The Fisher of Stories - The Fishero Stories

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I open at the closet.
Allison pulled her phone out of her pocket and looked at the text, then looked again. It was from her husband, Brandon, and it lined up perfectly with the morning she was having: it didn’t make sense, and it kind of pissed her off.
She stared at the tiny pulsating dots at the bottom of the screen, and hoped that the forthcoming explanation would be something funny. Brandon was nothing if not funny, and at one point he made her life interesting, not that she needed any more interesting at the moment.
Hahaha, I’m sorry.
•••
I was trying to type Allison, I love you. I am so thankful for you. You have made my life completely different from what it was just a few years ago. You are beautiful, smart, and I always hoped that you’d be the mother of my children. If I don’t see you again, just know that you were the best thing to ever happen to me. I love you.
Panic raced through Allison’s heart as she read word after word, then read it again. She called up the keyboard and began inputting text at a blistering rate, not caring about the typos this time, he surely wouldn’t care about them this time.
•••
Before she could hit send, the three little dots popped up again, moving silently left to right, and for just a moment she was able to hear the ellipsis, boom boom boom, boom boom boom, boom boom boom, but then realized she was hearing her own heart, frenetically trying to leap out of her chest.
Allison whoah, don’t worry abou that I’m fin•••I’m fine •••I’m trying to set up an automated message on my phone, I was trying to say Allison, I love you. I am so thankful for you. You have made my life completely different from what it was just a few years ago. You are beautiful, smart, and I always hoped that you’d be the mother of my children. If I don’t see you again, just know that you were the best thing to ever happen to me. I love you.•••Ugh! I’m trying to text I open at the close but the freaking thing won’t send before it changes. •••
Allison’s anxiety faded, but her heartbeat didn’t quiet. When fear stopped pumping adrenaline through her system, chilling anger took its place, and it did a more than thorough job in fueling her outgoing text.
Why, Brandon? Why would you send me something like that? I thought you were dead or dying somewhere, why wouldn’t you just call? And what does I open at the close mean?
•••
Allison, I’m SO sorry. I had no idea I’d saved it, and was just testing it to see if it worked.
If WHAT worked, you idiot?
•••
I set up a text replacement in my phone and the key phrase was “I 0pen at the close.” You know the line from Harry Potter? The one on the Golden Snitch that Harry looks at before he faces Voldemort? I just had to put a zero in ‘open’ so it wouldn’t send again.
•••
I thought it would be cool to use that as something I could text, then it would be replaced with all that other text, if, you know, if something happened to me on this trip or ever. You know? Just in case?
Allison’s reply was sharp, and she hammered the rectangular screen as though each letter she typed was a hot coal she pressed against Brandon’s skin, and she envisioned him flinching as he read every word. She knew how important words were to him.
To be honest, the Harry Potter thing is getting a little weird. I don’t feel good, the commute was hell, and the last thing I need is my supposedly grown husband sending me texts telling me he’s dying and then telling me he’s preparing for the worst by referencing a teenager’s film series.
There were no more dots.
—
Brandon sat back in his office chair, defeated. He knew Allison was going through a difficult time, and since she was going through a difficult time, so was he. He tried to lighten the mood as much as he could with humor, but that only worked so well before he became annoying. It wasn’t always that way; there was a time when Allison laughed at everything he said. He had felt like Dave Chapelle in the good years, before he got all preachy and walked away from television shows.
But the years passed quickly, and one dream after another had escaped her. College failed. The dream job failed. And finally, what she considered to be the biggest failure of all: she couldn’t get pregnant. Of course Brandon never saw that as a failure, not once, and in fact, he wasn’t even sure if he wanted kids. But Allison did.
At her insistence, they had tried for eight years to no avail. They had tried everything short of in-vitro fertilization, which was out of the realm of possibility because of the astronomical costs associated, and the risks of needing multiple treatments were too high. Adoption was out of the question because she wanted a biological child…lately it was all she wanted.
He was leaving today, heading to Washington D.C. for a work conference. Brandon was an information technologist for a mid-level security firm that did occasional work for the Department of Homeland Security, and part of his job included these trips to D.C. once a year for security briefings, which honestly would have been better disseminated in a five-paragraph email. But hey, it gave him a chance to drink a few Yuenglings, and that alone was almost worth the trip.
As for the Harry Potter obsession, he’d only recently acquired it. He was never allowed to read the series at home; his parents were convinced he’d try to put a spell on his younger brother. The movies were out of the question also, and as he got older and left the house, he never got around to either the books or the movies. That changed on his twenty-ninth birthday, when he picked up Sorcerer’s Stone. Less than two weeks had passed by the time he turned the final page of Deathly Hallows, and he was a fan for life.
Brandon was fascinated with two particular facets of the series, Harry’s loss of his parents at such an early age and his “Green Mile” moment in the final book. There were times, he admitted, when he felt like his life would have been easier with parents who were less strict, and he was certain the Dursleys were less strict than his own parents.
As Harry walked to his certain death in Deathly Hallows, Brandon couldn’t help but see the allusion to Christ walking to the cross in the final moments of His life. He also knew this was the kind of thing he could never say to his parents, or they would make his life—even his life away from home—seem like it was being orchestrated by Dolores Umbridge.
In Hallows, when he read the line “I’m ready to die,” he marveled. Here was a young boy who knew he was going to die, and he willingly walked into it in order to save the lives of his friends and extended family. In the moment, his fear of death was overshadowed by the concern he had for the well-being of those he held dearest. He’d thought about it over and over in the weeks that followed.
His phone buzzed. He looked down. It was Allison.
