‘Third Order Islands’

Photographer: Keith Edwards

Third Order Islands

“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

Although he had enjoyed his time in Professor Mendoza's Literature of Nihilism class back in undergrad, Jonah couldn't see himself writing a Metamorphosis, a Tartar Steppe or even a No Exit. His own fledgling style, gifted to him by his hygienic upbringing in Manhasset, favored bold protagonists of clear and noble ideals, romance, heroic last stands, and all those other venerable themes which he himself had not, and would never, encounter.

This did not deter Jonah. He was certain greatness awaited. After all, he'd worked hard on his manuscript, Cauldron of the Moon, a ninety-thousand-word yarn (perfectly lengthed for submission) about dragons crashing to Earth from its satellite, and he'd taken the runner-up spot in Gotham's Yearly Breakout Writer short form contest (good for $200) with a seven-pager about an old fish monger who died suddenly while setting up his stall at the Catania Market (he'd read about it in the paper). And if that wasn’t enough, the little shit got himself into Stony Brook.

It was his third of three choices (behind NYU and Columbia) and it meant abandoning his dream of living on Manhattan, the lifeblood of American culture.  Stony Brook’s campus was on the far side of Long Island, at Southampton, where only the Montauk train ran, and not on weekends. Like the other seaside hamlets that make up the Hamptons, Southampton was at least famous for its celestial beaches and prestigious resort scene; a veritable American paradise in the summertime. Jonah's classes started in September.

Like many Long Islanders, Jonah lacked a car but not an inheritance. He was thus restricted in his choice of housing to the beachfront rental his father had found (and paid for). A bohemian bachelor pad it was not but two stories of shanty, connected by a splinter-laden ladder, smelling of stale potpourri and lathered in a faded sail-boat themed wallpaper. Jonah’s new abode came with a mini-fridge, a two-burner stove, some wicker furniture (including a bookcase filled with manuals on surfing and water aerobics), a single standing shower separated from the kitchen by a plastic curtain covered in octopi decals, and a roommate.

My name is Honesto, he had said, meeting Jonah at the door in nothing but a towel from the waist down. Though not a large fry, our hero found himself looming a foot above his welcoming host. Honesto's pitch-black, concave nipples stared as if winking themselves out of a deep sleep at the far edges of his shiny, hairless chest. Jonah struggled to avert his gaze from the man's teats, uncertain if they meant him harm. Ernesto? he repeated, as if his roommate were mistaken of his own name.

No. Honesto, like I always tell the truth. The rest of my name is very long, he said, bouncing his 'the's as 'duh's and 'very' like 'berry'. Honesto Vincent Tawilis Divinagracia.

Jonah put out his hand to shake but began to worry when Honesto's firm, double-handed grip and rapid pulling motion threatened to loosen his towel. Is this your place, year-round?

No. I found it on Craigslist last month, Honesto explained, skipping 'found' across the lake of his tongue like 'bound'. The mermaids would not have been my idea.

Met with what he felt was the first hurdle of his burgeoning writing career, Jonah offered his new roommate a lie. I like it, he said. I hear Southampton is very remote—practically abandoned after the busy season. That's perfect for me.

The grad students spent their first evening together over a half pepperoni, half dried squid pizza from the only place in town that delivered after August. Jonah pretended otherwise, but it was impossible not to taste the fishy side, no matter which slice he took. Honesto gave him the layout of campus to which a bus ran twice a day—at breakfast and at dinner time. Generously, he even suggested a way to make back two percent of school tuition—the fitness center was looking for a desk monitor five days a week, from five o'clock until close at ten, though Jonah would have to walk home each night. Jonah didn’t need the money but itched for the chance to prove himself against the sleepy streets of Southampton. In all this, Honesto seemed a helpful, pleasant sort, but Jonah couldn’t picture him as a writer, as someone who might spend all day in his own mind, searching for the perfect way to phrase such-and-such a feeling or detail the inner workings of a grand design.

You are right, Honesto answered. I study at the school of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. My thesis is about the effect of climate change on phytoplankton.

Jonah had no idea what that meant but decided he didn’t care enough to ask. It was late and, feeling greatness approaching from the oncoming morning, Jonah decided to go to bed.

Being an understanding and enlightened school, the structure and curriculum of Stony Brook's Creative Writing MFA centered around the needs of its students. Those in want of inspiration were advised to take literature or film classes. Those hoping to improve their technical skills were pointed toward craft seminars. Jonah knew just what was best for him and put all his first semester's allotted credit hours toward the program's acclaimed novel workshop. It met twice a week (Mondays and Thursdays), from one to four in the afternoon, which gave Jonah just enough time to stuff his face with rice and beans or noodles with meatballs from the cafeteria's Sterno-blasted chafing dishes before reclining comfortably behind the fitness desk.

Still, an anxiety filled him when he printed his schedule. The workshop was led by none other than Dame Elizabeth Fringehead. Graduate of Oxford and King's College, editor-in-chief of The Times Literary Appendix, best-selling author of The Fortune of Fontainebleau, Beautiful Bartholomew's Day and For Their Own Good, and winner of either the 2004 or 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature (Jonah couldn't remember), Dame Fringehead walked into class late on her first day, strut to the whiteboard, and wrote her name in elegant, flowing cursive with an erasable neon-orange marker. With a thud, she dropped a stack of syllabi (twelve pages each) on Jonah’s creaky wooden desk and flicked her wrist, motioning him to pass them around. On the page marked “required reading” he rolled his eyes over a dozen entries, unable to recognize a single one.

