A whale soars over Brooklyn. Clouds spread in streaks over the pale blue sky like cold butter. And the whale cleaves right through. Dar spots it from his perch on the rooftop, smoking a contraband cigarette. At first, it looks like the whale is just playing. Bobbing in and out of the clouds the way calves do during their migratory season. But the whale is too large to be a calf; it casts a shadow over the entire block as it glides directly overhead. The atmospheric pressure changes under such an immense weight. The air tastes momentarily brackish. Dar stands to get a better look as it drifts farther away.

A marvel, truly: wildlife in the city. There’s no room down here for such a creature. But in the sky? With all that space, the whale’s fins splay wide. Belly parallel to the ground, the same color as the pavement. Ribbed and aerodynamic. It flicks its tail once more and then doesn’t move again. The whale’s descent has begun. It sinks behind the skyscrapers and lands in Manhattan.

Upon impact, the city ripples. A few seconds later, Brooklyn shudders. The entire apartment building shimmies like it might collapse, then settles. Car alarms cry out in chorus.

Dar doesn’t waste another moment. He thunders down the stairs as if escaping a fire. By the time he gets to the second floor, Porter is already rushing out of their shared apartment. A trowel and hunting knife in hand.

“Whale fall,” Dar huffs.

Porter is already ahead of him. “Saw it on Instagram. Chinatown. Though some idiot tagged Dime Square. The 4 comes in two minutes.”

“If we catch it before they hold the trains …”

“… we stand a chance.”

They make it to the Nevins station just as the train pulls in. Dar is taller and hops the turnstile, punching open the emergency exit for Porter. They slip into the car as the doors close. After that dead-sprint to the station, they can scarcely breathe. Hunched over his phone, Porter takes advantage of the last few seconds of internet connection, which he uses to check as many Instagram stories as he can. Dar leans over his shoulder to read along.

Chaos in Chinatown. A burst pipe flooded Yu and Me Books. No word yet on the safety status of the students at P.S. 124 Yung Wing. The nascent construction on the upcoming mega-prison collapsed, but it’s not clear if the whale landed on or even near it. The train dips under the river and Porter loses his internet access.

Nose wrinkled, Porter leans away from Dar. “Were you smoking?”

Dar sniffs the collar of his jacket. It smells like cigarette smoke, both old and new. The smoking revolts Porter, sure, but he loathes the lying about the smoking. Dreading a reprise of the argument that kept them up until 3 a.m. last night, Dar mutters, “Sorry.”

“It’s whatever,” Porter says. He slaps his own thigh in sudden frustration. “I didn’t bring any buckets.”

Dar scans the train car. People with tote bags and the occasional backpack. There’s a woman with a wheeled trolley, laden with shopping bags. Bingo. He puts on his best honeyed smile and approaches her.

“Excuse me, I’m so sorry to bother you. But my friend and I are in a bit of a bind. Could I buy your shopping trolley from you?”

She hoards the trolley closer to herself, drawing it between her feet. “I am not giving you my groceries.”

“Just the cart, ma’am.”

“Without the cart I have no way to get my groceries home.”

“I could pay for your Uber from the station?”

She takes a second look at him. Takes in his fashionably queer haircut and the worn doc martens he bought for bartending but wears all the time. “Two hundred.” She adds, “And fifty.”

“Done.” Dar is in the same jacket he wore to work last night, with all his tips in the hidden zippered pocket. He comes up short and waves Porter over to cover the rest.

“We better get something good,” Porter grouses as he watches her get off at the next station. “Otherwise, there goes our gas bill.”

Ire rises in Dar; what else was he supposed to do? But he tamps it down, knowing it’s a side-effect of their recent fight. Truth told he’s not really upset with Porter’s complaining. Hell, he’s nervous about the bill too.

They make it all the way past Fulton station when the train grinds to a halt between stops. “Folks,” the conductor sighs, staticky through the intercom. “We’re being held at a station due to an incident up ahead.”

Dar and Porter exchange a glance. Silently, they agree to get off the train.

