“we’re supposed to be going north!”

we stood on the deck of the beluga,

myself, stern, and magnus, starboard.

“no, that’s completely wrong!

the pollocks have already migrated by now.

there won’t be a thing there!”

his sailor swears echoed off the sides of the trunk cabin.

our cheeks washed red with a frothing wind

as the briny smells of perch and mackerel

wafted through the flat sea.

magnus’s footsteps landed heavily,

like the way the rain did on the day he came home,

twisted and empty in more ways than one,

after hedging all his bets on black.

an albatross above wailed,

like the way magnus did

when I snuck into bed an hour before sunrise,

with a ragged head of hair and without a bra.

I went to the gunwale and screamed.

my fingertips gripped the edge of the hull,

the barnacled sides, plenty rough and too far gone to repair.

it went swiftly, the ring,

down the digits of my finger, and into the murk.

the anchor of the boat remained the only still thing between us.

something caught in the trawl

put a halt to our maritime warfare.

magnus wallowed down the deck in his rubber wellies

and went to fetch it out.

upon its upheaving,

we discovered

a traveler from afar, a twisted mutation,

a barreleye that belonged to the benthic,

risen from the depths.

the aberrated fish came from where light did not go;

it was never meant to be looked at.

covered in carbuncular lumps,

its congealed tissue oozed a thick grime.

its jaw slung an underbite,

bacterium and plankton lay tangled between rows of jagged teeth.

the stench of it carried up magnus’s nose to his olfactory nerves,

and hence, he heaved up half-chewed bits of cod and carrot stew.

what’s worse was that the fish was not yet dead,

though its anatomy implied its little life was nothing short of suffering.

its eyes, the only thing left intact in its bulbous body,

jutted around frantically.

it searched for some semblance of solace,

some sign of something waiting for him on the other side

and in the end,

found none.