Lionfish

I’d come to finally get the papers signed. We’d chosen the Georgia Aquarium, being a half hour ride from both our apartments and exceedingly public, not that he cared. Sitting in the obscure, darkened circular alcove’s viewing window I made brief eye contact with a lionfish cruising by. Scientific name Pterois though nothing appeared scientific about the striped ghoulish creature. Bugged-out eyes and botox lips skirted in rivulet-like fins, elaborate intimidating fans showing how you didn’t need to be eccentric in this world, only had to look eccentric. An obnoxious weed amongst stunning and rare coral life. I’d chopped up so many of the invasive beasts. Still did, having them sent in from Florida and the Bahamas for only the cost of shipping since the bastards were destroying marine ecosystems. Eating and multiplying, a diver could look down and see a sandy floor composed of spiked spines swaying in the currents. Seaweed beds of venom.

Surveying the fanned-out living sushi I thought of the Red Knight from The Fisher King. A Robin Williams movie we had watched on our second date when I’d believed he was the one. The Red Knight was modeled after this fish, outrageous drapery and flare, the knight himself a symbol of pain and fear. Which brought me back to my husband.

He stood tall in the center of the room, trying to seek me out amidst the crowd. I watched for a moment, his confusion hued in blue light, all faces except his turned, pressed close to spy shadowy figures in the deep and weaving through the coral. Standing and walking a few feet my wave catches his attention so he strides over, a small smirk causing me to slightly crumple the papers I’m clutching. We sat on either side of the window ledge, me rigid, feet hanging loosely over the edge, him lounging, back folding into the curved wall, legs stretched out too close for comfort. The papers lay between us.

Clicking open the pen I move to hand it over, but too quickly for the tip jabs into his exposed palm, a single drop of blood falling onto the page.

“Jesus Jenna, you want me to sign in ink or blood?”

“Depends, which one will let me keep my daughter?”

“You seem to have forgotten last week’s conversation. Let me refresh. This signature is a formality to end our sham marriage. I am to get the house and child without argument otherwise I’ll expose your visa-less ass to authorities and you’ll be deported back to Korea or the Bahamas if you're lucky. This ring any bells Jenna?”

“That is not my name.”

“I don’t give a fuck about you or your name. I am going to sign these papers and then you and your korean slapstick name are going to disappear from our lives.”

This he said leaning closer, hot unwashed breath near my ear as I turned away to see the lionfish hovering there staring, grotesque eyes saying; “look, look how powerless you are, look how you become thin and feeble under his gaze, raw and immaterial”. Ryan speaks again but I am gone, wading into waters alien and unbreathable, behind all that glass. Reaching out to the frilly gaping insect, cutting off its spine in my mind, carving it up into buttery, melt-in-your-mouth pieces of filet the way my father taught me. How he’d shown me irritating venomous fins easily shorn off, not deadly to humans unless allergic.

Smiling at the fish and then my now ex’s face, so close to my own, I could see the fair aqua watery shimmer reflecting on his reddening puffy skin.

“Lean back, you don’t look well.”

“Oh God, I must be having a reaction. You still carry some of my epipens?”

Craning over him I hold his massively swollen hand in my own, observing how his clothes suddenly seemed too tight, almost bulging at the seams. In my other hand I hold the pen and glance at the Pterois before jamming the pen tip hard into either side of his already puffy neck.

“What rings my bells is the night we met. I served you lionfish on the house which you turned down. Better not risk it, you said. Bees and peanut butter alone could knock me off so best not to chance poisonous fish.”

I could see him turning to yell for help but his throat was swelling closed. Shoving his head back toward me I press forward digging in further with the sharp point.

“Mine will be the last face you see before your eyes puff shut forever. You think you own me, can dangle my voice before me as a string to be cut? You own nothing but your death.”

Peering over at the witnessing culprit I tuck the pen back into my pocket, having smeared it along the fins of a lionfish hours earlier. Leaving his blimp-like body swollen and abandoned on the window rim, bathed eerily in ripply blue tones, I stray away from the two lions, dead and behind glass, into the expansive tunnel of water coursing overhead, breathing instead of drowning under its weight.

Coroners would later remark on the impossibility of dying to anaphylactic shock from a venom one foot behind glass.