The Fisherman

THE FISHERMAN. 

It was his third time around this triangle, the right axis bent crooked and the sky an unforgiving midnight. For 11:16 in the evening on a Tuesday, the sea was abnormally empty— it had rained just two hours ago, stormed up a screaming fit up in the clouds, and even as he cast out his net when the water seemed ripe with bounty, there was no harvest. He’d reaped these waves over twenty times tonight, until the bow of his boat was drenched wet from the blood of the ocean and his face was a pale, lumpy sack of flesh hanging off his skull. Still, no fish. Even when the sea began to screech and writhe, there was none. Still, no fish, and still, he cast his net, over and over and over again. 

Pity to the prince that herds the sea. It was not the first night he had to watch this man orbit around the same nightmare plane every evening. Ridiculous, yes, undeniably so— but any martyr would’ve known that the old man could not control it. As soon as his boat hit the sea, his lips tasting the salty elixir of the water, he seemed to have lost all authority over his body. He could never stop thinking about his past. Yet, the more he thought of it, the more it haunted him so. It came back to him in the fish, returned to him in the sting of a serrated hook, and found him in the taste of the bitter wind— there was no escape. By midnight, he was no more than a ghost soldier trapped in the vice of a sea full of sirens and their song. 

He looped around the triangle for the fourth time now, beat on by the agony of the sea. 

He thought of his late fiancé, her soft cheeks and dark hair, almond eyes and olive skin. He thought of the time he’d taken her to that restaurant, fancy and prim and pompous, and he thought of the time they’d gone ice skating and bowling and sailing— in real boats, with motors and fancy triangular sails and bright baby blue paint. He thought about her smile, that sunshine-glint in her eye, and he thought about how she’d looked the day she died. He remembered those pink petals on her bedside, the turquoise-translucent vase they sat in, and he remembered breathing in the last of her sweet scent before she was draped in an ill-ridden black and sent away. He remembered touching her delicate body as the flowers grayed, wilting as the aroma of her life was riven from him. His parents swept her things away, fingertips poisoned with the touch of vain as they cooed to their son. The only thing he was able to take was her daisy-lace handkerchief. 

Two weeks later they brought the gruesome man a wife. Blonde, boney, and in his parents’ eyes, perfect. She was in it for the money, of course, but it wasn’t to say he wasn’t a fine man. He’d reel in the throw net— unsurprisingly empty. Just one more time, he told himself. Any lady would grovel to be married into a wealthy family like his. He cast his net once more, feeling the spiny ridges of the rope as it twisted into itself like how sharp her skin felt the first time he’d touched his second fiancé. They were married now, with two children, and even after his family’d gone bankrupt she still stayed. So it wasn’t only for the money, afterall. 

He clung to those memories of his first love like an infant to his mother. It was true that he knew each scene and story by heart, tasting them as he curled his tongue over the insides of

his teeth, feeling the grooves as he replayed and replayed and replayed— but none of it helped relieve his grief. Even despite having a loving wife and children of his own, he couldn’t shake the feeling of her— it was her, all the time, every time. It was her who he dreamed of, who he yearned for every night out at sea, praying and searching for her face in the stars.. He had a loving family, yes, but he knew he barely reciprocated their love, and it had long begun to kill him inside. 

The sea spat at him, crashing and warping like a blood-hungry serpent. 

His heart hurt. As a matter of fact, everywhere hurt. 

The moon glistened at him, a twinkling ghost-white. Ah, the ocean, his purpose. It was about time to reel in his net. Wrapping his fingers around the rough, thorny edges of the rope, the man yanked and yanked until he’d pulled the entire net on board. It was scrawny and light, but there was something silvery-skinned trapped within the hexagonal net— something scaly and ribbed. 

He pulled at it with his bare hands, then cursed quietly to himself beneath his breath. It was a half-eaten, slithering snake. 

What a joke. 

✧✧✧ 

It was 1:54 a.m. when he stepped in the front door in the dark of night. 

