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Cecilia Pinto

From Issue 7

Jellyfish


 
            Impossibly, Manning and his mother were having the same dream.
            “The funniest thing,” she said, “last night I dreamed that all anyone had to do was put their hands over their ears, bend their knees, and with a little push, float up into the air. It was marvelous.”
            Manning felt the hairs on his arm stand up.
            His mother spoke while rearranging two needlepoint pillows so that the one that had been in front was now behind. “The only thing was that while everyone’s head looked perfectly normal, mine felt as if it was huge, like,” she paused, staring at the pillows.
            “Like a pumpkin?” Manning asked.
            “Yes, like a big pumpkin, a carving pumpkin.”
 
            Manning didn’t tell his mother that he’d had the same dream. He told his sister.
            “That is so typical,” Alice said, embroidering furiously. “Of course Mom would be dreaming about you.”
            “She wasn’t dreaming about me, we had the same dream.”
            “Well, she’s never had the same dream as me,” Alice said.
            “She didn’t mention the shoes,” Manning said, “so maybe it wasn’t exactly the same.”
            “What about the shoes?”
            “It felt as if I was wearing heavy shoes, like the hooves of a cartoon cow. I couldn’t see them. It’s hard to move your head.” He spoke more to himself now. “I think you need to keep your hands on your ears.”
            “What happens if you don’t?” Alice asked.
 
            It turned out if you took your hands off your ears, you floated up. If you looked down at your feet, which appeared to be perfectly normal, despite the weighty feeling, you fell. Manning discovered this tumbling down and out of sleep one morning.
            He limped into the kitchen. His mother said, “I had that dream again.”
            “What dream?” Manning’s father appeared in the kitchen, his bathrobe belt trailing behind him.
            “Mom flies around with a pumpkin head.” Alice said. “He does too.” She jerked her thimbled thumb at Manning.
            “You do?” Manning’s mother said. “I’ve never seen you there.”
            There are other people there?” Alice was beside herself. “Who else is there?”
            “Oh, I don’t know. Everyone seems occupied with whatever they’re doing. I don’t want to interrupt.”
            “What are they doing?” Alice appeared as if her own head might grow larger. It was at the very least, changing color.
            “I’ve had lots of flying dreams,” Manning’s father said, “strange bicycle contraptions with wings, great fun.”
            Manning and his mother looked at each other. Whatever he was talking about they both knew that Manning’s father was not experiencing what they were experiencing. There were no machines; everyone was self-propelled through the vast, lavender space.
 
            Manning recognized some of the other people floating there; a life guard from the pool, a substitute teacher he’d had in fifth grade. No one spoke to anyone else. He tried acknowledging people as they passed, but everyone seemed, as his mother had said, occupied in something.
            He saw a friend of his mother’s, Nora Wooley. She smiled pleasantly as they passed each other but didn’t seem to see him. He began to wonder about his mother.
 
            He asked her, “Do you see people you know?”
            “Oh yes,” she said, scraping carrot skins into the sink. “Remember Doctor Lieberman? You had that odd rash. And that heavy-set man that sat in the back row at church.”
            Have you ever seen me?”
            She apologized, “no darling, I never have.”
            And this began to bother Manning. Why hadn’t his mother seen him?
            Alice squinted as she threaded a needle. “Well do you see her?”
“I saw Nora Wooley.”
            “What? What was she doing?” And then before he could respond, Alice added, “Oh my God, that is hysterical. You know,” she said point her needle at him, “I’m beginning to think you are experiencing a shared psychosis.”
           
            Manning felt reasonably sure it was not psychosis. The more nights he floated, the more people appeared. Some nights it was almost impossible to move in any way but in unison with everyone else. People were vaguely familiar but he never saw anyone he really knew. He began to wonder how he looked to other floaters. Was his face as placid, as serene as theirs, or did it look how he felt, increasingly panicked, claustrophobic?
           
            “It’s like this,” Manning’s mother was showing Alice a photograph from a magazine. The caption read, A Smack of Jellyfish in the Pacific.
            “A smack?” Alice asked.
            “That’s what they’re called, a smack of jellyfish,” Manning’s mother said. “You know, like a gaggle of geese, a mischief of mice.”
            “But a smack?” Alice said. “A slime would be better, a slime of jellyfish. Ooh, they give me the heebie-jeebies.”
            The creatures pictured were a gelatinous mass of pink and purple tentacles dangling. It was obvious to Manning that none of them were thinking about anything. He became mildly nauseous wondering if somewhere in that smack was a jellyfish like himself, striving to connect in some meaningful way with other jellyfish. He investigated the picture closely imagining that he might find one jellyfish staring at the photographer. “Do they have eyes?” He asked.
            “Jellyfish do not have eyes, they have ocelli, or eye pits,” said Manning’s father. He read from the magazine article while scratching his head. “No eyes and no brain,” he added.
 
