Catfish – David Sprehe

October 10, 2025

The rain hit gently on the pond. I looked across the way at the tall grass field. The clouds, the entire sky, blackened. But the fishing rod I held jerked. And I fought. Like I was against a stump. Tree branches came up from the pond water. A tree with black leaves and catfish. The catfish were attached to the branches and trunk, their flesh at one with the tree. The whole tree lifted out and hovered above the water in the rain. The clouds came to us, swirling and awakened. The tree roots gleamed in lightning strikes, filled with eggs and little fish. The clouds filled the trees branches, churning, and burst into fire. Ashes fell on the pond and on the field grasses. I walked to my truck. And that is all I know.

The patient was discharged. His sister received him in a white 1954 Volkswagen Käfer. She wore a yellow, white dotted dress and light blue shoes. Pale pink skin. Brown hair. Her eyes were a modified mono egg white.
        “Are you ok?” she said.
        “I did not think anything was wrong.”
        “You were dead.”
        “No. Doctors are worthless.”
        She pulled into a burger and milkshakes restaurant.
        In line. “Are you better?”
        “I feel refreshed. I feel like I slept. I could sleep now.” He smiled.
        She bought them vanilla ice cream cones. They sat in booths (blue).
        “I don’t want to talk if that is ok.”
        “It’s ok.”
        They ate their ice cream. They put their trash away. The patient was taken home.
        “Be ok.” His sister said when he exited the vehicle. She drove away.

Inside the door he took off his shoes. The shoes folded themselves into an origami frog and nestled into a cubby.
        “I’m here.”
        A glow overtook the wall in front of him. The glow became a silver skinned angel webbed in white strings. The strings melted together like disturbed waters and bloomed rainbows. Her silver skin dissolved and the rest of her splattered violently. The wall spilled before the patient a small angel girl. Errata. She hugged his waist and rested her head against his stomach. Her tears stained his shirt.
        He patted her mousy hair. “I wasn’t dead. And I’m okay. Doctors and nurses always think wrong.”

Ernie stood up from the kitchen table. He could hear birds outside the window.
        “I would like to go fishing today,” he said. “It has been a week since I left the hospital. I am rested.”
        Errata finished up the dishes and shattered to recluse spiders. The spiders scattered madly in all directions. Ernie put on his hat and went out the screen door to his truck. He checked to make sure the fishing pole was in the box in the truck bed. His tackle box was on the passenger seat.

He was alone at the pond. Where he stood at the pond, catfish piled over each other from the water to be near him. Actually crawling from the water to be at his feet. He cast around the catfish. The catfish had become completely stupid. Every single one. Other people used to come here regular he thought. A time ago. Even from town. Kept the fish from becoming this stupid. But maybe he liked this better. Kids, if you were out on a little boat, sneak in the tall grass and dump your picnic box in the water. People could disappear into the grass like bugs. If they knew how to step. I just want to fish, he thought. I only walk to fish.

“I’m here,” he said. “Errata. I have fish.”
        Errata pooled from the ceiling. She hung, a mouth forming on the surface of a fat silver cocoon.
        “How many? What kinds?”
        “Too many catfish. And too many to put back. I started cussing.”
        “I will help.”
        Ernie sighed in relief. “Thank you.”

Ernie returned to the pond the next morning. It was as he had worried about during the night in his bed. The catfish had tried to follow him home. They lay dead along the walking path. How far some crawled. Why did they do this? He gathered them in his truck bed and returned home. He walked to the shed to get a shovel. Errata appeared in the house window as he crossed the lawn. Ernie waved to her and flashed a sheepish smile. Errata glitched, her body distorting in squares and rectangles. Something was wrong with the sky. But she could not tell him.

Ernie began to bury the catfish in his lawn. Mid-morning became night. Like before, but now there was a great sound like a million cows lowing. In the distance, a great vulture was descending from heaven in a swirl of feathers. Its many great wings churned like wheels, each pair folding over the other to scoop up the land and shovel it into its center. The vulture’s mouth consumed the land in a concealment of black feathers and debris. Ernie ran. The vulture loomed upon him at frightening speed, destroying the neighbor’s homes, the trees, the road. Eating them. Ernie was near the door. The vulture’s wings lifted his truck, his entire driveway, and brought it to its mouth. Ernie was in the door. The vulture’s massive face was a beakless slit swallowing everything, eyes wide and gagging. Errata embraced him in the doorway, her body like running fluid. Drowning him. He felt himself lean and was lifted up fully into her water. He dove head first for the floor, which was the bottom of a bucket. Apples surrounded him in the water. He was entirely in the big apple bobbing bucket at the town fair. He was pulled out by his buddies John and Coby.

It was ok with me because Shirley Shepard gave me a sort of handkerchief to dry myself with. Tom Sacks was who did it. The fool. Shirley said to me, ‘They give you an apple if you fail. The secret is you get a better apple if you don’t fail.’ I noticed first all the catfish coming up out of the bucket.
        ‘That’s what you get Tom,’ I said to Tom who looked impressed with the all the fish. ‘A magic trick for your foolishness.’