I want you all to call me Birdie, Dame Fringehead announced. This is my class, and, in my class, we will treat each other like equals, except of course in matters of critique, attendance, grading and the conduction of class discussion. We will also do a little light reading, mostly from the classics. I expect several if not all of these works will be familiar to you but that does not excuse you from reading them again. If you flip to page five on your syllabus, you will see I have only a few rules. First, every student submits work on a bi-weekly basis, and revisions of previous submissions when called for. Also, there is absolutely no eating in this class—I find it distracting to the process. Since this is a cooperative workshop, we are all to be courteous and respectful of each other's work. Any and all genres are acceptable, but you should know, I've few good things to say about science-fiction and most fantasy is frivolous nonsense. Oh, and one last thing. I do hope we can have fun.

A bead of sweat trailed down the wrinkles of Jonah’s forehead as he eked his hand into the air. 

Yes, you have question.

When you say bi-weekly, what do you mean? Twice a week or every other week?
Bi-weekly means bi-weekly, said Birdie. Any other questions?

Only a few people came to the fitness center on Jonah’s first night—at six o’clock, a group of poetry instructors Jonah recognized from the faculty webpage, around seven, a hefty young man in a blue, NY Giants sweatshirt (still clung to by an XXL sticker) and, later, a little after nine, one of his classmates from Birdie's workshop. Her name was Alex. She did her long blond hair up in a bun, carried a Life Fuels smart bottle in a velcro pouch like a gun at her waist, and wore tight black leggings, a gray camouflage sports bra revealing the hint of a squiggly tattoo over her left breast, and a pair of spotless low top sneakers. She too wondered the meaning of “bi-weekly.”

Well, why didn't you back me up? Jonah asked, half in jest.
I guess I was just a little intimidated. She’s a very important writer. I've read all her books.

Really? You're into... Huguenots? Or is that just a thing people say?

Well... I don't know what you mean. Of course I've read them. They're great. She's the best. What about you? What are you into?

Honestly, I want to write fantasy, Jonah smiled. My manuscript is about how dragons are actually just the way ancient people manifested their fear of the natural world—the cosmos, volcanoes, shooting stars—you know? So, they crash into earth and come out through volcanoes. The humans try to hunt them down, because they're different, but all the dragons want to do is find a home.

Wow, how original! Sounds like you' might have a hard time with Birdie though. I heard her say she’s not a fan of fantasy.
Yeah, I heard that too. Was she for real? I mean, this is my story, this is what I'm about. I'm not going to change what I want to write just because someone else doesn't like it.

Famous last words, Alex laughed. But good for you.

Thanks. Jonah blushed. And you? What's your poison?

At this Alex, scrunched her face in surprise and slipped past Jonah, into the gymnasium, her space-age trainers squeaking on the polished polymer floor. Jonah thought her empty-headed but nevertheless glanced at her backside as she vanished from view. An hour later, when he locked up, he couldn't find her on any of the equipment or in the yoga room, nor had he seen her leave by the desk. Shrugging and tossing his backpack over his shoulders, he made his way, by streetlamp and star light, back to his apartment. Honesto was snoring softly on a small fold-out cot on the first floor, and Jonah, guessing that's how they decided who slept where, climbed the rickety ladder to the second where he promptly stripped to his underwear and collapsed on the bare, twin-sized mattress lying on the carpet of the shanty's attic alcove. There was a small circular window there, just beyond his legs, so he fell asleep staring down at the visage of the moon, casting its light upon the waters of the Long Island Sound between his toes.

Unsure of when his first submission was due, Jonah prepared his material the next morning. He proofread his first chapter twice and perfected its formatting—double-spaced, 12-point font, with eight-and-a-half-by-eleven margins and his name, the course abbreviation, page number and page count listed across every header. Then, in a flourish of pride for his selected genre, Jonah selected-all and swapped out Times New Roman for a distinctively thick, rune-like print he'd downloaded off onemillionfonts.com called “Breathe Fire.” Squiggly red underlines ran beneath his Tolkien-inspired proper names like tiny rivers of lava at the scorched edges of his lowercase letters.  Submit?  Click.

In class the next week, he sat beside Alex who flashed him a smile and a quaint hello. Birdie a fashionable five minutes late, arrived holding a copy of Jonah's manuscript above her head.

Okay everyone, she said, zooming toward the whiteboard, what did we think of Jonah's submission? Birdie looked at the cover page as if for the first time and spoke the title, Cauldron of the Moon. And remember, our job is to be helpful and respectful to the author.

The room quieted. The other students stared down at their own copies—some skimmed through the notes they'd written in the margins, others flipped through the pages, hoping to busy themselves with the appearance of attention. Alex raised her pencil, eraser end out.

Well, I liked it, she said, sending Jonah another smile. He felt a swift fluttering in his gut and his face warmed.

Birdie glanced about the room hoping for more. Remember all, this is an academic setting. Like it, don't like it, that’s not really important. What did the work say to you? How did you experience it?

Alex put her pencil down.

