Fish (by Tynan Portillo)

CAUTION: story contains GORE and themes of TORTURE.

For the first time in the history of The Poe Show, I am featuring a story of my own! This is a story which I have been working on for about 12 years. And it's more than a scary story about an old fisherman; the themes that lay underneath speak to many problems as well. I felt like it was also entertaining - and gothic - enough to feature on this podcast. I hope you enjoy my story, Fish.

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Episode music and narration by Tynan Portillo.

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Intro music by Emmett Cooke on PremiumBeat.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:33 Story
• 25:52 Aftertalk
• 33:31 Farewell

Transcript

Tynan Portillo presents, featuring the works of Edgar Allan Poe and the best horror stories from the 19th century. Welcome to The Poe Show podcast. Music and narration by Tynan Portillo.

Today’s episode, Fish. A horror story by Tynan Portillo.

Atop still waters of some vacant lake, amidst a din of mechanical crankings perforating the silent night air, a plastic lure of red and orange twirled inaudibly and beautifully - a tempting taste of ecstasy.

But an abrupt splash of water rattled the calm atmosphere as a lone bass lunged upon the plastic dancer, attempting to swallow it whole. In response, the hooked dancer was wrenched by its wire into the fleshy lip of the bass. Struggle as it might, the force at the other end of the taught line was stronger than the bass, dragging it through the open water. It was heaved from its watery home and dangled limply by its hooked lip, gasping for water.

Carefully, a fisherman standing near the riverbank had made his catch.

This fisherman was old. The kind of old that came with gray hair, a creaky voice, a tangled beard, large chapped lips, one less tooth in his smile, and dark brown eyes.

He was a pit, bottomless.

The fisherman held his catch close to his eye, to get a proper look at it, and grunted. His breath plunged from deep in his lungs into the night’s air, forming vaporous clouds that faded to nothing.

“It’s late. You’ll do,” he said to the speechless fish.

With his burly hands he gripped the lip of the fish, unhooked the lure, and tossed the fish into his accompanying bucket of water. Then he gathered up all his things and walked back to his truck, his thick boots crunching down on grass, weeds and gravel.

Quietly, he loaded his truck with the bucket, with the fishing rod and with his bait and lures. The hushed air about the lake was pierced by the start of the truck’s cold engine, but steadily returned to its peace as the truck drove off, terrorizing the tranquility of the rest of the night.

In no time, he arrived at his small cabin near another small lake in another small wood. He carried his catch in the bucket up his front steps, his hefty boots making the decaying ligneous wood creak underneath him. He twisted the front door’s green tinted brass doorknob and pushed hard on its sun-beaten skin, grinding the door’s corroded hinges - hinges which produced squeals of much needed oil as he shoved it open. Then with one swift kick of his solid heel, he forced the door shut.

He dropped his bucket next to his tiny kitchen counter, on which lay a handcrafted cutting board. He grabbed his catch in the bucket and plopped it onto the cutting board.

He looked at the wet, soulless eye of the thing.

“Thing about you is, supposedly, you don’t feel anything.” The fisherman stated this as a matter of fact. His curiosity started growing. His gaze slowly shifted to his knife kit. He chose the smallest knife in the set, and turned back to the fish.

“Don’t worry, I’m a doctor. Let me know if you can feel…this.”

He delicately ran the knife along the fish’s fin, separating it from its body. As blood began oozing from the cut, he looked again at the eye of the thing. Other than its gasping for life, the fish did not respond.

The fisherman frowned. “How about this?”

Like a surgeon, he ran his knife underneath the fish’s scales, stripping them from its body. He removed the scales one by one in smooth motion. The bass began flapping its tail.

The fisherman stared at it. A long time.

“Didn’t think so. None of you feel anything.”

He quickly cut along the belly of his patient, splitting it open and letting its insides spill outside. The fish wriggled in an attempt to escape. The fisherman  leaned in closer.

They gazed into emotionless eyes.

“No fear,” the fisherman said. He chuckled and said in a congratulatory tone “Good for you.” And promptly cut off the fish’s head, sliding it into the bucket below.

Eventually its wet lips stopped twitching.

He began to filet the fish, using the knife to find the spine and cut down one half of its body. The inside of the fish was lined with what seemed to be a thousand small red lumps, smushed together into a slimy sac in the bass’s tight stomach. They were eggs, nestled in their mother’s corpse, glistening in her blood.

He looked at the eggs for another long time.

He split open the sac and slid a portion of the eggs onto the blade of his knife, then examined them as if studying. A few of the eggs showed the forming eyes of baby bass. Those ones joined their mother in the bucket. Once he had all the little red lumps together, he again scooped some onto the blade, put the knife into his mouth, closed his teeth, and slid the knife out between them, catching the precious red marbles on his tongue.

