The Lobster

A Horror Story from my Archives about Were-Lobsters and Dad Jokes

Author’s Note: Working on some longer stuff, but while you wait, given that it’s October, please enjoy this short horror story I wrote a few years ago. I’m strongly averse to some of the stuff I wrote during my horror phase, but this one is more fun than macabre. Next piece will be an update on Trust Assembly stuff, then Lunar Olympics Essay after that, then another voting poll.

Want to hear a joke?

Okay, here goes.

Why did my dad name me Ruth?

Because he was tired of living in a ruthless society.

That joke doesn't make me laugh anymore. My dad was killed because he didn't understand that words have meaning. He played with meaning idly, but words are the tools to discover truth. My dad loved mashing puns and ironies together without ever thinking that some truths should be approached carefully. Jokes are too often reckless. If you tell an idle joke, you're walking through a minefield. You don't know what you might stumble across.

Idle jokes killed my dad. Idle jokes killed my mom.

That why I don't tell idle jokes anymore.

It sometimes seems that all my dad ever did was make puns. If you were ever foolish enough to ask him if he got his hair cut, he never missed the opportunity to remind you that he got "all his hairs cut."

When I first learned to tie my shoes, I asked if he could put them on and he replied, "I don't think they'd fit me."

When I was in first grade, I asked him how many apples grew on trees and he said, "All of them."

I loved him, but his jokes made me groan even as a child. He couldn't help it, though. He was like a child playing with matches, not knowing how close he was to the dynamite factory. I spent a long time wishing he would grow bored, or that he would run out of creativity. The end never came. He had an infinite supply of jokes. I think he must have got them from Popsicle sticks and old gum wrappers.

"Did you know that the first French Fries were cooked in Greece?"

"Did you hear about the guy who invented Lifesavers? I hear he made a mint."

"How do you make a Kleenex dance? You put a little boogie in it!"

Maybe he would have changed when I got older. Maybe his premises and his punchlines would have matured as I matured. I'll never know. When I was in the third grade he finally told a joke that literally "killed."

My dad ran a carpool for our neighborhood. All of us girls drove with each other every day. When the Homards moved in next door, dad invited them into the carpool like a good neighbor. Their daughter, Alice, was the same age as me. Only nine years old. I instantly disliked her, but dad said "It made cents to save on gas" and then looked at me meaningfully and wiggled his eyebrows.

What a fool. What a damn fool.

Dad made it a few months with the Homards. Looking back, I'm surprised it lasted that long. It was like dad kept wandering around a minefield and miraculously kept missing the mines. His first warning should have been that Alice never laughed. All she ever did was jerk her head around in machine-like arcs and blink her large, dark eyes. We all thought she was weird. Or maybe that she didn't speak English very well. Whatever the case, we knew she hated jokes. Dad should have picked up on that.

"Why don't crabs give to charity?" Dad asked, one day. "Because they're shellfish."

That joke made Alice jump, but it should have been enough warning for Dad. It should have made him stop. Maybe then I wouldn't be where I am now, always on the run, trying to stay underground and hidden.

"Where do shellfish go to borrow money? The prawn-broker!"

Alice always frowned at my Dad after he told that one. A murderous frown. It made me afraid of her. It made the other girls even more afraid of her. All my friends dropped out of the carpool one by one. Better to take the bus than to ride with Alice, who smelled of saltwater and had breath like low tide. After a while, it was only me and Alice riding to school with Dad in the carpool. I sometimes wonder why Dad couldn't have been smart like the girls. Why couldn't he have sensed what they sensed?

When Alice got into the van one morning with a new haircut, it might as well have been Dad's death warrant.

"You get your ears lowered, Alice?"

She kept frowning at my Dad, pure rage in her dark eyes.

"I got a haircut," she muttered.

"Don't you mean you got ALL your hairs cut?" dad pressed.

Alice sneered.

"It's a lob," she hissed.

Dad snapped his fingers and laughed as an idea occurred to him.

"A lob, eh?" Dad asked, "I guess that makes you... a LOBSTER!"

Alice froze. Her eyes went wide in panic and her skin drained of color before her whole body went... red. Fire-hydrant red. Redder than blood red. Clifford the Big Red Dog red. Alice opened her mouth and a series of loud clicks emerged instead of a human voice.

"You get it?" Dad, asked, eyes still on the road and blissfully unaware of what was transpiring behind him. "You've got a lob so that makes you a lobster."

Alice reached forward with her left claw. Her pincher claw. Dad didn't stand a chance. Next thing I knew, his neck was spurting blood all over the ceiling of our minivan. His head had landed in his lap. He still had that dumb self-satisfied smile on his face.

I was already scared of Alice. That fear saved my life. I threw myself out of the van right before it careened into a telephone pole. It took five minutes for Alice to clear herself from the wreckage and give chase. I would have been dead if not for that stroke of luck.

I managed to lose her in an open air seaside fish market. The smells interfered with her ability to sense me, I think. When I got home, several hours later, my house was on fire, an ambulance driver was zipping my mother up into a body bag, and I saw the Homards wandering around the neighborhood looking for me. Alice's father and mother looked like they were blushing or furious, but I could tell they were ready to transform in a second.

I got myself lost after that.

Spent a lot of time wandering around the country living on charity. The hardest thing was avoiding getting caught up in the system. I was young enough at the start that everyone wanted to help me. People's desire to help almost got me turned into fish food a couple times. I can't describe the stress. By the time I was fifteen I looked twenty and felt sixty.

When I got older, I studied Oceanography. I managed to correlate the Homards arrival with the tides. I tracked their name down through old records and noticed they returned to land every nineteen years. They'll be back next year. I think they'll come looking for me.

Good.

I'm prepared. This time, I haven't got any house for them to burn. This time, I've got no family to kill. This time, I've got the fire. They're the ones who have the family to kill. They're the ones with the home to burn.

I've got butter, too. Salt is dirt cheap. I've got enough for my revenge.

When they come this time, I won't be caught unawares. Unlike my father, I have not been idle. I'll meet them as they rise up out of the sea. I found their cave seven years ago. I know where they go when they shift back and forth.

Before they transform, I'll wrap their claws in rubber bands. I'll lower each of them into my giant cooking pot. I'll light a fire in their home. A cooking fire.

I know the words I'll say as they stare up at me with those dead black eyes, desperately hoping for the tide to come back to the cave and take them out to the dead and cold sea. My joke won't be idle, as they scrape and scrape trying to get out of the pot.

My dad was tired of a ruthless world, maybe, but I'm not.

I'll say, "Hey Homards, Long Tide No Sea!"