"Rescue Attempt" by David Morris

One morning last summer I was about to peebefore getting ready for work, my eyes still half closed with sleep, when therewas splashing and a dark shape moved in the toilet. I jumped back and watchedthe rim, now wide awake. Whatever was in there didn’t climb over the side. Thesplashing stopped and I inched forward, craning my neck until I could seeinside. The creature was olive-green, tubular with slick, shiny skin and smallblack eyes. Motionless, its head poked above the water. Its body extended intothe toilet’s drain pipe, making it impossible to guess its length. At first, Ithought it was a snake, but then I saw the gills on the side of its head.That’s when I thought it might be an eel.

“How the hell did you get here?”

I lived on the apartment building’s ninth floor.   

The creature started thrashing about, slapping theside of the bowl. I grabbed the toilet’s lid and dropped it and jumped back tothe doorway, turning side-on, ready to flee. I watched the lid for a fullminute, expecting to see it lift and the creature to emerge. But there was nomovement. I hurried back to my bedroom, thinking how I’d be late for work nowthat mystay-in-bed-until-the-last-possible-minute-and-still-get-to-work-on-timeroutine was disrupted. I’d have to deal with whatever it was in my toiletlater.

My alarm clock read 7:25. It was a thirty-minute walkinto the city to get to the bank where I worked. I had to be at my desk byeight. I’d still make it. But instead of getting dressed, I picked up my phoneand googled, “Australian eel”. The images that came up were a match: ashort-finned eel. I was sure there was an organisation that rescued animals thatwere injured or in difficulty: kangaroos hit by cars, seagulls tangled infishing line discarded on the beach, possums attacked by dogs or cats, and eelsstuck in pipes, even toilets. I’d find out who to call after Mr Morgan, thebank’s manager, finished his morning inspection, checking everyone was at theirdesk, bent over their work. I’d used up three days of sick-leave in the pastmonth, faking gastro. I couldn’t miss another day without a medicalcertificate. Even if I took a photograph of the eel with my phone and sent itto Morgan as proof, he wouldn’t think it was something that warranted takingtime off. He’d say, “It’s just a slimy eel”. In Morgan’s mind, wanting to stayhome and find someone to remove the eel would be further evidence I wasn’tdedicated to my work. My next performance evaluation was in two weeks. On mylast one, in the section titled “Job Commitment”, Morgan ticked“Unsatisfactory”. To be fair, his assessment was spot on. But the week before,head office had announced there’d be layoffs. I couldn’t afford to lose my job.The clock read 7:27. I threw open the wardrobe and yanked my suit off itshanger.

In the bathroom, no sound came from the toilet. Ilifted the lid a few cautious centimetres and peered in, hoping the eel haddisappeared back down the pipe. But it was still there, resting its headagainst the bowl. I lowered the lid. Then I lifted it, thinking the eel mightneed some air. But I didn’t want it to escape and slither around the apartment,leaving a slimy trail on the carpet. I lowered the lid again and bent down andexamined the small gap between the lid and the bowl. It was sufficient to letair in.

I dashed towards the front door, still needing to pee,thinking I’d use the bathroom in the apartment building’s gym, and that I hadto hurry.

*

I worked in a small, windowless office at the back ofthe bank. If I stood in the middle of the office and took a step in anydirection, I could touch the wall in front of me. I hadn’t hung pictures on thewalls like some of my colleagues. That would be like saying, “I give up. I’mnever getting out of here so I may as well make this tiny space as cheery aspossible”. But they could hang all the pictures of lush, green forests and white-sandbeaches they wanted, their offices still resembled a prison cell.

As soon as I sat down at the pine-laminate desk wedgedinto the corner, my heart still pounding from running, Morgan launched into theoffice brandishing a manila folder, shaking his balloon-shaped head.

“You’re late.”

“I’m sorry. There was ...”

“I’m not interested,” Morgan snorted, now standing soclose his flabby, pasty white skin was visible through the gaps in his shirt,where the buttons strained against his stomach. “We have a problem.”

