“This one,” Mrs. Kelly announced,
“is my incestuous grandfather.
See that perfect fin. It will
wound him for the rest of his life.”

“Is that a clam?” I asked,
intrigued by the thing in the corner
of Mrs. Kelly’s homemade aquarium.

“Well, that’s my husband, dear.
He was doing the really bad thing
with the cleaning lady when I got home
from my weekly grocery shopping.

“I suppose there’s nothing wrong
in keeping them inseparable forever:
my husband’s ossified lips
to fasten her sweet little tongue.”

Then I noticed an eel with no mouth
or any visible orifice. I had no stomach
to ask for the story behind it.

Mrs. Kelly's Aquarium
originally published in Big Pulp Winter 2011: Interrogate My Heart Instead

Kristine Ong Muslim’s work has been accepted by over five hundred publications including Aberrant Dreams, Abyss & Apex, Expanded Horizons, Space & Time, and Tales of the Talisman. She has received several Honorable Mentions in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror as well as five nominations for the Pushcart Prize and four for the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Rhysling Award.