Fisheyed.

Fisheyed
by james bezerra

Sam was out of food.

“I’m out of food,” he said, a little bit surprised even though this happened frequently. It happened so frequently because Sam so frequently forgot to buy food. He also seldom remembered to sleep. It wasn’t because he was disinclined to sleep, he simply forgot to do it very much because he was usually concerned with other things. Like clouds (which he enjoyed greatly) or thinking about how much he liked clouds (thinking about how much he liked clouds was also something that Sam greatly enjoyed). He also found trees fascinating. Equally, grass and the smell of it, but also its color.

See, Sam was intrigued by the world and he found the world so intriguing that he was often too busy being intrigued by it to remember to do things like buy food. Or sleep.

It had never occurred to Sam that the combination of lack of food and lack of sleep might be leaving him in a delirious state, which might be what made everything around him quite so fascinating. Sam was not given to thoughts like these. But he stood there looking at the empty cabinet where food should be and he was certain that food was supposed to go there and so he repeated, “I’m out of food.”

Determined to resolve this problem, Sam went to his phone and began pressing numbers at random. Whenever there was answer he said, “Hi, this is Sam and I am out of food.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” A man’s gruff voice said at one point. “Who is this?”

“I’m Sam,” Sam said.

“I don’t know anyone called Sam.”

Sam nodded, understanding that not everyone knew him.

“Well Sam,” the voice said, “why don’t you go buy some fucking food.”

“Okay,” Sam said, “thanks.” He hung up and put on pants and went out into the world.

Sam loved the world.

He sat at the bus stop and watched the cars shoot by. Some of them were bright red like lobsters and some were white like ghosts and others were green like plants and they were all in such a hurry. Sam squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and when he opened them the road spread out before him like the giant back oval of a race track. And just in from of him, lines up with legs bent and hands clutching batons, there was a lobster, a ghost in short track shorts, and a potted plant. Their bodies were tight with the anticipation of the coming shot. Sam looked at the giant phone that stood beyond the racers. It held a stopwatch in one hand and a starting pistol in the other.

“Okay,” the phone yelled, “On your mark! Set!” The phone squeezed the trigger, the pistol popped, the race was one! The lobster - on account of its having legs - took an immediate and  commanding lead.

The ghost was initially impeded by a heavy gust of wind, but as that subsided, it began to make up for lost time.

The potted plant hadn’t moved, given as that it was a plant confined to a pot and therefore not ambulatory. Sam looked down at the plant, “Why did you even join the race if you aren’t going to try?” Sam asked this question not out of annoyance, but out of genuine curiosity.

“I just wanted to feel the wind rushing through my leaves and stems,” the plant said, quite crestfallen.

Sam sighed; he was always unhappy to see a dream so dismally deferred. He bent down, took the relay baton from the plant and scooped up the pot. “Here we go!” he yelled and took off running.

The others had a massive lead. The lobster and ghost had already switched off 400 meters down the track to their lobster and ghost teammates. But Sam was fast and made up much ground. At the 400 meter mark he reached down and picked up the next popped plant on the team. It was awkward running with a relay baton and two potted plants, but he managed.

A slight breeze came across the track and blew the ghost sideways. Sam was able to advance. The second lobster handed off to the third, who took off scittering quick fast for a crustacean. Sam scooped up the third potted plant. The ghosts had managed to rally, but were still far behind. Sam was closing the distance on the lobster.

The third lobster handed off to the anchor runner lobster only moments before Sam scooted up the last plant. It was difficult for him to run now, cradling four potted plants of varying sizes as well as a relay baton, but he was able to manage. He managed to overtake the final lobster less than a hundred meters from the finish line, busting through the tape just moments ahead.

The plants were overjoyed. They hooray-ed and hurrah-ed at Sam. He tried to shrug off their compliments and said, “I have to go, my bus is here.”

At the grocery store Sam realized that he didn’t know what he was looking for because the man on the phone really hadn’t been very specific. So Sam did what he usually did and ambled to the area where they set out all of the fruits and vegetables for him to touch. He spent quite a while there. Hefting the watermelons over his head. Juggling the apples (he was a rather talented ameatur juggler). Arranging the avocados from left to right based on their squishiness. Shaking all of the coconuts.

