In lieu of a casket were siamese twin fetuses in a jar. In lieu of human guests, only Pacific barreleye fish were invited, to make the giant-eyed twins feel at ease.
With no barrier against the material world, the fish with the transparent heads saw everything unfiltered. They swam, swollen-eyed and overwhelmed, through every horror and joy this life afforded. It took something remarkable to jolt them out of that stupor, and here they were in their formalwear, attending my funeral.
They doffed their top hats at the door and leaned hard on their canes as the receiving line wended through the parlor to the glass jar, where every so often the twins punctuated the cryptic silence with a mild squeak. The twins were polishing the glass.
photo via Flickr, Bob Jagendorf
Each fish, drawing even with the fetuses in the jar, would have to look up to see the twins eye to eye. Being fish, they could not look straight up. Their necks did not pivot that way, and so they craned at an angle, the way very old men beg pardon as you made way for their stooped form on the sidewalk.
The jar twins and the barreleyes would blink at each other, once, and move on. The fish took care not to convey through their expressive eyes too much of their own shock at seeing such a thing. The twins, for their part, would not stop polishing the glass, squeak, squeak, as if they could not quite believe what they saw.
