Snap of Electric Fish

Reggie descends the littered slope. Dodges jags of chainlink, the splintered peaks of felled trees. Skids to the bottom and pushes through scrub. Past men hauling cables from the water.

The tumult of a carnival midway. Claims argued. Lines drawn. Muddied children curl around her legs. She finds a spot not yet staked. Kneels and fills her emptied handbag.

“You believe this?”

Jenna Gerrault, her downstairs neighbor. Cradling a paint bucket. The shadows of small corpses banging against the plastic.

Reggie shakes her head. “Never cleaned a fish before.”

“Me neither.”

A man with a wheelbarrow slogs by. The tiny wheel plows damp earth. Its freight of trout and pickerel sloshing, gelatinous.

“But hey,” Jenna says. “Free is free.”

Reggie lifts her purse. Water drains from the bottom. A dozen bug-eyed specimens, trapped in the faux silk lining.

The shouts of men. A body recovered. They drag a dented transformer up the embankment. Green-gray and dripping, spewing copper wires. Black scar where lightning struck.

The bag jerks in Reggie's hands. She tosses it away. They scatter. One among them twitching, snapping its tail. The mouth forms a rictus. Thin needles and pale gums.

“They do that,” Jenna says, gathering Reggie's catch, dropping them into her bucket. “Ghost current. The power guys were talking about it.”

The crowd thins. All along the riverbank—footprints and fish guts. A reek in place of movement, pungent and sour.

She refills her purse and goes home.

Reggie lies on the couch. Shoes drying in the corner. River musk in her hair. A box fan rattles nearby, but it's no use: a funk has seized the building. Fryers and stewpots running overtime.

Her own spoils mutilated, clogging the sink. Ribboned skin and crushed bone. YouTube no help. Reddit worse. A scaly massacre.

She thinks of that flapping bass. Its death boogie. Remembers what Jenna said. Wonders if others are making encores. Under paring knives. Across faded linoleum.

Tad starts to wheeze. She adjusts the oxygen. His shoulders hitch. His jaw clicks. She loosens the straps; he slumps forward.

Into the crook of her arm. Light as papier-mâché. He needs a bath.

She carries him down the hall. Strips him, buckles him into the molded seat.

They count while the tub fills. Reggie with one, two, three. Tad with the soft consonants of some private schema. His eyes, each on a separate trajectory, search the fogged tiles.

She lowers the chair until he's neck-deep in bubbles. Works from the bottom up. Finishes with his hair. Another bald patch has formed near the crown. What remains feels like cobwebs through her fingers. Roots wiggling in their follicles, loose as stripped screws.

She reclines the chair. Turns on the wand, rinses away shampoo. Steam and suds and the bite of cut lemons. Water sluices off Tad's forehead, his folded ears.

Her hand finds the crank. Tad goes down. Chin and cheeks clouded with foam. His mouth submerged; a single bubble breaks the surface. Pops soundlessly.

She hoists him back up. Drops onto the bath mat and cries into her hands. She reaches out blindly, pinches the stopper, pulls it free.

Bedtime comes early. Light behind curtains, televisions through walls. She places Tad under his blankets and sets the safety rails. A drop of Benadryl on his tongue. He twitches and paws at his tubes, then falls into a reedy snore.

Reggie takes a shot of 'Dryl before capping the bottle. Studies the shapes under the covers.

Tad's hand slips free. She touches his skin. A burst of static. His fingers open. Stretch. Curl back to a tight claw.

Reggie sits with the other moms. Adirondack chairs and tumblers of wine.

A woman in a bright pink track suit: “I hear Tad's been in the upstairs classroom.”

“That's right,” Reggie says, shielding her eyes. “Mainstreaming. They think it'll help.”

“Exciting!” Lipstick and teeth. Chattering bracelets. “Well, Samuel just loves him. It's been quite a learning experience.”

“I'm sure.” She drains her glass. “Next week they get to dissect him.”

Nervous laughter. More rosé.

Two girls ride the back of Tad's chair. A string of kids following, a lashing tail. They break through a finish line of linked arms. Stop in a trench of orange bark mulch. Balloons pass from hand to hand and are tied to one of the chair’s rubber grips.

Cake is served. Presents opened. Reggie lingers at the periphery. Drains unattended glasses. Then she melts away to where Tad sits abandoned in the flowerbed. His face covered in stickers and scrawled with marker. Balloons squeak at his shoulder.

She uses a wet wipe to clean his cheeks. Pulls the chair free and wheels it down the driveway.

She locks Tad's wheels and leaves him in the street—face flushed, hat cocked at an angle. She wrestles with his belts and braces, lifts and levers.

Ready, she sets him by the sliding door. Gets her hands under his flour sack body. Loads him in.

A rogue gust riles the balloons; they tug at the empty chair. Reggie bats them aside. Unties the lazy knot. The bunch twirls, breaks apart, scatters on the wind.

She turns. A straggler inside the van. Bright red. Pressed against the window. Tad leans into it. His tongue samples the taut rubber. Fine hairs bow and fix to its shiny curve.

Reggie reaches in to take it away. Her fingers tingle. The balloon twitches.

He grabs her wrist.

She drops her keychain into his clammy palm. Tries to wrest it free; he holds tight. Movement in his forearm. Spindly muscles trembling, sloughing their sleep.

