Skin and Bones - Magic Realism

Low tide at the marsh was all muddied feet, the sulphurous rotten-egg stench of peat that lingered even after a wash and a mess of soggy cigarette butts and fishing wire and other utilitarian waste briefly uncovered by the shallows. It was angry fin fish darting around ankles, a few eels or sand white out wonder if you were lucky. Few were these days. The outsiders, tourists with their wide brimmed hats and dollar-store sunglasses exclaimed it was the kind of serenity plastered on a tacky postcard. Albeit slightly blurry at the edges.

The young fisherman, Killian Buchanan – Kil they called him – thought otherwise. Ever the disappointment, Kil’s temperament did not match his namesake and his Pa had uttered more times than he could count on his fingers “Quit daydreaming son, trout ain’t catching themselves.”

It was quite the sight this father and son descending the pier before sunup. Boone: snacking on turnips and grits, Kil dragging along the fishing gear behind him. All scruffy and sharp edges; Boone Buchanan was a hefty man, the kind you would cross the path or avoid prolonged eye-contact with on the boardwalk. Rumour said the marsh had corroded any of the softness left inside of him. But that boy was all green, not natural, not like the marsh. Curiously tall and scrawny like a string bean, with beady, celery-green eyes that always wandered too much and lingered too long. Always slightly greenish, from seasickness or envy of the life he didn’t lead he was yet to tell.

Time passed slowly once Kil entered the beaten dory boat, sharpened his pairing knives and cast the rod into the steady bog water. He hummed some children’s rhyme he couldn’t get out of his mind:

“Don’t ever laugh when a hearse goes by,

Or you may be the next to die.

They wrap you up in a –

“Boy, watch your mouth! What did I tell you about singin’ and whistlin’ on board?” Boone spluttered out in a messy huff of incredulousness and hot breath.

Buchanan’s weren’t the overtly religious type, but Kil’s Pa and his Pa before him had founded Get Hooked bait and tackle shop on the superstitions of redheads and rabbits, singing and swearing as sacrilege at sea. And they were devout followers. A fishing store could only survive so long selling illicit broths of Moonshine, measly trout and sticky candy bars melted by the sun to the out-of-towners and children. They needed a good catch. Not misfortune following them around.

As sky dawned and more bait, than catch sat slimy and lifeless at the bottom of the red dinghy, it appeared Boone’s ravings were right.

Then a tug.

So strong and sudden Kil could’ve sworn the muscles in his shoulder snapped right in two, like crackers at a Christmas party.

But mother nature has a strange way of catching you when you least expect it.

Just like that, without a pop or a bang Kil disappeared into the marsh. Before he could pull or tug or put up a fight. Before Boone could even yell “Get the damn bastard!”.

Down with the mud and trout and eels, where everything was cocooned in seaweed and slightly salty – none of that mattered anyway.

In this pregnant darkness, life above the surface appeared aloof, strangely distorted through mangled reflections of light and water. A kaleidoscope of colours and shapes Kil couldn’t quite distinguish. The ketchup-red dinghy floated atop the bog waves, his fishing rod snapped to pieces, only the long, graceful florescent fishing wire suspended in its wake. Boone’s burly shadow leant across the boat. Arms waving frantically, his bloodcurdling cries and efforts imperceptible as Kil submerged deeper. A school of mildly disinterested bluegill swam right up to his face, all frowns and fins flapping about as he struggled. Like the fish in front of him, Kil stupidly moved his mouth – open, closed. Open, closed.

He couldn’t breathe. Inexplicably, he didn’t need to.

Now, Kil had never been much of a swimmer – the marsh didn’t accommodate for such activity and much to his father’s dismay; neither did his weak frame – but swimming through the bog was utterly hopeless. Like moving through concrete. Everything suspended in Jello. Upon first contact with the water, his limbs contracted into a wretched, foetal-like position and he had no choice but to stay all crammed up, a twisted human pretzel cradling his arms and knees.

Unmoving and utterly unable, Kil felt sour and sickly. Like he had been cured and preserved and well past his use by date. As he sunk further and deeper into the lush marsh vegetation, a dull and throbbing sensation began in his fingertips. All things considered, this was the very least of his worries, but as a perpetual nailbiter (a childishness habit frequently reprimanded by Boone) there was nothing Kil hated more than an itch he could not scratch.

Kil’s cosy, small-town life had been preoccupied by all kinds of these rather foolish, inconsequential concerns: waking before sunup, eating Mama’s cold leftovers at lunch, spending far too much time skinning fish at the store.

He could remember it vividly. The local radio on low and the familiar, ever-present stench of death and fish. Kil thought he learnt how to skin and gut and debone a fish before he could even hold a pencil. Boone always said: cut off the fin bone first. Then carve a shallow cavity along the stomach to the head, careful not to go too deep and puncture the stomach because that just makes the rest of it harder. Once you pull out the fish guts and wash their empty insides, just pop and scrape the membrane along the scrawny spine until you see milky, white bone.

Kil must have done it hundreds and hundreds of times. He had certainly lost count.

Yet, floating amongst the fluffy moss and spiky peat, the seemingly benign, arbitrary feeling in his fingertips morphed into a throbbing, ghastly pain that travelled up his forearms and past his elbows until the sensation became all consuming. Hot and cold, soft and searing all at once.

