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Ding!

Colin’s mobile alerted him to a text. He sighed, slipping the device out of his sweats pocket and poking it to life. ‘Gloria Peterson Message’ popped into the bottom of his iPhone’s screen; Colin jabbed at the notice.

‘Zoom time, 6 pm!’ her text read. ‘Post-prandial, virtual get-together. Missing you. Specially Jason and Marisa.’ A heart emoji summed up the sentiment.

‘See you then!’ Colin responded, resisting the urge to activate the emoji badge, smiling stupidly at the bottom left corner of his screen, and paste a cartoon character into his curt reply.

He’d been marvelling at the glacial reflections of Lake Louise, imagining himself a climber atop the majestic snow-capped ridges that excluded a vanishing point from his down-to-earth, valley-bottom point of view. The sky, streaked with wisps of cloud, and the lake’s reflected peaks converged, suggesting a true horizon somewhere beyond the scope of his visible world. But Colin refused to fix it anywhere past the southwestern rim of the lake or the imposing architectural weight of the Fairmount Chateau hotel behind him.

There is no place where the dome of heaven touches down. What we see is our unique quadrant of the infinite.

God, give me strength! Hermes grumbled. Preserve me from the philosophical upwellings of this mental distortionist.

Colin laughed. A passing tourist, filming the scenery through his mobile’s lens, glanced dubiously, as if he couldn’t quite pinpoint the source of the ambient chuckling and was wondering if Colin was the guilty party. Colin shrugged, smiling benignly. “Nice day for taking photos,” he said.

The remark came across as hollow; a pleasantry that couldn’t justify his presence in the rarefied atmosphere of Lake Louise.

Stop being stupid! Hermes barked. If you took a selfie right now, you’d be invisible. I can see right through you.

Colin laughed again. No one took notice this time. They were all too busy posing and recording memorable moments to take note of a sullen geezer, his butt parked on a wooden bench, as he tried to imagine a plausible reality from multiple points of view.

He was distracted by the gravitational pull of the Fairmount Chateau behind him. He laughed again—that’s three times today—remembering how the outline of the posh hotel on Google Maps reminded him of a gargantuan lobster, its claws poised to snatch up the selfie-absorbed throng on the plaza and shovel them, squirming and screaming, into its grinding, munching mandibles.

A horror-scope come true, Hermes concurred.

Let’s go! Colin launched himself off the bench and set out on the lakeshore trail, determined to escape the mind-warping proximity of the hotel’s grandeur and opulence.

It’s not envy. He cut Hermes off before the accusation could be made. Colin had thought of booking a room at the Chateau, but balked when he looked up the high season rates—twelve hundred plus per night. He imagined Cynthia’s startled objection. ‘What!’ she would have shrieked. ‘That’s a big bite out of the kids’ inheritance.’ Colin cringed at the prospect of a night alone, swaddled in the splendour of an exorbitantly expensive room, haunted by an unwilling ghost.

As he walked farther along the lakeshore trail, the crowd thinned until there were stretches where he was alone. He took a seat on a log bench in a niche beside the trail—imagined himself in Scotland, looking out from the sloped shore of Loch Ness, beyond the ruins of Urquhart Castle over the grey, rumpled waters.

Could a castle have been built at the head of Lake Louise, its stone walls and turrets constructed out of blocks carved from the surrounding mountains? And could Lake Louise be the habitat of its own monster—a vaguely imagined creature lurking beneath its aqua-green surface, depicted in third-person accounts and captured in blurry photos?

And does this fantastical creature have a name? Hermes asked.

Colin hesitated. He wanted the name to emerge along with a vision of his primordial beast, whose origins must have been in the fecund muck of some upstream marsh, where it would have emerged coated in slime and dripping scum, reeking with the stink of decay. Its presence would pollute any lake or precinct it visited, and its name would be synonymous with evil, would be the embodiment of cruelty, greed, and lust…

“Lizard Man,” Colin shuddered, like a dog shaking something rotten and foul out of its fur.

And what species does this miserable being belong to?

Malus Monstrum Palustre Sapiens. The name hissed like an infusion of swamp gas into Colin’s brain.

A mind fart?

