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This writing was accepted for publication in the 96 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book... “am I really extinct” Down in the Dirt (v122) (the Mar./Apr. 2014 Issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

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Escape

Peter Hully

    “Do you want to hold him?”
    “Does he mind being handled?”
    “Only friendly lizards here. Specially bred.”
    Laura listens to the owner and the other man from behind the fish-tanks at the back of the shop. She crouches and looks through the tanks at the two men. Their bodies and faces are obscured and distorted by fishes and bubbles and glass. She doesn’t need to see them to know what’ll be happening. Some of the men are bigger than others, but they’re always the same; always dressed in cheap jeans and an old, too small coat; their hair either long or shaven, but always unconsidered. The owner will try to soften his taut, angular, olive skinned face as best he can, so that it might express something that could be taken for warmth or trust. He might also touch the man lightly on the elbow, in that way men do when they want things to lead somewhere. His eyes will be open and welcoming and his voice even.
    At the back of the shop, the sound of the tanks’ filters is always there; the soft, vibrating hum and the popping of bottles as they drift upwards and puncture the water’s surface. Laura closes her eyes and listens to the filters until it’s all she can hear and the sound becomes a part of her. The darkness and the whirring and bubbling soothe her red wine headache and the scratching of her eyelids lessens. She stands, letting her body hang and waiver, until self-consciousness overwhelms her and she opens her eyes again, back into the light of the shop.
    “Come on, come here.” The owner says from beyond the tanks, speaking to the lizard but maybe addressing the man also.
    Laura goes back to cleaning. She runs the soft yellow cloth over the glass and it picks up strands of damp black. The fish put Laura in mind of the thin foil wrappers of foreign sweets. They move hopefully towards the glass, but then dart away as the shadow and cloth come closer.
    The fish return when she pulls the cloth away. The stripy ones with the pointed noses first, then the ones that look like translucent, swelling purple hearts. Laura smiles and the fish float suspended. From in between the fish, Laura can make out her reflection in the tank’s dull light. Her grin looks big and empty and her eyes are unreadable pools of shadow. At university, people had called her enigmatic because they couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She’d liked the attention; the flattery that people might care about and want to know her thoughts. For a term or two, she’d played up to it – dressing in dark clothes so that her slight frame became a shadow, drifting in and out of rooms, disappearing and reappearing. She wouldn’t say anything, but silently willed people to be intrigued by the inner life that she might one day choose to reveal. But then it seemed people stopped caring, and the effort of maintaining what she’d hoped was an essential mystique became too much, and she retreated away, no longer buoyed on by new feelings of curious, tentative acceptance.
    Laura moves to the lizards at the front of the shop where it’s brighter and smells of straw and dry, yellow shit. “If people want a lizard, try to sell them the tank and the lamp. If they only want the lizard, put it in a box.” The owner had said to Laura on her first day. She’d wanted to ask whether it would be cruel for the lizards to be kept without the heat lamps, but questions made her lightheaded and there was something about the way the owner had spoken – fast and spittle filled – that told her what the answer would have been as soon as her mouth had formed the words. She imagined the lizards in pokey living rooms, their bodies taunted by an invisible, foreign dampness, the sun replaced by broken desk lamps with strips of tin foil stuck to them. She thought of the too small tanks, placed at first next to televisions, but then moved somewhere less distracting, before being put into garages and utility rooms when the smell of shit becomes too much for people eating dinner and watching soaps. Her heart had become leaden and hopeless as she’d realised she was to play a part in all of this.
    “Do you have a vivarium?” The owner asks the man, an unrestrained eagerness creeping through. Laura sometimes overhears the owner on the telephone. He speaks hurriedly in a foreign language she can’t understand, but she notices how his voice will rise in pitch and get faster throughout the call, the words whining and running into each other. Sometimes he’ll be outside the shop, talking on his cheap mobile and pacing a spiral on the pavement. When he gets to the centre he’ll stop and end the call, lighting a cigarette with a shaking hand. If he catches her watching him, he’ll give her an unyielding look that says ‘no’. She’ll go back to cleaning out the rabbits, only with more vigour than usual and being careful not to spill any food.
    She runs the cloth over the lizards’ tanks with a limp effort. Today’s a Wednesday but it could be any day. Time has become cold tea, sloshing around, trapped. She’s started to recognise people when she takes the train to the shop; there’s the man in the brown shoes and blackened, beige coat, who always seems to be sweating, and the girl with the hunched shoulders and red scarf. She worries that her life has stopped expanding and it’s now contracting back in on itself. There’ll be nothing new, just the same people and places, repeated endlessly. The only thing that might change is the order.
