jimmy the fish

by Tony Cartlidge

Jimmy the Fish lived in a reef off the coast of Austral…

A reef?

Yeah, a reef. Off the coast of Austral...

Is it a nice reef?

I’d say it was a nice reef.

But would I say it was nice reef?

Hmm. I think I see what you’re getting at. Okay. Jimmy the Fish lived deep in the jade blue ocean a hundred miles from the coast of northern Australia, deep in the coral of the…

You’ve said deep twice.

I did?

Yeah, you already said I lived deep in the ocean, so you probably want to use a different word.

Abyssal?

                 Coral likes shallow water.

Whatever. Jimmy the Fish lived in a nook in the base of the coral…

A nook? Coral is full of nooks. It’s all nooks, all the time. Coral is nooks held together by crannies. A nook is just…

How about if I make it your nook?

Ooh! I’ve never owned a nook before. Carry on.

Jimmy’s nook was at the base of the coral in the shallow jade blue waters off the coast of northern Australia. Jimmy’s friends, Sam, Billy, and Paul…

Bit Caucasian, aren’t we?

Whaddya mean?

Jimmy. Paul. Billy. Sam.

I didn’t really think it…

Mattered? Of course it matters. When was the last time you saw a white fish?

Okay, okay. What are their names?

Sam is one, and he’s mostly white but he has red fins. Rafiq is blue, but he’s the kind of electric blue that changes colors when he gets frightened. I saw him turn bright orange once when he accidentally swam into an eel’s mouth. Jada is orange and white, like that character in that movie you told us about, Finding Nero.

Nemo.

No, Jada.

The movie character is Nemo.

Sorry, I forgot. Sam, Rafiq and Jada, and then there’s Zadie. Zadie is beautiful. She’s a shimmery glass-green with scarlet eyes, and she has that long ribbon of yellow on the tip of her dorsal fin that makes me want to just de-scale myself. I think I’m in love with Zadie.

You have the hots for Zadie, huh?

She’s a doll.

Does she like you?

I don’t think she even knows me.

But she’s seen you, right? Do you think she might find you attractive?

How would I know? I don’t know what I look like. I can barely see a fin, and that’s if I turn sideways quickly and then slam the anchors on and squint out of the back corner of my eye.

You don’t know what you look like?

You’ve never told me what I look like.

Oh, I’m terribly sorry. Let’s fix that. Jimmy the fish was… hold on, you’re still okay with Jimmy?

That’s my name, bud. Don’t wear it out.

Jimmy the fish was long and sleek, with muscular flanks that opalesced and iridesced when the sun caught him as he flashed and turned just under the surface.

Opalesce and iridesce are the same.

…with muscular flanks that opalesced under the liquid sunlight. His bronze scales lustered as he cut though the water, carving his way through the sea ferns and red weed that draped across the seabed like a living duvet.

A bit much but okay, carry on.

His powerful black fins clawed against the underwater currents and thrust him agilely through the hoops and tight turns of the coral, skillfully avoiding the snares and stings of the predators that sat in wait in their lairs. His teeth glinted as he chased the shoal desperately trying to escape him…

            Adverbs, dude. Show don’t tell.

Jimmy bore down on the straggler, a purple and black baitfish that swam with a limp. Two rows of deadly zippers lined his jaws and Jimmy snapped at the tail of…

                I’m not sure I like this.

Like what?

               The teeth.

What’s wrong with teeth?

I seem a bit evil. I don’t even like fish all that much. Especially the purple ones.

What have you got against purple fish?

They taste overly salty. Question is, what do you have against purple fish?

Me? Nothing. What do you eat, then?

Oh. I’m mostly vegetarian. I like to suck on rocks a lot. Loads of good stuff oozes into rocks. Electrolytes here, proteins there. A quick shuffle left and there’s salted algae, maybe some seaweed root. It’s like a soup buffet.

No fish?

                 I eat shrimp occasionally. If I have to.

