Affectionately, we called him Popeye. A sailor who rocked a corncob pipe, you can’t and obviously aren’t trying to escape that moniker. He didn’t have the laugh, thank goodness. As much as we all drank around him, that still would have gotten annoying.

He made up some crazy drinking games out there on that ship of his, brought them to us landlubbers at The Prosperity. I think he only came here because it could be the name of a ship. He called us regulars his “crew” and I was his first mate. Because I was always the last man standing. Well, besides him. I don’t know what really happened out there on that ship, but the end result was an alcohol tolerance the likes of which I’ve never seen.

Then again, maybe the games were all biased toward him winning. Regardless, two or three games into the night we would need a break and we’d ask for a story. Once he’d had some drinks in him, asking for a story was good for a twenty minute reprieve.

“Hey, Popeye, did you ever see a whale like in Moby Dick?”

“Aye, matey. Ye have no idear what it’s like on the open water. I read that thar tale, Moby Dick. You know a man can lose himself out thar. Ye n’er know if Moby Dick was a whale er a dolphin. It’s just what the man seen. And many a man seen the same thing dif’rnt ways.”

“What did you see, Popeye?”

“I spin ye one yarn, then it’s time fer ’nother game!”

“Aye aye Captain!” We all sniggered because...well...Spongebob. But Popeye never got the joke. Go figure.

“The night were dark and menacin’. The air wrapped around ye in droplets. Ye drive yerself crazy listenin’ for anything, but the air was too thick fer sound to travel. That’s how she got so dern close without a sole noticin’. It had to be a female to cause that level of destruction. Crushed the soul of nigh me entire crew. It were a great white fer sure. Were it Moby Dick? If Moby Dick were female.

Ye question God ye do. In that thar moment when the behemoth bares down upon ye, out of thick air. Crashed down with a vengenance louder than thunder but quicker than lightening. Damn near split me vessel in two. Four of me men immediately lost into the dark ocean. Lookin’ after them I spied the wee one. In the dark and fog we come too near her calf. Mebbe we even nicked it with our bow. Only she knows.

We weren’t a fishing vessel. Just a merchant ship. We had harpoons but not near enough to fight her off and we were down four men from the start. And then a storm bore down somethin’ fierce. We seen plenty ‘a storms out on the ocean, but this’n topped ‘em all. Thunder cracked so loud the whale reared back ‘n retreated into the ocean to protect her calf. Lightenin’ split the sky in bright ’n brighter. Them winds kicked up and took three more ’o me men.

That’s the night we made up this next drinkin’ game, ‘Death Tolls for Thee’.”

Popeye and I passed out at the bar the night. Luckily, it’s my bar.

I can't see the shore anymore because we've drifted way too far. We were once paddling together but you stopped and looked the other way. So we decided to go our separate ways and that didn't work because we were stuck on a current that made us go further out into the dark abyss. You started feeding the sharks instead of nurturing me. As well I too fed the birds while you starved watching their feathers fall off leaving their residue on our imperfect union all alone as one where together here but we're on separate sides of the sun. I'm salty while your transparent and tastless you say it doesn't matter but we're both the same substance.

Lionel stared out to the horizon, taking in the salty air and waiting hopefully for food to come. The only two fish to bite his line since dawn had been too small to take home.

Typically, Lionel had no problem attracting bass, snapper, sometimes even grouper if he was lucky. Squinting to look at the shimmering waves, he tried to find any fish that could be swimming near his small boat.

“Alright fishies, you’ve forced me to use the big guns,” Lionel mumbled to himself as he reeled in his empty line and switched his bait to something he thought would be foolproof. Live bait that he bought from his close friend had to be better than the stuff he got at bigger corporations. His friends had never guided him astray before, so he figured this bait had to be saved for an occasion such as this. If he didn’t catch anything suitable soon he feared that he would surely go hungry.

Stabbing his hook through the smaller fish, he tossed his line as far as his arms and hands would let him. They couldn’t quite perform with the same force that they used to.

