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GENES OF 5 MILLION-YEAR
Old Sea Monsters Live Inside Us
Katie Watkins
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Genes of five hundred-million-year-old sea monsters live inside us, creatures long undiscovered in the foreboding silent depths, the onyx abyss. Monsters with slippery spiny skin, arched backs that glide through caverns, covered with spongey coral, like moss on spring trees.
Now, in these same caverns, their descendants are species of fish which feast on their young. First, injecting them with paralytic poison or slashing gashes in slick flesh. Then, tenderly picking them apart, bit by bit, piece by piece and slurping skin and meat through carnivorous teeth. Filial Cannibalism.
My mother once told me my sister and I were sent by the devil. Something about her picks us piece by piece, and cuts deep, dispersing the scent of our blood through the air. Look, there are our bones in the gaps between her yellow incisors! There’s the oil from our flesh on her lips! Filial Cannibalism? Is it possible that five hundred-million-year-old sea monsters fall closer in my family tree?
