The Monster Baby Has Acquired a Taste for Oysters by Kim Murdock

It’s a weird brag, but that’s what the parents tell me. Though they don’t say monster. They say, Shuck him another! and angle the baby’s pushchair closer to the oyster hut. The parents are lean and beachy-golden. Their sunglasses and phones bling-bling in the sunlight.

The oyster hut’s not a hut at all, just a folding table with grey plastic bins and chipped ice for nesting the oysters. Sometimes, we get fake kelp garlands to dress things up.

The baby gives a little bounce, a squidgy exclamation mark. A string of drool tendrils down, attaching itself to his tartan-trimmed WEE MONSTER Nessie bib. His wee fists clench like mollusks.

They’re £4 a pop, the oysters, no joke. But I do as I’m told, wedging the tip of my knife along the shell’s cusp, one quick turn, offer the rough shell to the parents.

The parents shake their heads and motion to baby.

They say, Go on. He doesn’t bite.

The gull I call Frank, lands dangerously close. Frank has a habit of theft. Anything that hasn’t reached your mouth is fair game.

As if on cue, baby’s mouth forms a hopeful O, a little pink cave. He traces the fathoms to my cupped palm.

Once, my mother took me to Woolworths, said I could order anything I wanted. When the sundae arrived, maraschino cherry lustrous on its whipped cream bed, she reached across the table, plucked the cherry by its stem, popped it into her mouth.

Frank shrieks, wings extended. The parents bling-bling ready their phones. But the sun shifts and the baby flinches, screws up his face, tries turning away.

Instinctively, I step in front, casting the baby in quiet shadow.

The heat daggers my back. The parents say, You’re blocking the shot, and What the fuck?

Someone—maybe me—whispers, It’s gonna be alright.

Kim Murdock’s work has appeared in Fractured Lit, Crow & Cross Keys, Tiny Molecules, Bending Genres, Janus Lit, FlashFlood Journal, and won the Propelling Pencil Flash Fiction Competition. She lives in Ontario, Canada. Read more at kimmurdock.wordpress.com