The Baby Octopus by Rainie Oet

First runner-up in the 2018 Los Angeles Review Literary Awards, in the category of Short Fiction.

Final Judge: Doug Lawson

The baby octopus in my shirt drawer misses the ocean, but she doesn’t know how to tell me that, so I go on petting her head gently morning after morning as I open the drawer and choose that day’s shirt.

She’s lying on the pile of dresses I’m always too afraid to wear. (I hate when people yell at me, especially from their cars.)

Today I open the drawer and find her pale-bluer, almost pale violet. She’s cold when I touch her head, and I feel a thin layer of slime between my fingers and the rubbery skin. Last night she was making noises in my sleep, but I ignored them.

Noises like small fireworks going off, or like the air-conditioner bubbling after being turned off. As I dreamed of driving down a highway very narrow and surrounded by trees with almost no cars and going up and down many steep mountains. I kept taking wrong turns, going deeper.

I pick her up and hold her in both of my hands, gently cupping the sides of her head. One of her eyes is closed, the other blank and milky. She smells a bit like the bar of soap I kept in the drawer to keep everything fresh.

I wrap her in a plastic shopping bag, put on the black dress she’d laid on. The dress is damp, slimy, embroidered with blue flowers.

I am carrying her to the woods. There’s a little stream here. I bury her in the bag, near the streambank. I wipe my hands on my dress. I go back to my house. I get in my car and drive to the highway.

I am driving. It occurs to me I am trying to find a highway like the highway in my dream. But everything is flat here. So much corn. I get off at a sidestop and walk to the vending machines, I don’t have money with me, but there’s a bag of chips loose. I kick the machine trying to make them fall.

As I kick, I think about the baby octopus. One day it rained and I walked outside and saw her falling from the sky with the rain. Some storm must have picked her up and carried her here. She was going to hit the asphalt of the road. I ran into the middle of the road, and caught her. Two cars almost hit me from either side.

Eventually, the bag of chips falls in the vending machine. I take them out.

As I walk back to my car, a truck driver shouts, “Hey, turn around so I can see you! I’m talking to you!”

I can’t be anywhere except for where I am. Leaving. Walking back to my car, opening the door, getting in.

I eat the chips as I drive. I am driving in the direction the sun was rising in. I hope that’s the ocean. When I get there, I don’t know what I’ll do. If I ever get there.

Rainie Oet is a trans woman who writes fiction and poetry for adults and young readers. She is the author of Robin’s Worlds (Astra), Monster Seek (Astra), and Glitch Girl! (Kokila). She received her MFA in Poetry from Syracuse University, where she was awarded the Shirley Jackson Prize in Fiction. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her cat, Skipper.