The Fish
by Brian Yun
The Fish
I reel the fish in gently. It’s big and plump and round and it struggles against my hold but I am much stronger. I don’t like catching fish but they taste so good.
By the time I get home it is still squirming and yapping its little mouth. I look into its googly eye and it is muddled and grayish. I wonder what the fish sees now as it dies. Through its fish eyes lens my face must have been circular and round and I hope the fish found it funny too.
I look towards the little shack Demetrius and I shared. The roof is plastering and shreds of plastic lick up from years of brightness and heat from the summer sun. Viewed from afar, it looks like a field of weeds. I read the sign above the window. We made it many years ago, when we first opened the fish shack. We bought white paint from the dollar store and wove together weed plates from grass and fibers we dragged out from the river. “Happy Ending,” it read.
Demetrius throws open the door and walks across the wooden dock to my rowboat. I stand up to smile at him, and my boat wobbles a bit.
I call out to him.
“Hey, you think we could let this fish here go?”
He looks at me and looks at the lump of fish beneath me.
“Yeah, we’ve caught enough today,” he replies.
He steps into my boat and it wobbles a little more under his weight. I wonder if we are slowly sinking. Demetrius nods at me, and I grasp onto the fish’s tail while he holds onto its snout.
We lift it up, and under the sun, the fish’s scales are gleaming.
Together, we heave the fish into the water. It plunges straight down like a rock till it gets littler and littler, and we can not see it anymore.