Near the surface of the turbid manmade lake glow tendrils. Ultraviolet clusters of slime, white spheres suspended in each sloppy cylinder. I\u2019ve got a copper cup we\u2019re supposed to use for ceremonial purposes, but when the researchers start to panic\u2013\u2013no one brought anything to take samples with, this was just supposed to be a \u201cfor fun\u201d trip\u2013\u2013I offer my cup, feeling shamed and inadequate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Less than two weeks later, the eggs still haven\u2019t hatched and the scientists think they might be duds, but I can\u2019t get over the idea that they\u2019re stillborn, like a clutch of eggs can be stillborn. I let one of the scientists do all the things to me that make a person pregnant and I don\u2019t end up with child. Because I have copper wire wrapped around my cervix. Because I\u2019m a man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lake had been a valley. Loggers came down from Canada and needed an easier way to transport their cargo, so they flooded it. Dead trees they hadn\u2019t got around to harvesting poke out of the brown water, bark bloated and blackened with rot. Here\u2019s where all those eggs get laid. By what they don\u2019t know. There are barely any fish here, no frogs, either, so who\u2019s the bioluminescent mother? What is she?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To avoid the scientist\u2019s potential love, I leave early, on foot, and steal a canoe. The other side, the part that\u2019s for your partner, I weigh down with my gear. The copper cup. A camera I never use. One of our guns. I paddle quickly, despite the chill, despite the weakness in my arms. Mist gathers over the shoreline and reaches its translucent fingers for islands made of flotsam and rot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a dream I have every night until it\u2019s real. Until I can smell it, the briny air, the mist thick with need, the small animals living and dying in the bones of profit. I reach the first island and bypass it. A pale woman crouches on all fours near its center, her long, black hair matted with leaves and twigs. I nod at her. She nods back. I reach the serrated edge of an enormous dead tree, its wet trunk split down the middle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I only have a couple seconds to grab my copper cup from the pile of gear. My body heaves, deep in the pit of my stomach, then up my ribcage. Big, nasty pulses shudder my throat, my insides, make me gag. I steady the canoe as I vomit purple tendrils into my copper cup, first a handful, then a whole clutch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dark shadows tremble within the white spheres. These ones will make it. I\u2019m certain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
__________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shaawan Francis Keahna once had a residency at Cranberry Lake Biological Station and never quite got over it. You can read his stories in <\/em>Night Shades, <\/em>The Hoxie Gorge Review, <\/em>Never Whistle at Night Part II: Back for Blood,<\/em> and <\/em>ALOCASIA. More about him can be found at shaawan.com<\/a> or Bluesky under the same name. Keahna lives in Baltimore.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"