Little Squid

Chapter 2

"Look no further! The future is here!" A dazzling flash of pearly whites and the glitter of neon eyeshadow vied for superiority on my tv as the camera zoomed in. The man on screen gave a sassy wink before stuffing his coil of hair into the new RFG headset, the heavy metal obscuring his eyes and cupping his ears. Now all that was glittering were his teeth and lipstick. "Go anywhere in the world. Be anyone you want to be. Feel the things that you could only dream of before."

The screen flashed to a woman, dourly dressed, her cotton candy-colored hair frizzing out from an angular face and sad eyes. Tentatively, she sat down on a stool in a white room, her smile small and a bit embarrassed. "I was suffering severe depression - my fiance had just died-"

Beside me, my mother gave an appalled gasp, her eyes widening to two pretty blue saucers. "Oh, dear. HONEY, THIS WOMAN'S FIANCE DIED!"

"Well, all I wanted to do was - was see - see him again." The girl tore a tissue from someone off-screen, stuffing her face into the paper like it was adobo on a pile of fresh rice.

My dad's voice boomed from the small connecting kitchen. "WHAT?!"

"HER FIANCE, HONEY!" My mother immediately volleyed back and I blinked down at the mastiff currently crammed in between my mother and me on the couch. His eyes widened. "DEAD!"

"And with RFG I could finally see him again." The woman gave a watery smile. "Feel him. Hold him at night. I felt his breath on my face and his smell was finally all around me again-"

My mother gave a heavy sigh, shaking her head as she picked up the remote and turned it quickly to the afternoon news. And then scrunched her nose and completely turned it off. "Poor dear. I wonder when she's going to realize that he's dead. Dead-dead. Not trapped in a headset but gone forever."

I resisted the urge to wince, curling farther into the corner of the couch, Anchovy, our mastiff immediately stuffed me further against the arm, his big body taking up any available space. My mother's eyes immediately tracked to me, her expression searching. There were few things that I feared more than that look. Serial killers: yes. Being dragged to an underground sea cavern by a herd of rapist dolphins: yes. My headset frying me into an alternate dimension, trapped inside an infinite cycle of solo games and monster-slaying while my body was stuck withering away within reality... well, the jury was still out on that one.

That look meant that she was about to say something to me and she would know if I was lying or not. I gulped, bracing.

"Who's dead?" I'd never been happier to see my father whip around the corner, some fruits and matcha sheet cake piled onto a small tray. Bulky, barely able to fit through any walkway, my father was a force of nature. He came into rooms like a gust of wind, red-faced, panting. His graying hair was combed back, slipping easily into an overgrown beard.

In startling contrast, my mother was delicate, just as tall as I was but with more of a poised air. Where he burst into rooms, she drifted, floating into a given space and making the people there feel vaguely unworthy. It was a complex emotion that I had dissected and eventually digested when I was rather young. Her wily curls were always smoothed back into quiet disarray, looking somehow purposeful in their chaos. 

I had dealt with the whiplash of their opposing presences for 22 years.

My mother's eyes lit as she saw the platter, immediately uncurling from the couch and going to the small dining room table in the corner where my dad was happily pouring tea into tiny cups. They liked to do things like that - afternoon tea. I always felt awkward in the mix, somehow uncomfortable as if the fact that I was still living with my parents was a constant friend coming over to say hello.