He popped them between his teeth one at a time, rolling them inside his mouth, enjoying the chewing of each morsel.

Suddenly there was a knock at a door.

Not the front door, but the door behind him.

The thick, polished steel door in the back of his kitchen.

He turned to face it, waiting for another knock.

Another knock came, quiet and weak.

The fisherman, still holding his knife in one hand, took a key out of his pants pocket with the other and inserted it into the heavy multipoint lock he’d installed. He turned the latch and opened the door toward him, dragging the weighty door across the old wooden floor of the kitchen.

Behind the door was a small room, only 5 feet on each metal side, with a red stained stone floor, a rusted drain in the center, and a meat hook hanging from a bar mounted to the low ceiling.

There was also a woman. A terrified woman, her hands and feet bound by thick ropes and her mouth covered with a large piece of duct tape. Seeing him, her voice attempted to scream as she crawled into the corner of the tiny room. She held her bound hands out in front of her, trying to halt his advances.

“Stay there,” he said, cold coating his words.

He went to take the duct tape off of her mouth but the woman groaned and flinched away. The fisherman raised his knife to her face, resting the handle on her cheek and placing the blade in front of her eye.

“Stay there. Or I’ll slice you open.”

The woman lay still, taking in shaky breaths. He took his blade away from her face. The fisherman’s bloody, fish gut drenched fingers gripped the tape at one side of the woman’s mouth, then pulled the tape off of her lips.

“My name is Ranae. I’m a daughter and a sister and I’m going to be a mother. My mother’s name is Sarah. My sister’s name is Carlee. I’m marrying a man named Michael in December. I like painting sunrises. I’m going to be a music composer. I love the movie Curious George.” Curious George. After that, the fisherman stopped listening. But he kept watching as this woman in front of him scrambled for compassion. She had that look they get.

The restraint in accepting total loss of control.

The fisherman wondered why that was.

Ranae saw she was talking to a statue.

She asked, aggressively, “What do you want from me?”

The fisherman stared back coldly.

Ranae felt her whole body trembling. Hot tears swam in her eyes and pushed to run down her face, but she resisted giving him any such gratification.

She stared into emotionless eyes.

The fisherman cocked his head and furrowed his brow a bit to this response.

“That’s interesting,” he whispered.

He began running the blade of his knife along his calloused palm, unable to make a cut.

“How long have you been pregnant?” he asked, flatly.

“Two months. I’ve been pregnant for two months.”

“Almost too long.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, tentatively.

He didn’t answer.

“What’s going to happen to me?”

“It doesn’t matter what happens to you. Just stay quiet.”

The fisherman kept his unblinking eyes on her as he slowly stood up, stepped back out of the room, and closed the steel door, locking it.

…………..

Ranae heard a TV turn on outside the small room.

Her senses were all dulled, everything felt clouded and foggy. But she was sure she heard a TV outside her cell, playing commercials about chain restaurants. She had no light in the small cold room, it was pitch black. Her bare feet were freezing, her toes felt numb. She could barely bend her fingers because of the biting pain. She had an incredible thirst and felt her throat burn. Her muscles were heavy.

Ranae shoved her shoulder against the icy stone wall and used her legs to push against it. She began moving up the wall slightly, shifting her legs underneath her. She slipped, her knees buckling under her weight. She couldn’t properly stand, lifting her body felt like trying to lift an anvil.

But his words rang in her ears.

It doesn’t matter what happens to you.

She had seen behind the fisherman when he had opened the door. There was a kitchen on the other side of the door. A knife set was on the counter. If it was still there…

With all the strength she could muster, Ranae moved her legs underneath herself again.

………….

On the kitchen counter the fisherman opened a large black garbage bag he had dropped off earlier. He pulled out from it a woman’s fluffy pink coat, size 10 women’s nude shoes, an empty syringe, a small beige handbag and an iPhone. He opened a drawer in the counter and pulled out a meat tenderizer. Next, he took the iPhone, placed it inside the black garbage bag and smashed at the phone with intense fury. Once done, he lifted the bag to check his work. The phone was only bits and pieces now. He returned the meat tenderizer to the drawer and closed it, then placed the empty syringe into the garbage bag and placed it under his arm.

The fisherman filled his arms with the other things atop the counter and made his way to the back of the house, past the only bathroom and to the only bedroom.

He made his way down a dark hallway, into the dark bedroom, shutting the door behind him. Once inside the damp bedroom, he flicked the light switch to his right and a disturbing red light washed over the room. In the comfort of this warm light, the fisherman trudged over to the bed at one of the four sides of the room. He delicately placed the things in his arms down upon the dirty unwashed sheets, separating them. He went to put the fluffy pink coat into a large closet, holding it close to his nose and breathing it in deeply before meticulously straightening it upon a hanger and putting it up next to others. Next was the handbag, which he made room for underneath his bed. Purses that were brown, tan, black, yellow, polka dot and zebra patterned were shoveled by his meaty hands into a jumbled mess at the foot of the bed. But he placed his new beige one nearer to the head of the bed. Then were the shoes. He handled the shoes as if they were eggs, fragile. He knew just where to put these. He turned round to the wall in front of the bed.

