There were a few metallic ladders on wheels and runners, like in a great library. The ladders were narrow, but they went high up. Down into the dark spot at the tail of the fish, where the lights played out, my eyes adjusted enough I could see there was a pile of cars, both old and new, and one small airplane. All of this was mounded up together in what could almost be called a wad. The paint was off the cars for the most part, and there were holes in the metal, like termites the size of motorcycles had been at work.
Our bus was resting on a grid, long and flat with drainage holes all through it. The grid began at the pulsating gut gap that had launched us here, and a sewage aroma came from that gap as it irised open and closed. We wobbled slightly, not having gained our sea legs, as the great fish propelled itself through the depths. Beneath the grid, I could see a boiling green mess that gave off a fart odor that blended with the special smell that puffed out of the sphincter. The catfish that had swum before us lay flapping on the grillwork, its mouth opening and closing as it gasped for water.
People in the meat caves started down the ladders. There were a lot of them. Some wore rags, but most were raw and wet looking, covered in fish blood, their hair matted. Many were covered in puckered scars.
As they came down to see us, Steve said, “You know, I caught many a catfish in my lifetime—well, not that many, I suck as a fisherman—but, I never found no folks inside of one. Or any lighting equipment.”
“How about old cars or airplanes?” Homer asked.
“Nope,” Steve said. “None of those either.”
Grace said, “I just hope the natives are friendly.”
6
“How y’all doin’,” a big naked man said. He was holding his limp dick in one hand like it was a symbol of authority, and there was enough there to look authoritative. I was glad I was clothed, otherwise I would have been mucho big-assed embarrassed. A wiener like that belonged in some kind of museum, or maybe peeking out from under a circus tent in the snake section.
As an added note, a leech hung off his left thigh in a decorative way.
“I don’t know we ought to welcome you or not, seeing as how I figure you weren’t just driving through. But, I reckon some kind of howdy is in order, so, Howdy, goddamnit.”
He opened his mouth in a big grin at this comment, and showed us just how many teeth he was missing.
Men and women, and even one child, were amongst the crowd. I guess there must have been fifty or so. A number of them leaped on the large catfish that had washed in ahead of us, and with fists and bone clubs they were carrying, they beat it about the head until it stopped thrashing.
The naked man never even looked at this business. He just kept twiddling with his dick.
“That’s some cannon you got there,” Grace said to the naked man, “but I don’t know I like it pointed at me. And, now that I mention it, it seems to be a larger cannon than a moment ago.”
“I just try and display a little at a time,” the naked man said. “I don’t want to scare nobody ... You look so good.”
“Thank you,” Grace said. “I try to take care of myself.”
“And you look good too,” the naked man said to Reba.
“You’re hurting my feelings,” Steve said. “I just had a hell of a bath, and no good words about me?”
The naked man grinned. “I’m down here much longer, and you’ll start looking pretty good too. My name is Bjoe. It’s really Billy Joe, but everyone called me B. Joe, so I just shortened it to Bjoe, one word. I could tell you all kinds of fascinating things about me and my life, but I think you probably got other interests.”
“That’s the truth,” Homer said. “Where the fuck are we?”
“Why, silly,” said Bjoe, “you’re inside a giant catfish.”
“As Steve here said,” I said jerking a thumb at Steve, “I’ve never seen a catfish like this. How come it’s got all this rigging? The lights and such? The caves up there in the meat?”
“Sometimes,” Bjoe said, “I think about it and my head hurts.”
“I feel sick to my stomach,” Homer said. He turned from us and vomited onto the grillwork. We all stood there watching it leak through the holes, down into the bubbling mess below.
“You got a mite of sea sickness,” Bjoe said. “Had that myself at first. No telling how long I had it. We can’t tell one day from another down here. Not even false days. I mean, they’re ain’t no real light, just t
hem bulbs. And there ain’t no night. Ain’t nobody wants to turn off the light. There’s some dark up in them caves we cut into the meat, and there’s dark down there past them wrecked cars and such, but, hell, you don’t want to go down there. There’s things on the other side of them cars you wouldn’t like to meet in a dark fish ass.”
