“Gone Fishin’ “

He knew that there were fish here, even though he hadn’t caught any yet. He could see them in the clear water, orbiting around a freezer that was slowly rusting on the seafloor. He had been drawn by the pelicans circling, their white underbellies makeshift clouds under the dank sky of the bridge above.

It was nighttime before he caught his first fish but it was a beauty. A giant snapper, the first he’d ever seen in these waters. He watched the moonlight bounce off its scales, struggling in vain on the floor of his boat, as it took its final breath. It was beautiful.

He gutted it on the rocks near his house. He always did. He had always loved the fact that fish have red blood like humans. This ones spilled out of it too easily, a steady flow that caught moonlight. He ran the knife from the soft spot near the tail until it caught on the head. He tore the head loose and threw it into the bucket. The sharp sound of metal on metal snapped him out of his reverie. Resting the spotlight between his chin and chest he stared into his gut-bucket. The organs mixed around as he shook it. No telltale reflection from metal hit his eye, just the myriad of colours found in a fish. But he could hear it. A “tink” among the sloshes. He picked out the liver and held it up to the moonlight. His fingers pressed into the soft organ and when he moved them their imprints remained. He sank his fingers into the fragile organ and tore it apart. A metal ball dropped from the liver and rolled into a groove in the rocks. He stooped to pick it up. It felt about the size of a cue ball, and was perfectly smooth like one. One side of it felt rough, like there was an inscription there. He couldn’t read the writing in the moonlight, so it wasn’t until he got back to his car that he saw the poem.

“Three black and four light, Left to see before my night. No escape without your sight, What you cannot see you cannot fight. I will find you. I am your blight. We will be one, I am your might”.

It captured his imagination, and he tried googling it. Nothing. The search returned zero results. Why inscribe a poem on a ball? He tried to solve the riddle, but he couldn’t make sense of it. Three black and four light was relatively easy -a time frame – four days and three nights. But what was it referring to? Was it a countdown? A threat?

The next night he returned to the same waters. He caught a few fish straight away. Flathead – good fish, but the usual stuff for these waters and no great haul. He was about to call it a night when he got the bite. Another snapper. The second he’d ever seen in this spot. He followed his ritual, gutting it on the rocks under the moonlight. He could smell the iron in the blood and it made his nostrils flare. A few dozen slips of paper protruded from the fish’s stomach. It was slick to the touch, not just because of the blood. Photography paper. His stomach dropped when he looked at the photographs.

Him. Every photo was of him. He was at the local shopping mall. He rarely left the house, that and the clothes he was wearing let him know it was a few months ago. He had only left the house and his usual routine to purchase a new freezer. How had they known when he would leave? Had this person been following him for months? He looked through every shot. He saw himself from almost every concievable angle. He must have seen the photographer. He thought of calling the police and showing them. But what could he say? He’d found them in the ocean inside a fish. His head was starting to hurt due to this mystery. It was starting to feel dangerous. He burned the photos.

The next night he almost didn’t return to the fishing spot. Curiosity got the better of him though, and he was almost happy when he caught a third snapper. He’d looked them up last night. They weren’t even supposed to be on this side of the country.

He didn’t follow his ritual this time, and he gutted the fish right after he called it, the red blood staining the light wood of his dingy. Eagerly he tore apart the liver, tossing the shreds into the still ocean water. A metal ball dropped out. Bigger than the last one. Given the size of it he was surprised the fish had been able to even swallow it.

It wasn’t like the last one though. Not quite. It wasn’t solid and it wasn’t smooth. He stuck his knife into it and cracked it open. Staring at him from behind the jagged edges of its metal prison was an eye. It startled him and he dropped it into the sea.

Leaping to the side and looking down he found it with his torch. It stared up at him for seemingly forever as it sank into the dark depths of the ocean. The more he stared at it the more he knew. He could tell himself that it was a cow’s eye. That it was just some sick fuck somewhere, playing a joke. But he knew – without a doubt -that was a human eye. It was the same colour as his dead wife’s had been. Pale grey blue. He knew cows eyes didn’t look like that. He saw it when he dreamt that night.

