Noburu
An old fisherwoman lived in a cabin north of Green River. Her name is what they called her. However, I am not here to speak about her.
The old fisherwomen inherited her late husband’s fishing boat when he was devoured by an aquatic beast. Although the beast simply required adequate sustenance to replace its daily expenditure of joules, the old fisherwoman’s heart was cast on revenge and categorized the beast as a murderer.
Thus, to the lake she paddled hoping to catch the beast, scouring with hook and harpoon for signs of a monstrous hide. And plotted her revenge.
Days and nights. Nights and days. Shrivelled behind her notched fishing rod, chainsmoking cancers in a weather-worn recliner lashed atop the boat cabin’s roof, she waited. Her hand never fell farther than a breath’s reach from the makeshift harpoon she welded in front of the recliner. Uncivilized desperation, is how one would describe it. And so, I have.
One night, as it is always is when speaking in terms of mystery, as the old fisherwoman dozed under a clear moon, she thought she heard a plop in the still waters. After a moment of surveying the soothing ebbs of the murkwater, she resumed sleep. Nestled into her recliner atop her boat’s cabin and drifted to dreamland.
Again. The water plopped.
The fisherwoman stirred. Watched the ripples rock her boat, lit another cancer and waited on a third plop. When it came and she cast her line at the center of the ripples.
The line jerked taught and the old fisherwoman braced herself against the harrowing pull. The prow groaned under the strain of her heel as she repelled the assault. The torrent ripped her through the lake, dragging her boat this way and that – but mostly this – as the beast tried to snap her fishing line.
A shimmering green head split the waves and the old fisherwoman reeled back to her recliner, fearing the beast would dive to the lake’s bottom, and she slammed into her harpoon. She loosed a bolt. It missed the beast, spraying the old fisherwoman with briny shoals.
’Gufaw,’ went the beast, and the old fisherwoman loosed another patchwork harpoon. This too missed.
’Fuck off,’ said the monster, who turned and thew back the harpoon. It decapitated the recliner atop the cabin. The fisherwoman called the monster a sonofabitch.
As they drifted in still waters, eye to eye, the old fisherwoman realized this was not in fact the murderous monster who ate her husband, but was, in fact, a green-faced man skinny dipping. His name was Kenny. The local Olympic swimmer, I forgot to tell you about.
Regardless. This concludes the story of how Kenny the local Olympic swimmer was nearly harpooned by the old fisherwoman who lost her husband.
Goodbye.
29/01/23
