My Dead Husband Still Wants the Last Word
The Bone Hermit
It’s very inconvenient that the hermit crab has taken up residence in your bones. At first it was disconcerting, to see him skittering along the beach, parading your salt-bleached toes outside our cottage. Sometimes he stops, right at the edge of the garden, and folds himself up into the crook of your remains, staring straight at the gate, watching me.
I thought I’d done a better job at hiding your body. I thought the sand and sea would wash your bones clean and sweep them away. But the sea, it seems, is resourceful. And now this tricksy little creature has come back to haunt me. Maybe he is you, reincarnated, and this is your final joke. You always did tell me you’d get the last laugh.
I’ve tried catching the crab, but he’s a speedy little thing and my bones creak too much these days to be chasing tiny crustaceans across the beach. I followed him once, to the sea cave at the edge of the coast, where I thought I’d left you to rot, but I didn’t want to go back inside there. I wonder if he knew that. If that’s why he’d taken up hermitage there.
He returned later to the cottage, to my domain, now curled up instead in the hollow of a vertebra—a bone hermit, working his way up your skeleton. Haunting me with your remains.
The crab has moved into your skull. I can’t tell you the fright I got when I saw your hollow-eyed face, jaw half broken, staring in the window, as though measuring up my own skeleton. Maybe he has a family that shares his penchant for bones.
I tried to take the skull from the crab, but he would not be parted from you. Instead, he taunts me, coming just close enough to be seen, before scurrying away. It’s why I think he could be you. He reminds me that you’re never truly gone.
Do you remember the day you brought home that creel you found washed up on the beach after a storm? I told you to return it to the local fisherman, that it was surely stealing not to, but you just brushed me off and said the sea gives and the sea takes, and sometimes you have to take what it gives. You always said things like that, things you thought were philosophical and profound, but came across as nonsensical and dull.
The creel had two lobsters in it, and a few large crabs, which you immediately took to prepare for dinner. But it was also full of other creatures, small crustaceans, molluscs and barnacles, and even a bulbous squid. I wondered how it even got in there. Maybe it had been drawn into the creel during the storm, then failed to escape before being washed to shore. I felt for it—it must not be easy being swept up like that in such a current, only to find yourself lost and isolated.
After taking what you deemed of value, you could have discarded the other creatures, returned them to the sea where they could be free, but instead you kept them trapped, nestled inside our bath to slowly rot. Even though you could not use them, you let them suffer. You wouldn’t even allow me to take them back myself to put them out of their misery. When I tried once, you were there to stop me, with a firm hand on the shoulder and that sharp-clawed look you gave me. Sometimes I think I see the hermit crab giving me that same look, with his tiny beady eyes, standing still as if daring me to step closer.
I couldn’t bring myself to try to free the creatures again after that. But then maybe if I had, we wouldn’t be here now, and I wouldn’t be stuck here staring out at your broken skull, darting every day between soil and sand like a strange harbinger of something to come.
The squid was the first trapped creature to die, body paling before melting into a shapeless gloop. But the others were more resilient, and I could still see them move occasionally. There was a smaller crab that you said didn’t have enough meat on it, but that still couldn’t fit through the gaps in the creel. Every day it tried. Every day it failed.
I took to sitting inside the bathroom, watching them, wishing they would just give up and die. Sometimes, you would come and watch me watching them, a grim smile on your face like it was all some sick game. The creatures still held onto life, while I felt I was slowly suffocating.
The smell of it all became overwhelming, a stench of death I couldn’t get rid of, even when I was in another room, or outside on the beach. It was an acrid taste that clung to my nostrils, as steadfast as barnacles. The putrid scent was the strongest when I looked at you, or when I saw your smile at my discomfort.
Finally, when it all got too much, I begged you one last time if we could please just take them back to the sea. I told you that you were wrong, that I’d had enough, that you were cruel and vindictive and sadistic. That’s when you went to get your mallet, dragged me along by the wrist to watch, and then smashed them all up, one by one, until all that was left were broken shells and innards and brine. Some of the remains stayed squirming for several minutes even after that.
Then you told me to clean up the mess.
So I did.
I brought a net and mallet outside earlier, intending to finally catch the hermit crab, smash up his home, your skull—permanently this time.
But when it came to it, I could only watch the crab, lifting his tiny pincers, beady eyes bulging, no threat at all.
The crab hasn’t hurt me—he’s only trying to survive. If I can understand anything, it’s that.
