the screams of jellyfish

by ­­Michael Czyzniejewski

Ian started thinking he was part jellyfish. He told this to his brother, Delman, the only person he knew who would entertain such talk, and the only other person within thirty miles.

“What part?” Delman asked.

“I don’t know. My legs or my feet.” Ian could feel it when he walked, like he was going to collapse with each step. He hadn’t slept in two days.

“No, I mean what part of the jellyfish?”

Ian hadn’t considered that. He’d pictured his legs as two whole jellyfish, wiggling and wobbling, rolling along, dragging him forward, his torso riding a pair of beach balls.

“Jellyfish only have one part: the jellyfish,” Ian said.

Delman stopped sharpening the stick clenched in his fist. “Of course there’re more parts. There’s the tentacles—that’s what stings you. There’s the head. The mouth. The gonads.”

“Gonads?”

“Yeah, dummy,” Delman said. “Gonads.”

Ian didn’t like to be called dummy, even if it was the millionth time.

“You know, man, I’m the jelly, the stuff inside that makes it a jellyfish. My legs feel like jelly. That’s all I’m saying. I don’t have no fish gonads.”

“Not a fish,” Delman said. “But I hear what you’re saying.”

Delman continued sharpening spikes as Ian troweled out the pit. By nightfall, they had a decent tiger trap, good enough to let them sleep, not worry what might come for them, what the rising waters might scare up the mountain. The last step was to gather taro leaves to arrange over the hole, make it look like floor.

“The key is to not forget and fall in ourselves,” Delman said. “That’d be a dumb way to die.”

~

That night, Ian dreamed of jellyfish, a whole school, coming from the dark. They glided up to the clearing, glowing like lanterns, stalking Ian and Delman as they slept. One by one, they fell into the trap, each jellyfish pierced on a different spike, their jelly seeping out, oozing down the wood. Worse, the jellyfish were screaming, a dreadful wailing from the illuminated pit.

“Wake up!” Delman was shaking him. “You’re screaming. Except you sound like a sick dolphin.”

“I was a school of jellyfish,” Ian said, “dying two dozen horrible deaths.”

Delman’s eyes narrowed. “Whatever. Can you do it quietly?”

Ian couldn’t go back to sleep. His screams had surely alerted something. He told Delman he’d watch for a shift.

“That’s why we made that goddamn trap,” Delman said. “Get some rest.”

Ian turned back over. Delman settled against his back, a reverse spoon. The cave walls were cold, near freezing. Ian pressed against Delman, and Delman, already snoring, pressed back.

Ian listened for movement outside the cave. He tried to stay awake, which only made him fall asleep faster.

~

When Ian woke, Delman was gone. Ian peered through the brush they’d used to obscure the cave entrance: in place, but clearly shifted. Delman had repositioned it when he’d left. Ian pictured him outside, sitting on a log, saying, “Rise and shine, sleepyhead” when he emerged.

As soon as Ian saw the taro leaves pushed into the pit, the trap sprung, he knew what’d happened.

“Delman?” Ian called. “Brother?”

Delman didn’t answer. Ian crept to the edge of the pit. He closed his eyes, imagining his favorite picture of him and Delman, both tan, in faded ballcaps, a sailfish hanging between them.

Ian looked down.

He was grateful Delman at least fell in face-first, that he didn’t have to see his brother’s eyes.

Ian buried Delman just like that, filling in the hole with the dirt he’d dug the day before. No point in another hole, not to mention pulling Delman out, experiencing that. As gruesome and stupid as it was, this was the most convenient way for one of them to die.

~

Ian waited another day for the water to recede. It was thirty miles back to base camp. He thought it fifty-fifty that he could make it. When Ian stumbled into the camp, it was still under three feet of water. He waded to the trading post, seeing Delman’s yellow Jeep parked outside, not swept away. Ian knew it wouldn’t start, its engine submerged. He didn’t care. He needed clean water. He needed to collapse.

Then he’d call home, tell their parents.

Then he’d call Delman’s wife.

Inside the trading post, Ian made a beeline for the cooler and pulled out a bottle of water, guzzling it down. Then another. He took three more to the checkout, along with several candy bars, a bag of pretzel sticks, and some jerky.

The woman at the register was named María. Ian remembered her. Her fingernails and hands were filthy, pruned. She’d had a bad few days herself.

“Bienvenido de nuevo. Está su hermano afuera?”

“Qué?” Ian said.

“Is your brother outside?”

Ian shook his head.

A small boy came in then with a laundry basket. He poured something onto the counter at the other register. The woman there, whose name was Esperanza, gave him money from her apron. The boy ran out, basket in hand.

“What’s that?” Ian asked.

“Jellyfish,” María said.

“Jellyfish?”

“Sí,” María said. “They washed up with the storm. We sell them to pharmaceutical companies.”

“The ocean is sixty miles from here.”

“Sí,” María said. “It was a big storm.”

Ian stepped over to Esperanza. A large box sat next to her feet, dozens of jellyfish inside.

“Can I see one of those?”

Esperanza shrugged. She placed a jellyfish on the counter.

“Where is your brother?” María asked. “His Jeep will have to be repaired. I have his keys.”

Ian poked at the jellyfish with his finger. It was dead, but it still felt like Ian thought it would, like pressing into a sponge cake. Or a stress ball.

“Your brother?” María said.

“He’s dead.” Ian picked up the jellyfish and held it up. “He was killed by these. By a whole lot of these. They came for us in the night. He died saving my life.”

Photo of Michael Czyzniejewski

BIO: Michael Czyzniejewski is the author of four collections of stories, most recently The Amnesiac in the Maze (Braddock Avenue Books, 2023). He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Moon City Press and Moon City Review, as well as Interviews Editor of SmokeLong Quarterly. He has had work anthologized in the Best Small Fiction series and 40 Stories: A Portable Anthology, and has received a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts and two Pushcart Prizes.