Bastard Freedom: Epilogue

Joseph was in the river on a Saturday, one day before he returns to the Army again.

His father developed a technique for hand-fishing that involved a t-shirt, an eel, and whole lot of caressing. Joseph, on the other hand, honed it to involve a net: that way, he can traumatize the fish all in one go, and minimize the lactic acid build-up in the creature’s system. Eventually, after catching them, he lets them go, as he lets them all go. After all, his philosophy had always been: he came, he saw, he left early.

For how do you catch anything, except announce your intentions as a bastard in their territory, minimize the wound of trauma by dumping said trauma simultaneously, relying on the brain’s physiologically innate inability to process this sensory overload and focus on the most pertinent one: it is fucked at the moment, and therefore, all systems go. It doesn’t help that this fish is in quite a variety of yoga poses when a hand-fisherman comes up to it. One moment, you’re doing the Trout on its Head; the next, this careful lover bulldozes you and steals your gems.

It will struggle, but then the hand-fisherman reassures it, that everything is going to be alright. 

And, in a strange way, everything is alright: this is bound to happen. That is the fate of fish, after all.

Joseph was on the verge of catching one today when he slipped on the roof bed, and therefore the fish also slipped, albeit to freedom. He felt his eyes sting: another one let go. You couldn’t, after all, woo a fish back with flowers, karaoke, or polemics: once it’s gone, it stays gone.

You will never see her again. A final tear from his eye joined the waters of the river.

 

--Fin--

 

 

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