Hooked: Part 1

*This is what I do when I'm bored...

Hal settled down next tho his wife, watching the fading light filter through the cloudy water above them.
"Nice currents, we had today," said Hal, breaking the silence.
"Hmmm...," Bert responded, distracted by her own thoughts,
Hal sighed, Bert hadn't been herself recently.  He understood why, for the last two spawning seasons there had been no eggs to fertilize, they had no offspring in those year classes.
"Honey," he said gently," you have to stop letting it get you so down, when we go to the Slope this fall there will be eggs. I promise."
"No," Bert whispered, her voice shaking slightly, " I won't be going this year.  I can't take the disappointment again."
Hal flicked his tail in slight shock, no quite knowing what to say.  The idea of not going to the spawning grounds was simply..."Outrageous!"
"We're old dear, we've seen 27 turns of the ocean. All I want to do is rest.  We've released millions of offspring into the world and many of them have returned here to raise families of their own, some of the eldest are even grandparents.  All of our friends from our year class have long disappeared into the deep.  I'm not going to the slope this year."
Hal rolled one eye over to look at his wife just in time to see her throw her head up and swallow a juvenile yellow eye that had been carelessly lingering around her head for too long.  'Some fishes children,' he thought.  Then Hal thought of his children and remembered how the ones who had returned to from the long drift had been so beautiful, so like his amazing wife.  Hal sighed, resigned.  He hadn't won an argument with Bert in 27 years, mostly because he wasn't the kind of fish who could deal with seeing his love unhappy.   He didn't think he would start winning one today.
"Alright," Hal finally said, "We don't have to go to the slope.  Where do you want to go?"
Bert looked above her, fins aquiver, "Up," she said, "I want to go up, to where the ocean meets the sky."
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Hal hatched out of his egg with thousands of brothers and sisters on a rather unremarkable day in early March.  His parents, being rather unimaginative even for halibut, had named all the boys Hal and all of the girls Hallie.  Thus he began life, drifting upward and to the West on the strong ocean currents of the North Pacific.  He spent his early days eating plankton and chatting with the others of his year class that he saw.
Most of those conversations were the same: complaints about how much it hurt to have one eye join the other on a single side of their head, mixed with a general excitement about settling out and finally having some control about where to travel next.  In short there was nothing remarkable about it, except that he survived it.
Life in the open ocean was treacherous.  At the start of life, Hal was little better then finned plankton, with no real means to escape larger predators.  He'd seen many a unlucky halibut consumed by their unforgiving maws.  Fortunately he was not one of them.

Some eight months after he hatched out, Hal settled in a quiet bay on the eastern side of Kodiak Island.  With both eyes firmly settled on one side of his head, Hal's translucent body slowly became pigmented.  He felt that at a little over three inches long, he was a very good looking fish.
It was there, in the protected area of the nursery grounds that Hal first met Berta...and he could not stand her.
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Hal was disturbed by his wife's request.  He had heard terrifying rumors about what happened to fish who fish who wanted to see the sky.  He'd heard that none of them came back, or if they did they came back horribly mutilated.  he'd even heard of one fish come back with a long worm like growth coming out of it's dorsal fin.
'Of course,' Hal thought, ' all this is rumor and halibut are prone to excessive exaggeration. Not to mention the rumors are inconsistent - either fish come back or they don't and if they don't then who started the rumors?'


TO BE CONTINUED...
although in all honesty who wants this shit to continue?

Quotes from last night

"He's like Andre the Giant...but gay."-KK

"How do you shim up a lose box?  You need a wiener dog and a ham."-CB

"What am I doing?  I'm fucking nothing!"-SW (while standing on a chair and air thrusting)

There were about a million others...help me remember!

Talking shit about a big fish

Usually the hillbilly parties at Mountain Point kinda scare me.  However, sometimes there is a point to them.  Take the 350lb halibut I'm sitting on for example.  This is an excellent reason to call all your friends and spend about an hour BSing on the dock. I'll even join you. Some people can't seem to accept this though.  You know, those alpha male fucktards who think they are the most important people in the world.  Take this douche for example.  This guy pulls up and has been waiting, oh maybe five minutes to put his boat in the water.  He starts walking down the dock bitching about people who can't back their trailers down the ramp and not observing proper etiquette in haul out procedures...or something of the such.  He bitches at the guys who are oogling the big fish.  Then walks back says "yeah its big, but it will eat like shit," all the while glaring at a 16 year old kid whose old man is teaching him how to back up a trailer.  The kid did great, it only took him three tries to get it right.  Then the big important dude tries to put his boat in the water...it took him at least six tries, to get it right.  "So you were saying something about not being able to back up a trailer..."

Leavin' da ghetto!

Ask and you shall receive.  I'm moving out.  I'm done.  No, more crack heads knocking at my door and 3am, no more screaming neighbors, or ADHD kids running around the hall ways at all hours of the night. I got a good send off though.  This morning at about 5:30 my neighbor across the hall was screaming about her boyfriend walking off with her only lighter.  I grabbed my lighter, walked outside and sent it on her arm.  As I'm walking back into my room, I hear "Where'd this come from?"  Seriously how fucked up are you when you totally blank out a person throwing a lighter at you?

Ego Stroking...

There are days that I love tourists.  They occasionally make me feel like a total bad ass.  "Do you fish?"  Yes.  "Do you hunt?" Yes.  That's awesome that a girl does that.  Oh I know.  "What do you do in the winter?"  "I drive cab...at night!"  Oh my god your totally ballsy!  Oh I know. "You are the most interesting person we've met since we've been here!"  Yeah, you better believe it!

Yeah gotta love it!  But these feelings of awesomeness only last for so long before I go and do something that reminds me that I am in fact a total dork.  Like telling a dog that he doesn't really want me to throw the ball because I'll probably end up throwing off the dock...then accidentally   throwing it off the dock.