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FOR THE PAST week, Jack had noticed it growing. Peering over his right clavicle like a nosy retired next-door neighbour, judging the world without the presence of mind to do so subtly. A bulbous lump. It was after an early autumn swim in the eel ridden waters of Lough Lene with her partner that Kate had first become aware of it. Shivering underneath the gnarled remnants of an oak, they dried themselves frantically on a chequered picnic cloth, spitting stuttered giggles from blue lips. Standing up to slide on a robe, Kate paused while facing Jack, who was vigorously assaulting his wet black beard with numb hands guiding a towel. Squinting, she grabbed his shoulders and pulled them down towards her. The lump was now adorned with goosebumps.
‘Jaysus Jack, did you get battered there under the dock just now? Does that not hurt like hell, ya poor bollix?’ she asked.
‘What are ye on about, ye wagon?’ He grinned, playfully pushing her away.
Self-consciously, he groped around to where she was glaring and remembered. The lump. Feeling no pain, only what felt like a soft-boiled egg, peeled and planted beneath his skin. He pinched and rubbed it along his collarbone. Not a notion of pain, just the pins and needles feeling you’d get from brushing against a nettle. Yet there was some resistance to his touch.
‘Sure, I’m just after catching a bump in my sleep,’ he reasoned.
‘Right, well let’s keep an eye on it so,’ she answered.
He was also assuring himself that it couldn’t be cancer, and that it’d always been there; it was much easier to ignore it. They shut their mouths, sat close beneath the tree, sipped their post swim coffees and looked out onto the once inviting lake now set afire by the sinking sun. Silhouetted against the coming dusk, they looked like huddled druids awaiting their coven in their bulky dry-robes. Now warmed and content, they reposed alongside one another, meditating to the imperceptible hum of the electric fence behind them, which opened them to be serenaded by the discordant lulling of a handful of muddy market ready heifers in the nearby pasture. With his head lying in the nest of her lap, Jack fell asleep. It had been a horrendous work week, and this was relief. Propped up against the oak and knitting her man’s hair with thin fingers, she dozed as well. Roosting crows returned to the branches above to ride out the dark, peering down upon the first people they had seen on this shoreline for some time.
The darkening lakeside view slowly narrowed into a vignette. The distance a pinprick, being pulled down in and on itself. The clear amber horizon melted into a rippled floor. A still silty bottom populated with dark shapes. Boulders dotted with dagger shaped snails and rusted hairy clams, all agape in jubilance that they were finally being seen. Tendrils of lakeweed stretched across the distance from the silt. Reaching towards their tree, the oak dropping blankets of sedation down upon the lovers. Trickles of iron blood rusted light rode the obsidian backs of thick cruising eels. Inviting all who could see to be let in on a long open vacancy. To a precious and permanent residency.
With a desperate inhalation, Kate’s eyes opened with a start, her head bouncing off the coarse bark. She felt dazed, like the morning after her sister’s hen party. Her head was heavy and static. Jack was not there. Perhaps he was off for a piss. Gaining herself, she looked towards the lake, through a Vaseline sheen. Eventually she could spot his orange robe, lumped in a neat pile at the end of the dock. She heard no splashing; she saw no Jack.
Crossing the dew driven grass, Kate approached the fog bordered dock. It groaned. Each greenish board weathered and tired. The walls of cool morning phantoms continued to rise above the water, the dock now an isolated vessel parting a cloud of graves. Stopping short of the pile, Kate saw no clothes, no wet footprints, no Jack. On the pile was Jack’s pocketknife; he’d always carried one. It was pasted with congealed blood. Turning to face the shore, her eyes welling, she called out.
‘Jack! Quit yer fecking messin’, you absolute gobshite!’
Gentle lapping beneath the dock.
Her throat began to swell. Arms and legs shot cold. A small high noise began to cut through, rhythmic like the ping of a radar. Dropping to her knees, Kate could tell it was coming from his robe. Next to his knife, the hood had been folded across the robe. Pinching it as if it were diseased, she lifted and revealed a small, naked baby bird. Pale and fleshy, it erected its thin neck towards her. Black, unformed eyes beneath thin skin searched for her. Its round head teetering like a cattail in the wind. A large triangular mouth ached to be filled. Kate lost herself in its chasm. On the shore, crows rustled the branches of their oak with a strengthening momentum, like feathered apes ready for war. Silent, star fallen bats fluttered erratically, in and out of the fog to exit the coming day.
The oak released its thirsty murder along with every elm, sycamore and ash on shore. A fluttering black flag of crows descended on Kate, covering the dock to protect their own. Gnashing, poking and tearing until the offering was still. Till there was again nothing but the lapping of water beneath the dock. The army lifted in unison so the fog could silently swallow the dock like a waking snake, while across the blinded waters a distant swan trumpeted a loss.
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