Love, Lies and Death Rolls

By Robyn Thomas

 

He was so sweet when the first scales appeared. Cool to the touch, stretched skin hardened and split along my collarbone; he kissed in cascades down my neck and licked each diamond blemish, whispering “I love you, scutes and all.”

True, maybe he felt obligated to say it. We had been together four years and it was the kind of love that kept excavating depths you never knew existed, despite being marred by inevitable irritations (he warbled on endlessly about his thesis: a systematic review of chairs in the Middle Ages, I refused to vacuum, he never cooked with nightshades, my friends were too crude). Our love was a vast and eternal marsh, and all the sweet nothings and caresses could but express the waterlilies on the surface.

After six months of hornet stinging skin bleeding into my blouse and an insatiable drive to devour muskrats, I told Emmett I couldn’t do it anymore. Either we moved to the swamp or our relationship was… I couldn’t do it anymore—pretend to enjoy life on land, grocery shop for pre-killed dinners, and snack on meaningless crisps instead of juicy turtles.

“It’s a remote workforce these days,” he said, steadying his strained voice and joining me on the living room floor where I was sprawled on my stomach. He stroked gently around my callused spine. “As long as there’s public transport and I can visit the city two or three times a month, I’ can stay sane.”

“Sanity isn’t good enough. I want you to be happy. No, I want you to be… I want you to be all that you are in the world.”

“And I want that for you! Why can't you accept that in return?”

I flattened deeper into the carpet, moaning.

He sighed.“You’re right. It’s not ideal. But we’ve got a rare thing here. We can’t just toss it away because of how society defines a relationship.”
“But this is impossible,” I cried, slapping my nearly formed tail into one of our 17th century baroque chairs. “I’m an alligator and you are a person.”

Wincing at the possible damage inflicted on the furniture, Emmett held my front toes in his hands. “Do you really believe an alligator can’t achieve personhood? It seems to me you’re a moral agent over your own life. You’re sentient, possess cognitive and linguistic abilities, engage and participate in complex social structures, you—”

“Mon amour, you know what I mean. I love you and I want this, more than anything. Well, to be honest, all I want right now is to snap my jaws on tender muskrat flesh, but I do want you. What I don’t want is to hold you back. I know you need your cappuccinos, cocktails, and nights at the cinema.”

#

The smell of earth and microbes, worms and silt, rodent sweat and bird dung, leaf rot and bacteria steeping in ponds was heavenly. For a while, we achieved domestic bliss. I took him for rides through the swamp, parting duckweed and gliding between emerald-mossed, flared tulepo trunks as he read to me—Octavia Butler and Mary Shelley, Orwell and Kafka.

Then one night, he invited his friends over for a dinner party at our cabin. I was socially exhausted from the annual alligator sun bask and feeding frenzy, so I decompressed in my gator hole as they cooked and debated, fenced and played ukulele, their laughter skittering over the swamp’s surface like water bugs.
Footsteps vibrated near the water’s edge, and I wriggled out of the mud suctioned to my horned plates to investigate.

 

Shifting my lungs to the front of my body for buoyancy, I rose, undetected. Emmett’s friend, Benji, smoked putrid-scented cigarettes, and the sun of his phone seared my night vision. Perhaps I would have restrained myself better if Benji wasn’t such a wet blanket, but when his flicked cigarette ash rippled the surface---

Eighty conical teeth clamped down on his soft calf with the force of 2600 pounds per square inch, enough to tear steel.My front and hind legs squeezed against my core, tail rotating with rapid force. I churned and pirouetted around the longitudinal axis of my body, the snap of his bones and muscle vibrating through my snout, along my spine and tail, eruptions of pleasure tingling throughout my being. Alive, elated, whole; I was high on the scent of iron and adrenaline, rooted in the center of my power. And then I saw Emmett at the water’s edge. Aghast, staring at me like I was incomprehensible, reprehensible to him.

“I’ve always accepted your friends, even the most obnoxious ones,” he said, as bits of Benji’s kneecap floated beside me.

“I thought you liked my friends,” I whispered, elation congealing to shame.

“I was being nice,” he spoke through gritted teeth, eyes brimming.

Benji caught in my throat and sat heavy in my gut, waiting for my gastroliths to break down his mass. “You think I’m hideous, don’t you.”

Emmett released a guttural choke of frustration before kneeling to the water’s edge.“I’ve told you a thousand times, I think you’re the most beautiful alligator I’ve ever seen.”

“There you go, quantifying your statements again. You’re smart for an alligator. You’re pretty for an alligator. We have great sex FOR AN INTER-SPECIES COUPLE. Barry from Southern Lagoon thinks I’m hot. Just hot. Not hot for an alligator. He appreciates I’m over 900 pounds.”

“That’s because he’s an alligator!”

“Exactly!”

He sees my remorse, takes a breath, and perhaps reminds himself that I can’t change my most fundamental instincts, not without altering something precious. “That may be true, but no human eyes glow gold like yours, or wiggle their tails just the way I like, and I absolutely adore your orgasmic bellows.”

My jaw slackened and I released excess body heat from my maw, raised my chin and presented my favorite keratin scratch spot. He always knew how to make me feel special. Despite our adaptability to our new lives in the swamp, there was one thing that kept me awake in my gator hole. The strength of our bond was palpable, impervious to human and gator societal disapproval, but he didn’t know everything about me. I hoarded one shameful secret that could crack our foundations, make him weigh up the beautiful, expansive possibilities of our love and decide we were nothing but a dead end.