A second hand went up from the corner of Jonah's eye. Phoebe, sitting cross legged with a copy of Elements of Style and The Copyeditor's Handbook in front of her, took off her coffee-colored tortoiseshell glasses and stuck the right-side temple tip into the corresponding corner of her mouth. I found the font distracting, she said. A real publisher won’t let you use that typeface.

Birdie nodded. Yes, I guess I should have specified that in the syllabus. Please send all submissions in a serif font. Times New Roman is perfect. Good catch, Phoebe. Anything else?

Not bothering to raise his hand, Joachim, the tall young man in the plaid, blue shirt who sat across from Johan, spoke next. Take this with a grain of salt but the whole idea is a little, like, you know, done to death. Like, I don't know how much fantasy you've read but like I've read a lot, you know, like Robb Hobb, Anna Caffrey and Michael Swanwick's The Iron Daughter's Dragon. So like, dragons in volcanoes, okay, but what makes it interesting?

Joachim's head bobbed as he talked, causing the long black mane which flowed from the top of his dome to flop back and forth, covering and then revealing the shaved sides of his head. Jonah watched the bejeweled piercing in the boy’s nose as it heaved and fell with the flaring of his nostrils.

Okay, yes, there is the element of retread to be considered, especially with a work of fantasy, said Birdie, grinding her teeth at the close of her sentence.

At this, Jonah raised his hand. Birdie shot him a damning glance.

It says on page nine of the syllabus that authors are not to speak while their work is being critiqued, she said. The author’s privilege is just to sit quietly, relax and enjoy the conversation.

Jonah slid his hand down to his waist.

The last student was an elder gentleman who sported a gray speckled goatee and classic rectangle shades. He reminded Jonah of his pediatrician. Before speaking, the man cleared his throat, habitually. His name was Nathaniel James, he said. He had two teenage daughters, he said. He took the ferry from his home in Connecticut to get to class every week, he said. He'd never written a book before, he said. He was not a pediatrician but an anesthesiologist, he said. No one had asked.

His voice was deep, palliative. I've not read very much of fantasy, he said after clearing his throat again, but if dragons rode on meteors from the moon, wouldn't that make them aliens? And if they are aliens, wouldn’t they have advanced technology, like laser beams or shrink rays?

Jonah's hand shot up even faster than before. Birdie's glance was doubly agitated but, after a moment, she squinted and gave him the floor.

The idea is that they're impervious to the emptiness of space. They don't ride on the meteors—they are the meteors.

So, Nathaniel continued, if the dragons are the meteors, then what are meteors?

They're dragons. It's a fantasy story.

Can I just say, said Phoebe, looking into her notes, that I too was confused by this? Technically, meteors are small particles from comets that vaporize in Earth's atmosphere—I looked it up; they are very common. An asteroid—and that's the word you really want, asteroid—about the size of the one in your story would be fatal to anything on or around it when it made impact. Stephen Christianson, the director of Near-Earth Object Studies at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says that an asteroid just fifty feet long, like the size of one of these dragons, would have the energy of one hundred megatons of dynamite. That's twice the size of the most powerful nuclear weapon ever made.

A gap of silence filled the classroom. Jonah filled it most eloquently with a protracted ummm... followed by, so? It's fantasy. I'm just using my imagination.

Imagination is fine and all, Birdie cut in, but the work still needs to feel plausible to the reader. Enough of that now. Authors remember this is your privilege. Just try to sit quietly and enjoy what’s being said.

Jonah saw Alex at the fitness center later and promptly thanked her for the sincere, if brief, support.

That seemed pretty rough to me, she said. I hope you didn't take it personally.

I'm a big boy, I'll be okay. It was a bit harsh though, right? Have you done a lot of workshops before? Are they always like that?

Oh plenty, Alex said. Some of them are like this but some of them aren't. Some are way worse, but some are much better.

Jonah found himself wanting to change the subject. So, when do we get to read your stuff? I'm looking forward to it. You never told me what your manuscript was about.

I guess it's about a lot of things, said Alex. I've been working on it for, well, it feels like years now. If I had to sum it up, I'd say it's about that feeling you get when you're talking to someone and you realize you aren't like them at all, even if they think you are, in fact you're so other that you're practically a different species. Do you know that feeling?

Jonah had stopped listening, preferring Alex’s otherworldly beauty to her words. He blurted out what came naturally. A stupid joke. Maybe you crashed landed from the moon.

Alex smiled on only half of her face and gave a short, solitary nod, so Jonah, feeling it is role to continue their banter, followed with the only idea he had left. He asked her out on a date. Some place in town, some night next week?

Okay, but only if we don't talk about writing class, she said.

Really? Why not?

There’s more to the world than writing, don’t you think?

I guess it can get a little exhausting.

Again, she smiled.

Jonah walked home that night and found Honesto in another unbreakable slumber on the sofa. In bed, he thought of Alex—her pretty face, tight physique and, as he remembered it, literary support. Feeling uncomfortable with his new environment, he burgeoningly decided not to abuse himself.

In the morning, after devouring the Captain Crunch he'd poured into a large bowl painted in the guise of a mermaid's brazier, Jonah went over the critiques he'd collected from his first workshop. The premise is like, too recognizable—relies heavily on cliché—first chapter could use less summary—that's not how you spell 'tectonic'—who are the good guys, the dragons or the humans?—Is this really a story worth telling? Jonah sighed. What does everyone have against dragons?