            Manning decided to confide in his friend Arby as they sat in a fast food restaurant eating spicy chicken fingers. Arby was philosophical. “Dude, it’s like when I found my dad’s porn.”
            “No it’s not. How is it like that?”
            That time my dad got fired? He didn’t want to go back because of what he’d said and shit. He sent me to clean out his locker and there were magazines with pictures of Asian chicks. And first I was like, whoa, and then I was like, dude!”
            “How is that like my dream?”
            “You and your mom are the same. You have the same hobby or whatnot.”
            “It’s not a hobby and I don’t have a choice.”
            Arby shook his head, “Dude, who does?”
Manning poked some fries into a glop of red, gelatinous ketchup but then left them there.
 
            Maybe he did have a choice. He tried staying awake but failed. He took cold medicine in an effort to knock himself beyond dreaming but that didn’t work.
One night when the group swooshed pleasantly up or around, he tried to move in the other direction which sometimes meant just not moving at all. It required great concentration but his efforts began to have some effect. If he removed his hands from his ears, then looked at his feet, then replaced his hands quickly he shifted in a herky jerky way.
 
            He was in the kitchen with a slice of orange in his mouth when he felt his mother standing in the doorway staring at him. Alice sat at the table sorting embroidery threads.
            “Something very strange,” his mother said.
            “What,” said Alice, “what?”
            “Your brother,” Manning’s mother said. “Your brother is up to something.”
            Manning grinned an orange rind grin.
 
            That night he again was effective in not moving with the group and for the first time he heard a sound in the silent, velvet world. A voice called, “Stop it, stop it, stop it.”
            He kept going, away from the group, away into something else.


​
---
Cecilia Pinto’s fiction and poetry have appeared in various magazines and journals, including Esquire, Fence, Quarter After Eight, and TriQuarterly. A poetry chapbook, entitled A Small Woman, is coming this year from Dancing Girl Press. She works for a major retailer. 

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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
      • Christy Lee Rogers Spring 2024
      • Erika Lynet Salvador Spring 2024
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Diamond Forde Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
      • Isabelle Doyle Spring 2024
      • Reyzl Grace Spring 2024
      • Kelly Gray Spring 2024
      • Meredith Herndon Spring 2024
      • Mina Khan Spring 2024
      • Anoushka Kumar Spring 2024
      • Cate Latimer Spring 2024
      • BEE LB Spring 2024
      • Grace Marie Liu​ Spring 2024
      • Sarah Mills Spring 2024
      • Faisal Mohyuddin 2024
      • Marcus Myers Spring 2024
      • Mike Puican Spring 2024
      • Sarah Sorensen Spring 2024
      • Lynne Thompson Spring 2024
      • Natalie Tombasco Spring 2024
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2024
      • Donna Vorreyer Spring 2024
    • Fiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Bryan Betancur Spring 2024
      • Karen George Spring 2024
      • Raja'a Khalid Spring 2024
      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
      • Adina Polatsek Spring 2024
      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
      • Matthew Fertel Fall 2024
      • JooLee Kang Fall 2024
      • Jian Kim Fall 2024
      • Robb Kunz Fall 2024
      • Sean Layh Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
      • Jodi Balas Fall 2024
      • Clayre Benzadón Fall 2024
      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
      • Sara Burge Fall 2024
      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
      • Stephanie Choi Fall 2024
      • Sarah Jack Fall 2024
      • Jen Karetnick Fall 2024
      • Ae Hee Lee Fall 2024
      • Svetlana Litvinchuk Fall 2024
      • Mary Lou Buschi Fall 2024
      • Angie Macri Fall 2024
      • Gary McDowell Fall 2024
      • Sam Moe Fall 2024
      • Camille Newsom Fall 2024
      • Elizabeth O'Connell- Thompson Fall 2024
      • Olatunde Osinaike Fall 2024
      • Jessica Pierce Fall 2024
      • Diane Raptosh Fall 2024
      • Isaac Richards Fall 2024
      • Robyn Schelenz Fall 2024
      • Christopher Shipman Fall 2024
      • Alex Tretbar Fall 2024
      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
      • Shannon K. Winston Fall 2024
      • Wendy Wisner Fall 2024
      • Anne Gerard Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
      • J​oe Baumann Fall 2024
      • ​Morganne Howell Fall 2024
      • Matt Paczkowski Fall 2024
      • Ryan Peed Fall 2024
      • Gabriella Pitts Fall 2024
      • James Sullivan Fall 2024
  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Art Spring 2025 >
      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
      • Jesse Howard Spring 2025
      • Paul Simmons Spring 2025
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2025
      • Elzbieta Zdunek Spring 2025
      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2025
      • ​Cassandra Whitaker Spring 2025
      • Angelique Zobitz Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
      • Meredith MacLeod Davidson Spring 2025
      • Jessica Mosher Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Nonfiction Spring 2025 >
      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025