As he sat tapping his foot impatiently, his ears picked up a sound he’d never heard before. The docks were quite a ways away and no other boats were nearby. Lionel felt it not wise to investigate, for so long as he felt unthreatened he could still possibly row into town with a meal or two. Still though, he had an uneasy feeling begin to rise within him.

Something that sounded like a motor started up in the distance then, and Lionel began speaking to himself, trying to reassure his heart which had quickened its beating.

“Nothing more than one of those kids in their big fancy boats. Such a shame no one does it the old fashioned way anymore. Everyone would rather be lazy than put just a little elbow grease in and do anything properly,” he sighed and leaned a bit in his seat on the boat.

Just as he’d gotten himself more comfortable and prepared for more possible hours with no luck, his fishing rod nearly got yanked out of his hand.

“Oh mama we’ve got a big one!” Lionel shouted as he jumped up, nearly falling out of the boat himself. He gripped the rod and began to try and tackle the possible feast at the other end of the line.

Reel, slack, reel, slack, reel, slack, this fish was not letting Lionel win that easily. His arms began to give out but, determined as he was, there was no way he could justify letting himself miss this. This was what he had been waiting for and if the fish was as big as it felt, it could feed him for days to come.

“Alright buddy, you gotta fight fair. I ain’t letting you go but if I’m lucky that hook’s got you good and since you’re not wanting to cooperate I’ll let you squirm all you want. I can play the long game, but it’s going to be a more painful death,” Lionel preached as he sat back down, still firm on his grip of the rod, and let the fish pull a bit.

It went on like this for a couple of minutes while Lionel regained some of his strength. It’d felt like the fish had almost popped his arm out of its socket and if he had kept going like he previously was, he would’ve definitely gotten hurt and lost it.

Just as Lionel felt he would get up and try his luck with the beastly fish again, it yanked on the line harder than it had before. Lionel, being unprepared for the amount of force the fish found so suddenly, let out a scream that was then cut short by the boat tipping over. Lionel, as well as all of his possessions, found themselves in the water and he had no idea what to do.

Lionel could barely process what was going on, and had a sort of stubbornness about him. No way is this fish going to be able to swim at this rate for very long, Lionel thought to himself as he panted to try and keep above the water while the fish dragged him away.

The thing that hadn’t dawned on him was that the fish was not at all pulling him down. It swam in one straight line at one continuous speed. It did not slow, it did not quicken, and Lionel quickly lost track of where he was. His boat was no longer in sight and looking into the blinding blue sky he could make out some sort of dark building in the distance that the fish was swimming straight for.

No way could this be town. The fish had dragged him the opposite way, and going this way there would be no land for quite some time unless it was a small island.

Every time Lionel felt like letting go, he remembered what his father used to tell him when they would go to the lake together.

“If you’ve got a tug on your line and it’s really trying to get away, you know you’ve got the right one.”

Struggling to breathe, Lionel tried desperately to see what the building that they were heading towards could be. It was on a platform and seemed to be somehow floating on the water. It was huge, gray, and a probable source to the motor he had heard earlier. The building grew taller and the noise grew louder as he kept being tugged forward.

Any sane man would let it go, he thought. Any sane man would have accepted his loss, but the fight was too deep in now and the only thing Lionel began to care about was declaring victory and what an amazing story this would become.

Lionel could barely hear anything the closer they got. He felt that he would surely go deaf from this as the motors sound engulfed the air and the only other thing he could hear was how hard his heart was beating.

The fish came to a sudden stop as they approached the platform of this building, and Lionel supposed that it had hit something and killed itself, so he took the opportunity to climb onto the platform and reel in the fish at last. Only something was very wrong.

Upon reeling in what he thought was a fish that would end his hunger for weeks to come, he quickly realized that it wasn’t. It was a mechanical device unlike any he’d seen before.

“A robot?” He asked loudly.

“Lionel Morris.” A womans voice said from behind him, just loud enough for him to hear over the motor.

He turned slowly and his eyes widened, and in that moment he realized that his father might not have been right all those years ago.

If you’ve got a tug on your line and it’s really trying to get away, you might not want to know what’s on the other end. It might be a fish, but it might be the very thing that kills you in the end.