He opened the folder and pulled out a dozen documentsand spread them across my desk, straightening each one as he laid it down and tappingit with his index finger before laying down the next one.

“What. Are. These?”

He gripped the edge of the desk and leaned over. Hiscologne, which I guessed was supposed to be something “woody”, was as pungentas disinfectant and irritated my nostrils.

I pretended to examine the yellowing documents.

“They’re home loans from the nineteen-fifties,” I said,playing dumb.

“Theeeese!” Morgan pointed at the staple in the topleft hand corner of each document, saying, “This ... and this ... and this ...and this ...”

“I must have missed them.” Don’t apologise, I ordered myself.Do not apologise.

Morgan snorted again.

“You need to pay closer attention.”

The bank was scanning every document in its archive.In case of fire, Morgan said when I started. Or maybe it was for some otherreason and I’d forgotten. I didn’t know. I’d been at the same bank, in the sameoffice, at the same desk, doing the same job for three years. And that job wasto ensure all the staples were removed before the documents were scanned. Itwasn’t the sort of work that held one’s attention. Morgan explained what I alreadyknew: the documents couldn’t be scanned if the staples weren’t removed.

“If you don’t want to do the job, we’ll find someonewho does. Do you want to work here or not?”

Until a few weeks earlier, the first thing I did when Igot to work was search online for another job. But no-one was hiring. Then Ifigured, even if I did find something there was a good chance it wouldn’t beany better than this job. It might even be worse. So I gave up looking.

“I want to work here.” My lips felt like they were fightingagainst forming the words.

“Then do it properly. This, right here,” Morganpointed at the staple on one of the documents. “This is important.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Do that.”

On his way out, Morgan called back, “It’s why you’rehere.”

I waited until he had gone before I opened the desk’sdrawer and took out the staple-remover. I looked hard at that thin, bevelledpiece of plastic. This was what most of my waking hours were reduced to: using thisto remove staples from bank documents. I was twenty-nine years old.

I picked up Mr Ernie Blythe’s home loan from 1959 anddug the tip of the staple-remover under the staple and flicked my wrist,instead of inching and wiggling my hand slowly forward so that the staple liftedaway from the document. The corners of the four pages of the home loan toreaway. I threw them in the bin under the desk, rather than reattach them withtape. A small, pathetic act of rebellion. I looked at the clock on the wall.Nineteen minutes after eight. The bank closed at four, then Morgan locked thedoors and I had to work for another hour before I was released. I examinedErnie Blythe’s home loan. It took him just ten years to pay it off. What did hedo then? Anything he wanted, I imagined. It would take me thirty years to payoff my own mortgage, which was standard. I’d be fifty-eight. Fifty-eight!

“Enough of that,” I said. “Don’t think about it.”

Of course, that didn’t work.

Then I said, “You will get out of here. One day.”

But that didn’t work, either.

I started scrolling through websites on my phone,reading about eels and trying to find someone who could remove the one in mytoilet. One website stated that short-finned eels were on the brink ofextinction; their habitats, rivers and creeks and ponds, were being drained forapartment block developments and they moved through pockets of water deep underthe new buildings, trying to follow ancient paths. I lived only two kilometresfrom the Yarra River, which was probably where the eel wanted to get to. Ithought about its determination, climbing nine floors through the apartment building’spipes to try and reach its destination. But it had to be tired from its steepclimb. What if it couldn’t hold its head up any longer and drowned? What was Igoing to find when I arrived home? Its bloated, lifeless body in my toilet? Or,it might have found its way back down the pipe. Perhaps I was worryingunnecessarily. Still, I shouldn’t have left it. And then, to close the lid onit! But eels needed water. Maybe I’d done the right thing closing the lid, keepingit in the bowl.

I googled, “rescuing wildlife in Melbourne”, and openedthe first website listed. A picture of a man, tall and broad-shouldered,cradling a koala like it was an infant, appeared on the screen. I called thephone number at the top of the page. A woman answered and asked how she couldhelp.

“There’s an eel in my toilet.”

It sounded like the start of a joke. The woman didn’tlaugh.

“Is it alive or dead?”

