Hermit by Remy Fink
"By the next morning, they had abandoned their old shells and gotten cozy in their new ones. I was a little sad to see them growing up so fast, but I was also very proud of them."
Remy and I will talk about this some in our interview coming next week, but it turns out I’m a sucker for a story that starts by reading like something borrowed from real life (the actual Good News Caboose in Adam Petty’s recent story, actual weatherball in Russ Brakefield’s story before that), but then finds another gear, be it one of weirdness or mystery or horror or just heartbreak.
Fink’s story, “Hermit” starts with the narrator being given a pair of hermit crabs, and then just keeps getting weirder and weirder from there. When I first read it as a submission, I felt like it had a new surprise for me on every page, and I kept racing ahead, excited to find where the story was going to take me next. It’s a real joy and delight of a read. I’m incredibly excited to get to share it, hopefully sharing some of that joy and delight with you!
—Aaron Burch
My ninth birthday party was at Guptils roller skating rink, and all my friends were there. We skated in circles for hours until my mother summoned us off of the rink for cake and presents. Most of the gifts I opened were standard fare: a video game, a basketball, a baseball cap. But near the end of the gift-giving session, I was met with a surprise.
“And who is this from?” my mother said, lifting a shoebox-sized present.
“That’s mine,” Sonya Gatano said, raising a meek hand. “Don’t shake it.”
My mother hesitated, then handed me the gift. I placed my hands on the side of the box. It was stiff, with a ridge running around the lid. At the top of the box were seven or eight little puncture holes that looked like they’d been poked with a toothpick. I peeled a piece of wrapping paper back and saw red plastic. Intrigued, I peeled the paper back further. Clear plastic, sand, a little plastic palm tree, and then the main event, two small hermit crabs.
My mother gasped and covered her mouth, then forced her hand back down to her side. “What an interesting gift,” she said through clenched teeth. “What do you say, sweetie?”
“Um…” I stared at the hermit crabs. From the look on my face, everyone probably thought I wasn’t excited about my new pets, which wasn’t the case at all; I was ecstatic. What nine-year-old wouldn’t be? But equally, I was confused, because this wasn’t the first time I’d seen these exact crabs. Only two weeks before, Sonya had brought this same tank—red lid, fake palm tree, yellow-shelled hermit crab, orange-shelled hermit crab—into school for show and tell.
“I got them on spring break in Myrtle Beach,” she’d said, her round little cheeks aglow with excitement. “Their names are Fabio and Shilo. As they get bigger, they take new shells to match the size of their bodies. Sometimes they molt!” That whole afternoon, I’d watched the little crustaceans scuttle up and down Sonya’s arms and onto her hands. She let each of us take a turn holding them on the condition that we were gentle and did not drop them. By the time she put them back in the tank at the end of the day, she was the envy of the class.
So why was she giving them away?
“Remy,” my mother said, “What do you say?”
“Thanks, Sonya,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” Sonya said with a hint of glossy sadness in her eyes. She sniffled. “I hope you like them.”
*
Later that night, when my parents thought I was asleep (but I was secretly up playing with Fabio and Shiloh), I heard my Mom talking to my dad.
“How could Sonya’s mother do that without checking with us first?” she said.
“I don’t see the big deal,” my father said. “They’re just crabs.”
“The big deal is that they’re filthy and disgusting, and I don’t want them in our home.”
“So let’s get rid of them.”
“We can’t get rid of them.”
“Why not?”
“You saw how excited he was. When he got home, did he play the video game? Did he play basketball? No. He went right for the crabs.”
“Why don’t we just tell him they died while he was at school?”
I covered Shilo’s tiny body with a cupped hand.
“Steven!” my mother said. She paused. “I bet her mother made her give them away because they smell.”
“So he’s keeping them?” my father said.
My mother sighed. “Looks like it.”
*
I fed Fabio and Shiloh every morning and watched them use their dexterous claws to crush, clip, and nibble away at a medley of shrimp, pellets, and mealworm. I played with them every chance I got, and I brought them with me everywhere I went—friends’ houses, the park, school. If I was there, so were the hermit crabs.
