Stay on the Line, Little Bird (Chapter 2)
Chapter 2 of my work-in-progress novella. By Larissa Thomas © 2026
II
It Comes Upon You Slowly
By Margaret Muggerot
Chapter One
Lyle peered at the tiny colony of brine shrimp floating inside his seven aquariums. They resembled something one might find in a toilet bowl at a gas station; ancient protozoans with miniscule legs and translucent ligaments. Some might wonder how such gruesome creatures would become a popular kids toy, but to Lyle they were the most fascinating specimens he’d ever seen. He preferred interacting with “Sea-Monkeys” to most people. They’d been marketed as novelty “pets” for children since the fifties. Lyle was the purveyor of their knock-offs: Lake Monkeez.
They were the perfect product, in Lyle’s opinion. Compact, emotionally and financially disposable. A simple flush and they were quickly forgotten.
Lyle harvested, packaged and distributed his product from his small, brick-veneer home. A smallish fish in a smallish pond, surrounded by microscopic crustaceans that relied on his goods for survival. Or so he told himself. He’d been experimenting and innovating lately; playing with altering the brand regionally and to align with trends. He was trying out ideas like Post-Internet Rave Glitchoids from Beyond. N’awlins Nightcrawlers. Maudlin Monkee Mommiez. Sewercidal Shromp-Shromps.
“No need for messy pets or huge vet bills, enjoy the excitement of one of nature’s greatest thrills!”
“I hate it!” I screamed at the first page of my novel.
The fleeting excitement of a now-dead radio signal was fading. It had, at the very least, jump-started a creative impulse but now the beckoning voice on the other end was all I could think about. I wasn’t sure if I’d hallucinated it, if I’d intercepted a message for someone else, or if it was a meaningless advertisement.
The putrid sodium nightshade scent of mini raviolis I’d eaten out of the can for dinner wafted towards me. I hadn’t thought about what I’d do about dishwashing, eating and whatnot. That would be tomorrow’s problem.
I needed a change of scenery.
“Alright, I’m going outside,” I announced, pausing to see if the radio would speak again.
It didn’t.
I slid in a new disc titled: “COWBOY BEEBOP NIPPLE WAX UNPLUGGED!”
It sounded exactly as expected.
The sky had grown black and pitchless in the hour it took me to write three paragraphs, so I popped my LED lantern, slopped out more wine and planted myself on the shoddy, moldy fold-out chair on the boat’s shoddier, moldier deck.
This was the first time I’d moved out of a full-body rage kegel in years. I had, by all accounts, gotten exactly what I’d begged for: Silence and solitude. An environment to actualize without mundane reality creeping into every orifice and paper cut.
The taste of wine, light breeze on my shoulders, the sounds of slapping and lapping and rhythm of the boat was intoxicating. I’d always wanted to make it on a waterbed. The image evoked 80’s cinematic sleaze and exploitation; illicit non-stop sex in a sketchy one-bedroom apartment in the slums of Montreal in late spring. Wicked delights on feathery duvets and strange creative nascencies generated by the union between a depraved but attractive woman and her odd but devastating young lover.
I sighed, turning my attention back to my freshly broken-in notebook. Maybe that would be the next story. I’d have to circle back. I felt something meaningful coming alive in this seemingly asexual tale involving shrimp and small businesses.
“Stay…” I whispered to myself.
Chapter One Cont’d…
“What will you do to rectify this abominable service?” A man named Oswald Parkinson screeched at Lyle through his cordless phone. “I do not want a replacement. I want a refund. Your product arrived in a shocking state, and I had to scramble to find something else to give my niece for her sixth birthday! It was a tremendous inconvenience!”
“Yes, sir. I understand,” Lyle said, dragging a chipped fingernail across the glass tank. Each tank was carefully placed around the walls of his living room-office, out of direct sunlight, and at the perfect height for maintenance, cleaning and viewing. Lyle’s bicep-length hair had to be kept in a low-pony to prevent the tips from dipping in the water endowing him with a “swamp aroma” that his sister often mentioned.
The drone of a loud plane overhead startled Lyle for a moment. As there were no airports nearby, it was an uncommon occurrence. The plane was flying close to the ground, emblazoned with a “SnotNot” logo. Maybe there was something out of the ordinary going on in town; a convention.
Lyle clicked and scrolled through invoices with his chapped fingers. A new patch of psoriasis threatened to split open his knuckles. He carefully found Oswald Parkinson’s proof of purchase in his inbox.