Eventually he moved on to the back of the store where all of the fish were plastic wrapped into their styrofoam containers. He moved to each of them, poking each one in the eyes and always finding himself joyously disgusted at how hard the eyes were.

“Hey,” the white haired man behind the fish counter said, “are you just here to poke the fish in their eyes?”

Sam shrugged, “Pretty much, yeah.”

The man made a face at Sam. It was a strange face. A face that seemed to say to Sam, ‘I am looking at you and contemplating something.’

“Okay,” the White Haired Man said, “come here.”

Sam was allowed back behind the counter and then past the silver tables where other white haired people were gutting fish, and finally to a large metal freezer door. “Here,” the White Haired Man said, handing Sam a heavy parka. Sam put it on because he didn’t want to be impolite. Then the White Haired Man pulled open the heavy freezer door and they both went inside.

Spread out before them was a wide white hilly landscape of ice and snow. The sky above them was a dark and cold blue and the flakes of white snow fell from every inch of that sky.

Without a word Sam followed to White Haired Man to a dog sled. Sam sat down in it and the WHM took his place at the back. He called out to the dogs in a language Sam didn’t speak, but the dogs all rose up in unison and began to run, pulling the sled after them.

Up and over the white hills they went. Sam snuggling deep into the parka to stay warm. They slid along the edge of a huge blue frozen sea on which penguins teeter totter away in the distance. Then the dogs curved inland and between two great snowy mountains. The dogs pulled them down the center of a deep gorge and then finally slowed as they approached a wide open clearing of fresh white snow. Sam realized it was a frozen lake.

“Go on,” the WHM said, motioning to the circle cut into the very center of the lake.

Sam climbed out of the sled and walked carefully across the ice. It was slick and so he moved slowly. When he reached the edge of the circle he peered down into the cold water below. There was … is that … what … yes … there was a shape down there. Huge and distinctly fish shaped. Sam watched as it got bigger and then bigger. He realized that the shape was approaching from the depths. Sam stepped back momentarily fearful.

Then it broke the surface of the water; a giant fish head bigger than Sam himself. It poked up through the hole in the ice. It was the biggest fish that Sam had ever seen! It formed its mouth into giant O shapes up at the sky. It swiveled so that it could look at Sam with one of its giant eyes.

“Go ahead!” Called the WHM from the shore.

Sam reached out a finger and poked the thing right in the center of its huge fish eye.

“OOUCH!” the giant fish called out, “What the fuck are you doing?”

Sam recoiled. “Oh. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to …”

“Didn’t mean to? You poked me right square in the eye! It really hurt.”

“I’m very sorry …” Sam stammered.

“I just don’t understand why someone would do that,” the fish said.

“I really am sorry.”

“Forget it, forget it. Just maybe don’t go around poking everybody in the bloody eyes all the time, okay?”

“Okay,” Sam said.

On the sled ride back the WHM called to Sam over the sound of the dogs and the rush of the wind, “I hope you have learned your lesson.”

Back out under the bright lights of the grocery store Sam bumped into a skinny little woman who had wispy blonde hair with a little bit of blue dyed into it. She asked him, “Which of these boxes of crackers looks happier to you?”

“Oh definitely that one,” Sam said.

“That’s what I was thinking,” she agreed.

Sam looked her up and down. He liked the shapes of her and the way that her eyes were big and blue like the sky and how he had not even any desire to poke her in them. He sniffed at her and she smelled wonderfully of lilacs, which made him think of meadows, which made him think of being outside, which made him think of laying in the park and looking up at the clouds and that made him think of her again. And so he looked at her and said, “Would you like to go lay in the park with me and look at the clouds.

She seemed started at first, then said, “That is exactly what I was going to do after this!”

Her name was Elsie and they laid in the park and ate the crackers while they looked up at the clouds.

“That one looks like one of the lobsters I beat in a race today,” Sam said.

“Lobsters are always terrible racers,” Elsie said.

As they laid there in the park, on the green grass, under blue sky, Sam fell asleep with his head nestled against Elsie’s.

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