“Are you alright?” Her voice sounded too-high and jarring, too warm against his cold hair. She stared at him, wide-eyed and welcoming as he walked in. 

“Mhm,” He responded grimly, kicking his feet into the doormat as he shook off his raincoat. 

“No catch again?” 

“No.” 

There was a momentary pause as he began to stuff his equipment blindly into the cabinet by the entrance beneath the dim candlelight. 

“Are you hungry?” 

“No.” 

Another pause. 

“…You know we can’t keep doing this, Shiloh.” 

He was silent for a long while until she spoke again. 

“Well then. I… guess I’ll be heading to sleep.” Her eyes dropped to his feet in obvious disillusionment as she reached for the handrails of the staircase. 

He watched those hazel eyes, that forest-green tint that was so shockingly similar to his first fiancé’s. In a half-second he saw her face staring at him, blazing and golden and warm, but

a half-second later it disappeared. Vanished into the flames of the candlelight, and he was faced with his wife’s disappointed brown eyes once more. 

“I’m sorry, Betsy.” 

She turned from the seventh stair, only to give him a forced smile of hurt and sorrow before she whisked herself away. 

✧✧✧ 

Night two was no different, except that the deep, blood-blue waves were angrier, fiercer, and each bout of sea seemed saltier and fuller with malice. His boat no longer followed the paths carved out by the three axes of the triangle yesterday. Yet, even today, no fish lined his net. He cast the net once more and waited. Drew the net back then cast it again, then waited again. Nine times in and still no fish. 

Needless to say, the man was frustrated close to his limit. Wasted by the sharp air against his face, toughened by months of labor, he bit back his pain and grit his teeth to dig out some rusty old cans of cat food for when he fed the stray cats upon shore. They disappeared a few months back, and the food was probably all expired by now— but no matter, it would do well in flavoring the net. Digging a jagged thumbnail underneath the metal tab, he popped open the can with a sharp motion, then dumped its contents onto his throw net. Using his rubber boots he’d spread the mush into the rope, then hold it up to momentarily admire his masterpiece with an effort to not gag as he threw it overboard. Once more, he would wait, and he would be disappointed every time. 

His count was at thirteen, now. Thirteen like his first fiancé’s favorite number. “I just like how it sounds,” he remembered her laugh, “it sounds so ominous, like Friday the thirteenth, but so cutesy at the same time.” The man now felt his nose sting sharply, a telltale sign of tears, as his eyes welled up and swallowing began to hurt. No, he told himself, as he attempted to hold back his tears. Men don’t cry, he thought. But as a singular, salty tear rolled down his inner cheek from his right eye, he knew that it was well over even before it began. 

He raised a salt-stained, rust and catfood smelling hand to wipe his eyes, and it stung. He wasn’t sure whether it was the seasalt or the rust or the catfood, or perhaps it just… stung. Truly, he’d forgotten what it felt to cry. After the day his fiancé died, he wept a singular time— then it was over, and no tears ever came again, no matter how hard he tried. It was almost as if an angel had had its halo sucked dry from its soul, like how he’d lost his sunlight that day. 

His eyes still stung. The man began digging in a raggedy sack tied to his waist, eyes closed, impatiently before he dug out a lace-lined handkerchief and pressed it to his cheeks. He breathed in the clean scent of the fabric, clutching it close to his flesh, feeling the texture of the delicate lace against his soiled skin. As if it were magic, the pain began to lessen, and soon his vision returned.

But as he opened his eyes, the sea was different. No longer was it dark or dull or blue, but it was a shimmery silver, almost as if the sunset had drowned in the ocean. The waves acted as if the moon had sung them a lullaby. Was he hallucinating? He touched his face with frostbitten fingers, pinched his wrinkled skin, and he did not awake from any dream. Was this the rapture? Was he dead? Was this it, the end of it all? 

He was dumbfounded to say the least, and with this he froze and was not sure at all what to do. He only squeezed the handkerchief tight and prayed that if he died, he would go to heaven. 

