Black Work
And how it had to stop
Have you heard about giant oarfish? Until last year, I hadn’t. They’re so rarely seen, that there’s some lore attributed to them that resulted in them being called ‘doomsday fish’.
They supposedly appear when the shit is hitting the fan above sea level. Shit like tsunamis and earthquakes, although that’s not a fact corroborated by scientists.
It seems that every instance of a human being encountering one of their floating bodies warrants headlines, photos on beaches alongside meters-long slips of massive silver ribbons. They’re fantasically long, and thin, and they have scarlet, boneless fins.
Giant oarfish live at such depths that they may as well be from another world, so not unlike UFOs, they get people excited in that way that kind of makes them look giddy and gormless. Everyone piles in for a snap with the body.
When one is seen on the water’s surface, it’s usually dead or dying and in such an addled state that it’s only there by accident. An oarfish is your pressed and proper grandfather stripping off his clothes to walk to the shops. End of days shenanigans. A sign that something is very wrong. Their rarity has led to dot-connecting as to what tragic occasions their appearance marked in human history. And to be fair, there are a few dots.
If you worship at the altar of logic and reason, you won’t be surprised that tsunamis are linked to them; it’s reasonable to assume that deep-sea disturbances would directly affect the fish folk living in the neighbourhood, but still, people see them as a sign of things to come.
I love folklore and couldn’t help but get a bit “are you guys seeing this?” when last year, there were three separate sightings of these dead giants surfacing off the coast of California. Then the tsunami warning went out in the Bay Area in December, and I thought, “This is it”.
Nothing happened.
It reminded me of when asked “Has it ever been this bad?” Margaret Atwood replied, “It has always been this bad”.
A pause to look around is enough to make me wonder why oarfish aren’t in such abundance that they’re on the main menu all over the world.
All that is to say that I painted one and didn’t do anything with it. I wondered when the time would be right to release it. I wondered if there would be a right time. Horror Houses for Halloween, Toys for Christmas and what…fish for armageddon?
Then I painted the skin of the world being peeled away, and right after that, I got to work on a coffin floating downriver. I was going to open it and give it an occupant with oars, but when a family friend was hastily thrown into the fast lane to the grave, I realised that the river moves on its own, knows where it’s going, and you need not paddle.
The news carried on, and I painted a fountain of the dead, and then I realised that I was painting the same thing over and over again and that February had me in a grim headlock. And I didn’t know if it was a result of the times or the work.
I’m already filled with dread over next February. I’m thinking about how I’ll be getting out of the house- anything that makes me feel like I exist in society and not as a goblin hiding in the loft, because while the whole experience offered a grim sort of comfort and enjoyment during our darkest months (of the year and recent history both), I was left feeling like leaning in did me more harm than good.
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