As eels watched on, bored and unblinking; beady greys eyes wholly judgmental – a sudden and innately human urge to scream or cry washed over Kil. It felt utterly futile when there was no one there to care. Boone could have turned the dinghy right back around to the docks and carried on with his day at the store or gotten all geared up to swim the marsh shallows and attempt to release him.

Nevertheless, in his harrowed state Boone wasn’t here. Time underwater was scrambled and truth and delusion were hard to distinguish.

Perhaps, that is why it took Kil so long to grasp he was being skinned alive?

In his constricted state, head downturned, limbs tight in child’s pose, much of his surroundings and indeed Kil’s own anatomy were concealed from his view. An iciness rippled up Kil’s bony arm and his eyes madly darted around for clues.

What became starkly obvious were that long, lazy strands of skin were being peeled off Kil’s body – like a banana peel, cheese through a grater, food for the fishes. Delicate and translucent ribbons floating off to sea.

For the most part, the peeling was completed in rather large and tidy sections; fingertips to shoulder or ankle to calf in one big pile of skin. Just as Boone had taught Kil when they were skinning trout. But, in his tricky pose, the crumpled skin in awkward cracks and crevices –the skinny rolls of his stomach or vertebra along his spine, occasionally became entrapped by his grey cotton t-sort or inside of his sneakers and socks.

Forced to lie soggy and wasted.

Peculiarly, it was in moments like these - of sheer humiliation or shame - that Kil wondered what Boone would say about situation. Most likely that he that had been right all along:

Kil’s flippant cursing and singing had brought him bad luck, an irreversible misfortune.

The thought didn’t last for long, as Kil felt an acute, stabbing pain right by his abdomen. The creatures of the marsh; the finfish and crabs, bluegill and crustaceans, had all swarmed around for a front row viewing of the gutting. An irritated marsh crab, all clawing and racing from side to side along the sea floor clambered atop Kil’s mutilated body. Pink and fleshy. Succulent and wholly naked, a fish out of water amongst the sea creatures. Higher and higher the crab climbed, across his ankles and misshapen limbs until he reached right below Kil’s belly button.

In one clean swipe, Kil’s shirt ripped away from his body and punctured through to intestines, spleen and liver. Spilling out in a cloud of red, the fish crowded around, swirling, dancing through the blood and the water. If it weren’t his own intestines and plasma creating the display, he would have thought it all rather beautiful, some primitive choreography from The Right of Spring.

Then, a light tip toe, tip toe. Delicately curious shrimp and krill crept along his body; like ants leaving the nest and entered Kil’s gaping wound for the buffet experience. Hundreds of tiny creatures as there were, the whole ordeal took a rather long time as shrimp delighted on his vital organs and slimy digestive track until he was emptied clean. No residue leftover.

The pain of it all was so red-hot, so burning and distinct; Kil almost forgot he was in the deep, cool, blue.

Eventually the marsh life floated away, disinterested by his useless, almost lifeless, but oddly conscious form. He would have been grateful for the reprieve if he hadn’t feared what came next.

Kil knew deboning was a fiddly job. Extracting all the skinny and breakable pin bones and making sure to leave nothing behind was the worst part of preparing a fish. No animals needn’t be involved in this process. The marsh was plenty capable all on her own.

Hours passed in an oblivion and all two-hundred and six bones of Kil’s human body were dragged out slowly and deliberately, abrasive sandpaper against nerve endings and pain receptors. Gradually his body became lighter, looser as each bone escaped his being. Sometimes Kil was cut up and sliced into more manageable segments to extract his phalanges and metacarpal. His vertebra slithered out of his open stomach cavity like some prehistorical eel and sunk to the bottom of the marsh. Surprisingly, most painful of all was his lower jawbone. Stuck loose and wobbly at the bottom of his mouth, teeth scratching his sensitive gums with each movement of the sea.

A sack of crumpled skin and bones, Kil lay wasting on the marsh floor. Sand lulled softly over his decrepit limbs and the end of children’s rhyme that had supposedly gotten him into the mess turned about his broken mind;

“…for someday you’ll be the one to die

And when Death brings his cold despair

Ask yourself, ‘Will anyone care?’”

Did anyone?

After he fell, Kil could remembered Boone’s anguished cries muffled by the water and the red dinghy almost tipping over from his frantic movements. Disappointing as he may be, Kil was Boone’s only son; set to inherit Get Hooked. Surely that had to mean something.

A ripped Barbeque and Beyond’s plastic takeaway bag floated above him, casting off new colours into the sea. A greenish-yellow tinge from fish swimming by and a big red form-

Boone’s boat!

Kil realised it had been above him for some time, he had just been too preoccupied by the whole ordeal to notice.

In his empty, lifeless body he held a nascent hope that perhaps everything could be okay. Boone could scoop him up and piece him back together and maybe he would make the news and they would tell his story in history museums long after he was gone. They could laugh about this all later. It seemed rather nice.

The dinghy moved closer. Boone’s shadow leant over the edge, perceptible to Kil way down on the marsh floor.

In the distance a minute worm wriggled about, fish gathered. One swam closer and attempted to gobble it up, only to be dragged away. Caught hook, line and sinker.

As Kil watched on, dumbly, unmoving on the hallowed grounds he comprehended Boone’s sudden reappearance was not in the least concerned with him. He was here for a catch.

There, surrounded by a collection of skin and bones,

he feared the marsh had the very same idea.