Babe, I’m sorry. I’m frustrated, and I took it out on you. You said a lot of nice things about me there, and even though they were meant to be your last words, it was still comforting to know that you felt that way about me, especially with all that’s been going on. And I really do want to be the mother of your children.
Brandon smiled. Maybe they were turning a corner.
—
Allison stared at the dots, both wondering if her apology would be accepted, and knowing the last line was a lie. Just in front of her, the television they kept tuned to CNN burbled quietly. She moved to set the phone down on her desk when it vibrated.
Hahaha, it’s okay, babe. I’m sorry for getting you worked up. It’s just something I wanted to try. I love you, too. And all that stuff is still true, btw.
His forgiveness did nothing to lighten Allison’s spirits. To be honest, she had been hoping for a fight to help her justify the recent decision she’d made, to give her a target for her anger and frustration. She needed to lash out at Brandon because he was part of the problem right now. Not directly, of course, but he had certainly helped create the problem.
Allison was pregnant. She had found out a week ago, after a missed period that she could normally set her watch by. Fourteen years she’d had that thing, and for fourteen years it showed up at exactly the same time. When it didn’t happen last week she knew something was up, and immediately thought it was cancer. A routine blood test—“There’s no way I’m pregnant, doc, it’s cancer”—had given her even more surprising news: after eight years, she was, in fact, pregnant. And now the problem was figuring out how to tell Brandon, because two days before she’d gotten the “big” news, she had decided to leave him.
Figuring out the date of conception wasn’t difficult, Brandon’s birthday had been a few weeks ago, and sex was the only thing he wanted, according to his hilariously inappropriate reply to her emailed question about potential gifts. That had been the last time—the only time—in the past six months that it had happened. It wasn’t that the sex was bad, really. It just felt like a wasted effort to her now. The end result should be pregnancy, and that hadn’t happened, so why couldn’t they both just watch television until one of them either died or got the nerve to file for divorce?
She once was of the mind that pregnancy would fix all their problems. A baby, she thought, would be the solution to the crumbling marriage, the lost love, and the constant bickering. But when she got the news, her first thought was “How am I going to raise a kid alone?” instead of, “Oh my god we’ll be so happy now.” That had only solidified her thoughts that the marriage wasn’t going to last, kid or no kid.
Brandon of course was as clueless as ever. An eternal optimist. Not that there was anyone else, Allison was a faithful spouse, and she wasn’t interested in other guys any way. There had been a few at the office she could have had if she wanted, and perhaps they thought they had a chance, until they experienced her brusque rejections to even the most innocuous flirting.
In fact, now that she knew she had a baby on the way, she had begun to think she wouldn’t need anyone else for a long time. She had always been a bit of a loner; someone who preferred the company of herself to others. She thought it might be fun to raise a daughter—or a son, but it would be a daughter, a mother knew—by herself. Sort of a them against the world, sitcom-type of thing. Allison smiled at the thought.
The phone buzzed again.
Alright babe, I’m pulling up to the airport. I’ll be leaving soon, I love you, and when I get back we can talk more about what I can do to stop annoying you with some of my habits, hahaha. My flight number is 298, Bismarck straight through to D.C., I’ll let you know when I land.
Allison shook her head, snapped back into reality by text. Oh well, she’d keep him in the dark until he got back.
I love you too. Be safe, and maybe just forget you’ve ever read Harry Potter, that would be a start. 😉
The message received indicator changed from Delivered to Read, but there were no dots. Well, at least he wouldn’t bother her for a couple of hours. She shook her head again, then remembered the tiny life—all the websites said she (or he) was the size of a peanut—growing inside her.
“Don’t worry,” she said under her breath, “I’ll make sure you never meet Harry Freaking Potter.”
—
The plane engines hiccuped once, twice, then roared back to their normal pitch. Brandon glanced up from The Goblet of Fire. He’d experienced turbulence before. This wasn’t turbulence. The in-flight map on the headrest in front of him said they were just over Michigan, getting ready to hit the final leg of the flight over Lake Erie. His view of the screen was suddenly obstructed, and it took a moment for him to recognize the object. It was the oxygen mask. He grabbed his phone from his pocket. He looked around and saw he wasn’t the only one with the thought.
“To hell with airplane mode,” he said. —
Allison glanced up from her work to gaze absently outside at the storm gathering dark clouds in the distance. It wouldn’t be awful, just another North Dakota spring shower. Maybe some lightning, maybe a few thunderclaps to make everyone here in the ten-story office building jump and give them something interesting to talk about as they passed each other coming in and out of the lavatory.
Her eyes caught her reflection in the glass—time for a haircut—then she focused on the background and a reversed image of CNN. “eirE ekaL revo nwod seog 892 thgilF :gnikaerB” is what the ticker said, and pieces of metal littered a dark blue background. Her curiosity piqued, she turned around.
“Breaking: Flight 298 goes down over Lake Erie.” It took a moment for the correctly ordered words to register. When they did, her heart jumped. She knocked over a stack of papers on her desk trying to find her phone, as an urgent knock sounded on her door and all of the lights representing different lines on her office phone lit up at once. She glanced up, still searching for her phone, and saw her boss enter the room, panic and pity etched into her face.
She felt the phone, finally. Looking down, she saw a notification.
MessagesBunnyHunch (1)
She hadn’t called Brandon that in years. Why was he still saved under that name? She pressed her shaking thumb nervously against the Home Button, hitting it twice on accident. Her Visa card came up, asking to be passed over the machine that would process her payment.
Allison cursed loudly, and pounded the button with her thumb, finally clearing her screen. She heard her boss say something, but her attention was now on the Messages icon, and the tiny red number “1” in the corner of it. She opened her messages.
It was a single line, something so simple, yet so complex, and something that perfectly encapsulated the entire marriage she was now not so sure she wanted out of.
I open at the closet.

