The Dream Fish

They say that I came up screaming when

I surfaced, near the boat,

Distraught, they said, eyes gleaming

Thrashing around, could barely float,

They pulled me in with a boat hook, thought

I might be down with the bends,

Then decompressed in a chamber, that

Was where this story ends.

 

The start was out on a dive boat near

The Isle of Tora Lee,

One of a cluster of smaller isles

Down in the southern sea,

It lay out wide on the outer edge

Of the continental shelf,

‘It’s one of the greatest dives,’ they said,

‘But check it out for yourself.’

 

It fell away on the eastern side

A thousand fathoms or more,

Nobody knew how deep it was -

And who was keeping score?

The first three did their shallow dives,

No more than 100 feet,

While I stayed back in the boat to wait,

I had to be more discreet.

 

The record dive was a thousand feet

With our scuba type of gear,

I knew they wouldn’t be happy if

I tried the record here,

I cooked a fish on the after deck

While the rest were down below,

And ate it while I was waiting there

For their heads to finally show.

 

I checked the depth as I went on down

At a slow and measured pace,

I had to adjust to the pressure as

The fish swam past my face,

I checked the gauge, 600 feet

And I kept on going down,

Til I came to the inlet of a cave

That brought me up with a frown.

 

For jammed in the entrance to the cave

The remains of a sailing ship,

Just the prow and the forward deck

With the mast collapsed on it,

The stern had broken away and gone

To the seabed down below,

But up at the front, the ‘Black Revenge’

Was painted along the prow.

 

I swam on into the cave, and lit

My way in through the dark,

Hoping to hell I wouldn’t swim

In the path of a roving shark,

But fifty metres inside the cave

Was a tiny glow of light,

Flickering up above me like

The stars on a pitch black night.

 

Then suddenly I had surfaced,

There was air inside the cave,

Pulled myself on the ledge and found

I stood by an open grave,

A line of skeletons in a row

That had once been fifteen men,

They must have known they would never roam

Or take to the seas again.

 

I sensed in the corner of my eye

A movement in the dark,

Then spun around and I saw her there

A woman, standing, stark,

She wore the rag of a printed dress

And she crossed herself, and hissed,

‘Would the good Lord please preserve me!

Be you man, or be you fish?’

 

I must have looked quite a sight to her

In my rubber scuba gear,

I took off my mask to calm her down

As she backed away in fear,

‘How long have you lived down in this cave,

And how did you arrive?’

‘I eat of the good Lord’s fish down here

And they’ve helped me to survive.’

 

She said she’d come on the ‘Black Revenge’

As the moll of Captain Tull,

He’d kidnapped her from the ‘Bell and Bar’

And had locked her in the hull,

She’d sailed the seven seas with him

Til the storm that set her free,

Swept her into this cave with him

In seventeen sixty-three.

 

‘His bones lie there at the head of the line,

I cut his scurvy throat,

Just as he crawled up on the ledge

When he said he couldn’t float.

My name is Mary Parkinson

And I’ve hoped, and dreamed and cried.

To see my own dear home again,

Before my mother died.’

 

I didn’t tell her the year it was

It would be too cruel to say,

Two hundred and fifty years had gone

But to her, a year and a day,

I told her I’d fetch some scuba gear

And I’d be back down, and soon,

And that was the day I lost my way

On that autumn afternoon.

 

They said I shouldn’t have eaten it,

That fish with the broad green stripe,

The fish had made me hallucinate,

I said that it wasn’t right!

‘I’ve seen the woman, deep in the cave,’

They patted my hand, and that,

But I’m fretting that Mary Parkinson

Still waits for me to come back.

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

Once again you took me on a completely unexpected journey. Seeing the title, 'The Dream Fish,' I thought this would immediately go the way of the movie entitled, "The Incredible Mr. Limpet," starring Don Knotts. "The Incredible Mr. Limpet" is a 1964 American live-action/animated film from Warner Bros. It is about a man named Henry Limpet who turns into a talking fish resembling a tilefish and helps the U.S. Navy locate and destroy Nazi submarines. But no ... you didn't keep me there.

Instead you took me on another dark dive into the unknown. I always lose myself in your stories, am always entertained, and hate it when the story ends.

Thank God you always write more. I think I need to attend a DLP Anonymous meeting and go through the twelve-step program of getting over you. :-)

[TL Boehm]

another wonderful and unique tale from you the Master. I found it almost sad to think she may still be waiting for him in that cave.

[Angel]

So...was Mary Parkinson just a dream...a hallucination brought on by the fish??
Or was she...*gulp*...real????

I'm not sure I want to know....

[Baby Ricochet]

Seriously, I would not pick that chick up.

[TPK Stories]

Wow! So hauntingly beautiful! Another great story, David! :-)

[Leigh]

You have a brilliant way of putting the worries and fears the subject has into the mind of the reader. This is a great woven story, I like the use of the fish as it crosses so many boundaries, giving your writing more power.

[Marie]

Poor Mary Parkinson...but what would happen to her if she surfaced...?