As frogs serenaded the coming dusk, Emmett rode on my swaying hips during our evening paddle and pressed his torso down to my horned back. “Is everything okay beautiful? You seem… you’ve been distant lately.”

“I’ve just been preoccupied with the coypu. She keeps changing her drinking and feeding patterns. It’s been three months since I’ve had a meal and you know how I get hangry.”

“Alright. It just seems… well, more than that. Your rhythms seem wonky.”

My tail kept sweeping back and forth in a controlled metronome beat. “Hi Barry,” I said with fake cheer as we propelled past our scaled neighbour lurking his dinner.

“Hi Barry,” said Emmett, with the usual guardedness.

We reached a floating log sprouting with wild rye grasses, and I nudged Emmett gently against the bobbing wood until he maneuvered himself on.

“I think… I think this isn’t going to work,” I said, tears streaming down my scutes and merging with the murky water.

“Love, I’ve told you. I’m happy here. I have my life in the city while you have your time in the gator hole, and then I can’t wait to come home to you. It’s weird, sure, but it works for us.”

“I know. And I love that. But…”

“Please don’t tell me you and Barry…”

“No! For crocs sake. I’ve told you a million times that just because he’s my species doesn’t make him my type! It’s just… I know you love me now. But if you knew…” I submerged below the duckweed,lime-green aquatic flora masking my sorrow. He gently reached into the water and lifted my snout.

“Tell me.”

“I know you want kids. And I want them too. And I think I’d be a good mom, I know I would. Alligators are fantastic mothers, the most nurturing of reptile-kind. But… well… I might not be able to… sometimes we can’t help but eat our babies. And everyone thinks that’s so wrong, but honestly, if I lay thirty eggs at a time and just eat one or two, that’s still twenty-eight babies we can love and protect! It’s just… I think we have a fundamental diversion in values here. What I determine to be perfectly natural and morally defensible, you call infanticide.”

He smiled with such loving acceptance I wanted to bite his little feet off. “Awww. I know you’ll be a great mom. You’re not like the other alligators. You’d never eat our babies.”

“That’s where you’re wrong!” I wailed. “I’ve always pretended to be appalled by the practice, but really… I can’t imagine not eating one or two. Just one?” I asked, willing to compromise.

#

My love moved back to the city, taking time to process. I insisted whatever he chose was okay. But it turned me vertical. I spent two months in my gator hole. Barry kept checking on me, and I found it harder to turn down his advances. Our love would be tepid and dull, but at least he wouldn’t judge me for eating half our offspring. At least we wouldn’t be asking too much of each other.

When alligators shut their inner layer eyelids and open their outer layer, we see more than life aquatic. We wait, we lurk, we can spend a year of life learning the patterns of our prey before striking. But more than prey patterns and drinking habits, we see multitudes of realities splayed out before us like golden spider webs, glimmering, calling out. And so, we wait, because we see far into the future of each strand, sometimes believing we’ve already arrived and devoured a not-yet-existing kill as our bellies break down emptiness.

I see myself belly slithering to a new swamp, without mates, digging myself the perfect gator hole. I’ll sleep until the sun bakes the mud to my back and I’ll leave the amniotic earth when I desire a swim and not a moment sooner. The water will hold me up to the surface or open itself to its depths. I’ll feel newborn and ancient, and when I release a satisfied bellow, the baritone notes will reverberate through my DNA echoing back to the cretaceous period, a brief 85 million years ago. I will feel connected to everything and beholden to nothing. I’ll close my inner eyelids and open my external ones, clear vision in murky waters. No need to apologise or compromise. Relief.

Winter comes. The coldest winter in years. The lake begins to freeze over, and so, with a melancholic heart, I slow my metabolic rate, reach my snout up past the surface, and let the ice cement around me. Emmet’s not coming back, and I don’t blame him.

#

On a hot summer’s afternoon, when Barry was looking like my best chance of a mate, I floated to the surface and opened both sets of eyelids. Emmett was there in the distance, lugging two rolling suitcases down the dirt path. He caught my golden eye and strode down the decaying dock, setting his suitcases down and lying on his belly with his face to the water. I floated towards him, and we nuzzled heads, my integumentary sense organs tingling.

“You’re right,” he said. “We do have a fundamental diversion in values. I love you, but—”

I began to submerge, but his hair was caught in my bone spikes and I didn’t want to hurt him, even though he was about to break my cold-blooded heart.

“But, I wouldn’t be able to forgive you if you ate any of our babies.”

“Even one?”

“Even one.”

I hissed, but although disappointed, held him in high esteem. “I understand. I want you to be happy. I hope you find someone who doesn’t have an insuppressible urge to eat your offspring,” I said generously, decomposing inside.

“Wait. I’m not done.” He straightened and I already missed the weight of his head on my snout. Unzipping one of his suitcases, I noticed the top had been cut out and a mesh cover stapled over top.

“But. One of the things I love most about us is that we always come up with creative solutions. And I want to honour your true nature as much as I possibly can, without rejecting my own values. So, I was thinking… maybe, instead of eating our babies…”

A cry rippled through the swamp, and I saw the first glimpse of squirming, unarmored flesh, the colour of sweet compromise.

 

Robyn Thomas from UK is a Canadian writer and filmmaker currently living in Scotland where she’s completing her PhD in anthropology and discovering her love of haggis. Her writing has been published in Orca Literary Journal, Hunger Mountain Review, Marrow Magazine, Carmina Magazine and other publications.