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“Travis, drink it or you’re going to get a spanking.”

I was a teenager, and newly so. 13 years old, and at that point I thought I could handle the spanking, thought I was big enough now to not feel the pain as much as I did when I was younger. Then I remembered how bad it hurt, and I put the glass to my lips and tipped it forward, lips sputtering, not actually ingesting any of the liquid inside of it.

“Set the glass down, son.”

I did so quickly and happily.

“Now, do you think Lady likes to drink that water?”

Lady was our dog, a mutt, 13 years old like me, and falling fast to the pains of old age. She didn’t walk that well anymore, and spent most of her time laying down in the shade of a big sycamore tree in our yard. My parents had gotten her for free soon after they had me, and she was as much a part of the family as any of us were. However, since becoming a teenager, I had become negligent in my duties of making sure she had fresh water. When my dad found the water, it had algae and Lord knows what else in it. He’d decided to make my punishment a lesson I wouldn’t soon forget.

I made sure to keep the water dish filled with fresh water from there on out. Lady didn’t live much longer after that, I can distinctly remember the day she died, she laid on the grass, twitching, my dad trying to get her heart beating again, tears flowing from every member of the family, none of us wanting to let her go. Then it was over, she was wrapped in a sheet, and my dad was digging a grave in the back of the yard.

Then, 4 years later, a grave was dug for my dad.

I’d drink a million glasses of that water if I could have both of them back.