Dar goes first. He uses the door between cars and jumps the rope guard. He helps Porter down and together they make their way quickly along the tracks towards the station. Luckily, all the trains seem to be stalled for the whale fall, and they make it to Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall without needing to dodge an oncoming train. Dar gets a boost up onto the platform and hoists Porter up after him.

The platform is packed with people. Several are on their phones, relaying the madness of the whale’s landing. Dar catches bits of information as they sift through the crowd. “Already full of rats and wyrms,” from a grandmother, and “the bank collapsed,” from a tourist, and “my cousin saw its fin on Pell.” Porter glances back to Dar at that last tidbit.

Pell Street. They’re headed to Pell Street.

Outside, they have to fight the flow of people. Dar carries the trolley over his head, and Porter seizes the pocket of his jacket as a tether to guide him through the crowd. Dar has never seen the neighborhood like this. Paper lanterns formerly strung across the side-streets droop to the pavement, steadily trod by foot traffic. Trash bags burst open. Abandoned vendor carts overturned. The streets of Chinatown are packed … until they aren’t. Pell Street is totally empty.

And then they are upon the whale.

All told, the damage could have been worse. That’s how Dar knows he’s getting cynical. Because when he sees the whale lying in a heap of rubble that used to be a middling boba tea shop, sees the crushed fire hydrant gushing freezing water onto the remains of a trampled fruit stand—Dar thinks it could have been worse. The whale landed directly on Mott Street, between Bayard and Pell. It only clipped three or four buildings—“only,” there’s that cynicism again—and most of the whale managed to land in the street.

They beat the NYPD and the NYFD, but not the other scavengers. It looks like every delivery driver, teenager ditching school, and construction worker in the radius immediately beelined to the whale. It’s the working person’s windfall.

Dar himself only knew to come because, back in San Diego, he worked for a private junk truck company. He was too queer to blend in, and not strong enough to physically hold down the job for longer than a few years—just long enough to learn the value of refuse in the city. In the last year before Dar quit, there was a whale fall. But it didn’t look like this one. So fresh. Newly dead.

Hacked up like it’s being eaten in chunks.

At first, Dar thinks the whale is still breathing. Its ribcage, the bones already visible from scavenging, seems to pulsate. It’s not just the people, carving their way in. It’s wyrms, gnawing their way out. Emerging from deep within the whale. Looking for their next host.

The San Diegan whale fall wasn’t like this. They didn’t get there within the hour of impact, so the whale was picked clean of its organs by the time they arrived. No wyrms, no chunks. Dar isn’t braced for the viscera. The odor overwhelms him the second he smells it. He vomits onto a box of squashed persimmons.

Unbothered, Porter charges ahead. The sight of him, brave and determined, ignites something in Dar.

Porter stayed at the junk company in San Diego for another few years after Dar left. He’d been the one to show him how to harvest a whale. What parts can be hawked for the most online. And so, he knows what he’s talking about when he announces, “I can’t believe we just showed up at the ribs. You have no idea. I’m going in for the flight bladder.”

And then he’s off, elbowing past the other humans on the ground hacking away at blubber. Porter scrambles above the clutch of scavengers and emerging wyrms, up the side of the whale, about two-stories high. He crawls around, feeling for the spine. Counts the notches of vertebrae. Then, when he’s found the right spot, Porter digs into the whale.

There’s something admirable about the way Porter never hesitates. It was like this when they were in the junk truck together. Porter in the lead, Dar just there for the assist. But even as Dar admires him, their argument from last night creeps into his thoughts. It would have been nice if Porter thought to strategize with Dar before digging in. He has to tell himself that this is just the way Porter is. Calculated risks usually pay off for him.

Dar’s luck isn’t as good, so he reaches for the low hanging fruit.

Last time, he managed a fistful of baleen: whale teeth. The keratinous fronds sold for enough to cover his half of rent.

“Port,” he shouts.

Several of the other scavengers glance at Dar, then return to work. Porter doesn’t answer so much as grunt. He flings a bit of fat over his shoulder, and it slides greasily down the whale’s side. A teenager scoops it up into a Ziplock bag. They lick their fingers afterward and rise a few inches above the ground before settling again.