The wall in front of the bed was lined with shelves filled with hundreds of pairs of women’s shoes, filling the wall from the floor to the ceiling. Stapled to the shelves, just underneath each pair, was a photograph of a woman, and a name written in marker on the photograph. They always kept their best condition in red light.

And in the very center of the wall was a waist high pedestal covered with a sheet.

The fisherman took a pair of shoes close to the center of the wall off of the shelf and tore down the photograph associated with them. “Kathy” it read. The fisherman dropped the old shoes and photograph into a nearby bucket on the floor and placed Ranae’s shoes on the shelf. He took a few steps back and gazed at the things lining the wall. And he noticed something. Something he always noticed for the first time.

“Look at me,” he said to the photographs.

The women all looked on in complete terror in their photos.

“Look at me.”

His gaze turned to the pedestal before him.

…………….

With great difficulty, Ranae was standing.

She had developed some strength in her right leg now, enough to support her weight. She heavily hopped towards the center of her dark cell. She began feeling above her head, waving her bound hands slowly through the darkness. Eventually, they touched the freezing steel of the hanging meat hook. She wrapped her fingers around the hook and gripped it with a sense of pride.

Straining her right leg, she pushed from underneath the hook and freed it from the bar in the middle of the room. Her body slumped against the chilly stone wall and slid back down to a sitting position. Carefully, she groped the hook until she found the sharp end of it. As quietly and quickly as she could, she dug the hook into her bonds, picking away at the ropes.

…………….

He stood directly in front of the covered pedestal now.

The fisherman stroked the sheet and what was underneath it gently, lovingly. But then his fingers clenched the sheet tightly, angrily.

“Look. At. Me.”

He yanked the sheet off of the pedestal and tossed it beside him, revealing the decaying severed head of a woman. Maggots wriggled in empty eye sockets and between loose teeth. A photograph was stapled to the forehead of the severed head, which read “Morgan.”

He took the garbage bag from the bed and, with it, covered the head and slipped it inside. The garbage bag in one hand, he picked up the camera sitting on a bedside table close to the bed. On his way out the door, he turned off the red light and said something to the wall of photos and shoes.

“I’ll be back, girls. Got dinner in the oven.”

…………..

Ranae was freed from her bonds.

She had been able to cut through the ropes tied around her hands, then done the same to her feet. But her body still refused to move at full capacity. She felt as if she was moving in slow motion.

Ranae struggled to bring her back against the wall. She dug her heels underneath her, readying herself for a push to stand. Her left hand handled the corner close to the steel door, giving her leverage. Her right hand held tight the meat hook, which served as her only weapon. She wouldn’t let that go for anything.

She winced in pain as she forced her muscles to work, propelling her up and forward. She just had to grab that bar in the middle of the room.

With everything she had, she stood on her wavering legs, leaning against the wall. She reached above her head and in time found the metal bar in the middle of her cell. Weakly, she held the meat hook up to it, latching it back onto the ceiling. Both of her hands held onto it for her life.

She was ready.

…………..

The fisherman stood in front of an old metal barrel in his empty backyard, holding a gas canister in one hand and the black garbage bag in the other. He tossed the garbage bag into the barrel, poured gas from the canister on top of it, and took a matchbox from his pants pocket. He set the gas canister down, lit one of the matches from the box, then tossed the little wooden torch into the barrel. 

Fire came to life, engulfing all contents within its reach.

Within the quiet of the night, he watched the complete incineration of self and of worlds. The anger of chaos. The absolute judgement without mercy. He watched as the wrath of God writhed in front of him.

Then he picked up his camera and stepped back into his cabin.

.................

Ranae heard him.

She heard him shutting the backdoor. Heard his footsteps grow closer.

Closer.

Her heart beat in her chest so loudly and rapidly.

Closer.

She gripped the hook tighter than tight.

Closer.

The TV was turned off.

Closer.

A drawer was closed.

Closer.

Footsteps ceased.

He was there.

Waiting.

For what?

Ranae swallowed.

She waited too, in the darkness.

There was a ruffling of a hand in jeans.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door.

The fisherman was knocking at the door, asking to come in.

The sound of a key turning a heavy lock started grinding against Ranae’s ears.

That’s when she raised her legs in a hard kick.

…………..

All of a sudden the edge of the solid steel door crashed into the fisherman’s face, breaking his nose and shattering a front tooth. Severely stunned, he fell backward and swung his right arm which held the meat tenderizer. Blood gushed into his eyes from his forehead, which now had a deep vertical cut in it. He wiped the blood from his eyes, still swinging his weapon. He heard Ranae scream.