“Things?” Cory said.
“We don’t know what they are, but they’re fucked up and goofydoofy.”
“Goofydoofy?” Grace said.
“Yeah. They don’t like the light though. You see, they was here before the lights.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I just reckon it. Well, I kind of know some things, but it’s a long story.”
“Got a feeling we ain’t gonna be catching no train or nothing,” Steve said, “so, we ought to hear it.”
“You will,” Bjoe said, dropping his flesh hammer so that it flopped against his thigh like a paleeel. “But first thing we got to do is eat. Got to eat when you can eat. We’ll show you the ropes, since I figure you’re gonna be permanent.”
“Now there’s a word,” Grace said. “Permanent.”
Reba said, “I never knew how permanent the word permanent sounded, until just now.”
7
They pulled the skin off the catfish using sharp pieces of bone, their hands, and their bare teeth, bit into the skin near where the head had been—it got chopped off with bone tools—scuttled backward, stripping the skin off in dark bands, revealing the clean white meat, still pulsing.
They cut into the meat or tore at it with their hands, and pretty soon they were through the meat and into the guts. Blood and fluids ran out of the fish and through the holes in the grating, hit the bubbling mass below, and disappeared.
“I think that’s stomach acid,” Grace said, nodding down at the stuff below the grate.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think you’re right.”
“I think we better get in the chow line,” Steve said. “That catfish, big as it is, is going fast.”
We hustled back to the bus, where we had knives, and, slipping and sliding over the goo on the floor, we found them.
My knife was in my backpack, which I had appropriated from a car where the kid who had owned it had been eaten by her parents, and along with the knife were some other items, most of them ruined. But my journal, which I kept in a plastic bag I had found long back, appeared to be in tip-top shape. That was good, but right then I would have traded it for a ham sandwich.
Back at the fish, we cut off slabs of meat and ate them raw. It was surprisingly good, but then again, most anything to eat had become a gourmet treat as far as I was concerned. I had known folks back at the drive-in to peck undigested berries and such out of piles of dinosaur shit, had sworn that it having passed through the stomach of a critter made it more delectable.
When we finished eating, we looked about to see all the others wiping their oily hands on their clothes or bodies or in their hair. I used my ragged pants to take care of my etiquette.
Finished, the Fish People eyed us for a long while without speaking. Finally, Bjoe, having rescued his dick from lonely abandon, and having picked the leech off his thigh and eaten it, said, “Up there. That’s where we ought to go. That biggest cave. That’s where we have our community meetings.”
“What kind of meeting we talking about?” Steve asked.
“I don’t like heights,” James said. “Fact is, I don’t like being inside a goddamn fish either, but I can take that better than heights.”
“You need not come,” Bjoe said. “None of you need come. But that is where we can drink. We have drink there.”
“You mean like booze?” Cory asked.
Bjoe nodded.
“Where would you get that?” Homer asked.
“Made it.”
“Oh,” Cory said. “And may I ask out of what?”
“Spoiled things.”
“Of course.”
“This fish, our swimming home, he eats what I guess is algae. Some kind of weed anyway. You add water, let it set till it smells, which takes, I don’t know ... who knows down here ... Too long, anyway. But when it smells worse than the inside of the fish here, then you know it’s ready. You got to hold your nose on that first jolt, but after that, it’s all right. Besides, it beats all the bourbon and beer we don’t have.”
“There’s a point somewhere in all that,” James said.
“Does the fish ever do any acrobatic type swimming?” Grace asked. “I mean, anything that might make all this goop beneath us slosh up through the grates?”
