Fishing at midnight fucking sucks.
The wind is cold, you can't see shit, the water keeps splashing onto you, and you can't stop thinking of what may meet you if you fall out. What are the odds of shark attack in this area? Too late to check now, you left your phone at home. Your only protection from being violently mauled by a shark is a shitty Craigslist motorboat that sounds like a dying seagull. Is that what they're meant to sound like? You've never been in a motorboat before, and you're beginning to think you never will again. You pull out your pawn shop fishing rod, and cast it like you'd seen in movies. The line casts half a metre behind you. You reel it back in, and cast it with more care. As the line arcs through the night, the shitty plastic comes dangerously close to snapping.
This was meant to be eye-opening. You were meant to be staring out into the abyss and questioning who you are, and what brought you here. You were supposed to be lounging on your motorboat as you pondered what created this place. Instead, you were staring at the spider that has just crawled out of the motor. You were pondering why you had failed to check the day's forecast, and whether the liquid at your knees was the result of unyielding tides, or your fight-or-flight response. Where was your spiritual epiphany? Your romanticised isolation?
You closed your eyes. Your breathing slowed. You were calm. You reminisced about your day. About static land. About dry pants.
Today was a day like any other. Your mother shouted at you for living at home for so long, your younger brother snickered at your pathetic existence, and you played Minesweeper for the entirety of your work shift. Your disinterested manager paid you regardless. Not enough to support yourself, as always. You were eligible for government support, but the maddening twists and turns of your government's bureaucracy chain you to poverty.
The spider crawls onto your face. You squeal, then brush it off.
After a customary screaming match with your mother, you slinked back to your room. You hopelessly constructed your novel, before scrunching up the paper and violently throwing it across the room. How you scrunched up the pages of a Word document is beyond you. You then lay still in your bed, soothing your omnipresent malaise in the comfort of shitposts. Only you found them funny, but you did not care. You did not care if your shitposts were more shit than post.
A tug pulls you from your memory. A second. A third. Your eyes snap open, and you look to your hook. Beneath it is an amorphous shadow at least a metre across. It was all worth it! For your unbearable toil, the abyss had granted you a boon. With a catch as quick as this, you must be a natural. You'd finally prove your mother wrong, prove yourself wrong, all with a deliciou- -
A violent tug rips the rod from your hands. You desperately grasp at it, before it sinks below the surface.
You slump down in shock, splashing more water onto yourself. There may be tears streaming down your face, but it's already too wet to tell.
You turn around to turn on the motor. You pull on the rope start several times, and drift off to sleep as you wait for the motor to take you shorewards. The motor lets out an unpleasant wheezing sound, before dying. Fishing at midnight fucking sucks.
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