prose by katie ness

Rebecca’s Requiescat—
I Dream That You Forgive Me and My Body Turns To Water

13.

The mangroves are flooded. They catch Gobies, Grunts, and Gray snappers in great nets torn open, gutted. Spilling onto the deck like giant teardrops, silver orbs of gasping fish. Scales reddened by the scarlet luster of stab wounded clouds. Rivergod tears pouring onto boats, crying at the cruelty of man. Mangrove Jack mouths ‘pop pop popping’ as though trying to mutter their final prayers. Gills burning like cigarettes in the cough of November’s dry dawn. A thousand eyes startled. Death-wild. Pleading. A frenzied wriggling to hold each other in their final cold, choking minutes. I envy them in their brotherhood but I still laugh at their pitiful attempt to hug one another with the slip of fragile fins.

One by one, the fishermen reach into the buckets, scoop them out, slap them down, and slit them throat to tail. On their dying day, they die alone anyway, just like the rest of us. I walk on toward the cove where the glass bottle choir whistles in the breeze, Delaney scuttles along the rock pools hunting for shells and sea glass, her cherub face haloed by refracted sunlight shorelines. 

A hundred years ago they found the body of a young woman face down in the water and gnarled between ceriops roots like a caged mermaid, flesh like wet paper, hair like bleached seaweed and with a large crescent moon mark on her throat. Stories now weave around these parts of water horses appearing on the river bed during the slit moon, beguiling and dove-gray. Dragging people into the river with a low silky moan. At least this is what they teach the kids, scaring them not to swim in the river at night. Some say they can hear moans and lyrical words during the flooding months, as though the water is reaching for them, calling them in.

It is believed the river kelpies had been people once, grown out of their skins, giving up their bodies. Kelpies that carry the dead souls inside them. Kelpies that whistle and moan, calling the chosen into the gloaming. People tell all kinds of stories to try and make sense of grief.

A fisherman stands along the shore. Wellies grounded. Fishing line flying. “Day for it! Caught a whopper! She’s a beauty!” he smiles. Holding up the snapper ensnared by the hook like a witch tied to a noose. I double take and swear I see the fish peer at me vacantly. Her parched lips strangled to mutter something. 

Breathless she whispers, “It is time.”

12.

I imagined it. I say to myself, standing by the bathroom sink. I’m seeing things, the doctor said it’s all part of it. I forgot to take Olanzapine this morning because Delaney couldn’t find her shoes and we ran out of milk. I was preoccupied. These last days, my mind is a colorless frontier. My sea-blue eyes sunken. They stare back at me in the mirror the same way that fish stared at me. Knowing? A cry for help? The drugs are drying out my skin, becoming arid gray mottled patches; my voice is hoarse and I’m always thirsty. This damned heatwave scalds my cracked eyelids.

There’s a town parade this afternoon, I consider stepping out to take in the festivities but I’m not a Calliope sugar-sweet woman, the vibe is not for me. Delaney is asleep anyway. 

There’s water trickling down the living room wall, I better call the plumber, there are electrical wirings and plugs behind the plaster and framing. Could be dangerous.

11.

There’s nothing much to eat but I make a cup of tea whilst Delaney sits on my lap. Her body is a heavy devotion and her golden curls smell like chamomile. I take in one last breath and it hurts and I feel tender at the sight of her tearing at the shell bracelet on her wrist. Her hands then reach out and wrap around my neck like rope. The plumber came and went, told me there’s no water leakage, that the wall isn’t even wet, that I wasted his time. I said, “I know what I saw, the heatwave dried it up.” The weather report says thunderstorms are on the forecast, I can feel the shift in the air as I turn all the lights on and wash the dishes. There is a list of things I must put in order first. My days are slinking out like eels, this house is sullen, sick as a heart, and hemorrhaging light. 

Thunder claps. Startles me from a dream of a thousand eyes and a thousand roots in a dark arc. Sweat slips down my skin, patting hair to my face. My mouth is still so thirsty. I catch a glimpse of  Delany in salmon red rain boots splashing in the marshy garden. When the creek floods, the water sometimes reaches the houses, pooling around ankles and cabinets like mottled silver, resting between toes, quiet as butterflies.

Lifting my shirt to take a shower, I see my spine, a heavy ridge along my back, hair dripping like sweaty seaweed. My eyes are haunted, goldfish frantic. Glazed. I have no eyebrows and my skin itches as it sheds like pencil shavings. Look at the state of me, who could ever love me? God, I’m really just alone, I’m so alone! Crouching in the bath crying, curled like a shell I hear distant laughter in the lightning. The drugs ate my beauty like maggots eating dead fruits.

The wall bleeds water again and there’s now a mold patch growing over the ceiling. I better call that fucking plumber again.

10.

The house feels hook tight. Water is slowly trickling in, closing in. Streams along the windows, puddles soaking shoes.  A minnow slips through the moldy crack, scuffing the wall and plops down, flopping on the tiles next to the door frame. I see Delaney by the garden fence posts like a little fish wriggling near shark teeth. Going over to examine the peculiarity of the minnow, I see thin films of pearly webbing growing between my fingers, growing past the knuckles and thickening. Panic-stricken I begin to chew and pick at this in-between flesh ferociously but it keeps growing back.