“I’m going towards the head,” Dar reports.

“Good luck,” Porter replies ominously.

Sky whales aren’t really whales. They aren’t even related, though Dar read an article that noted the sky whale’s spinal movements are similar to that of true sea whales (and squirrels, curiously). There are a number of anatomical differences. Starting with, and most strikingly, the eyes.

Once you get past the fins, the eyes begin. Glossy and cloudy white. Two in a column every foot or so, hovering just above Dar’s head. He can’t remember how many whales have — something like 32 or 84, maybe.

Many of these eyes have already been gouged out or devoured by wyrms, but the last two towards the mouth remain. The biggest set. As large as watermelons. Two older men in a makeshift scaffolding swing hang from the top of the whale, fastidiously carving out the eyes on both sides. Shouting instructions at each other in Cantonese.

There are fewer scavengers up here, the good stuff mostly picked clean. But a team of three have propped open the mouth and are hacking away at the tongue. Their conversation echoes through the cavernous throat.

“Kind of wild it fell in Manhattan,” comments one.

“I read in the Gothamist that this new nonstop flight to Antarctica or something cuts straight through their migration pattern. A while ago, a pod got cut off from the rest.”

“Makes sense that they stayed here,” contributes a girl. “Since flights can’t go over Manhattan …”

“... the whales sort of hover around here,” finishes the scrawny one.

“Excuse me,” Dar cuts in. He has to step on the whale’s lip to see over the wall of brushy teeth. “Okay, if I take some of these?”

Inside, a motley crew of youths with bristly haircuts look up at him, assessing whether or not he’s a threat.

“We’re gonna get a truck in here soon for this,” the girl stamps a foot down on the tongue. “Think you can knock out some of the bottom row for us?”

Dar works efficiently. At first, it’s difficult to pry the teeth from their gums. But he learns if he swivels just a fistful in a constant circle, the teeth will eventually come loose enough to rip right out. He clears a foot of teeth, then two. A window into the cavern of the whale’s mouth.

One of the clusters gives Dar extra trouble. Too much; he got ambitious with the amount of teeth he could harvest at once. He positions a foot against the whale’s lower lip and leverages his weight against it. The teeth rip free, but Dar slips. Falls and jostles the tongue of the whale. The trio working inside the mouth cry out. “Watch it, buddy!”

A sharp cry echoes down the whale’s throat and something comes screeching out of the whale: a seagull. Swarmed with wyrms. Nasty, fleshy tendrils. Parasites with flight. The seagull doesn’t make it out of the whale alive. The wryms devour it whole, mid-flap. Dar freezes.

“Oh, watch out, they’ll get you.” The girl calmly depresses an aerosol can, carpeting the tongue in a chemical mist. The wyrms go still all at once, dropping from the air. To Dar, she says, “I’ll give you the can if you leave the wyrms for us to collect.”

Amazing that even a whale’s parasites are worth something. “Okay,” Dar chokes.

She tosses him the can. It’s just hairspray.

Even dead, Dar is too afraid to touch the wyrms. Whatever fearsome quality they possessed in life carries on in Dar’s psychosomatic system. He texts Porter, “Did you get the bladder yet?”

No response right away. Dar wants to send another text, asking if he’s still mad about last night. But it’s not the right time.

“Whales feed by skimming,” observes the scrawny one to the others. “Kind of neat that it just swallowed that gull whole. You think it could have lived inside the whale for a while? If the parasites hadn’t gotten to it?”

“Shut up and work, Mohammad.”

Dar used to dream incessantly about sky whales. Most children did, it seemed. The possibility of flight irresistible. When the dreams began to taper off, transformed into stress dreams and finally just nothing at all … Dar felt real sorrow at their loss. Gone were the days where he’d wake with the sensation of flight in his limbs. The irrational belief in his heart of hearts that he could fly, if only he really tried. If only he could remember, exactly, how it felt to be a sky whale.