When Fabio and Shiloh were getting ready to molt, I had my dad bring me to the pet store so I could pick out new shells for them. By the next morning, they had abandoned their old shells and gotten cozy in their new ones. I was a little sad to see them growing up so fast, but I was also very proud of them.
I thought maybe they’d be done growing at that point, seeing as how they had already molted a few times with Sonya. But sure enough, a week later, I saw Fabio’s exoskeleton lying in a heap in the sand. I went back to the pet store and had my dad buy me two new, even bigger shells as well as a bigger tank so they would have room to exercise. This turned out to be the right move—two days later, both Fabio and Shiloh had taken the new shells.
This did present a little bit of a problem because the new tank was too heavy to carry around with me everywhere. But luckily the school year had ended, so I could be home with them all day.
“What about summer camp?” my mother said.
“I don’t want to go this year,” I said.
“But don’t you think it would be nice to get some sun?” my father said. “Spend some time with kids your own age?”
“Fabio and Shiloh need me, and that’s non-negoatable.”
“You mean ‘negotiable?’”
“No, it’s not!” The tears came, and home I stayed.
We had a great time together that summer, me, Fabio, and Shiloh. The most exciting part was that every time I thought they were done growing, they would get a little bigger. Soon, they both outgrew any shells I could find for them, so I moved them into soda cans, and when they outgrew those, coffee cans. When it came time for me to go back to school, I had an argument with my parents about what to do with Fabio and Shiloh.
“The new tank won’t even fit on the bus!” my mother said. “There’s no way you can bring them in.”
“Why do I need a tank?” I said. “Why can’t I just go like this?” Right on cue, Shiloh—now inhabiting my PlayStation—and Fabio—who had made himself at home in my basketball—scuttled across the floor, climbed up onto my body, and settled on my shoulders. “They’ll behave, I promise!”
“No, absolutely not. Take them off!” My mother reached out toward me, but Fabio snapped at her with his claw. She pulled her hand back and stared in abject terror.
My classmates had mixed reactions. Some kids got up close and said things like “woah” and “cool” while others kept their distance. When Sonya saw Fabio and Shiloh, she walked up slowly and extended a hand to touch Fabio’s synthetic leather shell. For a moment, it looked like it might be a sweet reunion, but when Shiloh slashed Sonya across the face, tearing her flesh and drawing blood, she ran off crying and locked herself in the bathroom.
The biggest problem was my teachers, who found the hermit crabs to be a distraction. The final straw was when Fabio raised his claw on my behalf so I could answer a question in class. Mr. Coughlin, my history teacher, sent me to the principal’s office, where I was given an ultimatum: Either the crabs go, or I go.
I felt a little bad that my mother had to quit her job to homeschool me, but what was I supposed to do? Fabio and Shiloh needed me.
Each day would go something like this: Fabio, who now inhabited what used to be his and Shiloh’s tank—the second, not the first—would tap me awake with his claw. Half asleep, I would stumble to the bathroom where Shiloh—who had taken over one of my dresser drawers—would help me brush my teeth.
The three of us would go downstairs and have breakfast. Fabio and Shiloh would eat their shrimp, pellet, and mealworm medley. I would eat Captain Crunch. My mother would walk down the stairs and spread a few textbooks out on the table. Fabio and Shiloh would pull up their own chairs, climb up on them, and watch my mother give her lessons. In the evening we would all sit in silence and watch television together until I fell asleep. Fabio and Shiloh would then hoist me onto their shells, carry me upstairs, and tuck me into bed.
When it was time for me to take my standardized tests, my mother told me that Fabio and Shiloh had to leave the room. “They could help you cheat,” she said. “You need to do this on your own.”
“They wouldn’t do that,” I said. “Right guys?”
Fabio nodded his crustaceous head up and down slowly, with a twitchy, claymation-like quality. My mother, mouth agape, slid the test across the table.
I went at the test, filling out the scantron form. When I got stuck on a difficult multiplication problem, Fabio tapped on my arm three times, so I filled in “C”. When I got stuck again, I got four taps from Shiloh and filled in “D”.
“Are they helping you?” my mother said.
“No,” I said.
“Don’t lie to me. You’re cheating.”
“But mom, don’t you want me to get the answers right?”
“Yes, but—”
“Don’t you want me to get good grades and have a good life?”
