Many Things Under a Rock by David Scheel

Author:David Scheel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

16

Dreaming Octopus

Anchorage, Alaska

My living room is quiet except for the hum of the aquarium pump and gurgle of circulating water. Heidi is comfortable in her home and napping, stationary and asleep on the vertical aquarium wall. She displays a mottled mixture of browns, veined with sepia and splotched with cream. Her mantle tip is dark, but lightens toward her head. Below her eyes, she is still paler. The skin over her mantle and head is scattered with small papillae. It’s a relaxed camouflage body pattern, but this one is dynamic—darkness waxes and wanes over her body, as though she were moving through bands of shadow and light.

Heidi becomes dramatically darker, with ominous stripes appearing on either side for a moment. Then she pales, mantle first, then her arms. Her color is all pale. The papillae vanish. A yellow wash blooms, fades, returns, and holds. Then in a moment, her color blackens and her skin wrinkles along the veining. Pale again, then wine so dark it is black, followed by a deep camouflaging tessellated contrast pattern scattered with inky clouds. A curled arm tip twitches.

Heidi is asleep. Why do her body patterns change?

Perhaps she is dreaming. Can we know what an octopus is dreaming?

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