Fast forward to present day and the inspiration for this story. The Missus and I have a dog. His name is Poo, and he is a Boston Terrier. You might have heard me mention him before. I don’t like him much, and I don’t think he likes me. Sometimes I tease him, sometimes I’m a little mean to him, and he encourages that by being a sad little emo dog.

Normally The Missus takes care of him. She feeds him, she waters him, and he’s just HER dog. He won’t come near me unless I have food, but if she so much as glances in his direction, he wants to jump in her lap and snuggle and never leave her side. I think that’s another reason why I don’t like him, his obvious disdain of me and my position in the house.

However, a couple of days ago I walked outside and saw a leaf in his water bowl. That’s it, one leaf. Other than that, the water was drinkable by human standards. When I saw that leaf, I could smell that glass of water I stared at 15 years ago. I could see the little chunks of nastiness as they swirled in the glass, and it prompted me to act. I emptied out his dish, rinsed and rubbed it clean, and filled it with fresh water which I then offered him. He just stared at me, never coming within 10 foot of me, warily watching as I set the bowl down. He probably thought I was poisoning him.

It’s funny how some lessons we learn stay with us through our lives. I may not have the warmest heart towards animals, but one thing is for certain, they’ll always have fresh water at our house.

With all respects to Jesus and that fine story, the greatest story ever told actually happened two nights ago and was written by a bunch of teenagers.

Once there was a little girl who needed help. The little girl needed help getting NOS on her turtle so she could go to the store. On the way, the turtle saw a rabbit and they started to race! Then a semi came through and smashed the turtle and the rabbit to death! The rabbit did not die, he came back as a zombie and ate all the turtles that were left. But the turtles were from Iraq and exploded!

-The End

There you have it, folks. Rabbits and turtles racing, which is classic, and then zombies? You can’t argue that zombies have taken the literary world by storm. Add some violence with the semi smashing, toss that all together with an Iraq reference, which is topical, and you’ve got the greatest story ever written. Do you NEED to know how the girl eventually got NOS on her turtle? No. No you don’t. All you need to know is that the turtle was looking for victory number two when it came to rabbit/turtle racing, and he was prepared to do anything to get it.

I’m not going to lie, folks. That bit at the end, the twist there? I got the goosebumps. The turtles win again. When will those rabbits learn?

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In Propinquus
Time has stopped for me, although I continue to age.

Acts of heroism have now become a way of life, and there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t do something for someone. I’m traveling now. I have a new vehicle. I have a new license plate. I keep the old one in the new truck, just because it was special to me. It started all of this.

I have not killed again. The desire to kill has left me, although the guilt I feel for the only time has not.

I have stopped losing weight, I’m still big, but I’m more fit than I ever have been before. My powers seem to have stopped developing, and I’m a bit disappointed to announce that I have nothing new. The strength and speed are enough though, because they aid me greatly in what I do. I have to say though, if my abilities disappear, I will continue to try to be a hero in every day life. People need a hero. People need me. You might need me one day.

I will try my best to be there.

My wife and I were driving in Tulsa a few nights ago, and we came upon a car that had stalled out in a very dangerous place. The driver was waiting for help, because the car was on a steep incline and couldn’t be pushed. I convinced the driver to try while I had my wife steer. It took serious effort on my part to not make it look too easy, and to make the driver feel as if he helped. I don’t think he was entirely convinced. He offered to pay us for our efforts, and of course I declined. I’ve come to find out that the greatest fulfillment comes with doing things for others.

The number of people who know my secret is growing. I was approached by two gentlemen with a gun a couple of weeks ago. They wanted my wallet. I refused. The relief I felt at still being bulletproof must have been very evident on my face, because their reaction was pretty strong. In the blink of an eye I had the gun. In even less time I had them running. I chased them for a mile, always staying just close enough to keep them scared out of their minds. I made noises I thought would scare them even more. It was far more enjoyable than having to kill them.

I’ve been to California. I’ve been to Mexico. I’ve been to Canada. That was yesterday. I’ve stopped bank robberies in Quebec and terrorist plots in DC. The speed is wonderful. The freedom it offers is unreal. The ability to help people instantly in places that it would take me days to drive to is empowering. I have saved lives in 24 states, and look to complete the puzzle by the end of the year. There is always crime to be stopped, there are always bad guys to be beaten. Injustice doesn’t take a holiday, unfairness doesn’t call in sick, bad guys don’t sleep, and neither will I. There will be days when I can’t help everyone, and there will be choices I make that will cost innocent people their lives. I believe I can live with that. I have so far.

