Bivalve Lit

Seldom a full novel or memoir, but often a short story or CNF piece will be found inside the shell of an oyster, clam, or other bivalve when the pallial pouch (a sort of leathery drawer within the shell) is pulled back with a tweezer. The hitch is that an uninhabited shell is typically desiccated, picked clean by marine birds. Scarcely anything might be located by the beachcomber—just a few nacreous scraps, the arcs of poorly formed letters gleaming with dried slime. It’s hard to date these works, which could reach back a few hours or many hundreds of years. Their themes are more or less interchangeable—tides, currents, bird beaks. Like their authors, they are stylistically basic; the prose is rumbly and low, as might be expected of an object pulled from a seashell. Some are chambered, some are fluting in structure. In the hand, a full library will clink like loose pearls.

The Embarrassing Sycophant

It’s fashionable to own a shorthair penang, but we shouldn’t have done it. It depresses me. I’m so low my belly drags on the floor. They’re too intelligent. Ours is kind and affectionate, but terrified of being left alone for even a few minutes. It creeps into our laps and curls tight against us, clutches our waists as it sleeps. If I try to get up to pee, it grabs my hand and pulls me back down, eyes wide and moist. I apologize and sit again so it can lie across our knees. In return, it tries desperately to please us. It is the most embarrassing sycophant. When I enter a room it pushes a chair toward me with its nose, waves its arms and pats the seat hopefully. N-no, I say, I just need to get something. It nods and rushes around to offer me whatever object it can reach. Luckily, this pitiful being is able to take orders in English. Hand me a pencil, I’ll say, and it does so without hesitation. My wife finds it disturbing. It’s not like owning a dog, she says. It even tries to manipulate the TV to find suitable programing, just so we’ll stay home. If we leave for even an hour it will certainly attempt self-harm. We’ve put locks on the cupboards, but it’s too clever for them. We can’t keep sleeping pills in the house, even though I’m an insomniac. Let’s get rid of it, I said finally. Before my wife could answer, the penang climbed into her lap and buried its face in her chest. It slung one arm around her and reached with the other for me.

An Ant Regret

I noticed the ant queen had died. They bore her body on a litter. She was brought into a pyramid; they sealed the doors and slew perhaps a hundred slaves to keep the entrance secret. When they left, I picked up the capstone. The ant queen lay in a colorful sarcophagus decorated with petals and stones of a type ants enjoy. She was lovely to see. A pile of crumbs had been left to feed her soul in the afterlife.

As I was a kid, and a bad one, I casually desecrated the tomb. I carried off the sarcophagus and placed it on my windowsill. Ants entered the house every day, risking their lives to bring her soul a crumb or two. I would like them to accept this micro as an earnest apology.  





Addison Zeller lives in Wooster, Ohio, and edits fiction for The Dodge. His work appears in 3:AM Magazine, The Cincinnati Review, Epiphany, minor literature[s], and elsewhere.

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