DD #3: "The Thing"

And now for something completely different. "The Thing"

“I think it's a catfish.”

“Or a dogfish”

“Or a tiger shark.”

“Or a monkeyfish!”

The children fixed the girl with a glare, each still clutching a stick. They had been wandering the beach for an hour, and unexpectedly came upon a strange carcass. Being children, they poked it with thin branches, trying to discern its origins.

“There is no such thing as a monkeyfish,” the oldest of them said, a tow-headed boy with sunburnt cheeks.

“Well I think it looks a little like a monkey, and a little like a fish,” the girl defended. She used her stick to prod the head of the half-decayed and bloated corpse. The small skull lolled at the touch, eyeless and jaw gaping. The long spine ended in a tail that was clearly marine, but the rest of the body had patches of black hair, and one side of the torso had a leg still attached. Lanky and thin, a paw dangled by a few ligaments, webbing between the toes.

“And anyways,” the little girl went on, tossing her pigtails, “a catfish and dogfish and tiger shark don't really look like cats or dogs or tigers.”

The other children nodded. Though their guessing game was spoiled, she had a valid point.

The blond boy scowled, kicking at the sand. “Well, there still ain't no such thing as a monkeyfish.”

“Maybe,” another child put in, “it's a mermaid.”

“It's too small to be a mermaid!”

“Not if it's a baby one!”

“How do you think it died?”

The pigtailed girl plopped down in the sand beside the creature. “Maybe it drowned. Can fish drown?”

The philosopher had her pupils murmuring enthusiastically. Could a fish drown? If it could, was it from drinking too much water? Could fish even drink?

“I think a fish can drown,” put in the boy who had voted mermaid. “You know how we can drink water and it's okay sometimes, but sometimes it goes down wrong and you cough and can't breathe? Maybe fishes can drink down the wrong tube and drown.”

There was a murmur of assent, then one of dissent.

“But,” argued the tow-headed boy, “fishes breathe through their gills and drink through their mouths.”

“This fish don't have gills,” pigtails pointed out.

The chorus rose and fell again. They prodded the creature as if waiting for it to voice its opinion, too.

“Maybe,” the blond boy shouted over the din, “maybe it was murdered!”

The children hushed, the word resounding. The youngest one piped up first.

“What's murder?” He used the same tone as the older boy. It seemed appropriate for such a heavy word.

“Murder,” his red cheeks twitched imperiously, “is when somebody kills somebody else.”

“But,” pigtails put in again, “this isn't a somebody. Not unless it's a mermaid, and you said it wasn't. This is a something.”

“Well, if something kills something, maybe that's murder, too,” he defended.

Another one of the girls welled up with tears at this suggestion. “But my brother's snake kills and eats mice! Is it a murderer?”

Again the boy had to shout over the protests of his peers. “No, that's hunting. Snakes got to kill mice to eat. Like my cat—he eats mice, too.”

“So then it,” said pigtails, pointing at the carcass, “can't have been murdered. It's a something, and they hunt and eat. So there!” To add to her point, she stuck out her tongue.

“Fine,” the blond at last relented with another stomp of his bare toes. He dropped his stick and turned away from the beast. “Who cares, anyway? It smells and it's ugly. I'm going swimming!”

As he ran towards the water, the other little ones hesitated. They looked between the boy splashing into the shallows, and the girl with her stick prodding the creature's abdomen curiously, not sure which leader to follow. The body seemed to heave a sigh as the twig punctured its bloated stomach. Putrid, half-liquified something spilled onto the sands with a horrible belching sound and a smell that befitted the appearance. The children screamed, leapt to their feet, and took off running down the beach.

“Bad monkeyfish! Bad, bad monkeyfish!”