Fly Hook

by R.W. Chapman

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You were rinsing your plate in the sink when you found the orange gun. Why was it in the same kitchen cupboard as the lemon soap? You picked it up and your fingers struggled to wrap around the handle. The dock and bullrushes bobbed outside of the houseboat, and your stomach lurched.

Your dad grunted behind you. He was hunched, wheezing, and lighting a Camel. His stomach bulged under his oil-stained t-shirt.

You wanted to drop the gun, or stuff it back into the cupboard and pretend that you hadn’t seen it. But Dad would have seen your heaving chest. Your tenth birthday was approaching, and by then, you had told yourself, you would be better at pretending.

“Dad?” you said.

You had only ever seen a gun like this in the video games you played late at night under your engine-smelling duvet.

“Stupid,” he coughed. “It’s a flare.” Sweat tumbled down his forehead. “Use to set ‘em off at ducks when me and the boys were fishing.”

Fishing. That trip he took you on a week before. He had rowed you through the water in the skiff while you sat at the stern. In the clearing, he pushed a worm onto your hook and threw the line into the water. You both waited in silence as you did every evening in front of the television. Pressing your knees to your chest, you wondered what it would take for him to talk to you. You thought that the trip was a test, to see if you had grown up yet. Then the hook caught. The line drew in. A slip of brown life was birthed. He handed you the oar and gestured.

“It’s your fish,” he croaked. The small fish tried to drink the air. “What are you waiting for?” he wheezed.

You held up the oar. You met the green eye of the fish. A heartbeat crawled into your ear. Your dad’s eyes ran over you. What would happen if you didn’t kill the fish? Your dad might never talk to you. He wouldn’t respect you enough as a boy or his son. You would both carry on living in the same rooms, but being alone.

The orange of the fish’s fins flickered as it jumped in desperation. The oar slipped from your hand as the skiff dipped beneath you.

You fell from the boat.

In the water, you opened your mouth to scream and tasted mud, petrol, urine. Something grabbed your collar, hauled you out. Your dad. He dropped you onto the floor of the boat. You gulped air.

There was silence after that. Only his struggle for air and the occasional flicking of a Camel husk accompanied you on your way back to the houseboat. You had failed. Your dad sat in the living room while you found a towel. You could still taste the water. Your dad turned on the TV.

That is all you knew of him. Silence. You had been sitting together, silent, for your whole lives. If you had not fallen into the water, maybe he would have spoken to you. If you had pretended to be a man and plunged the oar through the fish’s skull. If you had smiled and killed and shaken his hand and eaten the fish’s flesh right there in the clearing, maybe he would have said something about his sadness. Maybe he would have said something, anything, to you.

The cigarettes were killing him. Starving him of air. Sometimes, as you laid in bed, you tried to think of ways you could help him. You wished that he would tell you. On the fringes of your dreams, you thought about winning the lottery and buying him a yacht. Fishing in turquoise water with browned skin and smiles.

Back in the kitchen, his eyes darted to the flare in your hands as he pulled the Camel to his waiting mouth. His brow crumpled.

“Try catch us something again. For tonight,” he said, snatching the flare from you. The heartbeat slunk back into your ear. Another test. Your legs wilted as you were pushed up the narrow stairs to the deck of the houseboat.

You stood on the dock, by the skiff. The day’s warm breeze kissed your cheek. Your dad checked the ammunition in the flare. A fishing rod and leather box were handed to you. He nudged you with the flare.

“Take it,” he murmured. Smoke floated from his mouth. “If you… you know…” He nodded towards the water. Your heart thundered.

You could have run. You could have pretended to faint. You could have pretended to be someone else. A lion tamer or an explorer captured by pirates. The long plank of the ship stretched before you as the crew poked and jeered. The water looked black. Your hands curled into fists by your sides. You would have to catch something and prove to him that you were not just a boy. You were an explorer. A man.

Your foot stepped forward onto the skiff, and you grabbed the flare from your dad. A smile broke across his face before a cough, and a flame devoured another Camel.

He pushed you out.

You struggled to pull the oars. The water was thick and rancid. Bottles, cigarette butts, and beer cans danced around you. A white plastic bag swam onto your oar and lay limp in the air before being submerged. The fish was just like that.

You never wanted to taste that water again.

Your back strained as you pulled harder with each stroke. The boat began to lilt towards the channel. It led to the clearing that you and your dad had fished in the past. You stuffed the flare gun into the leather box. It was not needed.

You watched the plastic bag float further away. Beneath it, you thought you saw scales flicker.

The water began to submit against your strokes. The heat from the evening sun wrapped around you, and the tips of the parched bullrushes leant against the breeze. The Broads were weaved of marshes and scrapes and peatbogs and dykes. You pretended that they were the veins of a giantess and that you were her child warrior searching for a way to be born. You could have gotten lost within her bloodstream.

But you knew that channel and where it led.

This was the inlet that your dad sped down in the midday sun a year ago.