Dragons? Honesto popped his head up from the sofa where he sat, face-deep in, what was to Jonah an undecipherable anthology of marine studies.

Sorry Honesto, I didn't mean to bother you. Just thinking about my manuscript.

No, no bother. Your story is about dragons? Why dragons?

Because they're amazing! My story is about how they just want to live peacefully in their volcanoes, but people just won’t leave them alone.

Dragons don't live in volcanoes, Honesto said, busting Jonah's 'v' into 'ballcanoes'.

Yeah, I know, but it's just a fantasy story.

Oh, okay. Just a fantasy. Honesto ducked back into his studies.

What about you, what are you working on?

Algae, he said.

Algae? That seems kind of boring. Why Algae?

Because without them, we would all die.

Having no idea how to respond, Jonah left the matter where it lay. He turned his focus instead to the submissions of his fellow students. Nathaniel, the anesthesiologist with the voice to match, was working on a family yarn; three generations of Virginians, a sharecropper, an autoworker and a federal judge, in that order, each with their own respective 20th century struggles. Jonah thought it slow and plainly written but otherwise innocuous, what he imagined Faulkner’s books were like, though he'd never read one. Phoebe's writing was erratic; a slew of flashbacks and present-tense monologue from a character who, despite knowing better, Jonah couldn't help picturing as the author. The complaints were too ripe and numerous to be entirely fictional; an overbearing mother, an absent father—maybe dead, hard to tell—a long line of shitty boyfriends who all cheated on her, and of course the intricate dramas of glee club, theater camp and debate team, as Phoebe's protagonist had yet to turn seventeen.

But it was the last submission that bothered Jonah most. Joachim's manuscript curled his toes and sullied his armpits; a re-imagining of late 19th century London with Jack the Ripper, not as a sadist murdering John, but a calculating rival prostitute, or, as the narrator put it again and again: a lady of the night. Jonah couldn't track the tone of the young man's work—at times saturated in offensive tropes (golden-hearted whores, gypsy street gangs, a troop of midget carnies) and gore porn (long-winded descriptions of women's mangled corpses, excrement, and Victorian era poxes) and at others an unironic pseudo-feminist manifesto, complete with second-person diatribes which shook the finger at readers for carrying on in the face of such filth. Either way, Jonah wanted nothing to do with it. And Alex? He still had nothing from her. It had been two weeks—they'd met four times already. Whatever bi-weekly meant, surely her work was due?

When Jonah returned for his fifth class, an audible sigh filled the room. Dragons, still?

Well, yes, dragons. I'm open to new ideas but this is a story about dragons.

That doesn't sound like you're open to new ideas said Birdie. I think it may be time for you to come out of your shell. Does anyone have suggestions for a radical change to Jonah’s work?

Nathaniel cleared his voice and let loose his tranquilizing tenor. What about whales? Whales are real. And your name is Jonah. Jonah was swallowed by a whale.

Are you serious? You want me to change my story about dragons to a story about whales?

I think we're past the point of author interference now, said Birdie.

There's something to that actually, said Joachim, bobbing his head feathers. Dragons and fantasy have been done to death but what about a bleak story about whales, maybe something existential or nihilistic—they’re all dying anyway, right? I mean, take this with a grain of salt but I think writers write best when they write what they know. And your name is Jonah so like, I think readers would be more interested in reading a story like that from you.

I don't know anything about whales, said Jonah.

Phoebe looked up from her phone, raised her hand above her head and waited to be called on. Actually, it wasn't a whale. In the original Hebrew, Jonah 2:1 says dag gadol. That means ‘great fish.’

A fish then, said Birdie. Jonah, take this as a writing assignment. I want you to start a secondary draft of your manuscript. This time around, take a different approach, perhaps darker, with more symbolism, and add a great big fish. Okay, who's next?

Jonah looked to Alex who'd since clammed up. She flashed her signature smile and single nod before swapping his manuscript for Nathaniel's. To Jonah's surprise, the uninspired tale was a hit.

The style of this draft is so crisp and smooth. The pacing flows really well too, said Joachim, sparing his salt. It feels like you're in your element, like you have the authority to tell this story.

Phoebe raised her hand again. I agree. A lot of the details—like how World War II impacted car manufacturing because the factories switched to making tanks—were spot on. It felt like you really knew what you were writing about.

Alex said she thought it was interesting.

Nathaniel smiled and dipped his chin into his chest as if he were going to take a nap. 

Jonah, anything to add? asked Birdie.

Oh. Yeah. No. I agree with all of that.

Birdie sneered at this paltry participation but said nothing more.

To Jonah's relief, his peers were more critical of Phoebe’s work.

You may be spending a little too much time in your protagonist's head, said Joachim. Like, again, take this with a grain of salt, but the protagonist here is a woman who complains a lot and lets men make decisions for her. That seems pretty tropey.  I know a lot of women who aren't like that and would feel offended reading this.

Where is her father? asked Nathaniel. Why does she keep getting into relationships with these good-for-nothing boys? Reading this draft, I just wanted to give the main character a big ol' hug.

Alex said she liked it but that the other students made good points too.

I wasn't sure of the theme the draft was invoking—like, what important point is here that needs telling? Jonah asked, remembering something that had been written on his own feedback.

Well, I don't know if we should worry about that yet, said Birdie. This is only the first chapter. Big questions like that can be revealed later on.