Shame. Zadie was impressed.

She was?

Yeah, definitely. She likes your aggression.

                 Oh yeah? Do go on.

Jimmy closed in on his prey. Zadie watched from the shadows, admiring Jimmy’s athleticism. If she had eyelashes she’d have batted them. But Jimmy wouldn’t have noticed because he’d finally cornered the purple-black baitfish, a fry named Arthur who he’d been in school with. He closed in for the kill.

                 Noooo. Not Arthur.

Why not?

I like Arthur. He’s a bit runty, and doesn’t swim very well, but he’s a good kid. He has a wicked sense of humor.

Okay, it’s not Arthur. Would it help if we called him Jane?

                 Weird name for a boy.

John, then. Let’s call him John.

                 Let’s just call him dinner and get on with it.

Jimmy cornered his prey and opened his mouth wide, swallowing dinner in one satisfying gulp. As he turned to locate dessert, he caught sight of Zadie staring at him. A shiver ran down Jimmy’s spine and he slipped and swam sideways into an anemone.

                 Ouch!

What?

                 Anemones sting like a motherf…

Language.

                 But they really hurt.

…swam sideways into a rock. A flurry of scales fell away from his dorsal as he composed himself. Zadie rolled her eyes… hold on, can fish roll their eyes?

                 Zadie can.

Zadie rolled her eyes and fluttered her fins and reversed discretely back through the coral before swimming away.

                 Oh man. She thinks I’m a dick.

Do fish have…

                 An idiot. Whatever, dude. She hates me.

I don’t think she hates you. Maybe you just need to impress her. Show her that you are mature and desirable, and a good breeder.

                 Yeah, man. I’m a great breeder. Look how I can thrust my pelvic fin.

Looks like you’re jiggling your hips. It’s kind of disgusting.

                 Not to a hot ladyfish like Zadie.

But Zadie’s not here. She’s gone across the reef. She’s hanging out with a triggerfish named Zane.

                 Fucking Zane.

No, I think they’re just hanging out.

No, I mean forget about Zane. Always the coolest kid in school, always the top of the class, with his pouty lips and strong jawline. And what’s with all the flashy colors? You just know he’s gotta be crushing more than shells, right?

What does that mean?

                 I don’t know. I just don’t like how this story is turning against me.

Maybe if you didn’t objectify Zadie so much. “Ladyfish,” indeed. Maybe you need some maturity before she’ll consider you.

                 Why pressure me now?

Well, we’re about six pages in and we need to increase the tension. We’ve set the scene, introduced the love interest, and the rival, and now we have to complicate things for you. Introduce some internal tension. Standard stuff.

                 I suppose. But I don’t have to like it.

Someone once said you should chase your protagonist up a tree and throw rocks at them.

                Some idiot.

No, a famous writer.

                Like I said. An idiot. Besides, I can’t climb a tree.

Metaphorically. It doesn’t mean you have to climb a tree. Not an actual tree. But there’s a challenge you must face that will test you to your limits. We have to find a way to get Zadie to like you better than she likes Zane. That’s your test. That’s your metaphorical tree, and I can help you climb it.

                Then throw rocks at me? No thanks.

So, what do you want to do instead?

                I wanna rob a bank.

What?

                A bank. I wanna rob one.

Hold on. I mean, okay, the unexpected twist, I get it, but how?

                With a gun.

Oh fuck. How do you expect…

                Language.

Sorry. I’m just trying to wrap my head around this. There are so many problems with this that I need to just unpack them for a moment, okay?

                Take your time. I’ll just be over here planning the robbery.

Okay, first, the bank. What bank? Fish don’t have banks.

                 Rivers do.

You want to hold up a riverbank?

                 No, stupid. A real bank. The First International Reef Bank of Australia.

But why? And more importantly, how?

                 The reef is dying, right?

It is?

Of course it is. Have you even looked around this place? Look at it with a fish’s eye.

