A Fish Plays The Piano, or, The Nametaking

♦ Thomas Beard ♦

Jonathan opened the door to his house carrying both his legs. He was still able to walk, of course—it was only that he knew that the legs in his hands were his legs. He didn’t know where he had gotten them from or who might have given them to him.

Maybe the fish.

The fish was there when he came in, playing the piano. That was the only way he could describe it. Just a fish. Just a piano. 

“What are you playing?” Jonathan asked, because it seemed like the only question he could ask without causing offense.

“You know ‘Moonlight Sonata’?” the fish asked.

“Yeah.”
“Cool.”

It didn’t sound like ‘Moonlight Sonata’. The music was more jazzy—upbeat but in a slow way. Jonathan didn’t hate it.

“What’re the legs for?” The fish asked.

“'Dunno,” Jonathan said, and at the same moment he found himself thinking: I must be dreaming. 

“Whatta’ think you’ll do with ‘em?”
Jonathan just shrugged. He went back to listening to the fish’s song.

I was walking

On a blue and yellow brick-

Walking

On a blue and yellow brick-

The fish’s voice wasn’t too bad. Jonathan didn’t like the puddle of water he left on the piano, but he was a fish.

“You better do something with those legs, Johny,” the fish said. Jonathan bristled. He didn’t like his name. He hated to think that those three  foul syllables had wormed their way into his sleeping life.

He walked away as the fish sang, “where do oceans go when it rains?”

The legs looked nice, the way Jonathan arranged them in his bed. He liked the idea of them being his legs. Just, the bed looked a bit empty, what with only having the lower half of a body.

“What are you gonna do with those legs, Johny?” the fish asked from the other room.

“Don’t call me that,” he said.

“It’s your name, isn’t it? What else can I call you?”

That gave Jonathan an idea. He took his legs back out of the bed, and stuffed his hands into the warm, meaty place where they had been separated from their bod(ies?) 

His arm crawled further up the insides of the legs, until he could control them fully. Then he walked back to the fish, displaying them proudly.

“Ta-da! Sock puppets!”

The fish blinked. “Johny, what—”
“Not Johny,” Not-Johny said as he brought forward the legs, moving the feet on the ends of them like mouths. “Olivia,” he said, nodding to one, “and Alice,” nodding to the other. Both legs came forward. “Do you want to talk to Olivia? Or Alice?”

The fish stopped playing the piano.

“You’re fucking weird, kid.”
“Thank you!” said Olivia-and-Alice, who walked out of the house smiling widely.