The Scorpion (a short story)

My first original short story in a while. Enjoy

I

“Let me tell you how pretty you are—”

“Stop—”

“Looking at you gives me the same feeling I get flicking through old photograph albums.”
Her forehead falls. She starts to pull away. I grip her hand.
”Not on account of the actual memories though—” I shake my head. “Nothing in real life’s as good as the way it looks after it’s been all warmed up by nostalgia. Y’know?”

“Sam, stop—”

I can’t tell if she really doesn’t wanna listen or if she just doesn’t understand. “I’m talkin’ — after all the bad bits have been stripped away and the best bits have been made bigger—more colourful.”

She stares hard at me, tilts her head in the way kittens do when they can’t quite parse what they’re looking at. It’s cold in this shed, but I can already hear cars pulling up. Each one that does, brings with it the clink of crate bottles and the chatting’s getting more jolly. She keeps glancing at the roller door that’s keeping us separate from the rest. But I put my back to it for a good reason.
I can’t tell if she’s grinning with me or against me. I know she half hates my hard-to-follow rants, but I gotta trust it’s more like than dislike right?
”Looking at you, is like thinking back on those long scorching summers. Swimming, drinkin’, laughing till the sun goes down. Except with you, it’s not a memory.” I grab her wrist, “You’re really here.”

“You sound like you’re about to sell me on bible studies or somethin’…”
I grin and pull her off the hay bail, pull her so we’re hip to hip. Her smile falls a bit. I only notice that ‘cause her lips are so close to mine. “Well y’know what really goes on at Christian camp don’t ya?”
I can smell cigarettes on her breath. One of those things I always preach that I hate. But now that we’re here?…

I raise my beer to take a sip, she intercepts the can. Takes her own sip, then puts it down, leans in close.

Lord, if nostalgia’s gonna add to this later on? She’s gonna have a job of it! To sweeten this moment, stretch out it’s warmth. I may just die.

Here comes the bit my memory’s gonna tamper with though. That roller door. Needs an oil, needs a stronger arm pullin on it. Of course this had to happen. Wouldn’t have mentioned it if this wasn’t gonna happen.

The crowd noise triples as the space opens up. Someone’s brought their stereo out Zack Bryan singin’ “Letting someone go,” as if he’s a goddamned prophet. Her lips leave mine for the first time, and right away, I know it’s the last time.

“Georgie’s Mum’s here,” she says, lookin’ down at her fingernails.

“Have a good time at the show—” I say. But both of us know I’m just sayin it to put words up in the air, and both of us treat it like that.

"I'll see you after okay?” she asks.

My heart punches me. She looks down at the beer can resting on the hay bail. “Just try not to drink to much. And no…”

She stops as if saying the next line might bring it to life. The sadness is already hitting me. Before it’s even happened. Well before the time you’d think you might be able to stop it.

“…and no fighting.”

II

I once got told this old fable about a scorpion that really stuck with me. Have you heard it? The one about the turtle goin’ about his day, swimmin in a storm.

He’s breast stroking through some bigger than usual waves and when he looks up, he sees the island he usually stops on, is half it’s usual size and shrinking fast.

Mr Scorpion is on the beach, teetering over the rising tide, with a look on his face that the turtle’s never seen on him.
”Buddy, I see you out there! Don’t ignore me. Have a heart and give me a ride to shore.”

Turtle starts to tread water now. The storm’s whipping up the palm trees throwing fronds all over that pumice stone beach. “You think I’m stupid?” he says. “Last time I was on land, I barely escaped you trying to sting me to death! Why would I make that mistake"?”

Mr Scorpion’s pacing is getting more frantic now. “I’m not asking you to trust me with your life. I’m asking you to trust me with my own!”

Turtle doesn’t answer, but he swims in a bit closer to let Mr Scorpion see just how confused he is.

Mr Scorpion, still talkin in his sneering, superior way, adds, “Just think about it. If I’m on your back and sting you while you’re swimming. I’d be drowned before the poison even starts to kick in! I’m a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of ‘em.”

Scorpion’s way of making you feel like you’ve got a sub-twenty IQ, worked at turtle’s belly like a steel brushed broom, but he had always been a sucker for logic. “Alright,” he says, swimming up to the shoreline which has now swallowed the whole beach and is lapping at the grassy dune.

Scorpion hops on with more of a “finally,” than a “thank you,” and the two of them set out on the long journey to the mainland.

You know where this is going?

Of course when they reach the deepest part of that stormy strait, Mr Scorpion’s ugly pointed stinger curl’s over turtle head and fires its striking venom right into his eye.
Immediately, Turtle’s legs stop working properly and he finds himself gasping for air. “Why?!” is the only word he can eek out as he makes eye contact with an also sinking Mr Scorpion.

Treading his insect legs out of sync, Mr Scorpion shrugs, smiles and looks up to the heavens. “I’m a scorpion. This is what I do.”

Now, a lot of people I know, hate that story. They think it’s about people being bound by their nature. They think it’s an excuse for people who don’t wanna better themselves. “This is just the way the good lord created me.”