Hey, I wanted to ask something. Does the world really look like it is viewed through a fish-eye lens to a fish?

                 Sure. Whatever.

Weird. So what would happen if a fish looked through a fish-eye lens?

                 You summon Satan.

Is that true?

Probably. Maybe. But if you say it with enough authority no one will question you. Anyway, look closer at this reef, and the life that lives within it.

Teems.

                 Eh?

Life always “teems” around coral reefs. It’s one of those nature documentary rules.

                 What’s a nature documentary?

You know about banks but don’t know about documentaries?

                 I’m usually a very limited third-person but I’m feeling adventurous. So, what’s a documentary?

It’s where some old English guy sneaks up on animals and whispers about stuff while they mate.

                 Pervert.

I know, right? But it’s a rule. Reefs always teem with life.

Okay, got it. Look closer at the life that teeeeems around the reef. The bright red coral and pale pink mollusks. Search beyond the spray of electric blue fry, dodging and darting through the smoky fingers of the deadly jellyfish. Look between the vibrant green hues of the waving fronds of weed, like nature’s hands lifted in prayer.

Nice.

But look further, between the delicate marine ferns and mesmerizing tendrils of sea grass, and you’ll see lifeless patches of grey. Grey and lifeless. Grey, lifeless, and sterile.

Yup. Grey and dead. Got it.

When you look closer still, you’ll realize that whole neighborhoods are dead. Subsurface highways are clogged with silt and the reef is boarded up and closed for business.

That’s horrible.

It’s no Atlantis, I can tell you. There’s hardly any of us left anymore. There were only 378,365 kids in my school you know. And we have that fucking oil platform going up, and the vibrations from the drilling, and that’s not to mention the chemicals they pump into the shaft to force the oil out. They’re killing us, man. They don’t give a fuck.

Those fuckers.

I mean, come on, it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure this shit out. Oil is a fossil fuel, right? Fossils. That means it comes from the bodies of all of our dead ancestors. Anyone that ever existed. It’s valuable shit, right?

Yeah, we kinda like oil up here.

Of course you do. But to get it, you kill the ecosystem for generations, which means that in a thousand years or a million years, or next week or whatever the timescale is, there won’t be any oil left. But we’ll all be dead and there won’t be any more of us and we won’t be turning into fossils to create more oil.

Oooh, I like that.

                  You’re sick.

No, no. I don’t like it. But I like this twist. A bit preachy maybe, I’ll have to tone it down, but we get the whole environmental thing going on. That’s quite popular in fiction these days.

So, you like making stories up about how you’re killing the planet? Weird. But do you do anything about it?

Not much, no.

                 That’s sad. At least I’m gonna do something.

By robbing a bank?

                  You’re a bit thick really, aren’t you?

Give me a break, Jimmy. I’m only hearing the story now.

Okay, I’ll talk slowly. The oil rig is experimental, right? The government says it will license it and give it a year to prove it can produce oil in a way that’s safe for the environment.

Got it.

They think that as long as the rig doesn’t leak it’ll be fine. Which is a joke anyway, because they have no way of monitoring spills and haven’t taken baseline measurements to check the chemical composition of the water, the reef, the sediment, or even the marine vegetation. They send down the sonar probes, pinging away all hours of the day and night, mapping away the seabed, searching for gas and oil. It’s enough to drive you insane. Everyone just leaves the reef until it’s done. But sonar mapping doesn’t produce detailed seismographic studies. They have no clue what impact the vibration from the rig will have.

What impact will it have?

It’ll give me a headache for one thing. We’re sensitive creatures, you know. We can detect particles in the water in parts per million. The drilling will interrupt thermal currents. The temperature will rise and that changes our mating habits.

I can see that. A couple of hours without AC and I don’t feel like it either.

Surprised you ever mate. You ugly. But start shaking the reef with the drilling and we’ll all be getting nervous. There’s so much that surface people don’t understand about what goes on down here.