Then in a split-second, like a rattlesnake bite, like a shark’s jaws, like cheetah paws, the sea turned on itself tenfold. It was a milky-way burst of color, an otherworldly golden confounded by pinks and oranges and purples, kissed with the ichor of the sun and the tears of the stars themselves. At the heart of the nebula-looking mass was a deep, darkened lavender, as if the flowers themselves were burned by the flame of the devil’s paramour. 

Like a dream. A monster, if it meant anything that was unknown. However unidentified, the creature was familiar in the back of his mind and just as pulling— almost as if he was spellbound, he understood from one of many of the riveting stories he’d heard in his childhood. Non-human, of fish not animal; long, wavy and wild and dark is her — her? — hair, stuck to her body alike second skin. There is a glimpse in the corner of his eye of translucent and fleeting fin the color of dragonfly wings, scales mirroring the glint of opal and lapis lazuli and rose quartz dripping as it shifts beneath the forbidden moon, elixir-heavy and aromatic of salt and seaweed and ozone and aster. 

There was silence between them and he parted his mouth to speak, but he hesitated for a beat too long. Her scales shifted, her telltale v-shaped tail flickered impatiently, forlorn and forbearing. On the surface, she was lustrous like a tender-hearted devil who danced too close to the sun. He admired her even as she ducked back into the water, and before he knew it, she was gone. Cold. Slinked back into the depths of the ocean, unattainable, lost, and forbidden. 

✧✧✧ 

Coward. The man did not return home that night. He sailed back as fast as he could from the sea, frantically with the handkerchief tucked in at his collar, and as soon as he arrived at shore he crashed and slept at the bank of the ocean, in the damp sand with a measly blanket-rag for warmth. He did not sleep in comfort, rather, he slept out of pure exhaustion driven to his limit. When he awoke, the dawn seemed to collapse in on him— the sky was a bleak shade of gray, and the beach was empty and barren as if an apocalypse had blighted the earth so. 

He spent the day out and about, strolling around as if his goal was to mimic a lost puppy for the day. Truth be told, he doesn’t remember much from what happened— only that he found himself in a restaurant scouring for food, then in the middle of an argument with the waiter about

the bill he vomited everything he’d just eaten all over the table. Then when the sky began to darken once more he remembered being compelled by a strange, foreign inner force that pushed him to take his boat into the sea for what he would know as the last time in his life. 

✧✧✧ 

The third night was special. The new moon was drained of its light, and the sky was no longer littered with stars like it’d been the nights before. The ocean was again an atrocity of fury as it whipped itself against its back, but he remembered those splitting eyes stabbed by viridian, those crystal veins that stabbed him back. As he rowed into the depths of the sea, feeling the familiar wet push on the bottom of the boat, he could not help but feel a perpetual shortness of breath, a burning at his sternum, forcing him to constantly gasp for air from the fear and fright of it all. 

At her lair, he would wait. He closed his eyes once more, imagining the orbiting galaxy of her aura, the silver sheen of her hair and the blush of her body. Forbidden, forsaken, forlorn. And there it was— a wicked alchemy, a sight so divine the man was sure he was in heaven. But no, as it emerged from the water, it was tangible and touchable and real. She wore the brew of a witch’s twilight, a rich, illicit sapphire-rose sworn by the saints of the sea. And she was beautiful, undoubtedly— her face was a smooth blue-peach with sharp and angular features, and her eyes carried slitted yet mesmerizing orbs. Her equally-bewitching tail flickered in and out of the sun-tinted water, and it was quickly evident that she was no other than the forsaken, living myth of a mermaid. 

This time, as if in a trance, he found himself at a loss for words as he stared into the unfathomable depths of her eyes, deeper than the ocean itself. Mystery. This time, thankfully enough, the beauty spoke first. 

“You are hurt.” 

Three words. Third night. Thirteen. Her voice was raspy, raggedy and low, yet it bore a transient lyrical tone to it the man could not bear the weight of. The salty ichor dripped off her tongue like a vampire. 

