A Name for the Interim
When I was born, my parents took their time deciding my name. They were hippies at that stage in their lives and debated over the best of their choices: Turtle, Cloud, Sage, Moonbeam. In the end, they named me Ocean, which was kind of cool, except our surname was Fish, which made me Ocean Fish. And that’s not the worst of it—my middle name was Silver. And sure, Silver is my mother’s maiden name, and okay, maybe I should be proud of it for that reason alone. I get that. Truly, I do. But all that accounted for, it didn’t change the fact that silverfish and Silver Fish sound exactly the same.
Ocean Silver Fish. My misconceived origin.
So I began my life, enduring the title imposed upon me until I became of legal age to change it. Of course, by then I had become somewhat of a hippie myself and decided to keep Ocean, but dropped Silver, and changed Fish to Zephyr.
Ocean Zephyr. I am transcended.
But this, too, was merely a phase, I soon discovered when the winds of change took me by storm, darkening my moods and general disposition. During this time, I ditched my Joan Baez albums and Jerry Bears. More than merely throwing them in the trash, I broke and tore them to pieces, lighting them on fire in ritual sacrifice to Lord Beelzebub, the Master of Cruelty. As I alluded to, these were dark and moody times, so when I visited the Justice of the Peace, I changed my name to Devour Kittens Darksoul.
Devour Kittens Darksoul. I fall from grace.
And grace is where I strove to end up next —no, not Graceland, or even Memphis, though the parish was, in fact, in Tennessee— hoping to redeem my misgivings and, more than that, my very soul. I took the cloth. I took the sacrament. But the good church of Christ would not take me in unless I took measures to change my name. Thou shalt not be named Devour Kittens Darksoul while in the service of the Lord. So I changed my name to Brian.
Brian Fish. A fisher of men.
But things changed, as they do—impermanence, as the Buddha would preach. I was not meant to be Brian Fish. I was no true disciple of God. I dabbled in Buddhism but got bored meditating. So, without knocking the church, not wishing to knock on heaven’s door by evoking the wrath of God, I took my lumps for what I deemed a respectful stint. Five months later, I hit the road. I removed my ecclesiastical vestments, letting them slough from my limbs like an old snakeskin.
And that’s when I realized it: I am no Fish, Silver or otherwise. I am not a man of the Ocean, which I cannot even look at without feeling sick in awe of its immensity and dark depths. My soul is not dark, and I could not, in truth, devour a kitten if you paid me one-million dollars. I am not fit to wear the cloth. I am not enlightened. I am, in essence, undecided.
And though I guess it’s true: I am, for the moment, Brian… and I guess, technically, I am legally a Fish… even so, it feels like another phase, a brief stop in a nomadic journey of shifting titles, names that change like the weather, or seasons. Never mind the legalities, never mind the Justice of Peace and the form and the fee and all that bureaucratic malarkey horseshit.
I am Brian. Brian Fish. But please, call me by my nickname. Until I have the time to make it official, call me Snakes.
Snakes Serpico. A name for the interim.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
James Callan lives and writes in Aotearoa (New Zealand). His fiction has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, BULL, Bottle Rocket, Reckon Review, Mystery Tribune, and elsewhere. His collection, Those Who Remain Quiet, is available from Anxiety Press.
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