The Lobster

When it appeared, he was unfit to consider it as it then presented itself, as real: he was watching a documentary on killer whales—the seafloor awash with gracious, godless beings—and drinking. His girlfriend had left him that afternoon, citing substance abuse and poor communication as chief complaints; he was smoking as well. In fact, moments before its arrival he had beheld the structure upon which it stood, stoically, not as a table but as driftwood, or a raft, kept somehow afloat in the improbable ocean of his living room. But then he turned off the television, and there it remained, and he stared in disbelief.

A lobster: red, unflinching, wet.

“Hello,” said the lobster.

“Hello,” said the man.

A lull.

“They call me Langostius.”

“Steven.”

And another.

The raft-driftwood-table was damp.

Steven sipped his beer. Langostius flailed.

“I have to ask,” said Steven, carefully. “What… are you?”

Langostius winced as if stabbed, then diverted his gaze.

“You don’t recall.” He sighed, almost knowingly. “We met many months ago, at the market off La Cienega. Larry’s Loving Lobsters. You came in alone, and began speaking.”

Larry’s Loving Lobsters: suddenly Steven remembered. Not the details—he’d been high—but the fact of having gone.

“Your speech did not seem directed at any particular audience, and the words came effusively, as though they might collapse if not baked in the heat of your breath. Indeed, it took me a moment to realize you were addressing me. You noticed a splash of blue on my carapace, and implored me never to question myself, for the beauty of the universe was within me.”

Steven closed his eyes, and exhaled deeply: he remembered more. He’d taken mushrooms that day, having failed to remember it was he and his then-girlfriend’s six-month anniversary. She was apoplectic, and in an effort to avoid a bad trip he absconded to Larry’s. He’d gone, once, as a child, after his kindergarten class was made to witness their teacher boil a lobster, whom she introduced as Gaston and who they wrongly suspected was the new class pet, alive. He went home dismayed, until his mother convinced him that all lobsters went to heaven, and brought him to Larry’s to calm his anxieties. Since her death he sometimes returned, as a way of honoring her generosity of spirit; that lobsters were cooler on psychedelics was incidental.

By the time he returned to the scene at hand, Langostius had shifted from his spot on the table, and was perched upon the cushion beside him. Their eyes met.

“You told me you loved me, Steven.”

He gulped, having had lobster bisque two nights prior.

I’m a monster, he thought, awash with guilt but unable to articulate it.

Langostius tilted his head as if in understanding, inching toward Steven as he did. “I know that humans make mistakes. They are born; they make mistakes; they die. Not so different from lobsters in that regard.”

Steven blinked: he was drunk.

Langostius continued. “What impelled me to come here tonight—to you, Steven—is just that. Death, a condition as lobster as human.” Here, he paused. “You do understand what I’m getting at, do you not?”

Steven shrugged; Langostius finished, “It’s my time: I’m dying, Steven.”

The weight of the disclosure hung between them, as if the air had thickened to gravy and Steven were a biscuit, absorbing it. He could conjure no relevant response, for the lobster condition was unbeknownst to him.

If he had gathered anything from his failed relationship, it was the power of intimacy. All the regret in the world meant nothing, if he did nothing to convey it. But emotional intimacy was not Steven’s forte, and so he did what first occurred to him, which was to extend his thumb and index finger and stroke Langostius along his abdomen—at first tentatively, and then, as the crustacean succumbed to his tender touch, with gusto—until he snapped his claws.

“Oh, Steven…” Langostius’s voice was suddenly songlike. “How pleased I am, to have offered this chance at redemption—and to have witnessed you rise to the occasion! I must admit to having my doubts, but you have lain all apprehension to rest, and proven yourself a man of your word. I know it now, and shall never question it: you love me after all.”

Steven took a long, deep breath.

“Langostius… you have the wrong idea.”

The lobster considered him, then laughed. “Ah, how your wit enchants me! The wrong idea—preposterous! How now, when all my life I have guarded my virtue, to bestow unto my beloved?”

Steven stared blankly. “You’re a virgin?”

“Of course! As are you, I presume?”

“I am,” he lied.

“Then what, pray tell, is this idea you accuse me of wrongfully possessing?”

Steven took another breath, and released it. “You’re wonderful, Langostius… but I just got out of a relationship, and I’m not looking for anything.”

The lobster was crestfallen.

“I’m sorry,” said Steven.

“Sorry!” echoed Langostius, and scoffed.

“I wish I’d told you, before—”

“Before having me believe you reciprocated my affections, and revoking my innocence?”

“Yes… before that.”

Side-by-side on a soggy sofa sat man and lobster—who, despite their propinquity, were worlds apart.

“I require a moment alone,” said Langostius, following a pause.