“Would you mind sending me a photo for insurance purposes? As I will have to make a claim—”
“No! If you don’t refund my money right now, I’ll report you to the appropriate channels. I’ll expose you for copyright infringement! For being a terrible person! And-”
“Yes, sir. Very well. I’ll refund your money—”
“Now!” the man phlegm-gargled and hung up.
“Now,” Lyle repeated.
“Now,” Lyle said, plucking a shrimp from the tank and squishing it between the tips of fingers, flicking it back into the water.
“Now,” Lyle whispered.
A couple of the critters investigated, or perhaps mindlessly passed by, the viscera. A comrade had fallen for no other reason than their God was perturbed.
Lyle loved to experiment on the creatures; seeing how temperature shifts affected their behavior; adding “threats” to the environment. A rancid Cheerio or half a cup of hot water; playing music against the wall of a tank; confusing them with strobe lights which caused them to flit around in chaos. He often found himself wanting to escalate the situation once boredom set in. What else could he do to them? Where could he put them? How long could they survive?
The CD restarted itself.
I had nothing else to say to my pages for the night. I dropped my notebook on the deck and squinted into the surround-sound noiseless void. I’d entered a strange reality. Everything still but ominous in its possibility. It wasn’t what I could see and hear that put me on edge, it was what I couldn’t.
The ambient fear aroused me.
I slid my dirty fingers into my white low-rises and touched myself in time to the waves. Why not? I liked the idea that someone or something might be watching from the nothingness.
“Is anyone there?” I called out softly.
The unseduced waves sloshed against frigid aluminum.
“Anyone there?” Louder this time.
The radio inside the cabin crackled with feedback.
I gasped.
Waited.
The interference stopped just as quickly as it started. A static heartbeat revealing a hint of potential existence; a dehydrated brine shrimp egg palpating itself and then giving up.
“Now you’re imagining a creature from the black lagoon is trying to fuck you through the radio? JUST WRITE YOUR STUPID NOVEL!” I could almost hear Chris’s castigations. “You’re inventing distractions now!”
“Go away,” I hissed.
A terrible sound ravaged the silence. Crispy bones cracking, splintering a membrane made of shrieking, drowning ghoulies.
I sat up. The hair on the back of my neck playing volleyball with unseen electricity in the air.
Lights flickered far off in the distance; something under the water was activated by the screeches. Or the source.
I stood up and tip-toed to the rails.
This was probably when self-preservation would kick in for a normal person, and they’d run inside and lock the door. But I couldn’t look away. I had to know what was going on.
I peered out into oblivion, but couldn’t tell where the noise had come from, or where the lights were exactly. I was looking at impressions of lights. Shimmering flickers, maybe from the moon, which appeared to be waxing gibbous and almost full illumination.
I squinted.
Hadn’t the hippie told me not to look at the lights? I couldn’t remember his reasoning though, if he had any. Maybe he was gatekeeping a mystical secret. A lot of spiritual people I’d encountered seemed to enjoy doing that. Taking a basic problem-solution pipeline and rebranding it to make themselves appear as divine vessels inseminated with the sacred fluids of higher beings.
Splashing in the distance.
Something was definitely out there.
“Reveal yourself!”
I breathed as slowly and quietly as possible.
I knew it.
I felt it.
A merman?
Another splash.
I burst into a fit of laughter. I took a big swig of what was left of my wine. Maybe I’d go for a swim. Why the hell not. Lean in, as they say. Were mermen supposed to be hot? I assumed so. They had to be.
I slid off my white and navy blue dress and tossed it on the chair. I hadn’t swum in a long time, but you don’t forget how to swim. Yes! This is what I needed!
“I’m coming!”
Then that terrible sound again—
A few feet away from me.
The shape became clearer the more I looked at it, like when I was a child and would see monsters where there was just a pile of laundry and toys.
Only this was in reverse.
I didn’t move.
A blanched, anemic creature perched on the rails. Was hard to get a gauge of its size. Bigger than me but balled up and hunched over. Its eyeballs black and shiny as a scrying mirror. Neither bird nor squid, almost human with what appeared to be stringy dark tresses knotted and infested with smaller lifefors. Something liminally horrifying. The longer I stared, the more that revealed itself: Wings and gills. Pendulous teets with a milky substance on the tip of each nipple, glistening in the moonlight. The nipples transfixingly raw, as if they’d been sucked on to the point of ulceration.
The beast perched between myself and the cabin door. I would have to pass it to get inside. It seemed to read my mind, opening its little beak-like mouth and licking its sharp little teeth.
An unignorable smallness gripped my insides. Anything could happen to me and no one would know. I was a sitting fuck’n’chuck. No signs of the mundane world or its inhabitants for miles.
The lamp flickered—
The chimera growled.
—then went out.