David McGroarty
"6 7 8 9 10, then I let it go again"
1. Ask me to count to ten, I'll count to nine for you.
2. I found it tangled in the trawl, its tail threaded in and out of the mesh: a creature of the deep, like a fantasy from an old seafarers map. Here be monsters.
3. All trawlermen have a story like this one. Spend enough of your life dragging things up from the bottom of the ocean and you'll surely come across something no one has seen before. It's vast and strange down there.
Some things you keep, some you put back. Sharks and squids have a value. My uncle says he caught something like a flounder, but with black, blinking eyes all over its back instead of spots. He threw it away.
"Who would want that on their dinner table?" he says.
4. Often, it's the bringing them up that kills them. Their hearts pop like bubbles.
5. It was alive.
6. It was no longer than a dogfish, patterned with bright green scales, leathery fins, teeth like a thousand needles. Its face, I found appalling: bright, lidded eyes, like those of a child. It watched me, and it hissed when I approached.
7. I called the boys. There was laughter, photographs. I pulled it from the net and held it above my head like a football scarf.
8. It bit hard. This little finger on my right. Straight through the bone. Swallowed it.
9. More laughter. Swearing. Blood everywhere.
(10. Then I let it go again.)
