Page 141 - Dark Matter Issue5 Part II

hand. They had visited a Disney park that housed a sad-eyed giant dolphin, an Orca.

Miranda and her father visited the underground aquarium wall, and she held her small

hand against the cool thick pane. The orca swam nearby, its black and white skin

shimmering in Miranda’s vision, obscured by tears. Meanwhile, her father told her about

rape in the dolphin world, about gangs of juvenile males ravaging one of their sisters,

about blood in the water, about how nothing is as innocent as it looks. When they went

up to the surface, to the dolphin show with its finale, the orca jumping out of the water

and splashing the audience, Miranda wasn’t able to see the mammal through her tears.

At home, her mother, the poet, scolded her for being morose, for being withdrawn, for

being a loner, and how her father was fed up with the both of them, the sobbing women,

the treacle stickiness of family life. Miranda wrote down these words in her diary that

night: Treacle. Morose. Gang rape.

On the boat deck, Miranda succeeded in opening shallow cuts on her cheeks, little

pepper stings of tribal scarring. The fellow boat passengers shifted backward in horror

as the first drops of blood fell thick and dark onto the green turf. Miranda was still looking

at the dolphin, only taking her eye away to select the first two beads. Then she inserted

them carefully under her dermis. The dolphin chattered at her, its sensitive jaw vibrating

in the drying air. Miranda felt the air’s coolness on the new braille beneath her skin.

Miranda finished inserting the prayer beads. She felt sure that her future love would

understand the message, etched in blood and pearls. Her fellow cruise passengers

shrank back even more as the young woman grasped the rail, swung a foot on the

lowest rung, and then stepped like a gymnast up to the top bar. One man, a recent

transplant from Colorado, looking to make his home in the surf shops of the barrier

5