“Alive.” Then I said, “I think.”

“You don’t know if it’s alive?”

I didn’t say anything and considered hanging up,before admitting to her I’d left the eel to come to work.

“But it wasn’t injured or in danger. If it was, Inever would have left it.”

I waited for her to yell at me, “That’s hardly thepoint.” Instead, she asked for my name, address, and phone number. But I knewwhat she thought: I was a terrible person.

“We’ll send someone over.”

“When?”

“I’ll contact one of our workers right now.”

“Now?”

“We don’t want to leave the animal stuck in yourtoilet any longer than we have to.”

“Of course not.” I opened my mouth to explain how it wouldbe difficult for me to get away from work. But what could I say? Can we make itlater tonight? I have important staples to pull out. I’m sure the eel can hangon until then.

“Terry’s on call,” the woman said. “Hold on. I’llcheck if he’s available.”

Maybe I’d get lucky. Maybe Terry wouldn’t be availableuntil lunch time, when I could run back to my apartment, have him get the eelout of the toilet, and be back at the bank before my break was over.

Over the phone, a local radio station started to play.An ad for a car dealership came on. I’d resisted buying a new car for severalmonths. My current one, which I bought second-hand five years ago, was fifteenyears old. Every time I had it serviced, the mechanic found something expensivethat needed fixing. Brakes, suspension, tyres. My father always said, “Asecond-hand car is a money pit.” The payments on a loan for a new car would keepme locked into my job, but it was only a matter of time before I gave in. Themortgage, my student loan, I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. What was onemore debt to add to the pile?

A song I didn’t recognise started to play.

I had a sudden vision of the eel struggling to keepits head up, making one final effort, and then giving up and slipping under thewater’s surface.

The song clicked off.

“Terry can be there in twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes?”

“Problem?”

I looked at the office wall, in the direction ofMorgan’s office, trying to work out how to get away. I considered a familyemergency: my grandmother in the hospital, my brother in a car accident.

“Sir?”

What if Morgan asked questions? Checked things out?But I couldn’t leave the eel trapped in the toilet.

“I’ll be there.”

I hung up the phone and left my office and walked downthe hallway. I wouldn’t say anything to Morgan. I couldn’t stand the thought ofmaking up some lie, looking all forlorn and abasing myself, only to have him makeme feel guilty and negligent for leaving my work undone. I just had to hope he wouldn’tnotice my absence. I took a deep breath and held it as I strode past hisoffice, head forward, and strode through the customer service area towards theglass doors at the entrance.

Outside, the sun was already hot. As I ran along thefootpath, I started to sweat under my suit.

*

Therewas a white ute flecked with dirt parked outside my apartment building. Thename of the organisation I’d called was painted on its side. A man who lookedlike he was about forty was in the driver’s seat, his arm dangling out of thewindow. He was tanned and had a bushy, sandy brown beard. His eyes were closedand his head was tilted towards the sun.

“Terry?”

He opened his eyes and looked at me. He smiled. “You must be James. The man with the eel in his toilet.”

I said that I was.

“You don’t look so good.” He reached over and took adrink bottle from the console between the front seats and held it up. “You wantsome water?”

I thanked him and said I was fine, wiping the sweat off my forehead and taking a deep breath. I pulled my shirt away from my chest to try and cool down, but the back of it was moist and clammy on my skin.

Terry opened the ute’s door and climbed out. He wore a pair of heavy duty boots, the toes scuffed and scraped, and tight khaki shorts, revealing powerful, tree-trunk thick legs. He walked to the back of the ute, peeled back the tarpaulin and pulled out a large pail.

“Let’s get it home,” he said.

Riding up in the elevator, we stood side by side. Hesmelled of sweat, but it wasn’t an unpleasant smell. 

“You lived here long?” he asked.

“Six months.”

He made a low, humming noise and nodded, like what I’dsaid meant something to him.

“They put these places up pretty quickly,” he said. “Soundproofing issues in a lot of them. You have any problems?”

“It’s not so bad.”

The fact was, I heard my neighbour every time he didhis vacuuming, or sneezed.