You’re pretty smart, I’ll give you that.

I was top of the class. Just behind Zane. The bastard.

Language.

                 This is a running gag now, isn’t it?

Yeah, sorry. But it can be quite effective to relieve moments of intense plot revelation, or “infodumping.”

                  Infodumping? Stupid word.

It does what it says on the tin. A bit corporate, maybe. Which brings us neatly back to the bank robbery.

                  Oh, well done. You’re quite good at this really.

Thank you. I’m just hitting my stride. So, what about the bank?

The drilling is financed by the First International Reef Bank of Australia.

Really? That’s where I bank.

                  You do? I thought you were in America?

Okay, I am in America, but the narrator is in Australia.

So, this is the narrative distance thing, yeah? There’s you the writer, then the other you, the narrator, and then there’s me, who is also really you, but it’s you pretending to be someone else, and that someone else is also pretending to be someone else. Right?

Yup. Pretty straightforward. And then there’s also the actual writer, not just the perceived writer character that I sometimes deliberately slip into. Writers normally have rules about which character is which but I’m kinda mixing that up.

                  Like breaking rules for fun?

You got it.

                  So just having this conversation is breaking the rules?

Kinda, but it’s also working on a meta level, so I get to make my own rules.

                   Isn’t that confusing?

Well, yes, it can be. It asks the reader to do a lot more work to find out which story thread they are following at any one time, but it can be really effective for building layers within the same story. It’s quite smart.

                    Sounds dumb.

Well maybe a bit show-offy.

                    Sooooo…I have a question.

Oh yeah? What?

                    If you get to make your own rules, then you get to break them, right?

I suppose so, yeah. As long as it makes sense. You have to have your own set of rules in order to know when you can break them.

So, like, we can have an underwater branch of the First International Reef Bank of Australia?

I suppose so.

                  And I can rob it.

I suppose you can, yes.

                   With a gun.

Hold on, see. Now we’re really breaking the rules about how fictional worlds operate.

                   But you can make me climb a tree?

Point taken. So how do you get a gun?

                    You give me it.

I can’t just give you a gun. Objects can’t just appear without reason.

                    Wanna bet? See that over there?

What?

                    The thing that’s peeking out from the sand, glinting in the watery sun?

Oh yeah. What is that?

                    It looks like a speargun to me.

How did that get there?

A diver forgot it. She was down here a few days ago, breaking off chunks of coral and putting them in a bag. She had a speargun to defend against sharks.

And she forgot it?

A shark showed up. Scared the crap outta her. She dropped it when she panicked.

Scary bastards, sharks. There’s something just viscerally worrying about sharks. Even the word “shark” is scary. It starts off all sibilant and slick and slithery, and it ends with a choking noise. Like fangs biting through a throat. Weird isn’t it, that words like ‘shark’ can be inherently scary.

It’s the teeth that scare me. That and the being eaten thing.

I could turn you into a shark if you like.

No, no thanks. They’re uglier than you. And I’d have no chance with Zadie.

You could probably eat Zane.

But what would be the point?

You wouldn’t need a speargun.

                 But I have a speargun, see? What I need is a reason. And a plan.

So, the First International Reef Bank of Australia is financing…

                 Just call it FINBAR.

Thanks, yeah. It’s getting a bit clunky.

So, the FINBAR is financing the rig. They’re the only ones that will do it because it’s very risky.

Risky how?

Well, they really don’t know how much oil is down here, so it’s a financial risk. But then there’s also the PR. People hate the idea of oil rigs on the reef. FINBAR is the only bank that’ll finance the venture, but it’s not a very big bank.

Even though they call themselves “International”?

They’re really quite small. It’s like when you humans call big people “Tiny” or “Little,” It’s supposed to be ironic or something.

Like Little John?

                  Who?

Little John. One of Robin Hood’s merry men. Robbed from the rich. Gave to the poor. Like you.

                  I don’t want to give my hard-stolen money to the poor.