More teeth. More wyrms encased in hairspray. The trio gets the truck in and loads as much tongue and wrym carcasses as they can into the back. They drive off. Dar gets nervous about Porter.

“All okay?” he texts.

Still no response to that first one. He’s staring down at his phone when someone farther down the whale calls out. It’s in French or maybe Portuguese, so Dar doesn’t understand what they’ve said. But the alarm rings through their pitch. Haphazardly, Dar shoulders the trolley and rushes down the length of the whale, to where he last saw Porter. The whale here has been ravaged. Its fins cleaved off; eyes fully scooped out. There’s still more to gather, but several scavengers have halted their collection to stare up at the top of the whale.

“What happened?” Dar asks a woman in a reflective vest.

“This guy fell right in,” she responds in a deep Queens accent.

Dar can’t see Porter. “Boost me up there?”

“The blubber is fucking soft, bro. You’ll fall in, too.” She shakes her head. “There’s no getting him out now.”

Dar is about to barter teeth for a boost when someone shrieks. His attention whips to the source of the noise: a busboy pointing in horror at a bulging eye socket. The pink tissue swells, as if growing another eye. But the bloody orb forming in the socket is not another eye. It’s a head.

“Porter!” Dar shoves others out of the way. “I’m gonna pull you out.”

Porter’s head has fully breached. He spits out a mouthful of gore and with his first breath says, “Help.” He thrashes, ripping open the socket as he tries to get free. “Wyrms. Help me.”

The gap is just large enough for his shoulders. Dar reaches in and hooks his hands under Porter’s armpits. Pulls hard. Gets stuck.

Porter thrashes again, face contorted. “They’re all over me.”

Dar has to use his entire weight as an anchor to wrest Porter free. He pops free with a slick pop. They topple to the ground and Porter curls protectively around his middle. And he is absolutely covered with wyrms.

In his rush, Dar left the hairspray back at the mouth. Why didn’t he get it? He should have left the teeth, not the spray. With his bare hands, he wrenches wryms from Porter’s thighs and back. One twists and sinks its teeth into Dar’s wrist. He slaps it hard, crushing its head. It dies instantly and two other wyrms fly off in alarm. An older woman comes to his aid and beats them off Porter with an umbrella. Porter curls tighter into himself, even when the wryms have scattered into the air.

“Thank you,” Dar says to the woman, but only has eyes for Porter. His well-being. Dar crouches, pulling at Porter’s shoulder. There’s a nasty bite on his neck, a ring of tiny needle pricks. “Are you okay?”
Slowly, Porter rolls over to reveal what he’s been protecting: a gloopy organ.

Dar is so surprised that he says something stupid: “Where did you get that?”

“From the whale,” Porter snaps. Then, maybe realizing he’s being harsh, he continues, “Sorry. It’s the flight bladder.”

“Right, of course.”

Shakily, Porter begins to stand. Dar helps him up. The umbrella woman eyes them, giving Dar a concerned look. He shrugs as if to say, There’s nothing to be done. And she goes back to collecting the wrym carcasses into a paper bag.

“Are you okay?” Dar asks Porter again. His own wyrm bite makes his whole wrist ache. Porter must be covered with them.

But then again, Porter has always been tougher than Dar.

“Fine.” Porter considers his haul again. “Incredible that the wryms didn’t get at the bladder. Thank god. It was fucking hard to get out.”

“Porter,” Dar says softly.

“What?”

“Nothing, just …” Dar reaches for the organ. “Want me to hold that while you look for something more secure to wrap that in?”

“Okay,” Porter says. He drops it into Dar’s arms. “Hey, um. Thanks. For getting me out. You’re stronger than you look.” He hits Dar lightly on the shoulder before he sets down the curb. Not so far that Dar can’t see him. They exchange glances while Porter sifts through the recycling on the curb. Aware of each other. Tethered.