Jonah dropped his head back behind his shoulders. Joachim's story was next, and Jonah wasn't sure if he had a lot to say about it or absolutely fucking nothing.

Alex spoke first. I felt afraid reading this, she said.

It is quite a frightening read, isn’t it? Birdie asked. Very evocative, expressive.

I was also scared but not in a good way, Jonah added. This submission made me somewhat nervous, as in, should we be, you know, concerned?

Nervous, good, concerned, yes, Birdie continued. The new take on a familiar legend makes the reader uncomfortable: what do we really know about Jack the Ripper? Could it have been a woman? What would that imply? We're not sure what to think—that's key to building suspense.

Joachim gave a firm nod, tossing his shadowy plumage back and forth.

Jonah looked over to Alex and found she'd given up her rebuttal. Instead, she was doodling something in her notebook. Her pen strokes were too wide for note taking but, even as he leaned closer, he could not make out what she was drawing. Birdie broke his attention. Going forward, she said, I want to see revisions from Jonah and Phoebe and next chapters from Joachim and Nathaniel. Give us new material. After all, you came here to write, not lie around on the beach!

Sitting at his post behind the fitness desk, Jonah felt defeated. Whales, he said to himself. Big fish. He opened his laptop and swirled his mouse over a blank Word document. The little arrow, straight and true, blurred as he hurled it from side to side. Behind it, the text cursor remained stoic; a blinking, immovable wall at the top of the page. Whales, he said again. Big fish. Jonah closed the document and opened his email.

Dear Professor Mendoza, 

I hope the new semester is treating you well. I am here at Stony Brook, missing your guidance. I have a question and it may sound strange. Do you think it's possible that some of Kafka's novels were based on real life? I'm asking because I think I may be stuck in a bad, absurdist story. My workshop professor seems to hate anything I do for no reason. The other students don't look or sound like real people; the things they say are total clichés. None of them seem to empathize with my vision. It's like they all want me to be something I'm not. I don't mean to sound disparaging. Maybe I am going a little stir crazy. Southampton is very remote—practically abandoned after the busy season. But I can't leave.  I want to become a great writer. Common sense says I should listen to people who have more experience than I do. My instinct tells me something is wrong.  What should I do?
Sincerely,
Jonah

On the evening of his date with Alex, Jonah neglected his manuscript. Instead, he shaved, showered, dressed, undressed and redressed, put on deodorant and cologne, combed his hair into an even part, popped a pimple on his chin, plucked his nose hair and talked to himself in the mirror until he’d perfected the timing on each of his three rehearsed jokes. I'm going out with a girl tonight, he told Honesto. Do you know any good places in town?

No, no good places. The cafeteria on campus is not so bad. They have calamari on Fridays.

Jonah squeezed out a smile to hide his disgust. Thanks, but I'm not going to take her back to school. I guess we'll go to that pizza place. 

Alex appeared at his door soon after. Odd, he thought, as she still wore her workout gear—leggings, sports bra and immaculate sneakers. I'm not hungry yet, she said. Let’s go for a run instead. Jonah, having worn his best fitting dress shirt and slacks, shook his head and ran his hair through his hair, ruining the part. You're… not hungry?

Not yet, she repeated. Besides, there's a full moon out. Like in your story!

With that, Alex set off jogging. Desperate not to spoil their date before it began, Jonah pulled the door shut and made after her, finding it impossible to keep up. Alex's form was flawless—she kept her arms bent at her waist in sharp, right angles, gliding as effortlessly as a school of fish through an ocean current. She stood erect, shoulders under her ears, kept her head up to the sky, and her feet low to the ground, never bouncing frivolously or wasting a single breath in exertion. Jonah struggled to keep her butt in his eye-line as he sprinted haphazardly behind her, awkward in his own body. As she approached the beach, Alex paused to take off her socks and shoes. Do you like running?

Jonah huffed and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Can’t say I do it much.

That's too bad. It's good for you, and then she darted toward the water.

Am I supposed to be chasing you? Jonah cried out.

Do what you want! she called back.

Fuck it, he said, and rolled up his sleeves, chucked his shoes and socks in the grass and ran after her. Alex was easy to find close to the water; the moon's rays cast down on her like a spotlight. By the time he caught up, Jonah could hardly breathe.

The moon, he huffed, pointing as if it were some sudden, foreign phenomenon. It's beautiful.

Yes, it is, she said.

I think you’re beautiful, too.

Thank you.
Say listen. Do you really think I should change my dragons to big fish?

Alex pushed her face into Jonah's and clasped his mouth closed with her lips. A kiss? A kiss! By the time Jonah found the wherewithal to kiss back, she had finished. No talking about class, remember? There are more important things you could be doing.

But don't you want my opinion on your—this time Jonah discovered Alex's tongue curling under the roof of his mouth. Before he could speak again, Alex had unzipped the front of her bra and shimmied out of her leggings. Jonah squeezed and sucked on her left breast—the squiggly tattoo above it, an octopus, bulged in his face. Alex invited him to do what he liked first, or rather, what he had learned from years of watching porn—a rudimentary bump and grind that permitted the avoidance of eye contact. After, as they lay naked in the cooling sand beneath the stars, the impetus to talk returned to him. Rather than be subjected to it, Alex straddled him and stuck her fist in his mouth. The salty taste overwhelmed Jonah and he found himself swallowing what must have been a flood his own overeager saliva. Her thighs wrapped so tightly around his waist that Jonah thought he might suffocate. This she needed to do for no more than three or four minutes. Jonah finished again and dropped, still and cold, like a beached humpback.

