Hooked

Last night I dreamt I had caught a fish. I was in a paddle-boat with my sister on an enclosed lake. Playfully dangling a baited lure into the water with my hand and some line, I expected to catch nothing. 

Unexpectedly, I felt a tug and it began to drop. Excited by the surprise, I called out that I'd hooked something. I held the line taught, slowly wrapping it around my knuckles to close the distance between myself and whatever I had hooked. I pulled on it carefully, like a spider, to avoid losing the creature; to prevent any excess force from tearing the hook clean through the flesh of its cheek.

Finally the fish emerged from the water, wrestling with the air, thrashing and twirling like a wind-chime caught in a hurricane. Suspended above the lake, beautifully colored - dipped in silver, painted with deep blues and violets - its yellow eyes revealed an almost human desperation. Its iridescent scales, shining in the sun, reflected small luminous squares of light, like a living disco-ball. It hung there swinging pendulously, entrancing me like a hypnotist's pocket-watch.

Momentarily free from its spell, and still holding the line, I submerged the fish back into the water out of fear I would kill it by suffocation. My sister asked what I was doing, why I had left the hook in it; "do you want the fish or not?" I said I didn't want to hurt it, and decided I needed to throw it back. 

I stole the fish from the water once more, with the intention of removing the hook from its mouth. The fish was making it hard for me, jerking and squirming in my hands as I tried to remove my hook, when suddenly our boat hit a rock, sending the fish into the air just over my shoulder. The fish slid down the back of my shirt, onto the middle of my back where I couldn't reach it, and the hook burrowed into my skin. The fish fought, twisting the point in deeper. Pinned together, our agonies intertwined, the harder we pulled the closer we became.

After a brief struggle, and much pain, I pulled the fish from my flesh and hurriedly tried dislodging the hook from its mouth. It bit at my fingers and batted away my bleeding hands with its tail. "Come on," I cried out "let me do this!" The fish became a bit less relentless, and I had the hook almost free when I realized the fish had ceased moving. "No, no no." Panicked, I held the fish in my hand under the water hoping it would breathe, but it didn't move. "Maybe if I hold it just a little longer" I said to myself, lying to lessen my horror. I waited, growing more impatient, more ashamed, every passing second more fearful. Despairing, I lifted it from the water to see its scales had grown pale. Wet and wilted it lay lifeless in my hands. Its eye, dead and accusing, stared into mine. 

Then I was in a darkened room, drinking, as I stared up at the fish now stuck to a wall. A blind man, young but with white hair, his eyes not unlike those of a fish, placed his hand on mine and said, "it was a beautiful fish."