Yes, I suppose, Colin agreed.

~~~

“Once upon a time,” Colin began…

Jason, Marisa, and Gloria huddled together on what he recognized as their common room sofa. “Michael couldn’t join us,” Gloria had apologized.

They’d chatted for a while, Gloria coaxing the children to talk to Grampa Grumps about the best things that had happened since his last visit a week before: Marisa had lost a tooth, and Jason had scored two goals in his last soccer match.

“The tooth fairy left me five loonies,” Marisa counted them off on her fingers, just to be certain Colin appreciated the significance of the present. “Mommy says I can spend them on anything I want!”

“Not quite anything, dearest,” Gloria corrected. “But just about.”

Marisa pouted.

“FIFA 2030, Jason?” Colin had enthused, careful to keep the encouragement in a seriously joking vein.

“I’ll only be fourteen years old, Grampa.”

“Well, maybe FIFA 2034.”

“I’m not supposed to brag.”

“I’m your grampa; I’m allowed to brag for you.”

They had shared a smile…

“Dad?”

Nudged out of his reverie by Gloria, who was looking at him as if he’d fallen asleep at the wheel, Colin started.

“Oh, sorry,” he flustered, refreshing his online presence, wondering why he’d promised to tell the kids a story, and how he was going to get through it without a book or script.

Spoken word?

He’d never done it before; Now or never, he steeled himself…

“Once upon a time,” he re-cued, “two friends were in a little rowboat, fishing in the middle of Lake Potentia…”

“Where’s that?” Jason wanted to know.

“Shush, honey,” Gloria chastised.

“It’s in Democratia, a nation no longer marked on any maps because it no longer exists.”

Jason gave Colin a dubious look.

“Just listen, love,” Gloria urged.

“The fishers had drifted a long way from the town of Amicitia, which stood out because of its castle, whose spires, battlements, and towers were visible from the farthest end of the lake. Neither of the fishers wanted to row all the way back to the wharf, and they argued about who should row first.”

“Let’s flip a coin, and it shall decide between us,” one of them suggested.

They agreed, and a coin was produced. “Heads,’ the gentleman at the bow called. “Tails!” the fellow at the stern shouted.

The coin was flipped, flashing in the air between them as it spun round and round. Alas, the toss went astray; neither of the fishers could catch the coin, which bounced off the boat’s gunwale and ‘plop’ into the lake.

“Arghh!” the man who owned the coin shouted.

“Ayee!” his companion agreed.

“That was a shilling! There goes me lunch and me dinner, too.”

“And the ale you were going to buy me for catching the biggest trout.”

“We’ll never see that coin again. It’s spent on a stupid toss.”

“And we can only blame the tosser for that,” the other jibed.

They laughed heartily. And rather than argue any longer, the stern man took to the oars and began pulling toward Amicitia and their dock.

“Now, that would be a pathetic story if that was the end, wouldn’t it? But nothing much happens until they get closer to shore, and you’ll have to wait till next week to find out what that something that does happen is going to be.”

“No fair!” Jason complained.

“Don’t stop!” Marisa wailed.

“Well, the best I can do is give you a clue as to what might happen,” Colin offered. “But I need you to promise there won’t be any whining or whinging once I’ve set the scene.”

Jason agreed; Marisa nodded, unhappily.

“Most of us have only looked down, through the surface of a lake. But water creatures, they look the other way, from their submerged world into ours above. The surface of the lake is their sky, and they see boats gliding through it like airplanes or blimps, and humans flailing about trying to stay afloat.

“The fishermen may not have seen the shilling once its shimmer had lost the light, but down below, way down below, at the bottom of the lake was a creature who saw something silvery fluttering out of his sky.

“He’d never seen anything like it. It’s lustre transfixed him, and he darted toward it, grasping it in his hand…”

“A fish with hands!” Jason squawked.

“I didn’t say this creature was a fish, did I?” Colin said.

“What is it then?”

“That’s what you’ll have to wait until next week to find out.”

Colin wagged his finger and shook his head when the two of them began squalling. “A promise made is a promise kept,” he said.

“You tricked us!” Marisa accused.

“No, I didn’t, hon,” he soothed. “I can’t tell you the next part because it hasn’t happened yet. I won’t know until next week.”

“Okay, kids,” Gloria intervened. “Time to say goodbye to grampa.”

“G’nite, Grampa,” Jason said; Marisa pouted, Gloria offered a frustrated but apologetic look.

Colin sighed after the Zoom session ended.

Well, that wasn’t a very happy ending, Hermes said.

You know, Colin responded. Dogs are so much more flexible—physically speaking—than we humans. So I suggest you do what only a snooty canine can, and stick your head up your ass and keep your snarky comments to yourself! 

Hermes howled; Colin hooted. They basked in each other’s repartee.

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