ANGLERFISH IN LOVE — Zoë Skoti
Male anglerfish, which are only a fraction of the size of their mates, use their […] nostrils to help them home in on a chemical emitted by females. Once a male finds a female, he will bite down and latch onto her body, where his tissues and circulatory systems will fuse with hers. In exchange for nutrients from the female's blood, the male loses his eyes, fins, teeth, and most internal organs, only serving as a sperm bank for when the female is ready to spawn.
— Elaina Zachos, National Geographic, 2018
i. before
At first, there’s nothing. The world is black and cold, a pulsing throat, and you’re stuck right in its center.
No operations are conducted to pull you out. No tweezers delve into the universe’s gullet, or try to drag you out alongside strings of blood and tissue. But you still know when you’re not welcome: when you try to curl into yourself, the world tries to swallow you down in turn; a burning, breathless pressure. When you try to stretch, it scrambles to spit you up, spasms like an exposed nerve.
So you change track. You lie flat, and let the world carry you like a rock skipped across rough waters, take you wherever it wants. You lie hidden, and you watch as time becomes a bodily sensation, measured only in the ways your eyes sometimes will open and sometimes will shut, or your breaths sometimes will quicken and sometimes will even.
It’s meant to be a life. It’s meant to be your life, as much as a fortune cookie is meant to be your destiny. But privately, you know (how couldn’t you?) that you’re not actually living right now - you’re just lying in wait.
Will you know Purpose when you see it? Of course. You were born for this. Dying for it should be no different.
ii. almost
Finding your way to Purpose turns out to be like a sleepwalker chasing a dream - when you claw your way out of your confines, you barely even realize you've done it. You’ve kicked the lid off the coffin of your old life, and you’re now following a sense higher than your own: a god with a face you've never seen, but who will (will, will, will) soon share your skin and bones.
Where is She? Where is She? You taste Her in the air, you smell Her so near it drives you mad.
Dimly, you remember a story about a man on a mountaintop, keeping himself warm by staring at a fire miles away and imagining himself bathed in the warm lick of its flames. You try to do the same. You try to do the opposite. Unlike him, you have no image, but at least you have a feeling - you get yourself drunk off of Her scent alone, that thick, heady promise, and try to shape the rest of Her in your mind, a sculpture hollowed out in its center for you to fit in.
How will She look, your Purpose? You imagine Her as an angel, form washed out in white, light framing Her face like a halo. You imagine Her as a home, with the porch light left on to help guide you to Her. You imagine Her as a dinner table, with a feast laid out for your bleary, dreaming eyes to behold -
You hadn’t noticed you’d arrived until your teeth are already sinking into the soft skin of Her stomach, and your lips are pressing like a bandage to the wound. In a way, it’s your first kiss. In another, it’s your final. You drink up graciously, and don’t spill a single drop.
iii. during
Where She goes, you’re fated to follow; what She eats, you’re fated to taste. Only your breaths don’t line up yet, a disharmony just slight enough to shame- your chest swells and sags out of tune to the beat She provides, and you pant pathetically, Her dog in every way.
Love is work, everyone tells you, and you think that must even apply to you, burrowed as you are into Her side, a corkscrew holding back wine. You have to work hard not to work at all, to let your mind slip like water out of the back door and surrender your flesh into Her hands to mold as She sees fit. You’re the clay, and She’s the craftsman, but She’s also the finished piece, and you’re the touch-ups - She kneads you, and you need Her. Irony. You think that made Her laugh, because the gentle vibration lights up your nerves.
You’re losing yourself to Her. You feel it every day, the gentle breaking down of your body like a rock by a wave, the eating away of your insides even as you eat away at Hers. It hurts - it should hurt, it does, but She comforts you throughout it, a baby’s bottle of blood permanently pressed between your lips, a sweet, salt-stained mercy. Tissue fuses like glue, muscle twists and melts. Your teeth sink so deep into Her flesh it’s like they belonged there from the start. Your eyes are of the last to go, and you’re only really sorry about it because it means you can no longer see Her - because once again it puts you in the same boat as that man on the mountain, forced to imagine one thing as you contend yourself with the other.
iv. after
Has She had others before you? It’s your last thought to come, sluggish, slow wading.
You’re almost gone now, a fossil imprinted on Her side, Her blood more fish-hook than feeding tube. It courses through you, fuses you, connects - a final red string to seal your romance. Seal your fate.
But have there been others? She doesn’t answer, doesn’t see the use. She’s probably right. It’s not like you’re the jealous type - you don’t want to be Her only, just Her one. And either way, soon, those others will have been yours too, all of you swallowed into a far greater symphony. Maybe you’ll get to meet them, you think woozily. You’re sure you’ll have much to discuss. Like:
Did they feel the same way about Her as you do?
What really guided you all to find Her, to follow that dancing star in the night?
Do they also see the irony? In starting out a parasite, stuck in the world’s cold black throat, and ending it just the same. This time, at least, the throat is yours, and the world lets you feed from Her instead of trying to spit you up or swallow you down. That has to be worth something.
Is that worth something?
What are you, without love? And who decided you should be the one to die for it?
How did they know they were ready to die fo…
AUTHOR BIO:
Zoë Skoti is a Greek aspiring writer, currently studying English Literature at the University of Glasgow.