“Wh-What?” The man sounded sheepish compared to the chained maiden. “Your heart,” A faint smile spread across her thin lips, rosy and red like flesh and blood. It was almost as if she had a sixth sense. “It aches. I hear it often across these waters, it’s quite loud.” The beauty mused. She spoke in an odd lilt, but her voice was as clear as day, as rubies. “O-Okay,” He couldn’t help the stuttering. “What do you want?” 

“To help you,” Her smile grew wider, and the man could not tell if it was gaining warmth or if it was only frozen over twice more. “The woe of a lonely man, you bear it.” Silence. 

“I want to lift your pain. Grief, longing, agony, restraint.” 

A pause would be granted as the man considered. “How..?” 

She grinned, now. “By cutting it out.” 

“NO!” He shrieked. 

At this, the man jerked back and clutched his hands to his chest, seeking the comfort of his handkerchief that was soaked in sweat by now. He was in full belief the mermaid wanted to

“lift” him up literally into the depths of the sky, drag him overboard, suck the sweet flesh off his bones and drink the blood out his veins. 

“You don’t want to live again?” Her voice wore a sing-songy and springy costume, or perhaps that was only his imagination. God, he couldn’t even imagine anything— everything was clouded by that damned voice of hers. “I mean no harm, sailor. I only want to take out your grief.” 

Once more, he would hesitate. 

It was an epiphany of destiny, a spell manifested too far it was ridden to rot in the depths of hell. Evidently, it was too late to run now. 

“From wh-where?” 

She lifts an arm, revealing her bone-skinny hands that were adorned with spiral-lengths of knife-sharp nails, akin to a unicorn’s horn. She held one finger up and pointed to the side of her neck, in the soft flesh beside her jawbone, near her ear. “Here.” 

He trembles at the sight of her fingers, almost imagining her claws scraping the side of his neck— and beneath the dim, glowing light of her body, he could not tell if she was holding ten needle-knives or one. 

Reluctantly, slowly, the man felt himself lean forward, rest his hands at the edge of his dark-oak boat, and squeeze his eyes shut as sweat collected in beads and beads on his forehead and chest. He was a rough man, muscular and broadly built, covered in a fair share of hair; yet in comparison to the mermaid’s dominance did he seem like only a scrawny ghoul. Shivering and cold and afraid. Smiling, twinkle-light tender with a smirk, the fair-skinned beauty lifted herself higher out of the water and reached for his neck. She placed a soft hand on the man’s shoulder-chest, and the other reached for the large tendon in his neck, running her fingers along its length, cradling his jaw until she felt the spot of the pearl-sized bulge. 

Breathless. He’d nearly suffocated beneath her grip, preparing to wince and grimace at the pain, but there was little to none. She makes a deep but small incision at the junction of his head and neck, twisting just beneath the surface of his flesh, until a small, smoky-obsidian pearl emerges from within. There was almost no blood, save for the little trickle of wetness that ran down to his shoulders. 

Whatever wicked fate this was, it ravaged his soul, but not without making him sensually and wonderfully complete. 

In an instant he felt featherweight— as if he could float into the sky, take flight as if he were a bird, and never ever come back down again. He felt the chamber to his heart clink open and his stomach balloon up with a newfound fervor of life. He felt as though he was a garden full of buds, eager to emerge in full bloom. And most of all, he felt green, fresh, and alive again. Almost immediately, his response came as obligatory. 

“Thank you.” 

She kept smiling. He watched as she took the pearl and swallowed it, slowly and promising. 

At that striking moment, he locked eyes with the mermaid and felt his noir-brown eyes clash with her orbs of emerald, his infantile pools of pale blue-hazel brush fingertips with her wondrous garden of eden, her overbearing forestry of life and living, fruitful and wild, merciless, teeming with mature hunger and childish curiosity.

He felt his eyes clash with hers in all sorts of ways, friendly, jagged, loving, thankful— and he would let hers win. 

“You’re welcome, sailor.” 

Viridescence. 

✧✧✧ 

The next morning he would’ve left a note to his wife and children, more than half of his savings, and not a sight of him in the town of yesterday.