The cops come when the sun starts to set. Shouting about safety hazards, beating off scavengers, confiscating their harvests. The NYPD start at the tail, which gives Porter and Dar a chance to flee. Dar brings the shopping trolley up on his shoulders and lets Porter make the tactical decisions. Porter hangs a left down Doyers Street and for good reason. This section is referred to as the bloody angle; a popular street for gang warfare because the sharp turn of the road obscured sightlines. He darts towards Nom Wah Tea Parlor and enlists Dar into pulling down the first fire escape they encounter. They scramble up the rungs, getting onto the rooftop.

“Cigarettes,” Porter gasps.

“Really?” Dar’s heart feels like it’s full of battery acid. Like it’s surging out of his chest. Maybe Porter is right; he should cut down on the smoking. “Right now?!”

Porter nods. “We need to look casual. Like we’ve been here a while.”

Dar catches on immediately, spotting the other scavengers fleeing the scene below. He lights a cigarette, despite his uncooperative lighter. They pass it back and forth. Generating a lot of smoke quickly.

The cops charge down Doyers. They march past Porter and Dar’s perch, but one stops. Looks back and up. Spots them. Dar sees themselves through the cop’s eyes. To the cop, they’re two queers—an Asian and a white boy who couldn’t afford a unit in Dime Square. Posing a fire hazard, maybe, but the cop has bigger fish to fry. Doesn’t register them as worth his time. Moves on.

Porter’s relieved exhale catches on a cough. He hacks up a lung. “We should wait here until morning,” he reasons. “Can I see what you got?”

Dar hands over the bag.

“Darling,” Porter whistles, looking down into the trolley. “You cleaned up.”

“No one wanted the teeth.” Dar demurs. But Porter’s first kind words of the day buoy him. Center him into a sense of purpose.

“This is like … two months’ rent.” Porter kisses Dar on the mouth, chummy like a hug and sweet like holding hands. “Let’s celebrate.”

Porter draws out the flight bladder. Delicately lavender, encased in a cardboard box he hastily assembled from the recycling left on the curb. He runs his fingers through the slime and sucks on them. Rolls his fingers around his mouth until he floats a few inches. Settles back down on the fire escape and offers the organ to Dar.

Dar hesitates, looks down to the people below. No cops in sight. He licks the organ directly and soars up a full foot, landing with a soft chuckle.

“That’s probably all we should do for now,” Porter says. His arms hover off his ribcage. As if suspended underwater. Dar’s own legs feel light, and if he nudges them up, they’ll float parallel to the ground.

“Totally,” Dar agrees. “How do your bites feel?”

Tough as ever, Porter shrugs it off. “Not too bad. Like wasp stings.” He rubs the bite on his neck, which has faded to a blush.

As the hours drag on and the levity in their limbs fade, he offers a whale tooth for Porter to pinch between his teeth like a toothpick. Sucking on the tooth doesn’t do much more than make gravity seem irrelevant. But it’s nice to have less pressure on Dar’s aching hip. Not even thirty-years-old and with joint complaints. That’s the service industry. That’s life.

“Hey,” Dar says, touching Porter’s elbow. “Are we okay?”

Porter shifts the whale tooth around his mouth. “Yeah, of course. We’re always okay.”

Night falls, and there’s still a lot of commotion by the whale. Dar looks up and for the first time notices the color of the New York sky at night. Not navy, like in more rural areas. A true indigo.

“It’s light pollution,” Porter dismisses.

“Yeah, maybe,” Dar responds. He looks down to the streets, which have refilled with shop- and restaurant-owners cleaning up their own streets. No tourists, yet. But soon it’ll be like nothing happened. Dar thinks to the other people and creatures pulsating around the whale carcass. How all the scavengers moved in tandem. “I think I like it.”

“The light pollution?”

“Yeah.”

In the small hours of the morning, after the whale is depleted and the coast is clear. Dar carries the box of flight bladder and the blubber in a plastic bag. Porter wheels the trolley. Folks are back to their normal day. A parent takes their child to kindergarten, points out the iridescent blackbirds in the schoolyard to the child on their shoulders. Says brightly, “That was the color of the sky last night.”

Editor: Aigner Loren Wilson

First Reader: Scott Beggs

Copy Editors: Copy Editing Department

Accessibility: Accessibility Editors