TENUTO

Bran stands heelbalanced on the beach. Boot crushing decomposed dead fish and sand. Sinking. Something in the ocean had massacred thousands of fish last night. It reeks of fermentation. Lemonmould. Beer. Sauerkraut. Corpsespeckled waves fizzle on coastline rock, leaving behind mangled carcasses. Finn sits out at sea on the tugboat. He has a windbeater chinzipped and a thumb in the mouth. Dummysucking. Blonde locks curl shadow over his brow. Finn can sense the sea through radar pulses throbbing up onto the breast of his finger. Sealife. Heartbeats. Pump, pump, pu-pump. Bran whistles to him through a gap in his top front teeth. Soundwaves bound seaward. Pitch crescendos comic then tumbles tragic; comedy and tragedy combined create a heroic theme. Finn hears the melody composed to him as though through a seashell. It is distant. He can taste blood. Not of the dead fish. Thumbblood. There’s a large heart underneath him. Pulse large enough to thump his thumbflesh torn. It echoes through his mouth. He can feel it beat through to the soft flesh at the back of his head. For a moment he becomes disoriented. Heartbeat confused with another heartbeat. Oscillation. Wobble. See-saw. Vibration. Something sizable has been slaughtering the fish. It muscles out every other heartbeat. In its presence he cannot even feel Bran. He looks back at the musician mouthing notes at the edge of the beach; the giant’s heartbeat threatens to smother him in rushing blood.

Bran teeths a handtorch. Finn sucks tobacco through a short cigarette, cross-legged on the sand, sat next to a large rock that Bran is stood over. Sea erosion has sculpted the rock to the rounded rectangular shape of a fishmonger’s bench. Torchlight cuts through smoke. Light blades a short length of tacklewire Bran has tugged around his knuckles. He uses it to bleed a mackerel. Zig-zagging through an artery underneath the head. Fresh blood spits out and dribbles across old cuts in the rock. Finn looks at his thumb beating. Blood unable to coagulate beneath bandage. Pressure. Decapitation. Bran hooks the bled head to a rod and packs the tool onto the back of the boat rocking on the shore. Hobbling back to the rock, he then presses both hands into the pooled blood.

The men embrace. Finn rests his forehead on Bran’s collarbone. Fingers run across scalp and through hair root. Blonde becomes blood red. Hearts thump and are tied together. Bran looks at the hero’s thumb; Finn at the bard’s severed toe. Thoughts connect to the beat: Remember Antarctica. We found it. Underneath the permafrost. The Giant Squid. Encased in ice. Remember Antarctica. Frostbite. The toe left behind. Tacklewire. Cut. Choked. Cast. Flesh. Purpled. Lowered through the fishing hole. Bloodbait. You evolved. Because I ate... Tacklewire. Fat. Heartfat crawled up the line. Gelatinous. Sticky. Heavy.

CONTENT WARNING: Graphic imagery

Words by Beck Rowse

Tentacles of fat. We never should have... It had been resting, peaceful.... It has come for us. Remember Antarctica - Anxious heartbeat overloads the connection. Finn sobcoughs as Bran stands up and goes back to the rock. Clutching onto the eroded edge for balance, Bran cuddles his forehead into the blood dye.

Finn and Bran seat themselves on the open back of the boat. Legs hanging over the turbulent ocean. One sat behind the other. Embracing. Bodywarmth. Through cut-engine silence they hear the monster’s heart knock beneath them. Finn trembling casts out the fish head. The bait briefly bounces along the scum of the sea before breaking the surface into submersion. Bran puppets the fisherman’s arms to keep them steady. Resting a chin on his nylon-clothed shoulder. Mouth puckered, Bran continues the song from before. To the tempo of the whistle Finn breathes diaphragm deep, decelerating his pulse to the same pace. The line straightens out. Weight tugs his wrists to the water. The creature has been hooked. Finn heaves the reel handle forward and around. Bran’s melody rumbles to a lower octave, somewhere between a hum and a whistle. It takes the strength of both men to push the next rotation. Hooked fat splashes out beneath them. Fingerwriggling. It snatches control of the line. Rodhandle torn from Bran. Midair. Curling. Finn is brought along into the red sea. Before plunging, he hears constriction around the windpipe. Maceration of the melody to a hard choke. Bran decapitated.

Finn coughs blood. The heartbeat bashes ocean pressure against him. He fumbles a hand through an assorted school of dead fish. Bone peeks out through his mangled thumb fat. Spraying blood, thumping. Beyond, the giant squid now encompasses everything peripheral. An amalgam of human and sea creature flesh bandage a part-exposed and infected heart. Fatglued. The creature throbs in excessive pain. Each beat spraying Bran’s severed head in bloodink. Finn uses the last of his strength to cut a path to the head. The closer he gets, the more encompassing the heartbeat becomes. Each beat causes muscle seizure. Finn manages to wrestle control in every other stroke. Soon, he wades before him. There, hugging forehead to forehead, he bubbles a funeral song for them both. One deep, sombre, and mournful.