That’s not how I see it though.

III

Didn’t seem like she’d been gone for more than a minute, when I opened beer number six. A crate beer ain’t your normal beer either, if I was a math goin’ man, I’d be able to tell you the number of standard drinks in each of ‘em.

But the best I can say is: the first three go down like nothin,’ by the fourth you remember these ain’t normal bottles, by the fifth you forget again.

Legs hangin’ over the tray of a truck, dog hugged under one armpit, I was lookin’ down at floodlights on a dusty floor.

Jesse was out front doin’ his usual thing. Making a fool, dancing about. Most of the boys had already paired off with one of the lasses and disappeared behind some woolshed bails. So we were left with about a full crate of bottle’s each.

Casey came up to me smilin.’ His crooked front teeth made it look like a jeer even if he didn’t mean it.

“Where’s Suz gone tonight?”

“Boxer horse show.”

Pffff.

I held the latest sip of beer in my mouth and looked down at the dog under my arm, curling his ear. Velvety, black. He looked back at me, the tan spots above his eyes lookin’ like eyebrows.

“The Boxer horse show,” repeated Casey, but mocking every syllable of it.

I studied the dog’s paws. Claws blunt and short. White fur lightly stained green from runnin’ up hills. A working dog.

The hollow steel of the truck’s tray creaked as Casey gripped it around the corner. “All I’m sayin is, I wouldn’t let a girl like that go any where on footy finals night.” He shrieked a hill-billy spatter of laughter that got everyone lookin'. Even Jesse stopped dancing.

Casey thrust a hand onto my dogs head and roughly smudged it.

I batted the hand away harder than I meant to.
He hovered that hand in the air and looked down at it as though he couldn’t believe it.

I tried to keep my eyes on the dog, but bodies were gathering around now. I could feel the dark space outside the floodlight growing smaller as a spontaneous circle of bodies began to form. This wasn’t anythin’ like the bon fire circles though.

The dog lifted his chin and looked at me, then at my chest as though the little bugger could hear my heart beating. I took my arm off him.

Casey stepped back and put his beer on the ground, kicking out his feet, though never turning his back on me.

I glanced to Jesse, who’s forearms were like a roadmap of veins leading down to his balled fists.

IV

So which ending are you hoping to see here? The one where Casey gets spattered across the hay shed floor for the most part, but happens to catch me with one good shot that cuts me above the eye? Or maybe it’s just my grazed knuckles that’ll give me away?

Do you want me to prove I’m the same as they all think I am? The way even Suz thinks I am, deep down.

The version where I don’t even try to claw back some pride by playin’ humble. I set on the hay bail, sweatin and bleeding, victorious, but a loser.

Suz turns up at the party looking like a $20 million dollar cheque, only has to take one look at me, ‘fore climbing back into the car she came out of.

I know better to even try to follow.

Or do you wanna see the hero’s journey version? Where I overcome it all. Get one over on my own nature and say, “no more.” I step out onto the dusty floor, take a sip of my beer and put it down as though I’m ready to fight. I raised my hands up to my chin as though I’m about to close the distance, but then put two fingers in my mouth and whistle that black and tan bitch over to me. She hops off the truck, I give her a scratch and the two of us leave the shed to claim both the girl and our pride.

I s’pose which of the two camps you fall into depends on how much you like me. Are you rootin’ for me to be a good guy? Or do you wanna see me fail like everyone else in my life?

Shit, I never did get around to explain’ why I see the scorpion story as different to most folks did I?

See I’m a simple guy. I’d like to tell you I had a unique take on why Mr Scorpion wasn’t a scumbug, but the truth is. It’s not that complicated.

I always liked that story, ‘cause it lays out the idea that folks will mostly let y’ know what typa person they are before you even ask. We ain’t as complex as we’d like to think.
If you just look at the pointy tale and claws that God adorned you with, you can generally take a good guess that you’re probably gonna like grabbing shit and stinging it.

Suz was just a girl, from a small town. A pretty one at that. But that’s the problem.

We were sixteen. The footy finals unleashed at least forty, super athlete seniors into our town one night a year. Boxer horse show?

Casey was an asshole, but he wasn’t a liar.

I was just a young bloke who’d had a few too many drinks and was gettin’ a stick poked into his pride.

And without makin’ excuses for my self: Suzy knew who I was, what I was, perfectly well. That’s why she liked me in the first place.

That’s why she set me up to fail. Because at the end of that night we were both bound to betray each other. It was just gonna come down to which one of us had made the bigger promise to the other.
See me and Suz, were on the brink of somethin’ special, I’m certain of it. But she never once promised herself to me. All she said, was, “I’m comin’ back later.”
That’s worth less than an I.O.U from Chicken Steve (sorry that reference probably didn’t land if you don’t know Chicken Steve).

You can judge the two of us all you like. You can throw around the words ought and should, till you’re blue, but there’s certain stuff in our blood. And if that stuff tells you to draw blood from time to time, you’re hard pressed not to do it.

I’m a scorpion, Suz is a scorpion. It’s as simple as that.