When the sun licked his face in the morning, he was alone, lying in the sand. Jonah dressed slowly and nursed his sore muscles on the walk back to his apartment. There, on the sofa, he found Honesto with two laptops and four open textbooks, tracing climate models from NOAA and pumping the numbers onto a steadily rising bar graph, oblivious of his roommate’s excursion.

I'll change it, Jonah said. It'll be different now but still a fantasy. Still my story.

Your fantasy story? Honesto didn't look up from his reading.

I'll also have to change the part about volcanoes though. Dragons sure, but no one will believe me if I say fish live in volcanoes.

Sea robins live in volcanoes. So do anglerfish and cusk eels. Lots of fish live in volcanoes. 

What's a sea robin? What are you talking about—how do you know this?

Because I live in a volcano, Honesto said, severing his pressing attention.

Jonah's eyes drifted around their shared, mermaid-riddled shack. He held out his arms as if to present it as evidence. I don't get it. This is no volcano.

No, my home in the Philippines is a volcano. Bulkang Taal on Luzon Island. They call it a third order island—that is an island with a lake with an island with a lake with an island. All these lakes and islands are in a volcano and in that volcano, there are many fish.

You're shitting me.

No, I'm not shitting. I am working.

Why didn't you tell me you came from a volcano?

Because I did not think you would care. There are no dragons there.

The following week was frigid cold—Jonah had to wear his coat just lying in bed. He read the submissions of his classmates and again, found them wanting. Nathaniel's draft meandered on, with sentences like working in the court room was hard work but not as hard as the work of working in the factory which was itself not as hard as the work of working in the tobacco fields. Phoebe's submission, which her classmates decisively agreed needed clarification, increased narrative distance, and a rework of potential stereotypes, was exactly the same. Jonah opened both drafts on his laptop and compared them, side by side. Not a paragraph had been altered, a sentence added, nor a comma removed. And Joachim's piece? Jonah knew to eat after reading Joachim's piece.

Rough, he thought to himself, before sending off his own draft, complete with Times New Roman font, more scenes and a clearer thematic purpose. He spent nearly every waking moment of the week rewriting the text around its new focus: big fish and their struggle to get by in a society dominated by humans. If being flexible and taking advice was the key to good writing, he was damn sure going to prove himself capable.  Mostly, Jonah just wanted to see Alex again. He still hadn't received her draft. Or had he? It was nearly November. How could she have delayed for so long? Jonah felt a curious itch on the back of his scalp as he pondered this mystery and, upon scratching it, found a sharp protrusion which left blood on his finger. It tasted salty. Must have cut myself on a shell or a rock or something, he thought, grinning from ear to ear as he remembered his sandy tussle with Alex.

Feeling a rush of chilling excitement in his veins, Jonah arrived early to class and waited for the others. Nathaniel came in with Phoebe in the midst of a conversation—she chuckled; he yawned. Joachim was next, the greasy, black mud flap on his head bobbing as he walked. By routine, Dame Fringehead ran another five minutes late. But the seat beside Jonah remained empty. No Alex.

Let's start with Joachim, said Birdie. What did everyone think of this week's Jackie Rips London? Nathaniel closed his eyes, pretending to sleep. Phoebe started writing a note that never seemed to end. Birdie looked to Jonah. Her brows furrowed. Jonah took a deep breath.

I'm not sure this story is saying what it's trying to say.

What do you think it’s trying to say? Joachim asked.

Jonah looked to Birdie and held out his hand in protest.

That's a good question, she said. Do stories really speak or is it the reader who speaks to the story, seeing what they expect to see, hearing what they expect to hear?

Jonah huffed, the air feeling heavy in his lungs. I don't know. It's just... I don't think empowering women means making them just as bad as men. To take a male serial killer and just make it a woman… I don't think that's feminism.

Why not? Women can murder just as well as men, Joachim added. Why shouldn't society see female killers as every bit as capable as male killers?

This time Jonah stuck out both hands and bucked his head bucked for attention.  Birdie did not seem to notice.

Because killing is bad? Jonah continued.

Well, I am a woman, said Birdie at last, a very accomplished woman and a writer, and as a very accomplished woman writer, I found the story quite liberating.

. Jonah put his hands down. Never mind, he said. The story is great as is. A perfect story.

Well, no, it's not perfect, said Birdie. Nothing is perfect. That's why we're in workshop.

Jonah understood he couldn't be right even at being wrong.

Nathaniel's story was next. Phoebe raised her hand, but no sooner did she begin to weep, speckling her tortoiseshell glasses with tears and steamy breath. It’s such a beautiful story, she said. I wish my mother was like the mother in your manuscript.

I mean, it’s like the reader becomes the characters, said Joachim. Incredible.

Yes, added Birdie, there is a great depth to Untitled. One almost forgets how well it's written. Such an approachable style. Writing like this makes what we do look easy.

Like a beast with three heads atop one body, Joachim, Phoebe and Birdie glared at Jonah, daring him to disagree. Unambiguous characters, he said. Very… legible.

Nathaniel let out a long yawn of thanks.