Steven retreated wordlessly to the restroom, where he avoided his reflection as he splashed his face with cold water. He lingered a few moments longer, bracing himself for the tension and trying to formulate an apology that addressed the severity of the offense.

When he returned, Langostius was no longer on the couch: he had migrated back to the table, and was perched beside two new beers.

“We needn’t discuss the matter further,” said Langostius, with an air of finality. Then he swept a decisive claw toward the bottles. “A truce.”

The anxiety left Steven’s body instantaneously.

“A truce,” he echoed, nodding.

Langostius nudged a bottle toward him, and he accepted it.

“Cheers,” they said, almost in unison.

Steven took a sip, then another. It was more bitter than usual, and not the brand he remembered buying, but drinking it was something to do—a Langostius-sanctioned something at that—and so he sipped, and sipped, until the bottle was empty. Then he set it upon the table, next to Langostius’s untouched bottle.

“Are you going to drink yours?” he asked.

“Lobsters don’t drink!” he replied, as though it were self-evident.

“Oh… may I?”

“By all means.”

He took up the second bottle, and downed it as quickly as the first.

Steven blinked: he was very drunk.

Langostius was studying him. “Everything alright, Steven?”

“Yeah,” he slurred. “I just… drank too fast.”

“Ah—perhaps you should fetch some water, then!”

Steven made for the kitchen, but on standing felt dizzy and unwell. He faltered, groping an arm of the couch, before falling back to his original position. Sobriety and faculties had forsaken him. His substance use, which even he could admit was considerable, had never yielded this outcome: he had been carried to lands unimaginable, cradled in the arms of the angels, imbued with the light and love of all things good and pure—but this was new, this emptiness, a sensation of sinking so deep into himself he feared he would never get out.

“Stuck?” he heard, echoing, from somewhere outside himself. “Well, well. Now that I seem to have your attention, let us return to our earlier topic of conversation: mortality. You see, there may be a solution to my dilemma.”

Steven lurched, but produced no vomit.

Langostius continued, “The blue spot on my carapace, in which you found such beauty—and how lovely it was, to be connected to beauty, to have been found to possess it—is not really a spot, but my heart.”

He paused, albeit briefly, for it was clear that Steven was incapable, in this state, of contributing much in way of conversation. “I was born with a cardiac abnormality. It’s rare, but not so serious— not necessarily. Think of it this way: my heart is like a balloon, inflated with just too much air. The overinflation is not a problem in itself, only now the balloon is more susceptible; one might pop it more easily.”

Steven’s eyes began deceiving him just then: the room’s neutral palette shifted to violent blues and purples. Isosceles triangles danced beneath his eyelids, taunting him when he blinked. Despite the disorienting visuals, his anxiety and shame were pronounced. He had led on, and then let down, a disabled lobster. Could he have stooped any lower?

“To compensate, naturally I had to protect myself. I put up walls and built them high, allowing no lobster or man to scale them—and then, you came along.”

Langostius shivered as if very cold.

“I thought it was love… that you loved me. You told me as much, and how was I to know better than to take your words as truth? So, I waited. Day and night, night and day. The staff kept quitting, I pinched so many fingers. I was fighting for my life, and for what I thought we would have, when at last you walked through those doors to reclaim your beloved. Then days were weeks, and months came after; I felt my feeble heart teetering toward oblivion. I came tonight in hopes of reconciling, in hopes of forgiving and forgetting. Perhaps tragic circumstances had befallen you—for surely no man could renege on such a heartfelt declaration. How naïve I was! It is, I think, the cruelest irony: the healthy-hearted may neglect their passions, while the rest of us must perish by them.”

Steven could only barely make out these words, which assailed him like darts. Feeble pleas for forgiveness danced in his throat, but his mouth would not give way to them. He heard a knocking, or thought he did, from the front door, and struggled to respond.

“Listen—oh, how I hate raising my voice! It’s no use, Steven. After those beers, your cries will amount to little. Trust in it! You had your chance—”

“Steven? I came to get my things.”

“Ah! Chances, then!” Langostius turned disdainfully toward the door; then, almost at once, his demeanour softened. “Nay, I mustn’t begrudge her—no doubt you broke her heart as well as mine. Did you not?”

The knocking persisted.

“Isn’t that right, Steven?”

The knocking abated, and then the room was quiet.

“I came with intention: your heart would be mine, one way or another. I gave it my word. And unlike you, my darling Steven, I am a lobster of my word.”

Langostius looked into Steven’s eyes, and Steven returned his gaze, hoping beyond hope that he could convey what he felt—the extent of his remorse; the lengths to which he would travel, this time, to make things right—with only one look. But instead his vision blurred, and his eyes rolled into his head, and he was insensate.

“Be still, my beating heart!” cried Langostius. Then the lobster was upon him.