    Sometimes she thinks about staying on the train, letting it take her somewhere else. She tries to imagine a day in a new city, but all that comes to her is sore feet and deflation. It would probably be no different to those empty evenings spent alone on the internet, eating crisps and drinking red wine until her fingers turn a brittle powdery orange and her lips a bruised red.
    “Can I look at one of the bigger ones?” The man asks and the owner guides him over to the tank with the biggest lizard – the solid, muscular one that never seems to blink. Most of the lizards look forlorn and tired, but this one jumps and skitters around, head-butting the glass. Laura isn’t allowed to feed it. The owner says he wouldn’t be able to afford it if it bit her and she sued him. When the owner’s not around and the shop’s empty, she’ll jab her fingers at the tank and watch as the lizard charges and leaps, marvelling at its undiminished and instinctive need to fight and escape.
    “This one’s three-hundred pounds. Very rare.”
    “Hey fella.” The man says. Laura wanders away from the tanks to where she thinks might be the periphery of the scene and positions herself behind a carousel of dog collars. The man’s about five years older than her, but seems to be suffering from the unshakeable tiredness of someone much older. He hunches over and strokes the tank, moving his hand with a heavy slowness. As he straightens himself, his back moves uneven and ratchetting, as if he might get stuck before he’s fully upright. When he steps away, Laura can see the lizard at the front of the tank, its tail whipping the sand up into tiny orange clouds.
    “He’s got some energy. Can I hold him?” The man asks. The owner pauses and Laura imagines him weighing up the risk of the man being bitten against the necessity of making a sale.
    “Okay. I’ll get some gloves.” The owner goes to the stockroom and the man turns towards Laura with a weak, nervous grin. It’s maybe the embarrassed, awkward grin of someone being caught about to buy something frivolous, or perhaps it means something else. Laura smiles back, shrugging her shoulders without realising, as if she wants to apologise for something. There’s something about the men who buy lizards that makes her uneasy; a recognition that makes her uncomfortable, only the men buy lizards and she wants something else.
    “I’m . .&nbso;.” She says, waving the cloth towards the door, leaving the man to wait.
    She wipes the glass panels in the wooden door. Outside an old couple walk along, hunched forward against an imagined headwind, their arms interlinked. She watches them until they reach the end of the street and she feels as if it’s safe for her not to look any more. She goes back to cleaning the glass, being careful not to knock the peeling paint onto the floor. From behind her, there’s a twisting, injured groan and the clanking and ringing sound of cat collars falling to the floor. Then a pause of realisation and a light, frantic scratching.
    “Stop it.” The owner shouts, his voice fractured and sharp. Laura turns to see a flash of yellow dart across aisle. The flash stops and it’s the lizard.
    “Get it.” The owner shouts again. The man sits on the floor, holding his finger close to his face and inspecting it like a jeweller may consider a diamond. Laura realises the owner must mean her.
    “Here, here.” She whispers, bending forward towards the lizard. It moves again, this time towards the back of the shop and the fish tanks.
    “Corner it.” The owner orders and Laura moves forward, crouching and scanning the floor, but there’s no lizard or blur of yellow, nothing
    “Where is it?” The owner asks. Laura shrugs and stands upright, wrapping the cloth around her hand like a mitten.
    “Here.” The man shouts from the front of the shop. The owner runs over at the slow jogging pace that people use for running indoors.
    “Have you got it?”
    “I’m not touching that again.” The man says, holding his hand up to the owner, so that he can see the thin lines of red that trail and twist down his fingers and onto his hand. The owner points at Laura and waves towards the door.
    “Stop it if it comes to you.”
    Laura thinks of playing at netball at school and the way the taller girls would tell her to do things she didn’t understand or couldn’t do. Moving towards the door, she feels the same nervousness of unavoidable failure that would make her forge notes from her mother or feign illnesses, anything to avoid the caustic disapproval and the silent walks back to class. She lowers herself and bounces on her calves, trying to look ready, but not knowing what it is she’s supposed to do.
    “Get it.” The owner shouts and an ‘S’ of yellow comes towards Laura. It moves with the force and certainty of instinct; it knows this is it and what it has to do. The owner runs towards the lizard, this time as if he’s outside. Even when she sees how angry and desperate the owner looks, she knows she can’t stop the lizard, to do so would be impossible and might damage whatever balance or reason there is in the world. She jumps upwards as the lizard comes towards her, neither of them stopping or turning, both stuck in the primal inevitability that dictates the way things are. She doesn’t feel responsibility or thought as she reaches behind her for the door handle.
    “What the fuck?” The owner shouts.

    The door’s open and the lizard’s away, out into a different world of damp pavements, cold shadows and heavy feet. It charges forwards into the newness, its feet slipping on the pavement, itself unchanged and not stopping.

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