And what of Phoebe's draft, Fractured, Shattered, and Broken?

Much better, said Joachim. Like, take this with a grain of salt, but the last draft had way too much interiority whereas this one is like, much different.

What is that old saying, Nathaniel added, show, don't tell?

Yes, that is a good point, said Birdie. There's something about this version that seems to say: this is my story; this is what I'm about. It's a powerful message and I respect it.

Baffled, Jonah scanned through both copies of Phoebe’s draft as fast as he could. The opening line, the next paragraph, the following page, the last page, the character names, the setting, the time period, the header, the page number, the title, the font, even the due date in the top left-hand corner was the same.

Jonah, do you have something to say? asked Birdie.

No. Nothing.

Another grimace. You just want to get to yours, don’t you? You know there are other people in this workshop, and they expect your help too. Fine, let's move on. What did everyone think of Jonah's draft and its new title, Conversion of the Fishmen?

A pause took over the room, from which Jonah imagined that a clap or a cheer might emerge before Joachim said, take this with a grain of salt but it felt like all you did was control-H the dragons with fish. So, like, it still leans heavily on tropes and stuff, but now for giant fish people instead of dragons. Also, the main character does this thing where he says the same phrase over and over and like, I don't know if you know he's doing it, but it's annoying.

I know he's doing it, Jonah said. It's called a motif.

It's annoying.

Phoebe raised her hand and began chewing furiously on the stem of her glasses. There are some problems with the tenses and punctuation, she said. It seemed like, when the giant fish people were in the ocean, the narration was in past tense, but when they transformed into humans, it switched to present tense. I think you should pick one or the other because it felt unrealistic to have both.

Nathaniel rose his head from his elbow and pried the crystals from his eyes. Is there water in a volcano? he asked. How do fish breathe on land?

It sounds like there are more big changes to make, said Birdie. But that's okay. Writing is all about transformation. Change the tense, change the plot, change the author, change change change!

Change the author?  Jonah left as soon as he could and trudged to the cafeteria. Perhaps it was the unfulfilling response to his hard work which spurred his appetite, as he ransacked the buffet in a fitful fury. Particularly luring to his palette was the seafood, which he scooped generously onto his tray. Tuna salad, fried clams, lox from the bagel tray, he even scraped the insides of the calamari tray and devoured every rubbery tentacle he could find. Later, he awaited Alex at the fitness desk, yearning for her with a similar hunger. He thought back to their time on the beach; her perfect form drifting over the sand, the swishing movements of her legs, her strong, strangling limbs and the salty taste of her secretion. He wanted to whisk her into the gymnasium shower or make love again in sight of the sea.

But when nine o'clock arrived, Alex did not arrive with it. He searched the gym, thinking she might have slipped through while he took his bathroom break. It was empty. He looked for an email in his inbox, but she had sent nothing. In its place, he found a letter from Professor Mendoza.

Dear Jonah,

To be a writer, I think, has always been a contradiction. One must listen in order to understand life's mysteries. The writer should be selfless and silent. But in the act, the writer demands to be heard.  Writing is loud and selfish. I believe Kafka hoped, by exposing this struggle, to resolve its absurdity. What is worthy of being said? What taboos deserve elevating, what assumptions ought to be destroyed, which experiences explored, and which pains shared? Maybe the writer has nothing to say and maybe that itself is worth saying? Although he was not one of the absurdists, in answering your email I find myself thinking of Melville. In Moby Dick, he asked: “Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it.”

To answer your question more directly, yes, it could be that you're experiencing the kind of dread the absurdists wrote about. Or it could be that what you're experiencing is entirely normal—that you are simply perceiving it as absurd. Are your classmates really clichés or does seeing them that way make it easier to dismiss them? Might they think the same of you? I don’t know. Perhaps the suggestions of your peers are more valid than you'd like to admit. But remember, how much you choose to change is always up to you.

Best of luck on your current voyage,
John Dory Mendoza

Jonah walked home and threw water in his face. He was too exhausted to read, to make revisions, or to touch himself. Instead, he rolled into bed and mumbled. I give up. It’s me, okay, fine. I'm the strange one. So I’ll change. I'll do whatever it takes to be great.

The next morning, Jonah had scales. The abrasion which he'd felt on the back of his head only days earlier had spread across his skull—the end of an occasional hair poking through between slimy gaps. More scales breached from his shoulders; pauldrons of shiny green and white rhomboidal dentin which pricked his human hands as he touched them. Jonah threw off his shirt and underwear and found prickly, serrated edges where his chest hair had been, thick enamel over his legs and the wavy strands of a blue dorsal fin growing out of his spine. His dick, while free of scales, hung bloated and blue at twice its normal length with the growth of four sharp hooks protruding from the underside, ancient and cruel weapons with which to trap and fertilize his mates. Jonah ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The encroachment had yet to alter his boyish face—his lone mammalian expression, utterly terrified, looked woefully out of place on a body consumed by chum.

Stumbling into the living room, Jonah grabbed Honesto, still asleep on the bamboo sofa, and shook him. Honesto, Honesto, wake up. Look at me! I'm a monster!

Honesto rolled over to face the wall. No, not a monster. A shitty roommate. Let me sleep.

I'm serious, Jonah cried. I'm growing scales!

No, no more of your fantasies, said Honesto, cupping his face in his hands. I have real work to do fixing real problems in the world, so leave me alone.