Why not? Zadie would love it.

But then I’d be poor again. I’d need to rob another bank.

Okay, we’ll figure that out. But how do you know about the bank?

                  Financial pages.

You read the newspapers? Okay, you’re stretching credibility now.

And yet we’re chatting away quite happily, and I’ve just educated you on the finer points of reef ecology.

Touché.

If you’d just stop interrupting, we can get on with this. I’m sure the readers are getting annoyed by now.

Got it. Carry on.

Thank you. So, if I can rob the bank and steal enough money to reduce their reserves, it’ll scare their shareholders, and they’ll call in the loan. The oil company takes a hit, the rig doesn’t go ahead, and the reef gets some time to repair itself. I’m gonna get me some gold teeth and impress Zadie so much that Zane is outta the picture. Happy. Ever. After.

It’s not very literary, is it?

                  Waddya mean?

Like getting in touch with emotions and stuff. Character development.

                  Imma fish. Whaddya expect?

Did you just shrug?

                  Neat, huh?

The readers will hate it. I’ll be slaughtered in workshop.

                  Fuck the readers. This is my story.

You can’t say that. Why would you want to piss off the readers? They’re the only reason you exist. Well, them and me.

                  You? Aren’t I the reason you exist?

I suppose that’s a philosophical debate that probably belongs elsewhere. Right now, we need to get a move on. The narrative is all over the place, the pace is lagging, and this is all happening in dialog. It’s choppy and interruptive. The readers need some movement, and the story needs to make some rapid progress.

                  And it’s inconsistent.

I’ll clean that up in the next draft.

                  Oh, that is just genius. Evil genius.

What?

Well, here we are, breaking the rules all over the place, and the story is shit, and you’ve just solved it by reminding the reader that it’s just a first draft.

I don’t get it.

Simple. By telling the reader that this is a first draft, they can’t tell if it really is a first draft, or if you are carefully crafting a very flawed story to demonstrate the writing process. It’s all a bit meta, as you said.

Oh, that really is clever.

You could probably litter the text with spelling mistakes and then tell people it was a creative decision. Brilliant.

I have an idea. This is just a first draft, right? So maybe we can move the story along and change the tense and the POV and maybe it’ll seem more literary.

                  So, I get to tell the story?

Why not? Tell us how it goes down?

                  Goes down?

The bank heist. I always wanted to use the word “heist.” Go ahead, Jimmy. Tell us about the heist.

It is Friday morning, right? The bank has just opened and the cash for the weekly wages has just been delivered. I hide around the corner of a rock with Sam, Jada, and Rafiq, waiting for the guards to go to lunch.

Lunch? You said the bank just opened.

The guards are sharks. It’s always lunchtime for sharks.

Got it.

But on Friday they are hyper-vigilant because of the extra cash, so they only eat lunch about a dozen times a day. We have to choose the right moment and be quick. But the guards won’t move. They just glide back and forth in front of the bank. They are tempted when a diver swims nearby, but he carries a speargun, so the sharks freeze and wait for him to leave. A steady spray of bubbles escapes from the diver’s mouthpiece, fizzing toward the surface. Five meters above, fry egg their playmates on, darting through the stream of air, getting soaking dry. The diver breaks off a piece of coral and puts it in a net hooked to his hip before swimming away. The sharks renew their patrol. Then, Arthur swims up behind us.

Arthur? The kid from earlier? But you ate him.

                  I think you’ll find we de-identified Arthur.

Right you are. Okay, so Arthur shows up.

Yeah, and he has Zadie in tow. Apparently, old blabbermouth Sam told Arthur the plan and Arthur told Zane, and Zane told Zadie, and now there’s like a whole school of us hiding behind the rock. It’s beginning to look suspicious, and the sharks aren’t budging.

What can you do?

I’m gonna shoot one of them and hope the blood frenzy will distract the other guards.

How many others?

Three. Maybe four. We can change this, right?