“It does,” Bjoe said. “Now and again. Mostly, just a bit of side-to-side movement. Not bad. The Big Boy is quite steady, actually. Most of the time. I do advise not being in the area of your bus, however. Lots of water comes through his gullet there, washes through. Sometimes, enough of it comes through, the goop as you call it, swells over the grates, and then we all got to stay cavebound. You really should get your own cave. You got to cut it into the meat. But not too deep. You do that, you could injure the fish, or cut through the outer skin, then it would all be over. Which, sometimes we think might not be such a bad thing. A quick rush of water, and down we all go to the bottom, our lungs wet as Noah’s flood.”
“I guess we can come up,” I said. “To talk.”
“And have a drink of that rotten fish swizzle,” Cory said.
“I’d like to try that,” James said, “but once again, heights. Ain’t for it.”
“I might can bring you some back,” Cory said.
“That would be great. Just like the rest of my life. Great, great, great.”
8
With the exception of James, who decided to stay with the bus, we followed Bjoe and his band up one of the rolling ladders. I tried not to look up, as the fella in front of me didn’t have on any pants, and a nastier asshole you could not imagine, and when he stepped high his grapes swung wrinkled and ugly on their vine.
Behind me came the others, Reba, Cory, Homer, Steve, and Grace last in line.
It was a precarious trip, as the rungs of the ladder were damp from wet feet, and I had to hold on tight. I cautioned the others to do the same.
When we reached the summit, we stepped off the ladder and into a very large cut in the meat; a pulsating cave that went some distance back. The walls were wet with thin stains of blood from the fish, and you could see veins throbbing in the wall of the cave. One rib bone had been exposed and was visible. I could see skin over the rib and wondered just how thick that skin was, and how much it would take to pierce it, bringing in all that water; thought too about these folks, and what Bjoe had said, about how they sometimes thought about ending it.
I didn’t like my life, but as I had come to realize, it was the one I had. I wanted to play out its string as long as I could, and I preferred to not have anyone cut it short for me just because they had had enough and wanted to go.
There were skulls in the caves, or rather the tops of skulls. They were split from the eyes up, and had been turned over to be used as utensils.
“How’d you come by your tableware?” I asked.
“Folks that died,” Bjoe said. “We ate them. Waste not, want not. You have a problem with that?”
Actually, I didn’t. I didn’t like it, but in this world, you did what you could. It was okay by me. Cannibalism has its place.
If they had in fact died, and not been helped along.
I had a tense sensation that we might have just climbed a long ladder to unwillingly accept a dinner invitation.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Bjoe said. “And no. We’re not going to murder you.”
“I could have told you that,” Grace said, looking ready to fight.
“We may not look like much,” Bjoe said. “And I may play with my dick more than a rap musician, but we don’t mean you any harm. Long as you abide by the rules and get along and such.”
“That’s good to hear,” Steve said.
??
?What about that booze?” Cory said.
“We’ll come to that,” Bjoe said. “Please. Make yourself at home. Guys, play with your dicks if you want. We don’t discourage it. Ladies, you can plunk your pudding if you like. We don’t consider it vulgar here.”
And they sure didn’t. Three of the women had revealed themselves and were slapping their meat in a savage manner, grunting like pigs to trough.
“Maybe later,” Grace said.
“Suit yourself,” Bjoe said.
We sat down cross-legged, and I could feel the great fish’s flesh vibrating beneath me, taut as a harp string. The meat against my ass was warm, and I could imagine going to sleep quite comfortably in this cave.
The women who had chosen to explore their valleys were still at work, and even though only one of them was moderately attractive, I couldn’t help but watch. There was nothing really sexual about it for me. It was just interesting to see. Sort of like midget wrestling.
Bjoe went over to a row of skulls against the fleshy wall and picked one up. He brought it over, set it down in front of us, squatted to join us.
“So,” Cory said. “You just get some weed the fish ate, let it rot and such, and it’s ready to go.”
“We spit in it too.”
“Whoa, now,” Cory said. “I didn’t need to know that.”
“Saliva blends with it, makes it ripe.”
“I bet,” Steve said.
“You really should try some,” Bjoe said. “It’ll set you free.”
Cory leaned over and sniffed it. “It smells like a dead animal,” he said.