Yes, that's exactly it. You're a marine biologist. You know all about sea life. Well, I'm right here—your greatest discovery, just look at me!

Honesto pulled his blanket over his head. You writers are terrible people, he said. Don't you know not everything is about you!?

Defeated and distraught, Jonah slipped back into his shirt, carefully stuffed the dangling, prickly anchors of his genitals into the left pant leg of his khakis, and ran outside, looking for anyone who could see him. But Southampton is very remote, practically abandoned after the busy season. It was too early to take the bus, so Jonah ran to campus.  His arms and legs shimmied in perfect unison like fins paddling the ocean’s depths. His lungs, unable to keep up with the pacing of his heart, reached into his neck and burst the skin in bloody slits which gasped and heaved with a predator's zeal. Bursting through doors, he came upon his workshop classroom. The bi-week had not come yet, whatever that meant, but nevertheless Jonah found his classmates sitting, waiting for him.

You’re late, said Dame Fringehead, standing by the whiteboard. Jonah, confused, tried to blink away the sight but his eyelids were missing. Joachim nodded. Phoebe smiled. Nathaniel slept. Jonah took his seat. Again, no Alex.

Okay, what did we think about Nathaniel's draft this week?

Joachim had a forty-eight-ounce box of Morton Kosher Salt on his desk and was scooping spoonsful of it into his mouth. As always, he spoke first. Like, we should write to Columbia University and ask them to consider it for the Pulitzer Prize.

Totally agreed, said Phoebe, breaking off the temples of her glasses, crunching, chewing, and swallowing them whole. When I showed it to my mom, she told me she loved me for the first time in ten years. Then she sent it to my dad, and he promised to come home for Christmas.

Yes, a very moving piece, said Birdie. Jonah, do you have anything to add?

Jonah looked at Nathaniel whose eyes were clearly shut, his face tilted down on his chest. With his lateral line system still in development, Jonah could feel the shallow wake of airborne vibrations coming from his classmate and, with his advancing chemoreceptors, smell the cells collapsing in his brain. Nathaniel was not sleeping. Nathaniel was dead. Jonah's stomach rumbled.

I think Nathaniel is gone, he said. He's not breathing.

Oh, how fitting for him, said Birdie, not to be appreciated in his own lifetime. 

Jonah moved closer to his fallen compatriot, incited by the pungent odor of his flesh. Reaching forth with his scabrous limbs, Jonah pulled at the dead man's hand, stuck a finger into his mouth and savored its delicious bitterness. Nathaniel was a far better lunch than he was a writer, Jonah thought.

Hey now, we can't have that, said Birdie.

Jonah, suddenly aware of himself, dropped a half-eaten knuckle from his teeth.

Please remember the rules as they're written in the syllabus. There is absolutely no eating in this class—I find it distracting to the process.

Joachim threw down his spoon and Phoebe took one last gulp before sticking a saliva-ridden monocle in her eye. Where's Alex? Jonah asked. 

Who's Alex?

The other student. She has blond hair. Doesn't say much. Her manuscript was about… I don't remember what it was about.

I have no idea what you’re talking about, said Birdie. One last think before we go. I think all of us ought to congratulate Jonah. He has clearly embraced our transformative suggestions.

Though he'd made no attempts to hide his pelagic growths, Jonah suddenly felt revealed.

Birdie, reading the shock on his face, held out her hand, assuring good will. A change like this can be scary, she said, but I think all of us noted in our feedback this week the positive impact it's had on your writing. Putting the story before the self is a brave and difficult thing to do, but the work is always better for it. Kudos to you!

The workshop's surviving members offered scattered applause.

Jonah skipped his responsibilities at the fitness desk that evening, much to the disappointment of his manager. Instead, in a mad daze to find Alex, he darted back to the beach. There he did not find her, only a wide, flat spot in the sand where they had spawned. He recalled her inviting suction cups and the intoxicating spray of her ink sack. She hadn't eaten him—he was lucky in that regard. As Jonah stood in contemplation, watching night fall, his husk continued to grow. Three razor-sharp spikes split from the seams of his pants and stuck out on either side of his legs. One punctured a small piece of folded paper from his pocket, holding it out to him as if it were a gift. Inside was Alex’s drawing—a mighty dragon, wings outstretched, claws long, head held high in pride, with the curves of the cratered moon behind it. Jonah looked down at his body and felt the flaky shell of his new self invading from every corner. If he squinted hard enough—using his imagination—he could picture his skin, not covered in fish scales, but in dragon scales and his fins not as fins but as wings. Like that, he might fly up to the cosmos and become a shooting star. But with his own eyes he could see the heavens were impossibly far away and the sea, only a few steps. The water felt warm, the air cold. Between them, shining across the waves, sat the moon's reflection.

Jonah shrugged his slimy shoulders. Close enough.

There was more he'd hoped to say, but in that moment, nothing in particular came to mind.

Noah Goldsher is a Professor of English, currently teaching at Quinnipiac University, and a graduate of Emerson College's MFA program in fiction and creative writing. His work has been published in the Raw Art Review (2020) and Noctua Review (2021), Southern Connecticut State University's Graduate Literary Journal. In 2019 he won first place at Emerson's Graduate Student Awards for short fiction. He likes cats, hiking, political debate, kosher dill pickles, and Dungeons and Dragons.