When the ice age strikes, I grow an extra limb, then two, then three. They spring from my body, rows of suckers popping up along their muscular length, wiggling in the air like newborn tongues. My husband stands there in the kitchen and shouts at me, his face turning coral pink, goddammit Beth you stop this nonsense right now, but his words freeze in mid-air, his grubby, creaking fingers snatching fruitlessly at my powerful swirling tentacles. By then, I am already slipping out the door, my new limbs slapping wetly on the pavement, and the last I see of him through the window is his gaping fish mouth as his eyes burst open with ice crystals. Down down down I surge into the ocean, escaping sub-zero temperatures, escaping oxygen, shooting water through the holes in my body like a rocket as I gurgle out salt bubble laughter. I am classified as a dumbo octopus, I can fly, I can fly, I’m soaring. The colder it gets, the faster I propulse. In the dark, I become gelatinous, the purple bruises dotting my skin now just a part of my shimmering chromatophore camouflage, and I live there in the abyss for thousands of years, because down in the midnight zone, you can be soft-bodied and still be a predator.
Elena Zhang is a Chinese American writer and mother living in Chicago. Her work can be found in HAD, JAKE, Exposition Review, Your Impossible Voice, and Gone Lawn, among other publications, and has been nominated for Best Microfiction 2024. You can find her on Twitter @ezhang77.
Lost Balloon 