short stories, past perhaps

Full Moon: Symphony of Scyllarides

Every January a man arrives at an abandoned fisherman's wharf in the Adriatic Sea, spending weeks to drop a metal box into the water. In February, he sits for hours, headphones on his head.

Scyllarides, deep-water lobsters, are hard-shelled and clawless, subsisting on mussels and being hunted by triggerfish. Every year, the second full moon kicks off their engagement in two-hour activities, during which they bite and consume one another, vigorously alive. Through imaginary lens, one is breaking two of the six segments on another's head; a few others are motionless from lost segments on the thorax. In the background, roughly two thousand broken bodies are orchestrating, scraping shells, and chewing one another's protein-rich meat - without screaming. There are also sounds flowing underwater.

The Symphony of Scyllarides has always been improvised and never recorded.

To human eyes, the full moon seems forever for 3 days, though it's but a moment, exact to the second. In Croatia, in 1900, it arrived at precisely 14:12:46 on February 14th.

"Do you know how rare this is?"

This man responds: "Yes, I think someone needs me to listen.”

On this February 24th, no one disturbs his afternoon with his Symphony of Scyllarides.