“Of course I do, but—”
Fabio clicked his claws in anger and shifted his eyeball stalks in the direction of my mother. She lowered her shoulders and looked down at the papers on the table. “Yes. Yes, that’s what I want.”
The daily routine changed a bit when the hermit crabs moved into our television sets. Fabio took the big T.V. from the living room, and Shiloh took the slightly smaller one from my parents’ bedroom. It was a point of contention for my parents that we could no longer watch television, so I came up with the ingenious idea of connecting Fabio and Shiloh to wall power with extension cords. That way they could wander freely, but we could also enjoy our favorite programs. When plugged in, the televisions kicked right on, and we all celebrated. “Maybe we have an engineer in the family,” my father said, ruffling my hair.
But the good will was not to last. Shortly after connecting Fabio and Shiloh to cable, the channels began to change on their own. At first, we thought it was an unintended side effect of their crab bodies pushing up against the wires. But when I began to pay attention to the order of the changing channels, I discovered that it was not random at all, but rather, quite deliberate. For example, this sequence from Fabio:
The channel flips to Marlon Brando in The Godfather saying, “I want.”
A quick change to Giada De Laurentiis saying, “To eat.”
And then Bubba from Forrest Gump saying, “Shrimp.”
Fabio and Shiloh were communicating. Most of what they talked about was shrimp and mealworm, but sometimes Shiloh’s T.V. would be set to beach volleyball for hours at a time. I think it had something to do with sand.
One day, I took a break from school lessons and went to the bathroom. When I came back, I caught the hermit crabs having a conversation with my mother. In his stilted, channel-flip speech, I heard Fabio say, “Relinquish control, woman.” And then Shiloh: “Stay away from our son.”
My mother didn’t talk to me much after that. She would just give me my books and sit idly by while Fabio and Shiloh gave the lessons.
A few weeks later, I awoke to a hissing sound in the middle of the night. I opened my eyes and squinted at the polar glow of two televisions set to static. When I climbed out of bed, my foot landed on something crunchy and dry. Upon closer inspection, I identified the crunchy object as Fabio’s exoskeleton. I walked down the hallway, stepping around Shiloh’s exoskeleton, and made my way to my parents’ room. The door was cracked open, and I could hear a faint squishing sound from inside. I approached the room, careful not to make too much noise, and nudged the door open.
Inside the room, I saw my father. His jaw was slack and his neck was leaning limply forward. His skin was loose on his body, and his back was arched like Quasimodo. A pair of claws jutted out from beneath his bloodied ribcage, and a set of eyestalks extended from where his eyes used to be.
“Hello, Remy,” he said, his mouth moving like a ventriloquist dummy. “New shell you like?”
“Fabio?” I said, my voice trembling.
Fabio nodded my father’s head.
“Like too mine?” Shiloh said from the dark corner of the room in a low, gurgling version of what used to be my mother’s voice.
I screamed and ran back to my room where I hid under the covers. Tears streamed down my face and snot ran from my nose. I heard footsteps—or not exactly footsteps—legsteps, scuttling down the hallway. The door opened and the steps approached the bed. There was a clicking sound, and then the cover was pulled off my head. Fabio and Shiloh looked down at me through my parents’ eyesockets.
“What wrong?” Fabio said, clicking his claw.
“Worry not,” Shiloh said. “We take care of you now.”
*
And such was my new life. Fabio started going to work, posing as my father. And since my father worked for a large corporate entity and the extra limbs increased his productivity, nobody seemed to care about his change in appearance. While Fabiodad was at work, Shilohmom would homeschool me, mostly about marine biology. At the end of each day, we would have shrimp and mealworm for dinner, with the occasional pellet mixed in. It took me a while to get used to the new diet, but I adjusted. After a couple years, Fabiodad left his job and started a business raising mealworm in our garage and selling them to pet stores.
When I graduated high school, I told Shilohmom that I wanted to go away to college.
“No,” she said, “join you family business.”
So I worked with the mealworms, organizing orders and helping to develop our brand. For years I was in the same job, that same dark garage, never leaving the house. Ten years passed, twenty, forty, sixty, and then, one day, Fabio and Shiloh were gone.