He didn’t go back to the fishing spot after that. He thought, he hoped that if he didn’t catch the fish he could make it all go away. He should have remembered the biggest lesson he got from dealing with his wife. You can’t ignore something to make it go away. It requires action. He spent the night in the lounge room watching television, trying not to think about the fish. Trying not to think about the riddle. Or his wife. He was halfway through his bottle of scotch when it came. A huge thump on his front door. Heavy enough to shake the house. It took him a minute or two to work up the bravery to look. He thought about just calling the cops, getting them to come check on it. Just so that he didn’t have to. Telling them everything. But the local boys didn’t like him much, never had after his wife died. He grabbed his filleting knife, razor sharp, thin and long. At least he knew how to handle it if he did have to defend himself.

It was almost anticlimactic when he finally opened the door. There was no-one there. A snapper, far smaller than the rest was sitting on his doormat. It had already been gutted, and he could see a metal ball. It was larger than the first but smaller than the second. Hollow with no poem. Perfectly smooth except for a join in the middle. His fingernails were getting long and he managed to work them into the seam. He kneeled on his doormat and pulled it open right there. He thought he was going to tear his nails off before it came loose. In the ball there was no poem. No eye. Just a photo of him. A photo from his wedding. Scrawled over his dead wife’s face was a message. The handwriting was messy, the wet ink smeared so that the message was barely legible. But he could make out the word. ‘Tomorrow’.

He sat the photo next to the ball with the poem on it. The fish he sat with the others. The snapper were taking up the largest portion of his small, almost bare freezer. Then he returned to his scotch and waited for the next fish to come.

He worked his way through the bottle before falling asleep, and it was dark when he re-awoke.

He grabbed his filleting knife and a torch and opened his front door. Bright light hit him in the eyes, and he squinted, instinctively closing the door to shield himself. Peering out he saw the fish.

It dwarfed the others like a whale to a shark. It was a massive fish, more the size of a tuna than a snapper. But a snapper it was. A huge shard of mirror as tall as him jutted out of the ground, and impaled halfway up the spike was the gargantuan fish. He walked up to it and looked on both sides for any clues as to what it was supposed to mean.

Only on his second trip around the giant mirror did he see that there was a handprint dried in blood on the mirror. He placed his palm flat against it, and was strangely unsurprised when it was a perfect match of his own.

Suddenly he knew what the riddle meant. The eye, the pictures, the riddle – it all made sense to him now.

The realization caused him pain and he had to squeeze his eyes shut in an attempt to stop it.

When he opened them the mirror was gone. Walking back into the house he was not surprised to see the other clues were gone as well. Opening his freezer full of snapper he saw that his freezer had nothing at all inside it. It was completely bare. His freezer was empty. None of it was real. It was all – reminders.

As always, the riddle seemed simple once he knew the answer. The first part of the riddle was a time-frame as he’d thought. Three black and four light. Four days. Three nights. The time was up now. The day had arrived. The rest – No escape without your sight, What you cannot see you cannot fight. I will find you. I am your blight. We will be one, I am your might.

What he once knew but had forgotten. He had lost his sight. He forgot how to see the truth. He forgot what he had done. It had been nice, forgetting the truth. The guilt had vanished. But he couldn’t let himself forget. He couldn’t protect himself having forgotten the truth. God, he’d almost called the cops! Then he remembered what was both his blight and might. His bravest action – but also his most cowardly. What set him free – but continued to rule his existence. He remembered it all now.

It was a year to the day now since he had killed his wife. She would never leave him alone. Never let him do what he wanted. Never let him go fishing. So he cut her throat with his fishing knife and left her in their freezer. The cops had called around, suspicious and searching. They’d almost found her. He’d taken the freezer then, glued it shut and thrown it over the bridge.

That’s why he choose that fishing spot, and fished there every day. That spot – watching the fish swim around his dead wife –  it gave him an immense sense of calm. The man sat down and poured himself a drink. One whole year of freedom, he thought.

He decided to go fishing to celebrate.