“Do you live nearby?” I couldn’t think of anythingelse to say.

He laughed.

“No.”

He said the name of the place where he lived. I didn’ttell him I’d never heard of it, but maybe he could tell from my expressionbecause he said,

“It’s about an hour’s drive from here. It’s quiet,which suits me.”

Wherever it was, I was sure there wasn’t much outthere; no shops or cafes or restaurants or bars or cinemas. I couldn’t live insuch a place. The boredom would kill me.

Terry had wiped his boots before we entered thebuilding, but as we walked along the hallway they left a faint imprint of dirton the carpet. I didn’t like seeing it, and was relieved when he took the bootsoff before entering my apartment.

Inside, Terry stood in the middle of thekitchen/dining/lounge area and looked around. He didn’t say anything, but I wassure he was thinking about how small the apartment was, or how it still stunkfrom last night’s BBQ Meatlovers from Domino’s. The air didn’t circulate evenwith the windows open.

“The bathroom is through here.”

If the eel’s still there, I thought as I led Terrydown the short hallway, please, let it be alive.

I stood off to the side as Terry approached thetoilet.

“I closed the lid because I didn’t want it escaping,”I said. “I figured it needed to stay in water.” 

“I understand. But you needn’t have worried. Eels cansurvive out of water for a couple of days.”

“I didn’t know.”

Please, let it be alive.

Terry bent down and lifted the lid. I almost burst outlaughing when I heard water splashing.

“Looks like it’s OK,” Terry said.

He stood up and stepped towards the shower and openedthe door. He turned on the water, holding the pail underneath.

I felt like I should say something, but didn’t knowwhat.

“Have you ever had to rescue an eel from a toiletbefore?”  I asked.

“This is a first.” He chuckled. “But there’s always something new in this job. Last week, a woman called because she had a bat flying around her house.”

“How did you catch it?”

“Fishing net,” Terry laughed. “Sometimes, you have toimprovise.”

He turned the water off and returned to the toilet,getting down on his knees. He reached into the bowl.

“You don’t wear gloves?”

“No,” he said. “Gloves can strip off the eel’sprotective slime.”

I moved closer to the toilet.

“Its instinct is to be wary,” he said. His handhovered above the eel. The eel’s gaze was locked on it. “Which makes sense. Theones whose instinct was to trust us probably didn’t last very long.”

“Do they bite?”

“Sure. If they feel threatened.”

The eel’s head didn’t move, but I thought any secondit would strike out at Terry’s hand, like a cobra.

“You’ll be OK,” Terry whispered. “I’m here to help.”

I leaned forward. The tips of Terry’s fingers madecontact with the top of the eel’s head. The eel jerked away.

“You’re OK,” Terry whispered, again. Over and over.“You’re OK.”

“It isn’t hurt, is it?”

“No,” Terry said. “Mostly frustrated, I imagine. Probablythinking, How the hell did I end up here? And how do I get out? Or scared. Goodthing you called when you did. We wouldn’t want to leave it feeling that wayfor too long.”

Had the woman on the phone told him that I’d delayedcalling for help?

“I would have called sooner,” I said. “But things atwork ...”

“I understand,” he said.

But he didn’t understand. He didn’t understand that Iwas deep in debt and my head was on the block at work. He didn’t understandthat not everyone could make rescuing an eel from their toilet their toppriority.

“There’s a lot going on, right now.”

“Like I said, I understand.” He was moving his handmillimetre by millimetre towards the eel, which continued to watch it. “Ididn’t always do this for a living.”

I was about to ask him what he meant, but he touchedthe eel, which flinched only slightly, and started stroking it. The eel loweredits head, like it was enjoying his caress.

“There you go.”

“That’s incredible.”

It really was.

Terry didn’t say anything. He continued to stroke theeel, and with his other hand moved the pail to the front of the toilet.

“Will it be OK?” I asked.

“It will.”

