BooksBarbecue
Back The Octopus and I
Chapters (19)
  1. COVER PAGE
  2. PRAISE
  3. TITLE PAGE
  4. COPYRIGHT PAGE
  5. DEDICATION
  6. CONTENTS
  7. ONE
  8. CROSSING ISTHMUS
  9. THE OCTOPUS INCIDENT
  10. TWO
  11. A SEAL’S TAKE
  12. THE MULTI-COLOURED KNITTED KNOCKERS
  13. NO BIRD IS ONLY AN I
  14. THREE
  15. I AM SHE
  16. SPUN AIR
  17. THE OCTOPUS AND I
  18. NOTES AND REFERENCES
  19. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I find the urchin again and float above it and know it is spiny is spiky is poisonous. I need a rock to flip it with and I jet and twirl and the surface dips closer and threads of starlight shimmer and curl and I am slippery am sleek am she, and I trace my arms along the sand and scatter tiny fish and lice as my arms unfurl searching searching searching and over there—what is it?

It is a he like me and he is jetting is rippling is dancing towards me, and I taste he is ready is wanting and I taste on his eddies that he senses me as she—as pulsing as purring, as she—and I coil and curl and then I unfurl and he dances he dances, he spirals and twirls and his arms curl and unfurl. He brushes me touches me and I coil and swirl and slowly unfurl and his arms touch me and taste me, trace over me, under me, and one arm dips into me, slips into me, and I feel my body clamp around it clamp onto it and I feel it pulse pulse pulse. We are still, and I feel it pulse pulse pulse.

And it is enough now, I have had enough now, and I coil up and jet off and drag him knock him from me and he jets away jets away jets away and is gone.

The world sighs slowly as currents swirl about me and I taste us, taste she and he and something sweet and nutty, and I jet back and on the sand is the urchin and he must have knocked into it swept it flipped it over!

I dip my arm into its mouth and curl a wedge of flesh out and crush it to my beak and it is sweet is nutty is spongy is bliss and my body is brimming is pulsing is purring.

SPUN AIR

SPUN AIR

Lucy is out and about in Hobart with Kat and her mate Shani. They’re in a pub Lucy has never visited, maybe because she never really goes drinking in Hobart, but probably more because she feels, deep down, that she’s a bit too prissy to visit a place like this without the right kind of company. The people here are real, and scruffy in that urban fuck-the-man way that Lucy can never quite pull off. Despite the fact they’re worn and filthy, her Blundstone boots feel contrived. Her newly finished tattoo stings when her merino brushes against it. There’s a part of her that’s tempted to lift her top and flash her octopuses about; to show people that she’s badass too.