Fishtale -1&2- Melanie Brown and Joyce Melton

Chapter 1 – The Magic Fish

The beach was mostly empty. All my fellow students were sleeping off getting drunk the night before. But that’s okay. None of them are my friends anyway. I honestly don’t know why I chose this beach for Spring Break. What friends I had went to Daytona in Florida, or La Jolla in San Diego.

As beaches go, I guess this one’s not that bad. Just not popular. The hotel is near the rugged cliffs that form a rocky ridge into the ocean. The rocks are sharp, so no swimming there. But I enjoyed hearing the waves crash against the walls of stone.

Little tide pools that would trap small fish or other marine life dotted the area below and among the rocks. I walked up to the tide pools and took a deep breath of the fresh salty sea air. Fishing boats far from shore drew my attention. I stood there taking in the scene for a bit before heading back to my hotel room.

I was just about to head back when I heard it. Very faint at first, but it was definitely a voice. I looked around. I was alone. I must be hearing things. I started again to walk away.

“Help.”

I looked around. Nothing. The solitude must be getting to me. I hated feeling lonely, and it was beginning to affect my mind. I took another step.

“Down here! Hey. Help.”

The only thing “down” from me was a tide pool with a little fish trapped in it. The pool was drying up, and the fish would soon die.

“Help me, please!” The voice seemed to be coming from the fish. I must be going crazy. Yep, Loopy City, next stop Straitjacket Junction. But it seemed so real. Bright sun. Solid rocks. Sand under my sandals. Ocean breeze. Reality — this is what it’s like.

Almost against my better judgment, I knelt beside the small pool, and the fish immediately jumped and splashed. “Please return me to the ocean. I’m a magic fish, and I can grant you a wish if you save me,” the improbable voice exhorted me again. Did it sound a little like some old-timey actor I vaguely remembered getting turned into a cartoon fish in some movie?

I grunted. “A magic fish? Do you think I’m crazy?” I’m talking to a fish, so I guess the jury is still out on that. I shook my head.

“Oh no, kind sir. Please return me to the ocean, and I’ll grant you a wish.”

A talking fish would have to be magical, right? Right? Regardless, the little fish will die if I do nothing. I’m not without a heart, you know. I scooped up the tiny fish in the palm of my hand and started walking toward the ocean.

“Thank you, thank you, kind sir,” said the small fish in my hand.

I walked to the water’s edge, the waves splashing over my feet. “Here you go, little guy,” I said and flung the tiny fish out into the sea. I saw it splash into the water. I stood for several minutes, the water splashing over my feet. Nothing happened. What did I expect to happen? Do I really believe some fishy story about magic fish and wishes? The only practical wish I had was not to spend Spring Break alone.

I shook my head. “Fuckin’ fish.” The morning was growing old, and the beach was getting populated again. Should I tell anyone about the fish? Do I want to look at the inside of a padded cell for the next six months?

On my way back up the beach towards my hotel, a bunch of college guys were setting up a table on the sand and starting a fire in the fire pit. I didn’t know any of them, but I sure wished I could join them.

The wind chose that moment to grab the partially unfolded table and carry it off to Shangri-La or somewhere. “Dude! A little help!” one of the guys yelped, and I realized he meant me.

I rushed forward, grabbed the end of one table leg, and helped wrestle the would-be flying table back to the ground. The largest of the other guys threw himself onto the tabletop, forcing the legs into the sand and effectively anchoring the table.

“Way to go, Thuddish!” said another guy. At least, that was what I heard. Thuddish? It struck me as maybe appropriate for such a large guy, and I smiled.

The guy who had first called to me grinned back. “Dude! Thanks, dude! This dude was gunna fly back to Okay City without us, huh, yeah?” He slapped the tabletop to indicate which dude he suspected of making a break for it.

The other dude must be me. “Hey, you’re welcome!” I said, acknowledging his thanks. “Happy to help out.”

Chapter 2 – Dudes and Dogs

They introduced themselves as we got things out of the cooler and set up on the table. Rob was handling the fire while Ted (Thuddish) unwrapped wieners and buns, and Gordo (Gordon?) handed me a beer.

“Here go, dude,” he said, putting the cold can in my hands. “What’s your name?”

“Uh, Finn,” I admitted. Finn Marchand, but nobody was using last names.

He closed one eye and looked at me from the other. “Finn? Like a fish?”

“Uh, yeah,” I agreed. “Finn like a fish but with two ns.”

He laughed, but I’m used to having to say that. And no one can spell Marchand either. “We’re all from Oklahoma, you could probably guess,” he continued, gesturing at his T-shirt. They were wearing clothing identifying their school. “Where you from?”

“Vapid City,” I said.

He looked blank.

“Uh, Rapid City,” I clarified. No one ever gets my jokes.

“Oh!” Gordo laughed again. “You funny, dude,” he said, pointing at me with his beer.

I beamed at him. No one back home thinks I’m funny.

“That’s in — like, Canada, right?”

I nodded, not wanting to correct him.

Thuddish pointed at me with a quizzical look, “Dude, You’re from Canada? Cool. I watched a hockey game once.”

I let out an embarrassed laugh. “Cool.”

“Fire’s up,” announced Rob. “Give it a few minutes to get hot.”

Gordo put his hand over the flames from the lighter fluid. “Feels hot to me.”

Rob shook his head. “Ain’t ready, goof.” He gave Gordo a slight shove.

Thuddish waved a wiener. I really hoped he’s washed his hands. Looking at me, he said, “Bruh, how many dogs you want?”

