No home for a kraken

Abstract

No home for a kraken Charlotte Turnbull (bio) SCENE 1: LUCY'S KITCHEN, DAY A kettle boils, water pours, a teaspoon swooshes. LUCY: (pen clicks) Once a month there's this mums' writing group at the library and I never usually have anything to share, but my son wanted this colossal squid for his birthday and when it arrived, I thought—I can use this. (sips tea) This poor squid, I thought, 420 metres above sea level, landlocked in plush tangerine fur. And while I'm buttering toast I tell the boy there was this article I read in the local paper about finding tiny remains of sea creatures here, on the moor, and how we would all have been under the sea in cretaceous times, but how it must have been a thin, revealing sea, not a dark, forgiving one; no home for a kraken. But then I look at his pale face and think—oh, what have I done? (whispers) Sometimes I wonder if the other mothers are only there to fill time. They write such lovely stories about their husbands and children and the spring and the autumn and a bird they once saw, whereas I begin: (clears throat, nervous, lowers voice) This deep-sea predator is an ambusher in more ways than one. SCENE 2: LUCY'S KITCHEN, DAY Cereal pours into a bowl. LUCY: (sigh) It is so soft, though, this toy. Soft and giving, everywhere—it travels by mantle and fin, the rest trails behind, so despite its mature heft it is weightless and dreamy in water—it's so soft that my son's incredibly disappointed. [End Page 12] Apparently, the tentacles should have hooks, to stop things drifting away; to pull things closer in. I can use this, I thought. I can use the two antennae that he's always telling me are mistaken for tentacles. What's the difference, I think, who cares? They stretch out, you know, all around the flat. They're always wherever I'm standing, and it's only a one-bed so if I move an inch there are just another seven to trip over, and then when you add on the antennae etc. … But he cares, so, of course, we look it up. We run through the facts—maybe, three to forty times a day—and, oh, I can use this, I think, as he complains there is no beak where its beak should be, only the nylon sheath for your hand to go in. And while I struggle to think of this limp, orange puppet as anything other than starving to death without its evolutionarily-earned beak, I read about Abyssal Giganticism and how the females are so much bigger than the males and I do one of those exhales where the front of your own hair stands on end (exhales) because—oooh—I realise I can definitely use this. (pen clicks) (clears throat, less nervous, lowers voice) It hides in plain sight; its camouflage is the bioluminescence, the sparkle, that draws us in. SCENE 3: LUCY'S CAR, DAY Car engine stops. Hand brake pulled up. Keys removed. LUCY: Today I palpate life into this feeble beakless-maw for nigh on two hours just to get him into the car, (jingles car keys) and we're always late, and they're always understanding, and I'd leave the damned toy in the class with him, but the rest of them see it, still on my hand, tentacles swinging sadly, and don't children have their own weird antennae for the salty tug of pathos because they gather around, and he hates people near him, so I stuff it up my jumper like the world's meanest clown, with half of that bloody writing group watching me, and I'm thinking, well, should I use this? (pen clicks twice) [End Page 13] (lowers voice) It takes advantage of a natural instinct to pursue the unexpected and mysterious. SCENE 4: LUCY'S BEDROOM, NIGHT Storm outside a window—sheeting rain, howling wind. LUCY: At night, my boy sleeps where his father once slept, flinging himself around, whipping me with the slender, flexible limbs I gave...