Nobody talks about piranhas anymore. I don’t know why they’ve been forgotten. Used to be all the rage when I was young. Boys mulling around the backs of sheds, smoking, hands deep in pockets tugging at testicles, talking about the insane things that piranhas could do to you. We were all petrified. Afraid to dip our toes into any river, lake, or pond, even though we knew, deep down, that there were none, no chance, were miles away in the Amazon or someplace, chewing on the flesh of some native who happened to be out fishing, some unfortunate casting his net wide and slipping over the side of the boat, a vessel he probably built with his own blistered hands.  007 villains, they used to have them, didn’t they? Long time ago, those days of gullibility, when I was sure things would always work out. I can’t even remember the villains’ names. Scaramanga? Was that an arch-nemesis or some town in Argentina I once visited on sabbatical? And there was some kind of trap door, so that if Bond wasn’t cooperating with his interrogator the hatch opened. Or maybe it was a shark. I can’t remember exactly. My head’s frazzled, after all that’s gone on recently. After all that I’ve done.

My kids say nothing about piranhas. Maybe they don’t even know what they are. They know about sharks though. I’ve heard Toby on the subject. He said that you can swim with sharks quite freely, they won’t bother you. The secret is getting your heart-rate down so low that they can’t hear you in the water, can’t feel the vibrations. But who could get their heart-rate low with a shark about? It was a sort of conundrum, Toby said, though he had a problem pronouncing it. Mandy said: sharks have no ears, so then how can sharks hear, dumb-ass? Mandy gets her stock of slang ‘n swears from American shows. So does her mother. But Toby was adamant, said that he seen it on TV, and after that you have no comeback.

I got fired from my job. Caught fucking a student. I won’t go into the details, even though that’s all you probably want from this kind of story, how on earth a balding cunt got to be fucking a hot seventeen-year-old. Even my word choice, fucking, instead of a soft seeing or dating, got you hooked. And of course seventeen and hot. Lurid. That’s the way it is with people. Lou Reed (at least I think it was Lou Reed) said the same thing, he was giving an interview and turned on the guy saying that he didn’t care about the music, that he was only interested in the size of his cock. That’s all any reporter really wants to know about a male rock star at the end of his journo day, cock size, length and girth. Whether you are the street poet of New York City (or used to be) well, that doesn’t matter a shit. I like Lou Reed. And you, you probably like the fact that I called myself a cunt. And balding. You might be beginning to like me. No one else is.

My wife hasn’t talked to me in months. After word got out she seemed to just give up. I don’t know if she even physically can anymore. Words not getting out. Doesn’t bother with the kids much, which is the real tragedy. It’s not their fault. I don’t know if she will leave me or not, or if she will order me to leave. Ordering will take words. She probably will, but she’s dragging it out, making me suffer. Or maybe she won’t bother her arse, the kids’ sake and all. She may have a heart, even in her speechlessness. The kids are good though. Both of them. I’m glad they talk about stuff, even if it’s only amongst themselves, in dusty whispers, even when it turns into arguing. Still, communication.

I was watching Toby the other day – I’m like a spy around here – he had sticks and stones, bows and arrows, an arsenal. He had his sister tied to the garden tree, his hand waving back and forth over his mouth like a TV Indian. Later both of them flung the arrows at a knotty old stump, voices raised, angry tones. From the outside I felt like part of their game, the vigilant sheriff who was going to burst in and fix the whole debacle, calm the damsel, reform the savage. But of course I am not allowed in their games, they haven’t said, but you just know. You can pick up their vibes, vibrations in the water. It wasn’t until later, same long day, I saw just how pointed the arrows were, sharp as pencils. His mother insists on taking him to Boy Scouts to learn this stuff. Survival techniques.

I could make claims for Mandy being just as brazen. But I’ve no evidence. I see her playing with her dolls, dressing them and undressing them, folding their clothes, pretending to sew the hems of their party dresses, with her back to me. Sometimes it looks like she’s shed a tear, but I can’t get close enough to see. I wonder how much they know. Kids sense things. We forget this. She was undressing one doll, a smooth, naked, skinny thing; I could just see it, from behind, there in the crook of her arm, Mandy rubbing the poor emaciated thing, and a glisten on her cheek as she looked down on it. She hurried on a new outfit for it, made it pretty and okay again.

One day they’ll all gang up on me and call me the kinds of names that I deserve. There seems to be no way to be able to change this. When the kids are old enough to understand what kind of a dick I am they’ll tear me apart, bit by bit. I see all this coming. Sometimes we have that foresight. And sometimes we don’t. When I was with Charlene, what did I foresee? She lay there like some lifeless thing as I undressed her. What was the name of the bald Bond villain, with the scar on his cheek? Bond never cooperated with his interrogators, the smart-ass quips, the hatch opening.

Used to be that my boyhood friends would sit around talking about all the vicious things in life, the things crocodiles could do, and hippos, which were a real surprise, and far more dangerous in many ways, Peter May said. I didn’t know how that could be, but it was powerful knowledge all the same. Piranhas though, they were paying you back, for taking things out of the water, taking things you shouldn’t. Didn’t care if you had made the boat with your own calloused hands, didn’t care if the children would be wondering why Papa wasn’t coming back to the hut.

Toby came into the living room late last night. I was camped out on the sofa bed again, the clock my mother-in-law gave us ticking way too loudly, the pendulum swinging. He might have been sleepwalking. My heart was thumping. I hardly heard him come in.

—

Colin O’Sullivan is an Irish writer living in Japan. His poetry and fiction have appeared widely on the web and in print. He has published a book of short stories and a novella for teenagers. He lives in Aomori with his wife and two children. For information contact Author Rights Agency (Dublin).