That morning, you felt the softness of lips against your forehead. Your mum’s hand guided you to the small boat. It was going to be an adventure. You were going to be a big boy and pretend. She rowed you, smiling, into the clearing.

Later that day, your dad told you that he had woken up to find that your mum was gone, her wardrobe was empty, and you were not in your bedroom.

You were hugging your legs when he found you. Just you. In the skiff.

He pushed you against his chest and you smelt the engine oil and leather of his body. Crying, he thanked God. He was silent the next morning and returned from the mechanic’s carrying cigarettes.

Back in the skiff, a plastic bottle pecked at the hull. The setting sun hugged your neck. You entered the clearing.

You tried to thread the line and push the worm onto the hook the way your dad had done a week ago. A pool waited beneath you.

You might not look at the fish once it was in the skiff. You would try to kill it without thinking. As you cast the line into the water, the wind embraced you.

Something soft bit at the end of the line. You fumbled, reeling it in. Under your breath, you promised yourself that by your tenth birthday, you would also be better at this. The brown leaves of the fish’s skin winked in the light as you cradled it out of the water and into the skiff.

You grabbed the oar and measured the distance between your knight’s sword and the foe. The small fish’s belly plunged and contracted. It grasped at its passing life.

You met its eye. You saw your dad wheezing on the sofa, struggling against the weight of his sadness as the smoke choked him.

You felt the crash against the hull of the skiff before you heard it. The boat lurched in the water as the oar was knocked from your hands. You could not see the cause yet. Great waves surged around you. Then a mass of green scales sank into the darkness. Something was beneath you.

The fish you had caught had jumped out of the skiff in the chaos. Your chest clenched. The sun was setting. Something lived out there. A bigger fish. You would be knocked from your small boat. You would plunge into the murk and drink the disgusting water. You would fail.

You closed your eyes and tried to steady your heartbeat. The waves slackened to ripples. A warm wind weaved through you. You sucked in a deep breath.

Your shaking hands found the oar. There was a bigger fish out there. Maybe you could use this fish to become someone else. Maybe you could become a sea captain, catch the fish and make your dad happy.

Your captain’s hands worked faster baiting the line the second time. You cast the hook out of your ship and waited.

A plastic bottle bobbed past you. It dipped in the water, and you thought you saw the scales again.

The sun sank as you waited. Your stomach tightened. Your eyes grew heavy.

A tug on the line heaved you to the water’s edge. You strained to pull back and smiled as you wrenched the rod between your legs to try and gain leverage. The reel clicked as it was dragged closer.

A slick green dome rose from the water. The tips of two pointed ears. Yellow cat’s eyes stared at you. The slits burrowed into its skull above a stretched and fanged mouth. Gills wrapped its scaled throat. It lifted a scaled hand from the water. The hook had caught in its palm. You screamed.

It tore the hook from its hand and made a high, cold screech. Almost as if in fear, the skiff jumped beneath you. You fell from the boat.

The water was warm. You held your breath, not wanting to drink the filth. It was out there, beneath you. It had seen you.

You kicked through the water, pushing yourself to the surface. You crawled onto the reed bed and nestled yourself amongst the spike-rush. You saw the leather box floating against the bank.

You imagined your dad. He was hunched and wheezing. Then choking. The image became fainter. You were going to die on the reed bed, and you would never get another chance to try and save him from his sadness. He was already dead, and so were you.

You heard broken breathing behind you. Flinging open the leather box, you grabbed the flare.

You spun and met dry, swaying reeds. You pushed the barrel of the flare through them.

You held your breath.

In the moonlight, the creature hunched over an oval of woven reeds, plastic bottles, and cans. Cigarette butts jutted from the nest’s walls. The creature straightened. It wheezed, clutching a plastic bag in one of its hands. It searched for where to place the bag, being led by its translucent, bulbous belly.

Her green young huddled within the nest.

The creature’s wheezing stopped and started. A low tone floated from her throat. It modulated. A melody cut through the night air. She sang.

You lay in the dirt and listened to her gentle lilt.

A breeze rubbed against your cheek, and you remembered being in the veins of the giantess, the warmth of the water, and the wind that hugged you as you fished.

The rushes cradled you.

You were not going to die, and neither was your dad.

You rose and turned in silence, but she saw you. Her eyes were no longer slits, but full silver circles. The melody stopped, and, for a second, there was only you and her and the breeze across the reeds.

Your heart hammered. Your legs rooted themselves within the peat. You raised the flare to call for help. From Dad. From anyone.

The orange flare made a damp click, and the shot jammed.

You met her eyes.

The creature turned, pulling herself through the thick reeds, and disappeared into the water.

The young curled into one another in the nest, still except for the occasional rock of the breeze. Their peeling scales gave way to off-white flakes of flesh. Their cat-eyed faces twisted. Their chests bent.

The flare fell to the ground. You crumbled. The warm peat and hugging reeds felt cold and dry beneath you.

You lay beside the nest and tried to recall the melody she sang.