Reflection from a window of an old rotting house. In the distance, seen from a tunnel under a bridge. Tunnel. Bridge. A polluted stream swelling with rainwater. Aflame with oil amid the deluge.

What was “house”? Buildings lived as hills and mountains, resided in Botch as dim dull shapes. But a house burned buried in his head now. On and off and on. Botch shook his head to dislodge tunnel, bridge, house. But failed. Was not residue, but inside his body, at the heart.

Yet Nocturnalia receded in time. Night became flat and angular again. Receded the flush, the open nature of darkness. The air at dusk against Botch’s scales carried no heat. The green dried, flaked, fell away brittle.

Splash of that relief, Botch returned to his old ways, the ways of rollick slaughter and slaughterous rollick. Lurking under mud flats, swallowing ballast to sink into mire and muck, mottled-muted until only eyes protruded, gold-rimmed … and when some creature hopped or crawled or crept to the water’s edge—

Great and forever was the opening of Botch’s maw, the crunch between slick jaws the object of its desire, and every kind of creature he hoped would reside in the crux of that lethal architecture. In moan or squeak or scream; gullet-bound difference was heresy. Meaningless.

The fish grew languorous and mighty. Until one day he molted away the name of Botch, which had become nothing but echo and falter. Lay at the heart of the shed skin, enraptured and disguised.

Botch gave way to Behemoth. Loath to move, letting prey expend litheness into his jaws. That under the gloom of reeds and mud, beasts might enter that cathedral unaware. Months Behemoth might lie in wait. In a tunnel under a bridge. In the basement of a rotting shed filling with water.

The holding ponds receded under the spell of drought. Plain became desert. The ponds huddled melancholy next to the Company building, deeper and wider than before. But fewer in number. Behemoth would dive deep, stay deep, learned to hibernate for long months.

Learned the ping and the drift and ripple from the surface that meant food. Spread jaws to scrape the algae sides, moved up slow. Snapped shut in time. Snapped shut to capture time.

Yet still the door to the Company raised up and out came more live pretty, pretty alive, confused, and ready to be convinced of extinction. Pulsed at the crux, unaware. Amazed of movement, cured of movement.

Behemoth had fought much mightier beasts and won, faith and fated, shaped by scarring, a history of broken ribs, of fins turned misshapen like crooked oars, of a leer to the left side of the mouth caused by a claw ripping through and past. A great white pool of an eye, fissured in spirals, that yet could see.