I said, “Well, I don’t want to impose and all.”

Thuddish grinned. “I’ll put you down for three. Do they even have hot dogs in Canada?”

Rob laughed and looked at me. “Of course they do. Only they use sheep or something, right?”

I smiled weakly. “Or something.”

Gordo laughed. “It’s a good thing you were ‘oot’ and ‘aboot’ so you could join us, bruh.”

I grinned and nodded. I wasn’t going to say if it hadn’t been for a magical fish, I’d be back in my room by now. Did that even happen? Was I just out in the sun too long?

Gordo was still unpacking the cooler as Thuddish started laying wieners on the grill. Looking at me, he said, “Dude, get whatever you need. We got buns, butter, ketchup, mustard, relish, salsa, chips. Whatever. Help yourself.”

I grinned. “Thanks… dude.” I started sprinkling a paper plate with chips and scooped some salsa on it.

As Thuddish pushed the wieners around on the grill he grunted. “Man, the only thing missing from this party are chicks.”

“You didn’t bring any?” I asked as I speared a dog with a fork and put it inside a bun.

Rob shook his head. “They didn’t want to come. No surfer dudes at this beach.”

I chuckled. “That’s pretty shallow.”

Thuddish shrugged. “Hey, they’re chicks. What do you expect?”

“True.” I took a bite of my hotdog.

My fellow dudes quieted down a bit while we ate. I learned what each of their majors were. I had taken Thuddish for something athletic, but his major is aerospace engineering. Rob and Gordo were comp sci. No surprises there.

I had downed my allotted three (!) hot dogs and decided I wanted to return to my room for a nap. Hey, it’s my holiday to spend as I please.

I was about to announce to my new friends my departure when a volley ball bounced off Gordo’s head. Not far from us, another group of college students were playing volleyball on the beach. A couple of them ran up to us to retrieve their ball.

“Sorry, dudes,” said one. 

“Hey, wanna join us?” asked the other.

Somehow, I got talked into joining a volleyball game, four on four, us against them. Us being me and my new Oklahoman friends. Except it wasn’t four on four at once. Two players at a time from each group played until someone won a game, then they would switch up.

I never did get all the names of the new group, but their leader and organizer, a big redhead called Somerset, as unlikely as that sounded. No girls in their group as well, and a moment was taken out to bemoan that fact.

“Girls don’t know what they’re missing,” said Thuddish. Everyone laughed because it wasn’t what he said, but how he said it — as if he were genuinely upset about what these absent hypothetical women were missing out on.

“Chicks,” said Somerset with a shrug, and most everyone nodded in agreement.

Our fire was portable, a cast-iron hibachi full of briquets, so it was carefully moved over to the stone firepit the other group had been using, and both cookeries loaded up with sweet corn, zucchini, hamburgers, buns and bratwurst as well as more hot dogs.

Beach volleyball is a lot of fun. No one really cares about the score; it’s just jumping around, shouting, and hitting the ball as hard as you can. The tide was low, the sun was high, and we had the rockier end of the beach pretty much to ourselves.

I’m blondish, light brown hair, fair skin, freckles, and I was just beginning to realize that I might be getting a bit too much sun. Thuddish and I were standing off Somerset and one of his crew in the third match when Somerset, in an excess of enthusiasm, pounded the ball too hard and too high.

Thud leaped for it and fell to earth like a local tremor and, laughing, I started to run after the ball. Look –– I’m from South Dakota, I have an intellectual appreciation of tides. Just no experience. The fact that the water that had been thirty yards or more from our little camp had moved much closer caught me unawares. It was less than 20 feet away, and our game ball landed in the wet.

I ran right into the water after it, still laughing, when a wave taller than my head knocked me off my feet and started pulling me toward the Caribbean. I wasn’t real acquainted with waves, either or how unpredictable they can be.

Speaking of things I didn’t know, I wasn’t really aware that you gasp on the inhale. I was so startled that I did the natural thing. I gasped, then choked, and coughed, and flailed about as the wave receded and carried me with it. I had heard of the phenomenon called “a riptide,” but I couldn’t have imagined how fast such a thing could be.

I was literally in over my head. The water foamed around me, I grabbed for the volleyball but it went one way and I went the other. Further into the ocean, deeper into the water….

Have I mentioned that I’m from South Dakota? Where 80% of people my age don’t know how to swim?

The deep blue water got bluer and darker…. At some point, I realized that I was drowning. Help, I glubbed.

A fish swam right up to my face. A familiar-looking fish, was it the one I had saved from the tidepool?

I seemed to hear it speak. “I’m Lemuel, the magic fish, and I remember you!” he said in a sort of burbling glee.

Ridiculous, fish don’t talk, they’re not named Lemuel, they have like sixty-second-long memories, and besides, we were underwater. Regardless, I tried to talk back. “Help me, I can’t swim!”

Well, I couldn’t breathe either, but if I could swim, maybe I could find some air.

Lemuel, the fish, swam up and booped me on the nose with his snout, making me go cross-eyed trying to see him. “Wish granted!” he said and promptly swam away.

And suddenly, I could swim. I knew how to swim! I could breathe, too, which was weird since I seemed to be in even deeper water than before. I’d known how to breathe earlier, even if it shouldn’t be possible to breathe water. But swimming was easy, you just waved your fins and wiggled your tail, and Presto! you were swimming.

Presto? That damn Lemuel had turned me into a fish!

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Copyright 2025 Melanie Brown and Joyce Melton