I’ve decided to never tell my wife. She seems to know more than she lets on anyway, and we’re both comfortable with the balance. I won’t endanger her by putting her in a position of truth. “Plausible deniability” if you will. Instead I will daily watch over her, and when we have children, I will watch over them too. They will be the most protected family in the world.

However, I won’t forget about you. You will be protected as well. If you are fortunate, I will be there in your time of need.

I will try my best to be there.

I don’t fly. I can’t shoot lasers from my eyes, my breath doesn’t freeze lakes, I don’t have a utility belt or a sidekick, and you’ll never find me in a special form fitting uniform of any kind. I’m Travis, and there is an excellent chance that we’ll become good friends without you ever knowing the truth. This will be my last time to write about my incredible journey. I don’t have time for writing anymore. The world needs me.

I know Superman doesn’t exist.

But I do.

Hello there, my name is Rain. I don’t usually tell people my last name, just because this crazy world can do a lot with a person’s full name, but I’ll tell you, because you’ll never believe me. It’s Storm. My full legal name is Rain Anabell Storm. I told you that you wouldn’t believe it. My parents insisted that they called me that because I was born into this world on June 22^nd, 1991, during the worst storm in the history of the small town where I live. I think they did it because they were hippies. It doesn’t matter now, they’re dead and I’m currently on a mission, unable to contact a courthouse about possible name change
I should probably start at the beginning. You see, my parents died while taking me home from the hospital. I was 2 days old at the time. It was a car theft gone bad, and my parents were both understandably belligerent with the thief because of their newborn child in the back, so he shot them both in the head. The newspapers from that day say that he then went on with me in the back, and he drove almost 50 miles before the car we were in was struck by a piece of metal thrown from the road by a tire. It came through the windshield, killing him instantly.
Two days later, the doctor who had delivered me died suddenly of a massive heart attack. Then the EMS worker who pulled me from the wrecked car was diagnosed with cancer. He lasted 2 weeks. The pieces of the puzzle were put together surprisingly quickly, and I was quickly sequestered for “the safety of the general public.” I grew up alone. I had no friends. I had no enemies. I was watched from afar, never talked to unless it was on an intercom, and I was studied incessantly by doctors who never stood near me unless there was a wall between us.
My name, I’m afraid, has been my curse. I’m not wanted anywhere. The way I’ve been treated would have cracked a lot of children. It would have sent them spiraling out of control down a long stairway of madness and into the basement of senility, where deep rooted issues take up permanent refuge in the now clouded home of the mind. However, I’ve come through it okay. I believe I can be useful. There are things I can do that you normal people cannot. It is those things that I am doing now, even as I write this. You see, I’ve escaped. I’m not as dumb as one might think I am after being cooped up all those years. It gave me time to think, to plot, to notice weaknesses and flaws in the system. Three nights ago I made my nighttime run towards freedom, and I headed south. You see, while I was incarcerated, I was given access to newspapers, television, the internet, and several other types of news media. There was a man being hunted in Mississippi. He goes by the name Thomas Fields, and he is wanted for 32 counts of murder in the state. He claims the longest list of victims in Mississippi’s history. His face has littered the pages of papers, the screens of televisions, and the monitors of computers every day for 2 years now. And still no one can find him. I’m in bed with Thomas now. His hand is resting on my naked thigh, and he is snoring softly. Finding him was simple. Apparently I’m an attractive woman. There are many advantages given to the attractive, such as being able to ask questions and get very accurate information, especially out of men. He’s stopped snoring now, but he’s still breathing. I wonder how long it will take? You see, I can be useful. I will be useful. I will forever be known as Rain Storm, and with that name comes a curse. I will never know love, and I will never meet anyone I actually want to meet. I won’t have friends. Walking will be my method of travel. It will be a lonely life with absolutely no recognition for my actions, but that’s okay, I don’t want any. I just want the world to be a better place. Justice, like the weather for which I was named, is seldom wanted. However, it was delivered here tonight, because Thomas is no longer of this world. I have to close this journal now, pack up and head towards Los Angeles. Am I coming to see you?
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