Whalefall

by Daniel Kraus

He got fired for telling customers how 9/11 had been a godsend for baleen whales. The emergency closings of ports had dramatically lowered whales’ glucocorticoids, their stress hormones. When a customer told Mitt it was unpatriotic to celebrate September 11 for any reason, Mitt got into it regarding which mammals were more worth saving.

I’ll take overcast any day—too much sun means too much plankton. Jay wills the voice to shut up. Mitt’s right,

Hewey might have been right. Where else but heaven could a clump of guts live unaided?

Maybe Mitt hadn’t lied when he claimed to be born in the water; maybe birth is a process, not an event.

“Mitt saw himself like one of them dolphins,” Hewey said. “Like he’d been trained to do tricks in captivity.”

“Where you from, Hewey?” Hewey points again. Through the wall. Toward the sea. The old man smiles. “Did you know sailors and angels are homophones in Hebrew?”

Want to know your dive time? Wear a watch. Your safety stops? Three minutes at fifteen feet, what else is there? Your temp? You’re either cold or too cold. You want your pressure gauge reliant on batteries? Are you nuts?

The whale is a fellow mammal; its gaze has a simian weight. By acknowledging Jay, it shares that it has a soul.

and had his hands paralyzed for hours by its clicks. This left no doubt in Mitt’s mind. If a sperm whale wanted to stun a diver? Jay can still see Mitt’s delighted grin, hear his giddy voice. It’d break every bone in your body.

His bare foot slips off the icy nose, souring Jay’s balance so that his right heel goes between the whale’s front teeth and he slides feetfirst into its mouth on two inches of warm slime, the effluvia of a thousand squids past.

Sleep. His only defense. It’s what he’s done every free hour since leaving home two years ago. On sofas and floors, parks and beaches, benches and bleachers. Why not inside a stomach? It’ll make the end come without the screeching fear of anticipation. Jay curls up tight. His whole life, recollected from this spot, passed so fast. Let his death come fast as well.

Through the whale. There, behind and below him— BAUM —the echoing boom Jay heard while sliding down the gullet. The whale’s heart. Then a slushy— THROOSH —the whale’s pulse, raging rivers of blood shuttling through pipeline arteries.

It’s squid residue that lights up the stomach.

(What are we) The whale is talking to him. Nonsense, drivel, delusion, lunacy.

The pain is polychromatic, barbed wire through every nerve, white blindness.

Does a compass work inside a whale?

Severs prey’s spinal cords as easy as a knife through noodles.

Pressure builds the deeper you dive, basic stuff, but this is beyond. Jay’s joints are smooth butane flame. His body is sheathed in cement, curdling, crusting.

He feels what’s called mask squeeze, the air inside the plastic shriveling, turning into suction. Next, his eyeballs will pop out into his faceplate.

After that, Jay’s ribs will snap like a handful of twigs. If not already punctured by ribs, his lungs will collapse. After that, the crawlspaces of his sinuses will implode like lightbulbs, his face crumpling into debris.

he’s radioactive with pain, teeth squealing in their sockets, bones shrieking like nails being yanked from wood.

What’s a job? A gimmick of industrialized society. A hamster wheel you gotta turn to get your kibble.