Despite his gentleness up to that point, I expectedhim to grab the unsuspecting eel and rip it out, and anticipated watching theeel thrash about, fighting against him. Instead, in a swift movement, he slidone hand down the eel’s body and pulled it forward and placed his other handunderneath it, guiding it over the bowl’s rim, so that its head disappearedinto the pail. His actions were so smooth it was hard to believe he hadn’t donethis before. The eel slid into the water and coiled itself inside the pail. Itmust have been a half a metre long.

“That wasn’t so hard,” Terry said, standing up andlifting the pail. “Once he knew we were working towards the same goal.”

He looked down at the eel. “Isn’t that right?”

“How do you know he’s a he?”

“His size. The males are smaller than the females.”

“How big do the females get?”

“About twice the size.”

“Really,” I said.

Outside the apartment, Terry put the eel down to puthis boots back on. It wasn’t moving. I wondered if it was afraid, or if it knewthings were going to work out.

In the elevator, I asked Terry if he thought the eelwas trying to get to the Yarra River.

“Yes,” he said, and I felt a degree of satisfactionabout being right. He said that’s where he planned to release it. He knew wherethere was a quiet spot. Outside, I walked with him back to his ute and thankedhim. I looked in the pail, where the eel was motionless. I smiled, knowing it wouldsoon be back where it belonged, but I was also disappointed the experience wasover.

I raised my hand and said, “So long”. The eel didn’tlook at me. I didn’t move. I thought about how in half an hour I would be backat my desk, removing staples from pointless bank documents. The thought made mybody sag.

“You don’t want to come with me and release him?”

Terry said it like he was confused.

“I wish I could. But I’m afraid I have to get back towork.”

“It won’t take long. Twenty minutes, tops.”

He held his arm out, like he was guiding me towardsthe ute’s passenger door.

I opened my mouth and emitted a strange, strangledcroak. I still didn’t move. Morgan would have realised I was gone by now. Thelonger I was away, the harder it would be to come up with an excuse for myabsence, and the greater the trouble I’d get into. But I couldn’t go back tothe bank. Not yet. I’d think of something to tell him. As I walked towards thepassenger side door, I felt anxious. Then invigorated.

*

“You said you hadn’t always done this for a living,” Isaid, as we drove towards the river. “What did you do before?”

Terry drove with one hand on the wheel, his other arm resting on the edge of the open window.

“I spent most of my life working in a warehouse thatstored and delivered boxes filled with the crap they sell in two-dollar shops.Then, five years ago, I saw an ad calling for volunteers for wildlife rescue.Weekends, mostly. I replied to the ad because I wanted to do more with my life... I wish I’d done it when I was younger.”

I looked at him, thinking he’d be looking at me, buthe was staring straight ahead.

“Then it turned into a paid gig,” he said. He presseda button on the dashboard and my window wound down.

I rested my arm on the window’s edge. The air feltgood on my face.

I looked down at the pail between my legs. The eelmoved its head, and then flicked the end of its body so that water splashedonto my trousers.

“It’s OK,” I said. I said it again. The eel settleddown a few seconds later.

When we took a turn, forcing me to lean sideways, Iclasped my knees tight against the pail.

I thought about what I did on the weekends: sleepingin, binge-watching TV shows, getting drunk, trying to forget the week justgone, dreading the one ahead.

“Had you worked with animals before you volunteered?”

“No,” he said. “But you pick it up pretty quickly. Ithink we have an innate empathy for them, especially when they’re in trouble.The rest is learning about handling procedures.”

I thought about my own reaction when I first saw theeel, and how I was scared and then more worried about getting to work on timethan helping it.

We pulled onto a dirt track. There were no other carsaround. I didn’t know where we were.

“But a lot of it is dealing with animals that havebeen hit by cars. Kangaroos and wombats, mostly. Dead, or dying. That canreally get to you. You have to be prepared for that.”

I’d never touched a dead animal, or watched one die. Iwondered if I’d be prepared for that.

I wondered if it would get to me.

“We’re here,” Terry said.

He parked at the edge of a steep bank. Below us wasovergrown grass, and trees whose species I couldn’t name. Beyond that, theriver. The current created ripples on the muddy water. Terry got out of the uteand I followed, carrying the eel.

