Playing God
Jasmin Viney
The fish is warm and wet in my palm. Scales slip off its corpse. The delicate underbelly splits easily under the curve of my blade. Guts drip onto wet soil as I reach my fingers in, scooping and emptying the carcass, running lines against brittle bones that did not help protect the fish in the end. They crack easily, breaking from my inexperienced touch. It’s my first time fishing on my own, no one to do the gory bits for me now. There’s a strange vindictive pleasure in it that I don't mind. Some untapped sadism inside me.
The slip and slide of the blood and flesh make me laugh as I reach through the fish, dropping entrails onto the bank, discarded. Crack. Operculum’s thrown into the water, and soon there’s a small red heart in my palm, no bigger than an apricot. My hand dwarfs it. Like a giant in a film, I am playing my part.
I roll it around my palm, pushing and pulling the soft flesh. It warps against my fingerprints, like a fresh cherry ready to burst. I imagine biting into it and feeling it tear against my molars, grinding it into an unrecognisable slop. Red and bleeding. Vulnerability lying open in my hands. I can almost taste it on my tongue, the unmistakeable notes of iron and salt, crashing against the inside of my mouth. Would it give easily, flesh parting like the Red Sea? Or would I have to chew? Would I have to bite and gnaw against sinew and tissue, would I rip each valve from its core? I hold it between two fingers, like a ripened summer berry in my kitchen.
All it takes is a bit of pressure and, pop, the heart is flat, crushed like a raspberry at the bottom of the punnet. I can smell the stench of death all over my hands like liquor on my breath. I bend bones in half, dragging my knife over the curve of the fish. I can name all the parts. The caudal fin, the swimbladder that bursts in between my fingertips, the lateral line. All in my hands. I’m Hannibal Lecter, holding his victim in front of him before he feasts. I am a child on Christmas morning.
Something in the distance splashes, but I ignore it. Probably some other small fish. There’s a plethora of things in this river and anything could be jumping out for a taste of the humid sky as the afternoon seeps in. I smush an eyeball in my hand, feeling the satisfaction as it seeps through my fingers onto the mud beneath my boots. A louder splash, a lot bigger, a lot closer. Finally, I turn. Under the water, I can see it.
A dark shadow playing beneath the surface threatening to break the surface tension is taunting me. Just under the bank, sending ripples through the still water. I feel a shiver go up my spine. The hot air’s gone still, almost hanging in anticipation. Sweat beads against my forehead, and the mozzies quieten. It circles my bank, like a shark, sizing up its next meal. The shadow moves faster, closer. I shift my feet in the mud, nudging discarded bones and blood-seeped dirt under my shoe.
The blood in the water, of course, it’s attracted something bigger and beastly looking for a quick feed. Couldn’t be a croc. No. They don’t come this far. Surely not in the Murrumbidgee, anyways. I shuffle backwards towards the safety of the trees but before I can even turn the water breaks. Like a dam shattering it crashes down on top of me. My back slamming against the wet riverbed.
I recognise it instantly. A bunyip. I read a book about it, one my parents had bought me when I was little, a stupid kids’ book about a bunyip that ate Canberra. The cartoonish animal that stamped the front cover of that book has absolutely nothing on the beast that looms over me. Fangs bared, thin sharp nails digging through my shirt into my skin, ripping and tearing easily. This thing could kill me six ways from Sunday.
It’s like a hippo, slathered with slime, covered in thick wet grey skin that drips water onto my face. I feel its weight heaving down onto me, my body relenting like paper. All it could take is a little force and my ribs would shatter. Baring its teeth like a dog all I can do is breathe in the stench of its hot breath. Blood and dirt cuts through the air, invading my nose. Saliva dribbles onto my cheek and I smother a gag. The river is flowing endlessly behind me, unaware of the monster atop me. Birds flock and gather as if already waiting for my death, just for one tasty morsel from my scraps.
The bunyip drags its muzzle against my neck, smearing spit against my pulse, sniffing and heaving in my smell. I can’t move. My arms are trapped, my legs bound by the humongous weight of the animal. Its rough jowls scrape against my skin, friction causing blood to well up and splash beside me. Lost in the mixture of water and mud. A warm wet tongue trails up my face, arching over my eyebrow, a taste test. I whimper under the weight. Black eyes drag over my body, I can only imagine what I must look like, shivering crying beneath the belly of the beast.
I am the bunyip’s fish. I can imagine it clearly, my own soft belly giving way under its sharp claws. My entrails mixing with the fish’s on the bank.
Jasmin Viney is a highschool student from Sydney Australia. She has always had a passion for writing, even in younger years with small short stories and adolescent novels, though nothing published. She hopes to improve and encourage her writing skills to grow and share her stories. She loves to read in her spare time, classics mostly, trying to help her form of writing. Other than that she enjoys, baking and swims at Bondi.
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