She paces. Snatches her phone and queues the clinic. Stares at the number. Feels hope tempered by visions of white rooms and probes. A carrion arch of masked faces. Six years of weekly visits, nothing to show but copays. The doctors' fruitless experiments—pushing trucks in a sandbox.

Velcro rasps. Tad, clutching a dangling strap. He raises it a couple inches. Brings it down. Again and again, as if driving some invisible beast. The buckle catches in the spokes. Slips through his fingers.

Reggie presses her thumbs into his arm. Firm and springy. She lowers her ear to his skin: blood rushing, water into a dry riverbed.

Warmth on her neck. She takes Tad's hand, puts it in her mouth. Bites him lightly. He doesn't fight. They stay that way for a long time.

He stalls, elbows giving out. Collapses with a thump. Reggie touches the exposed lines between his shoulders. Bright snap, a whiff of singed skin. Another red spot among dozens, blistering and turning gray.

Tad curls into a ball. His eyelids flutter. A hiss in his throat like air brakes releasing. He rolls onto his stomach. Raises himself and continues to snail-crawl across the living room.

Three days and already mobile. The grunts of primitive speech. He breathes without his tank. Swallows semi-solids. Reggie tends to him with cautious wonder. Steering the progress. Wielding sparks.

The school called earlier. Then work. She made excuses. Stomach bug. Specialists in Boston. A week in the bank, enough time to see things through. What—who—awaits on the other side.

Tad bumps into the wall. Places his palms on the peeling paint. The burns on his naked back bunch and flex. He lifts himself, hand over hand, knees scraping the baseboard. He's flat against the plaster. Legs dangling like the roots of an onion.

Strain in his eyes. Sweat on his cheeks. He begins to slide. Reggie kneels beside him. Readies the cord. Where it bends at the split.

Locates a patch of virgin skin.

His mouth twitches behind wisps of smoke. Not quite a smile.

A single syllable: “More.”

“Let me up!” he demands through a mouthful of foam cushion.

He finished with the cabinets, moved onto doors. Frames gutted. Hardware in brassy heaps. The whole apartment an executed search warrant, tossed and broken.

She pries the biggest piece free—a four-inch spike right above the ankle—then rests. Tad kicks away. Blood spatters the wall, the toppled furniture. He stands before her. Head raised. A pulse in his throat.

“I want to go outside,” he says flatly.

Reggie reaches for the baton. A little more time. To figure things out. To jury-rig a restraint. Each jolt a thirty-minute respite.

But then he'll wake again. Sharper. Stronger.

Her fingers graze broken glass. The busted back brace. She sees the prod on the kitchen counter. Battery depleted. Boymeat fused to the prongs.

He follows her eyes. Smirks, so easy. Takes the baton before she can get to it. Taps it against his palm. Clicks the cold switch.

“You're tired,” he says, running a thumb along the greasy shaft. Picking bits of himself from the twin barbs. “Aren't you?”

The first few days had been fitful. Sleep snatched between Tad's excursions. His stunted outbursts. Now he doesn't sleep. Moves through the rooms at all hours. A trapped animal.

“We're not ready.”

“You're not ready.” He moves closer. His torso a charred cave painting. “For them.”

Them. Doctors. Teachers. Their meddling relatives. There'd be no fresh start among strangers. No Hallmark fantasy. Her bank account enough for a few nights in a motel. Maybe a week if they went fleabag.

“You know how it felt?” Tad says.

Reggie scoots back. Thinking he means the cord. The jabs with the cattle prod.

“Hands all over me.” He frowns, grips the frame of his overturned chair. “Squeezing. Hurting. And I just had to take it. Couldn't even scream.”

Hands. Her hands. She looks at her lap. Swollen knuckles and cracked skin. Relics of his long suffering. A thousand baths in the rearview. Blocked cannulas and packed diapers. Even the juice rendered moot now. Tad at his apogee.

“I don't need permission.”

She nods.

He helps her to her feet. She reaches for his scarred shoulders. Pulls back. She follows him into the bedroom. He lets her dress him. Her clothes: Red Sox T-shirt, cargos. His own threads tight, stretched out by a ghost.

She tucks in the shirt, cinches the pants. They walk out the front door.

Reggie watches his reflection in darkened windows. Tries to keep pace.

He stops at a cross street. Looks both ways without being told. Races ahead, his body angled like a rocket taking flight.

He shoots through the arms of a walking couple. Splitting them, forcing them to either side.

She yells for him to stop. At least slow down. But he's already around the corner. She breaks into a trot.

Turns into a blind alley. Scummy pavement. A cat upon the fence, gnawing something small and brown. Beyond the pocked wooden slats: the river. A glinting grin in the wasting light.

She searches and calls his name and begins to wonder who she's chasing. She rests under a streetlight. Touches the post, tries to coax the thrum of its guts. Just cool metal. Flaking black paint.

She lowers one arm. Then the other. Lets them hang at her side. Tries to raise them again. Can't.

Keeps moving. Her feet grow heavy. Drag. Slap. Something pops in her neck. Her vision cants, a projector knocked on its side.

Noises in the distance. Familiar. Urgent. She lurches forward. Hunched and simian.

By the time she gets to him, she's crawling.