Fisheye lens by cailín Frankland
“Do you think salmon are bothered that we named the colour after their guts and not their scales?”
Lex’s fillet knife glints in the fire’s half-light as they let out a chuckle, the fish’s dripping rib bone pinched between their calloused forefingers.
“Jesus, Fran. Feeling that edible now, are we?”
“Not at all,” I lie, “In fact, I might take another.” I let my eyes drift up to the shadowed treetops around us, then back down to the forest floor. The woods feel different after sunset—magnified and drained of their heat, a stadium with the stage lights cut.
“Can salmon even see colour?” Saachi starts pulling out her phone to google it before remembering where we are. She slides it back into her pocket sheepishly as we exchange a look—Covered in bug bites and missing the Internet? Yeah, me too—our folding chairs angled slightly towards each other like gossiping teenagers. .
“I don’t think salmon can get bothered,” Maxwell replies, taking a beer out of the cooler at his feet, “It’s too human an emotion. The real question is whether we are bothered. Shiv, are you bothered that we as a species named a colour after fish innards?”
We all look across the campfire to Shiv, absentmindedly practicing his surgical knots on the drawstring of an empty tent bag. His glasses reflect bright orange as he looks up. “I’m bothered that there’s a drink in your hand but not mine! Fork it over, asshole.”
We eat messily, fish oil and tartar sauce dribbling down our chins as our dinner’s skin sticks to our teeth. I scrape the scraps off Lex’s camping dinnerware with a travel fork, wincing at the squeal of enamel on steel—Maxwell rinses them with bottled water, then wipes them dry with old towels.
“Salmon eye for dessert, anyone?” Lex holds up one of the fleshy disks in their palm, the pupil staring blankly as juice drips from its severed optic nerve, “They’re a great source of fatty acids!”
Saachi tries to suppress a gag.
“I think Saachi’s letting us know she wants to stick with the s’mores,” Shiv jokes, breaking a bar of chocolate into squares with his fingers. I skewer a marshmallow with a steel roasting stick and hold it above the fire, letting out an involuntary yelp as the gooey result burns the roof of my mouth. Undeterred, I have another—then half a dozen more.
~
I wake to an empty tent, the smell of red meat cooking outside. Throwing on the nearest sweatshirt and my muddy pair of hiking boots, I unzip the entrance flap and crawl into the morning, squinting as my eyes adjust to the brightness. Where is everybody? Christ, it’s sunny today.
Only the sun doesn’t have antlers, doesn’t sit cross-legged at the campfire with a smirk on Its lips and blood on Its teeth. I feel my retinas burning just looking at the Thing before me, this molten StagManGod with black hole eyes—as It stands I turn back towards my tent, my tears blurring the afterimage on the back of my eyelids as I try to blink its sting away. I feel it walk toward me—each shuddering step an earthquake, each breath a gust of dry heat—and grit my teeth as a burning hand engulfs me. My sweatshirt’s polyester hisses as it melts into my skin. I will not scream. I will not scream.
Cailín Frankland (she/they) is a British-American writer and public health professional based in Baltimore, Maryland. Their cultural criticism, poetry, flash fiction, and short fiction have been featured in numerous print and online publications, including The First Line Literary Magazine, Eye to the Telescope (Rhysling finalist), Flash Frog Magazine (Best Microfiction-nominated), Black Cat Tales: An Anthology of Black Cats, and meat2meat: Body Horror by Those Who Know It Best. They live with their spouse, two old lady cats, a rotating cast of foster animals, and a 70-pound pitbull affectionately known as Baby. You can find them on X as @cailin_sm.
