1/8

Portmagee, Iveragh Peninsula, Ireland 

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤIt’s somewhere between dusk and dawn at the Light House, and every poet in the building is completely drunk. Soft green lamplight washes over the barstools, distorting as it passes through empty bottles, and fills the room with an endearing drowsiness. Conversations rise and die in murmurs — somewhere upstairs someone is practicing the cello. We’ve been drinking for hours and have no intention of stopping anytime soon. 

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤThe Esteemed Young Writer’s Collective has arranged a two week creative residency in the quaint village of Portmagee to be inspired by the majestic cliffs. Since it’s been relentlessly pouring for the last five days, the Collective has instead found inspiration in the regional whiskey at the local pub — the Light House — the last place in town that hasn’t sprung a leak. 

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ“I’m telling you, he’s coming back for us.” The fisherman in front of me is old enough that I swear he’s been deteriorating before my eyes in the ten minutes he’s been rambling. If I look closely, I can almost see blood shifting beneath the near-translucent landscape of his skin. Or maybe I’m just very drunk and he is very red from his senile breakdown. He appeared sometime after sundown, drenched and shivering to the bone, claiming to have returned from the sea after his boat got caught in the storm.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ“I saw it just yesterday. I thought I would die in that storm, but all at once the crashing waves calmed and it appeared. An enormous floating house, almost as big as the ocean itself.” Since most of my peers are passed out by the fire or have dissolved into hiccups and limericks, the fisherman has become my prime source of entertainment and he is happy to provide. He’s accosted by time, at least eighty, withered by his years at sea, and so tiny it looks like his chair is trying to eat him. “A goliath in the eye of the storm,” he whispers. “A floating zoo. Noah and his Ark and all his infernal beasts…He’s coming for us.” 

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ“I don’t think that’s how the story is supposed to go. I thought Noah was supposed to be man’s savior,” I interject, but let him continue because, after all, I’m a poet not a preacher.  

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ“There are too many of us, the clock reset, the insects and us. Us and the insects. All we have left are those left behind.” Tangles of rain blow upwards with the wind, the world outside is a directionless haze. No one will be going home anytime soon. A headache is developing at my brow and I’m no longer amused by his offputting riddles. I reach to fill my drink but knock the whiskey bottle on its side and get up to scramble for napkins. When I return, the old man has completely lost his mind. His eyes are luminous and pool with light of extinct stars as he repeats:

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ“And the waters flooded the Earth… 

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤAnd the waters flooded the Earth… 

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤAnd the waters flooded the Earth…” 

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤThe wind howls and batters at the windows. Phantasmagoric distortions in the white mist propagate across the glass panes, a tiger, a serpent, a hare. A fantastical carousel of illusions that form and dissipate at the command of the storm. My skin crawls and my throat is suddenly tight. 

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ“He’s coming for us.” He says again. “The tides have already risen.” 

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ“Alright, I believe you,” I whisper. He begins to shake with huge crescendoing sobs. Out the window, the land has grown static. The lamps sway softly overhead. The whiskey is pooling onto the table and dribbling off, the old man is crying, the roof has finally begun to leak and every poet in the building is holding their breath. 

 40 Years Later

2/17

Chungking Mansions, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤIn the subliminal crevices of society, buried deep into the subconscious of Hong Kong, there lives a phantom of a man and this is the first time he’s sought out sunlight in days. Unfortunately, the sun is obstructed by dark billowing clouds and his return to civilization is punctuated by rain, but he’s on a mission to buy a fish and must succeed. 

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤIt’s the first day of the Lunar New Year, but ghosts haunt every conversation and misfortune muffles his footsteps. Wong Tai Sin Temple is desolate — the storm is too strong to light incense and the winds are only rising. The promenade by the harbor should be packed with parades but it’s half flooded and the annual firework show has been engulfed by the storm. It’s the Year of the Fire Horse, but the air is so damp that his cigarette won’t even light. As he approaches the market, it melts out of his hand and into a puddle in a plume of pollution.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤThey say it’s good fortune to eat fish on New Year’s day, but his mission goes beyond fool’s luck. For in his sleep he was blessed by a god. His first dream of the year was of the hill outside his mother’s house rippling like a silken sheet in the wind. Before he could take a step, the long grass slope dissolved into handfuls of silver fish, and he awoke after the writhing mass crashed over him. He doesn’t need to clean, or pray, or give red envelopes, not that he has any money left to give. He just needs his fish, and all will be forgiven. 

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤHe used to live in a nice apartment in Kowloon Tong, back when he was working in private equity and was untouchable. He was the paragon, the man on fire, the phoenix. For the most minute sliver of his life, he was immortal. And when he was laid off, in his ricochet with mortality he’d lost everything. In the legends, the carp leaps over the pearly gates and becomes a dragon. Once he figured out where he was swimming, he would bathe in gold, his mother would call, his daughter and wife would come back. Just one more month and his loans would be forgiven, he’d reassume his esteemed position at the bank, he’d never have to enter a gambling den again.   

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤThe fish would forgive, it had to. He chooses the biggest one he can find, a green and gold mammoth of a carp, and returns home to cook. The elevator hasn’t worked in a decade so he’s forced to lug it up into the stairwell and with each step he swears it grows heavier in his arms. By the fifth floor it weighs as much as his daughter when she was just born, by the fifteenth: as much as her now. It’s been a few years since he’s seen her, but he imagines her smooth skin and dark liquidus eyes. She must be at least six, though he’s forgotten the exact date of her birthday. Panting and dripping sweat, he reaches his door, but when he looks down, only the fish is there to look back. 

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤHis apartment is the size of a coffin, and the carp is so big it dangles off the counter and its tail falls into the bathroom sink. A beetle scuttles from the vent, the newest infestation. It takes five minutes of hunting in the piles of old clothes and newspapers to locate his cooking knife and another five to find a rag to clean it. When he goes to cut off the fish’s head, the knife skids against glass, and under its scales lies a green glass bottle. The label is still intact, Portmagee Whiskey, and he’s struck with dull familiarity. An outdated tale that recently resurfaced in some online conspiracy chat room about an old ferry town in Ireland that was annihilated by an unexpected tsunami. He’d clicked away into a horse racing forum and had forgotten all about it. 

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤBeneath the entrails and fish blood smearing over the warped green glass, there’s a piece of paper stuffed into the bottle. As he unfolds his fortune from the carp, his heart begins to pound in rhythm with the rain. It’s not a check or a banknote like he’d hoped but a page ripped from a book, ink running so badly it’s illegible except for the English words penned into the margin: “And the waters flooded the Earth…”

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤIt’s not monsoon season but the storm is relentless, agony pouring from the sky. The power surges and with a crackle the lights go out. He’s struck with unease and the fishhead is looking up at him from the floor. Waves lap at his windows, salt stinging his nose. His heartbeat has grown hooves. He fumbles for the lighter in his pocket, but when the small flame ignites, shadows fill his apartment. Tusks and horns and feathers — a horse. On the wall a bestial army stretches from the dark.