Recoil
Elijah Pines
One morning, William Bechler turned over in bed and found his wife with hair made of coral. Normally, Marissa’s hair was thin, damaged from years of flat ironing it, and fervently redyed since she went gray so young. But this morning her hair was a strong sun orange, made of twisting coral branches in which tiny fish nested. Anyone else would have found it terrifying, but William was in awe. He laid there gawking at the coral crown, until his wife awoke and looked him in the eyes. She screamed and jumped out of bed, yelling “Your eyes! Your eyes!” She pulled him out of bed and hurried him to the bathroom, where he was met with his own reflection. There, he found his normal dull and droopy face except for his eyes, which were radically different from the deep blue eyes he used to have. His new eyes had large black pupils much larger than a human iris, and a thin silver membrane where the whites used to be. He was so shocked, he buried his face in his hands and kept his eyes shut, and would not open them until he saw a doctor.
At the hospital, there was a swarm of doctors, nurses, a couple janitors, and even a patient that came to see William’s phenomenal eyes. William was an intolerant man, and normally would have bickered and complained by being poked and prodded so much. But instead, he found himself enthralled in his environment. No matter who came into the room, they all had some fishy quality to them. Some had gills, others had fins, one person even had the head of a hammerhead shark. He pointed it out to several people, but every time he was dismissed. As every doctor in the building came to examine him, the room slowly turned more oceanic as well. Seaweed sprouted from the ground, sand poured out of the cabinets, and a faint blue tint crowded the air. Still, no matter who he asked, they all denied the change of scenery.
As the staff danced around William, he looked to his wife to share the moment. Instead, he found her sulking in the corner with a sea worm in her fingers like a cigarette, with a strange gooey secretion bleeding out of it. So infatuated with William were the doctors that none had asked her to take it outside. She spoke often, with little quips demanding the doctors to stop poking around and fix it already. However, she was often met with no response. William, in a shockingly feeble tone, asked her to calm down and let the doctors do their work. Marissa was so disgusted at how lovely he was being that she blew the secretion in William’s face and left.
Still, none of the medical staff could figure out what was wrong with him. Some doctors thought he was faking it for drugs, others recommended removing the eyes, but most were just fascinated by it. It was only until a veterinarian came by that the mystery was solved. After only a few seconds of examining William, the veterinarian pointed out the obvious. “Your eyes are turning into fish eyes,” he said. “You still got your eyelids and your old human retina, but on the current path, I’d say you’ll have fully developed fish eyes by the end of the day”.
The doctors sent William home after it was concluded that he wasn’t in any pain, and therefore didn’t need to be treated. Stuck in traffic on the car ride home, he noticed that some of the cars next to him were actually truck-sized catfish, sucking the bottom of the road as they slowly trudged on. Marissa, annoyed by the stillness, slammed the horn like it was a drum. As she did, bubbles rose up from the grill of the car. William found it delightful, and giggled like a baby at the scene. His wife gave him a look of worry, as normally William would have berated her for being so rude. Above him, a school of fish flew in the sky, giant kelp columns rose from the ground, and a colorful coral barrier separated the highway. In William's mirror, the cutest little baby clownfish slowly approached. He rolled down his window and gently held the creature, but he couldn’t help but notice the crunchy noise it made as he caressed it. He turned to his wife, who looked at him as if he was eating garbage. “Honey,” she said, “that’s a plastic bag”.
Marissa wanted to keep William home as she thought his delusions made him far too giddy. But the two had been saving up to retire to Florida, and William was keen on getting there. He was dropped off at his job, where he worked for a property management firm. On that day in particular was eviction day, when William was forced to do the dirty work of kicking people out. He first went to his desk to see if he could hide out the assignment. The office was just as beautiful as the rest of the world, with a flourishing sea bed growing between file cabinets and cubicles. A mosaic pattern, formed by light hitting the waves above, slowly flowed over the floor. His cubicle, however, was a grotesque scene. Sectioned off in the very far corner of the room, his desk was an algae covered machine, perhaps the engine of a gravely fated plane. The little bits of bone scattered about the floor certainly didn’t help the atmosphere. The air around him was thick and oddly warm, with a distinct green hue. He sat down on an aged hunk of metal where he tried to type on his keyboard, but it was made of dying coral, and crunched under his fingers. Perhaps most disturbingly was the spot where his only son’s photo should have been. It was taken when he joined the navy years ago, and showed the young boy with his shaven head in full uniform. It made William smile to see his son try so very hard to look stoic, but his baby fat cheeks wouldn’t let him. But the portrait wasn’t there. Instead, there was a comically small carcass of a freshly dead whale. Like most whales after dying, the body released an astronomical amount of gas, and blew up like a balloon. It was only a matter of time until it exploded. William picked up a pen, slick with algae, and gently poked the whale. He flinched, thinking it would pop, but it just continued to float around pathetically. He rubbed his hands anxiously as he watched the little time bomb sway on his desk. Luckily for him, his boss called him into his office.
