The Staircase

It was your idea to split a seafood boil at the wharf.

One of those blistering Septembers, a plastic bag full of cooked ocean critter carcasses sprawled across my lap, oil dripping onto my new Reef's, first-degree burns blooming on my thighs, but I didn't dare complain because twice you stabbed your fork super close to my crotch and I was cautiously optimistic that it was deliberate. There was a Cirque du Soleil flyer running practice drills in my stomach. I ate the small half of a boiled potato, while you tore apart and slurped the flesh out of each scrawny crab leg, one-by-one. You were chatty, even with your mouth full. There was too much eye contact.

"Do you think, when they terraform Mars, they'll put an ocean up there?"

Your ginger brows got this cute little dimple between them when you asked, like you were actually worried. Like, you expected they wouldn't, and it was within the realm of possibility that you might live there one day and never again eat spicy crustaceans from a hot plastic bag.

I tried to console you. "If they don't, I'm sure they'll at least clone crabs in the dome, or whatever."

You got those watery, cartoon puppy eyes. Had I said something wrong? I was a little late to the dating game. You were my first girlfriend, and I didn't have sisters; those ephemeral waves of unfiltered emotion were a fascination to me.

"And they'd never see the ocean? Their whole lives?" You slumped your shoulders. A guy with grey stubble and a backwards baseball cap was docking two slots away, The Morning Star scripted in neon orange across his sporty boat's shiny dark hull.

"Well, they wouldn't know what they were missing out on, would they? They'd just think their lab-crab dome-home was the way it had always been."

"Oh no." Your lower lip protruded into an exaggerated pout. "They wouldn't even know."

"They wouldn't even know," I echoed. This was going pretty well. I ate the other half of that potato and scooted closer to you, trying to play it off like the splintering dock hadn't just snagged my board shorts and pierced my left cheek. I stared at the curve of your small breast peeking out from the side of your sundress, wondering if it would feel supple or firm in my hand, and, as covertly as I could, searched for the outline of your nipple.

Ball cap guy of the gaudy runabout was coming towards us now, and the ornately scripted text on his V-neck T-shirt pulled my attention away. Always Been This Way, it said. My head swiveled as he passed, and I caught the back of his cap: You Don't Even Know.

"But I would know," you affirmed with a giggle. I turned back towards you, discombobulated when I had to crane my neck to look up at you. Since when were you sitting higher up than me? It took me a moment to notice that you were growing—expanding in breadth and height like one of those inflatable yard decorations that my Aunt Suzanne bought for every holiday.

"I know how it started," you said in a sing-song voice. "Have you forgotten?"

As you grew larger, your voice did, too. I felt a commotion in my lap, and looked down to see a swarm of tiny, very alive crabs scuttling sideways out of the bag, across my knees, down my legs. Small crabs share an uncanny commonality with big spiders. I screamed in a pitch I was not proud of and leapt up, flinging the boil bag from my lap and dousing myself in hot oil and globs of paprika. We were the same height now, but you were still sitting down.

"Aw, they're so cute, Dimitri. Look!"

The crabs lined up in ordered rows along the slats of the dock. Their telescopic eyes, turned on you, bobbed up and down in hypnotic synchrony.

"What the ever-loving fuck?"

When I looked back at you, I watched your giant body ascend into a crab pose. Your sundress fell up your thighs, knees careening in opposite directions. I groaned. I had run so many scenarios in my mind about how we might finally take things to the next level. This permutation? Not on my radar.

"Don't you want to come home?" You asked. Your voice was at once deeper and softer, with this gentle radiance that seemed to slow down time. The crabs answered with a flurry of chirping, like field crickets at dusk. But you were asking me. I felt my jaw slacken and fall open.

"Forgetting is fun, I know. But come on, Didi. It's time. You'll like it. I promise."

Just as I noticed you weren't wearing any underwear, your vulva began emitting this soft, yellow light. A sound, like the humming of bees, grew louder as an archway appeared between your legs. A white staircase rolled out from within you, and descended to the surface of the dock.

You squealed as the crabs, one-by-one, filed up and in.

When the crabs had all disappeared into the portal of your body, you looked at me and jerked your head as if gesturing to the wharf, The Morning Star, the sea, the world. "You really thought this was it, didn't you?" I noticed you had a double-chin, your neck bent at an odd angle so you could look past your knees at me, beaming with bright eyes and smiling lips. "Oh, I love this part! Come on, follow your brothers."

"My–?"

But my tongue was disappearing fast. My fingertips tingled, hardened. Then came the shell. I turned red on the outside—and on the inside, too, dissolving like honey in hot tea. I wobbled with all the coordination of a drunk toddler, and clattered down to the deck.

"That's right."

Ah, yes. Of course, I thought, and scuttled sideways up the stairs with great relief.