“It really is beautiful,” Terry said, standing on theedge of the bank. “All those years cooped up in that warehouse really makes youappreciate something like this.”

He took a long, deep breath, and exhaled. He gazed, asif in a trance, at the scene in front of us.

I looked and looked at the canopy of overhanging treebranches and the dense gathering of bushes with their small red and orange andpurple flowers, and the river, at the exact spot where Terry was looking. Butwhatever he felt, I didn’t feel it. I felt only my distance from everything. Ilistened to the same silence as him, and breathed in the same faint grassyscent that I was sure was part of his experience, that he likely found calmingor reassuring or affirming, but it only increased my awareness that I wasdisconnected from these surroundings, and that something important was missingin me. I looked down at the ground.

Terry moved forward and started climbing over the edgeof the bank. When he was over, he reached his hand out.

“Give him to me,” he said.

It was strange, but I didn’t want to let go of theeel, and didn’t move for a few moments, but there was nothing I could do excepthand the pail over to Terry. It felt like I had failed at something.

“You’ll be OK,” he said. He was looking right at me.He reached his other hand out.

I examined the river bank, the grass and soil. My suit and shoes were bound to get dirty if I went down there.

“Come on,” he said.

I stepped forward and took his hand. His skin feltlike dried-out leather, and it was rough with callouses. I didn’t resist as hegently pulled me towards him. He held me tight as I made my way over the bank’sedge, and kept holding me until I found my balance.

“There you go,” he said. “You’re almost there.”

I followed him through the thick grass, loose bladesstuck to my trousers. My shoes sank into the mud as we approached the river.

What would Morgan say when I returned to the bank?

“You can’t work here looking like that.”

But I didn’t stop. I’d come this far and now I wantedto see the eel released into the water.

We made our way under the low-hanging foliage ofseveral trees. It was cool and shaded.

Terry set the pail down at the river’s edge.

“You should do the honours,” he said.

I didn’t move.

“I ...” I said, the start and end of my explanationthat I didn’t know what to do.

“All you have to do is tip the pail,” Terry said.

He said, “Go on.”

I stepped forward and picked up the pail and,adjusting its angle by gentle centimetres, tipped it. Sure enough, the eelflowed from the pail into the river. I watched its natural, easy movementthrough the water, tracking it as it was borne along by the current, a darkshape disappearing and then reappearing. I managed to track it for maybe half aminute before it was gone, but I kept looking for it. I must have stood theresearching the water’s ripples for a minute, maybe more, before Terry softlycleared his throat. I guessed he was letting me know he had to return to work.I was sure he felt bad about interrupting.

“We should go,” he said. He was right. The experience was over. What good did it do me to stay there? But even as I heard twigs crunch under his footsteps, and heard him climbing back up the bank, I didn’t move. Now, looking back, I don’t know if it was the eel or a trick of the sunlight, but as I searched the river’s surface I saw something. It was moving further and further away from me, but I tried to keep it in sight.

*

Art: Digital Painting by Joe Lugara.

David Morris lives in Canberra, Australia. He studied creative writing at the University of Melbourne, where ‘Rescue Attempt’ started as a writing exercise for a course that engaged with contemporary eco-fictions. The story was inspired by the discovery that the campus and surrounding area was built on a creek that was once a migration stream for short-finned eels, and that eels still follow this ancient path using drainpipes. His work has appeared in Monkeybicycle, Red Fez, Cordite Poetry Review and elsewhere.

Joe Lugara took up painting and photography as a boy after his father discarded them as hobbies. His works depict odd forms, inexplicable phenomena and fantastic dreamscapes, taking as their basis horror and science fiction films produced from the 1930s through the late 1960s. His digital photographs debuted in a 2018 solo exhibition at the Noyes Museum of Art in his home state of New Jersey. Mr. Lugara’s work has been featured in several publications and has appeared in more than 40 exhibitions, including the New Jersey State Museum and 80 Washington Square East Galleries at New York University. Follow his work at www.joelugara.com. Twitter and Instagram: @joelugara.