The minnow stares and ‘pop pops’ it’s mouth rapidly. It is time. I hear that voice again.

I do not want to talk to the voices anymore or see these things, I am frightened. I want it all to stop. Get out of my blood, get out of my head. A fact dressed up in melodramatic melancholy. I try to sleep again to rest my mind from the haunted things.

9.

The yearly river flood vomits out into the sea and brings with it a great cull. There are more hooks than fish in the harbor. Men teaching lads how to fish like a rite of passage, girls wading in the waters in pretty dresses like prayers. Fish festivities forget the dangers. It is the drowning season. I left the washing up in piles in the sink but I put the laundry on and go out to the promenade to the markets. I give permission for my thoughts to wonder as Delaney trundles alongside me, her little hand squeezing mine with so many smiles poking through ringlets. She’s sweeter than a lollipop; my little sugarfish. 

I think about that time I looked up the meaning of my name. Rebecca, from the Hebrew word Rivqah. Means snare, tie, bind, noose. That’s about right. Most days I feel like I'm choking. Hanging on with harsh breath. I’m drowning in the air. 

“Mummy! That big cloud reminds me of the cloud we saw on the beach, that time we made ourselves sand mermaids!”

And for a moment I want my ribs to carve open with love and I want it to kill me instantly.

8.

We arrived at Sea Salt Fishmongers on the harbor. The air tastes like ‘catch of the day’and salt and vinegar with the rattle of smiling strangers exposing fangs. Josh, my jolly sailor bold, stands behind the counter with a smile as warm as the September sun. This is the business that we built together, not far from where I proposed to him. He’s been up since the crack of dawn, putting cart loads of aquatic carcasses on ice. Prawns, oysters, squid, salmon, and more. Some are already hooked, gutted, and skewered. The spokes of the fan on the ceiling look like long knives cutting through the daylight, it’s shadow casting blades across customers' throats. Fish on display grin back at me with pouty requiescat.

I see the dark haired woman sitting at a table again. She writes poetry then hits the beach in her sexy summer dresses. She comes in here often and not for the fish. Her October olive eyes have an oceanic pull. Without uttering a sound she reels men towards her like caught fish, a beckoning creature in a saucy orbit. Her presence hushes people like a waterfall. She’s not from around here—displaced like a wrong deity. I hate her as much as I hate myself yet she was everything I wished I could be, something darling and free with a messy heart that everyone falls in love with, an exotic contradiction of British bubble gum naivety and flecks of something primal, a sultry huntress.

Josh takes one look at my hands, the dried blood now scabbing over between my fingers. Horrified he asks, “Sunshine, why do you do this to yourself?” I say, “I’m fine, you know I pick my skin when I’m anxious.” 

I stare at Josh and think it’s times like this when the marine haze lifts off the sea that I realise there are things you still don’t know about me. Like sometimes I'm afraid my sadness is too deep and that one day you might have to help me navigate it or cast me away. I try to keep my eyes level to the horizon and beyond, in our boat with fin and little fish, just off the coast of Korora bay, listening to Summertime Sadness by Lana del Rey. 

7.

Outside we pass by seagulls stalking tourists and head up to Muttonbird island. Birds rain across the gray swell. In the distance, I hear horses where the waves crash up against the old lighthouse. The sky is yawning open. This close to the wild things I feel completely free, but I can feel the pull of it in every cell of my body. It is a deep, sorrowful, yearning feeling. To jump. Out here I’m as calm as eagles. I try to eat my words. I eat my errors. I am only a guest here. A fleeting tempest.

6.

The dark shift darkens. The ground heaves and sighs into wet sands like the mandible of a great whale and proteas in bright profusion scream at the sky. An opal of thunder cracks in labradorite clouds. The sea argues with the river and then rises up like an octopus. Flying fish emerge from the waves like a soul leaving the body. Rain clouds opened up like an ancient womb, birthing emotions I cannot. Salt water. Salt tears. And a shower of marine life falls on Muttonbird island like bullets. 

Dashing for cover under a lone tree we are curtained by falling sky fish! Mackerel, tuna, cod, guppies, eels, pike, blue tangs, haddock, and more. Delaney laughs and claps. I wait by the crusted rocks, watching the flesh slide off the cliff, some plop back into the sea, others snap to the ground. One fish comes cresting up, it’s narrow belly flopping over the slick moss. Its marble eyes curse me and I fall to the ground, pulling out bad memories as though pulling out innards.

On the frothing shore, crescent moon hoof prints trail out from the water, up the coastline, and dot across the riverbed. My lips are cold and chapped so we head home and I pretend none of this happened, it’s all in my head like most things. It’s time to take my next dosage of Olanzapine. 

5.

