The Fish

I guess this is supposed to be a ghost story. It also could be a story about nothing at all. It seems to be worth writing down because it isn't something that happens every day, and I have yet to comprehend what we saw. When I was six years old, I lived in a reasonably large subdivision that bordered a wooded area on one side. My friends and I tended to gather in those trees almost every evening. The land begins to slope downward after the tree line, descending until it becomes a long ditch that stretches along the hill's bottom. On the other side of the trench, the land ascends. There had been a hard rain the day before, so there was rushing water separating the two hills instead of a dry trough. This was, of course, pleasing to all of us. There is something about rushing water.

We were all standing on the same side of the water, tossing twigs into it and watching them get washed away when a fish came swimming toward us from our right. The fish was swimming with the current. We all were confused. There shouldn't have been a fish in that water, especially one as big as the one that was swimming toward us. We were sure there was nothing at either end of this creek but dry land, but there it was, zig-zagging from bank to bank and flipping its tail. Of course, we followed it; how could we not. We even discussed jumping in after it. We never got the chance, though. As soon as it found its way to a broader area of the creek, it didn't seem interested in going any further. Instead, it kept swimming in that one area like it was trapped, and then it vanished.