Go ahead. Like I said, first draft.

I grab the speargun and I’m about to shoot one of the sharks…

How do you grab the speargun?

Just go with it, okay? If you can chase me up a tree, I can grab a speargun. I look down the sights, zeroing in on the biggest shark. My pectoral fin trembles as it curls around the trigger, the tension tightens my scales and chromic light dances along my flanks. Just as I’m about to shoot, Arthur says he has a plan. Before we can stop him, he swims off toward the sharks and pretends to limp. Zadie screams for Arthur to stop, but he’s already gone. The sharks decide it’s lunchtime and Arthur spurts away.

He’s quite quick for a kid with a limp.

                  Was.

Oh no. Not Arthur.

Yeah. Pathos, eh? Such a brave little fella, he was.

Your tenses are wandering.

He is. He does that trick three times, pretending to be injured and letting the sharks catch up, and then just as the teeth are about to close on him, he scoots away, drawing the guards away from the bank.

What happens?

                  He trips on an urchin and hurts himself.

He can’t get away?

                  It’s not easy to limp on both sides.

Poor Arthur. Like Icarus, swimming too close to the sun.

                  Who’s Icarus?

Classics reference.

                  Classics?

Classical literature. Thousands of years old.

Bet the chicks love that.

I wouldn’t know. I don’t have much success with women.

Easy fella. You just collapsed the narrative distance. You’re pulling the reader out of the story.

Sorry, yeah, the chicks love it. And it’s super clever too because Icarus dared too much and then died. Like Arthur, who dies, but so he could save you. Such a noble sacrifice.

What are you on about?

Layering. It adds important subtext to the story and makes it more than about a fish bank heist to save a dying reef. It’s super clever.

“Super clever”? Do you even listen to yourself?

Just forget I said anything and move on with the story, okay?

                  First draft?

First draft.

Poor Arthur, Icarus-like, swam too close to the sun and made the ultimate sacrifice.

Thanks.

But his blood in the water keeps the sharks distracted so we can get into the bank with no one watching. After that it’s kinda easy. We just march right in there, with the speargun and demand all the money. I do the talking, and Zane waves the weapon around, a crazy look in his beady eyes, muscles tensing along his rugged jawline. His colors flash like a disco.

Hold on, Zane was there?

Yeah, I just wrote him in because I thought of a plot twist. And we need a trigger fish…err…fish.

Trigger “fish”? Lame.

                  Oh, my jokes are lame but yours are just fine?

Point taken, but let’s just get the story told.

So, with Zane waving the speargun around, and me doing the talking, they get scared. Real scared. So, we hit ‘em hard, we hit ‘em quick, in and out. Proper handy we was.

You’ve turned into a Guy Ritchie character.

Yeah bruv, I’m Jimmy Da Fish. Bank robber and legendary lover.

What about Zane?

                  Well, as we was on the way out, wiv all the dosh…

I’m gonna rewrite the RocknRolla crap, so you might as well knock it off now.

Lighten up, fella. I’m just getting into character. Besides, no one is gonna read this. It’s so full of inconsistencies. Tense shifts. POV changes. Character issues. It’s kinda poo.

Gee, thanks.

I mean, you’re really gonna have to oversell that “deliberate first draft” shit if you want them to buy it.

Yup. Just did.

Cool. So, as I was saying, we were escaping with the money. Sam has one bag of cash. Jada another. Rafiq has one too. Zane, still carrying the speargun, is the last to leave, swimming in reverse and balancing a bag of cash on his head. But swimming backward, the water goes the wrong way through his gills, and he stumbles, and the bag slips over his eyes.

Dumbass Zane.

I really don’t know what Zadie sees in him. Anyway, he panics, and the gun goes off, and he shoots the bank manager, who is also a shark.

A loan shark?