It is a growl of a night, a bestial hurt. My malaise soaks through marrow deep. I make pumpkin soup in a daze, burn the fish pie, and undercook the potatoes. Delaney does not notice. Josh will be home soon and he will anchor me. My skin is thirsty and peeling so I run a bath. Underneath the peeling flakes now trailing over my body, there’s a layer of sleek skin, mottled and silky tight like a porpoise. My hair is now cold, white. I am glistening. Swampy. Accepting that this is the way it is.

In the bath, my skin appears to shimmer like opals and I dream in red and rope. The house churns, becomes heavy and bulbous, squeezes itself like a sponge, arching eel-like and making arresting sounds to push me out. Keyholes leak tiny streams of water and wrap around my hands like a best friend pulling me to a happy place.

That night I dream of those fish in the rain clouds, falling onto hooks and hanging by the river. I feel a sudden weight on my chest. Something wet. There is a creature keening on the bed. I hold my breath. Then it is gone. Holding my hands up to the moonlight I find large slick bite marks set into my wrists like a stamp of approval. Josh cuddles into me and asks, “Is everything alright?” I say “Everything is alright.”

4.

Scarlet morning scratches my eyes. I wake up to the sound of the pied butcher bird invoking a new day. I think about that parade the day before, celebrating life-giving sustenance with dead fish to feed us and drowned victims that were called to the waters. Fish on land. Bodies in the mangroves. The irony happens every year. I still feel dehydrated, choking in this humid air but my body, now barnacled, streams water down my curves and pools at my feet. Cockles and conch shells fall out of my hair like lice. 

3. 

Riverbank sermons sing to me. I am in a thirsty atmosphere. I accept it with grace and release the deep pressure behind my stinging eyes. I feel my soul moving out of my fingertips, I am becoming something else and I am calm. I laugh and think I could be happy inside a horse. I hear a wailing and intoning language in the breeze. I do not understand it, but I know it, and I want to follow it.

2. 

On this last day, I put everything in order. Send Delaney to her father. Iron your shirts. Wash the dishes. Feed Fin. Plump up the cushions. Hang the laundry. Pull down the photos from the fridge. Mop the floor. I write you a letter. Leave it by your fish bone art. I leave quietly. Walk past the long body of the coast. I am disorientated and nobody is coming for me. I think about how you will find me—find the house empty. Would you come for me?

I’m almost there, past the point of no return. It is time. 

For a moment I stop to uproot a protea, Dig your own grave, I told myself. Because no one else will. But every time I see your face and you asked if I was okay, I thought Help me! But I always felt I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Like if you flicked the searchlight into my eyes you still wouldn’t find the answers as to why I felt this way and why I did what I did. I see your knees buckle with grief.

1.

In the dark, their echoing curses boom like the crash of waves. My sadness dissipates with the rain. Everything sounds clear, so true, porous bright blue. Pulling my socks off, I stand serenely balanced between roots and water. The river is lunar. My body levitates before the fall. Breath potent between gasping heartbeats. A large branch snaps. I lose sight all the way down until it is dark enough to feel the thousand eyes and the thousand roots waiting for me. A motion of something brushing and binding my legs together as a light lulled to me.

I’m whistling with the tide, calling to you from the deep. Roaming wild and free in the herd of white waves. I’ll come back to you with the floods. I’ll sing to you under the slit moon. My ruins rise with the waters, each one the sound of stones drifting away to make me whole. 

My heart was a very fragile thing and I had nothing left to give, I couldn't fight what was in my nature. I had to break away from my namesake, from myself and leave my Ophelia-body with the groves. I tried so often to grip the edge of goodness. To be a good daughter, a good mother, a good lover, a good friend . . . I didn’t feel enough. I didn’t feel good enough. Just projecting something into empty air. 

I was brave wasn’t I? It wouldn’t have been easier if I had stayed. I had to rove. I felt my throat separate from my body and vanish into the tide, and I smiled and smiled into the wild, and promised that . . . after all this, after all, this . . . I love you still. I am now the beauty of the after. The beautiful pilgrim of the river. I am the forever kelpie.

I dream that you forgive me and my body turns to water. 

***

In dedication to Rebecca. Goodnight sweet Kelpie, may your soul finally roam free in cosmic oceans.

 30°17’48” S 153°08’22” E

My dear friend Rebecca was diagnosed and struggled with psychotic depression. She took her own life weeks before her 30th birthday in November 2021. She was a quirky, free-spirited Sagitarius who loved living by the river and the sea in Coffs Harbour, Australia. Since Saggitarius is half horse, I had her, in death, transform into a water horse. Setting her free in her favourite place. Whilst Kelpies are from Scottish folklore, water horses are also associated with Poseidon and I imagine her immortalised roving free with the waves in his oceans and with other water spirits.

Katie Ness is a published poet with Hecate house’s: BIRTH and DECAY anthologies, SUBCONSCIOUSLY ABLAZE Anthology, Poetry Undressed, The C Word Magazine, Wandering Autumn and others. Her essays and articles feature in Rebelle Society, We for Women Stories, Kindred Spirit Magazine, and more. Ness thrives along quirky edges, roving with the rippling rhythms of shadows and light that we call life. She lives in London and is an ectopic pregnancy survivor.