I had just finished my shift working with the mealworm. I went inside to eat my shrimp and encountered a terrible odor. I walked up the stairs and found Fabiodad and Shilohmom curled up into little balls in my bedroom, next to the tank where I had first brought them home. I gave them each a shake. There was no response from their dry, lifeless bodies.
And that was the end of that.
I walked downstairs and opened the front door. For the first time since I was a child, I absorbed the light of the sun. The air was cool and the leaves were yellow and red. A mist hung over the grass. Fall. How I had forgotten Fall. I began to walk down the street with no direction in mind. My body did not move like it used to. My hips ached, and my back, which had grown arched from years of mining mealworm, tugged and pulled with each step.
But I pushed on.
I walked to a shopping plaza where I used to go. The stores were all different, except for one: the bagel store. I went inside. The smell was profound—bread, fresh fruit, bacon. I walked to the counter and placed my order:
“Would like I, bagel with things many,” I said.
“What?” the cashier said.
I took a breath, then forced myself to speak proper English. I ordered a bagel with cream cheese, smoked salmon, tomato, and red onion. Like I used to get with my dad on weekends, when I’d go with him to buy his newspaper and lottery tickets. I found a seat, took a bite, and immediately gagged. The years of shrimp and mealworm had rendered everything else inedible. So it was. I was about to get up and leave when an old woman walked by me with a little girl at her side. I almost bumped into them.
“Apologies,” I said. “Not used to being around people.”
“Oh, it’s alright,” the old woman said. She turned to me and offered a tired smile, and that’s when I saw the scar on her wrinkled, round face.
“Sonya?” I said.
“Yes?” she said, giving me a perplexed look.
“It’s Remy,” I said. “We went to grade school together.”
“Ah, yes, good to see you,” she said, though I was not convinced she actually recognized me. Her body may have been in better shape than mine, but from that little exchange—that certain vague confusion in her voice—I could tell her mind was going. But still, in Sonya’s face, it all came back—the time before the crabs, the days outside on the playground at school, laughing, smiling in the sun, surrounded by friends.
“Do you remember,” I said, “how you gave me two hermit crabs for my birthday?”
“Hermit?” Sonya said, squinting her eyes.
“The hermit crabs. Fabio and Shiloh.”
“Oh, oh yes,” Sonya said. “Fabio, Shiloh. Orange and yellow.”
“Yes, yes.”
“I remember them.”
“Well, I think I’ve figured it out,” I said.
“Figured what out?”
“I figured out why your mother made you give them to me.”
“Oh?” She smiled.
“Yes.she made you give them away because she was looking out for you. She was worried that they were taking up your time, turning you inward. Keeping you from connecting with your friends, your family, your loved ones. Keeping you from connection, from understanding. Keeping you from people. But, you need people. I need people. We all need people. Because…a life without people isn’t a life at all.”
Sonya thought about it for a moment. The little girl at her side kept her focus on a cell phone-like device, ignoring the whole conversation.
“Hm,” Sonya said, the wheels turning in her tired brain. “No…no, that’s not it.”
“Then what is it?” I said. “Why did she make you give them to me? I don’t understand. You loved those hermit crabs.”
“My mother made me get rid of Fabio and Shiloh,” Sonya said, “because they smelled. They smelled absolutely awful.”
I stood in silence, waiting for her to elaborate. The little girl tugged on Sonya’s sleeve. “Grandma, can we go?” she said.
“Yes, dear.” Sonya licked her dry lips and looked at me. “Nice seeing you again. I hope you’ve been well.”
Sonya walked off with her granddaughter, leaving me alone—alone now, alone always, alone forevermore. Where was I to go? Where does one go after an experience, after a lifetime, like mine?
Well, there really is only one place to go.
Home.
STORY:
Remy Fink is a writer and film director based in Brooklyn, NY.
*
ART:
John Elizabeth Stintzi (they/she) is an award winning novelist, poet, editor, and cartoonist. JES is the author of the novels My Volcano and Vanishing Monuments, the poetry collection Junebat, and the illustrated short story collection Bad Houses. JES is also at work illustrating their first graphic novel: Automaton Deactivation Bureau.
Next Tuesday, we’ll feature a bonus interview with Remy about this story!
As a cancer, I approve of this story.
The escalation! 💛🦀