Not funny, dude. Zane is in trouble. Big trouble. We’re calling for him to hurry but he’s coughing and there’s a new cloud of blood in the water and the guards are jetting back toward the bank and they’re blood-drunk. They rip the place apart. Customers, bank manager, tellers, Zane, Zane’s bag of cash, everything. They destroy the bank and everyone and everything in it. And then they turn on each other and start thrashing and slashing. There’s claret everywhere, until finally there’s only one shark left, but he’s so excited he starts attacking his tail and then his belly and his fins and then there’s nothing left but eyeballs and teeth and blood and guts.

Sounds horrific.

It was. But it leaves no witnesses, so that’s cool.

And convenient.

Poor Zadie was traumatized.

Tense.

                  It was.

No, I mean… forget it. Poor Zadie. And poor Zane.

Poor, poor Zadie. She needs a lot of comforting from the brave hero who robbed the bank and saved the reef.

I feel breathless.

You should do what I do. Open your eyes and close your mouth, and then open your mouth and close your eyes, and then alternate back and forth for a minute.

Will it help?

                  No, but it’ll help you get into character.

Funny. So, what will you do with the money?

                  I read that there are some activists that want to blow up a pipeline.

You want to finance international terrorism?

                  If you put it that way…

You could invest it in green energy research.

Oh great. Another trickledown plan from the wealthy elite, eh? Where did you get that one, Reaganomics 101? Might work for your lot but us down here? We get nothing. It just further serves the 1-percent and increases the wealth gap. No wonder the world’s fucked when you have well-meaning fiscal conservatives like you pretending that the free market is a rising tide that lifts all boats.

I just said…

Yeah, well, some boats are never gonna rise on that economic tide, are they? They’ve been harpooned by the Captain Ahabs of industry and they’re gonna get swamped instead. And the rest of us don’t even have boats. How about investing it at root level, eh, and let’s put the laissez faire mythology to bed forever. Down here, in Davy Jones’ locker, where it’s dog eat dog and fish eat fish.

And metaphor eats metaphor?

                  Whatever, fella. You’re the writer. This is my first story.

Sorry.

                  That’s okay. It’s been fun, though. Hasn’t it?

Yeah, it really has. We’ve saved the reef for you and all your friends. We’ve ruined a disastrous drilling plan. And collapsed an unscrupulous bank. And you’ve got a shed load of money.

And we’ve told a great story with layers and subtext and Icarus and all sorts of crazy meta shit.

Yeah.

And I got Zadie. And it’ll last forever because now that it’s written down it won’t ever change.

Until the next draft.

You won’t change it too much, will you? You won’t try and sneak in a traumatic ending?

I don’t think so. I might just clean up some of the language.

                  Yeah, get rid of that running gag.

I might kill you.

                  What?

Yeah, just to see how that works. Knock off the gags and go for pathos. I might kill you off.

                  You can’t kill me. I’m the fucking story.

Not if I change it.

                  It’s called Jimmy the fucking Fish. How is it not my story?

It’s a working title. I could call it Zane the Fish.

                  Fuck Zane. I’m glad he’s dead.

Or I could call it Reef. It could be a sprawling epic, like Gone with the Wind, but not racist. It could be the Watership Down of sub-marine eco-disasters.

                  Sounds shit.

I’d have to see what the editor says.

That git with the red pens and the dictionaries and the dandruff falling into his free-range salad? Who cares what he says? This is my story.

You’re probably right. Maybe I’ll just take out some of the lines that don’t seem funny anymore.

                  Your lines.

Mostly.

Maybe I’ll write a story, too. I already have an idea.

Oh yeah? What’s it about?

It’s about a writer.

Does he rob a bank?

            How did you guess?

Photo of Tony Cartlidge

BIO: Born and raised in Liverpool, England, Tony Cartlidge is currently being held against his will in Illinois. His work has appeared in The Guardian, trampset, Pithead Chapel, Riggwelter, Drunk Monkeys, and elsewhere. He stole an MFA Indiana University and doesn’t know what to do with it.