William went to his boss’s office, who had the gross head of an angler fish. He handed William a folder of papers and gave him instructions, none of which William heard as he was too distracted by the snot and slime that spurred from his boss’s mouth as he spoke.
As he left the office he flipped through the folder and took note of the address. The place was an old crumbling building next to a polluted river. William had been to this building many times, as this was where the company put problematic tenants. He had nothing but negative associations with the building, but as he climbed the stairs of the building, the world around him dove deeper and deeper into the ocean. The creaky wooden steps turned into rigid water torn stone, the overpainted walls grew nooks in which little fish swam, and the dust in the air turned into small aquatic creatures waiting to be fed upon. By this point, William’s eyelids had rescinded, only forcing him deeper into this new aquatic world. Just before reaching the top step, a tiny shrimp floated in front of him, only to be eaten by a larger trout, and that one eaten by a grotesque eel. The eel swam out the open window, where a blue whale rose from below and swallowed the eel whole, all in front of William’s own eyes. It was a mortifying moment for William, and yet he couldn’t help but feel an aura of beauty coming from the scene.
He knocked on the door of the tenant, and was greeted by a curvaceous woman with a blob fish head. Her flat eyes saddened as she realized who William was. William struggled to keep his laugh in as he looked at her. She leaned on her hip and tilted her head. “You don’t have to do this,” she said.
William held his folder to his mouth as barely got out the words, “I really do”.
She let her hoodie fall a bit to reveal herself more. She leaned forward and her fat nose swung. “I’ll do anything,” she said.
William couldn’t take it and broke down laughing. He pointed at her and said some indescribable nonsense between giggles. She scowled at him and gave a little “hmph”, which made her blubbery lips jiggle, sending William deeper into laughter. She slammed the door shut as William had a fit on the floor.
He went outside to collect himself. He rubbed the sweat off his forehead as he was still laughing. It was the most fun at work he had in a long time. He leaned his head up toward the sun and took a deep breath. He then turned and caught a glimpse of his reflection in the building window. In the background, he could see a school of teal fish hiding between colorful coral reefs. Sunlight dripped down from the sky and sparkled on the fish’s scales. Dolphins jumped and played in the sky, splashing about as if it were a real ocean. Then there was William. Dull and bland, with increasingly thinning hair and thickening wrinkles. The only wrinkles he didn’t have were smile lines, which caused his eyes to sag more than usual. It was the first time since that morning that he examined his eyes, and as he stared deeper into them, he realized how beautiful they were. The silver membrane around his pupils was the only thing on his face to catch the sun. He looked down at his hands. It was strange, but he wished so intensely that his hands were actually flippers; that he could jump and play with the dolphins behind him.
William was reported missing by his wife that night at 11 pm when he hadn’t come home from work. The police searched all over the city, but they couldn’t find him. They got a call a week later from three towns south. His body was found under an empty oil barrel washed up on the side of a bank. He was dead, certainly, but even as they lowered his casket into the ground, his eyes never stopped moving.
Elijah Pines has a crippling fear of being bored. Residing in Chicago, the stillness of the flat landscape has driven Elijah to constantly busy himself with creation. He has taken up many art forms, such as photography, animation, film, and writing. He believes that art is the shared language of humanity, and helps us in better expressing ourselves. He truly feels there is meaning and joy to be found in everything, especially in the small and or ridiculous. Even in his more serious works, room is always made for comedy, for there is no such thing as excess goofiness.
