The Shadow's Catch
A Fisherman's Terrifying Tale
Intro
Happy Easter!
I wanted to do more fictional stories. I think I’ll try to do at least one a week if I can!
Thanks again to those who read these. I love you all! In the substack chat I’d love to get your writing prompt ideas if you have some. I could use the ideas right now!
The Shadow’s Catch
The fisherman ghasped.
“What on gods green earth is that!”
He screamed in such a way that caused the closest deckhands to jump in fear.
They looked at the source of the sound for guidance. However, They were met only with the fisherman’s frozen stare, unmoving, and his finger pointing straight at the fishing net.
The net was hauled out of the water only seconds ago. Inside it, lay the ghastly figure of some creature. The figure was unrecognizable, an aura of blackness consumed, and surrounded it. As if light itself could not escape the creatures grasp.
The whole boat lay silent. The fisherman and the deckhands slowly gravitated towards the net, never taking their eyes off the creature.
“Hehe wow, I must be one lucky guy, its my first time out and I get to see something none of you have ever seen before” said one of the deckhands.
”Yeah… you said it… what the heck is that thing?” said another, obviously more experienced deckhand.
As they talked the black creature writhed within the net, much slower and more calm the the erratic and desperate motion of the fish surrounding it.
Someone interjected, “Shit I wish we had a marine biologist on staff. Has anyone seen this before?”
Standing opposite from the rest of the crew the fisherman, no longer frozen still, is backing up to the edge of the boat.
“I have” the fisherman whispered. He trembled, as if every word of that two word sentence had cost him a hundred lives.
Nearly at tears, the fisherman climbed onto the railing of the boat, screamed, and jumped off the side of the boat into the ocean below.
The whole crew of the boat turned, startled by the scream, to see the fisherman abandoning the ship. A few of them ran after him .
“What are you doing!” They yelled. But just as the fisherman turned to answer another deckhand called!
“Wait where did it go? Did someone cut it out?”
The rest of the deckhands turned to see the net full of fish, with the ghastly creature no where to be seen.
The fisherman turned back and resumed his panicked swim away from the boat.
“GET OFF THE BOAT!” he screamed!
Postmortem
Ok I’m not gonna lie I ran out of steam on that one. I had the idea of the monster only killing those who entered shadows now that it has been released on the ship. But to be honest that was making this story longer than I wanted it to be. Then I had the idea that maybe the monster killed people who weren’t being looked at. So two people would have to keep an eye on each other to survive. But that sounded really hard to survive, and I had no idea how they would come to discover that without all dying.
I’ve been playing through Dredge and wanted to write something inspired by it. I used the theme Eldritch Horror Fishing as my starting theme.
This was a fun experiment in suspense though.
Hopefully I’ll get to build on this more. I’m not even sure what qualifies a short story yet.