Then he felt the freezing metal of the meat hook dig deep into his neck.

He was unsure what was happening. He couldn’t move his head. His right hand had dropped his weapon and would no longer move. He wiped more blood from one of his eyes and saw Ranae on the kitchen floor, grasping at his knife set on the kitchen counter. Losing all sense of direction, he lunged for the knife set as well, but missed. He fell to his knees as he knocked the knives all to the floor. He struggled to snatch up a knife as Ranae scrambled to clasp one as well.

Ranae found one first.

…………….

She gutted him like a fish.

The fisherman’s insides quickly spilled outside of him, his blood painting the floor. In a daze, he gripped at the intestines that had begun to unravel from his torso. His groans were stifled in his pierced bloody throat.

As a coldness engulfed his senses, he gazed at Ranae, and found himself entertaining a curious thought.

There was something in her eyes.

A final word crawled out from his mouth.

“Fear.”

The fisherman wondered why that was.

His body went limp and hit the floor with a loud thump.

………….

Ranae fell to her knees and vomited onto the floor, violently, her body shaking. Her arms wavered as she did so, her heaving stomach sending ripples through her body until it felt empty. She fell onto her side, still heaving, but nothing coming out. She took in big breaths between each heave, gasping for air. She slowed her mind, tried relaxing her body and refocused her blurry vision, having to be slow about it all. Gradually, the world became right again.

She left out the decrepit front door, slamming it behind her.

Hello and welcome back to The Poe Show, I’m your host Tynan Portillo. I hope you enjoyed my story. This is the first time I have featured a work of my own on the podcast so I hope you enjoyed it and give this podcast a 5 star rating, follow and subscribe and share it with your friends, family and even other authors who might want their stories read on the podcast. If you’re interested in that, or in hiring a narrator for your audiobook, you can contact me at poeshowpod@gmail.com and on ACX for Audible. And if you’re an author with a gothic spooky tale that you’d like to have featured on the podcast, then email poeshowpod@gmail.com. I’ve also featured a story from Nicholas Leonard, and yes his name is Leonard, not Leonard as I pronounce in the episode, which is really embarrassing. Sorry about that Nicholas.

I wrote Fish with themes and ideas in mind but I wanted it to be ambiguous enough that you walk away with your own interpretation of it. So please let me know in the comment section on YouTube or Spotify what you noticed about the story and what meanings you drew from it.

I began writing this story about 2 months ago, I think. Technically though, I started writing this story over 12 years ago, most likely when I was in middle school.. I wrote the title down and essentially waited for a story to come to me about it. When I was in middle school, I had some really great English teachers who inspired me to write. Their encouragement was instrumental in building my confidence in storytelling and making bold choices, as well as knowing how to better explain my ideas. I hope they somehow hear this episode because I’m gonna give them a shoutout. Mrs. Weirman, Mr. Layton and Ms. Andrews, you guys were my heroes. Also, Mr. Harward if you ever hear this; Mr. Harward was the best teacher I have ever had.

Mrs. Weirman was the woman who first inspired me to write and convinced me that I had a creative mind with good ideas. That didn’t even have to be true at the time, in fact I’m sure it wasn’t because I was in the 7th grade. But she made me believe it. For that, I will forever be grateful to her. She instilled confidence in my young mind. Thank you, Mrs. Weirman.

Mr. Layton made me develop a love of reading in 9th grade Honors English. He read a new book every month and always told us about what he had just read. He didn’t put that requirement on us, he just did it because he loved reading. And that inspired me to do the same thing, and fall in love with literature. I still remember reading To Kill A Mockingbird, and the way he had us study that book made it important to me. Thank you, Mr. Layton.

Finally, Ms. Andrews, who was my Honors English teacher in 8th grade. Ms. Andrews, I don’t know where I’d be without you. See, one time I had BS’d a book report and it was completely terrible. So one class she had everyone but me and like 3 other students go to the computer lab. And with just us 4 students in the room, she gave us each a piece of paper and told us to write a paragraph explaining why we deserved to stay in an Honors classroom after the low effort in our book reports. She kind of put the fear of God in me. Which was something that I honestly needed at that age. She got me to think about the fact that being in an Honors classroom is a privilege, and it was due to my excellent work, so I shouldn’t take it for granted. I essentially answered with “I know this wasn’t my best work. Please let me show you my best work.” And she read stories that I wrote and gave me a more critical eye to make my writing better. Ever since then, I try to excel in everything I really want to do. So thank you Ms. Andrews.

Also, on this subject, if Scott Craig ever listens to this podcast episode, Mr. Craig, I’m sorry I never redid that presentation to bring up my grade. I feel guilty about it to this day and I just have to apologize.

Alright, moving on.

This story took a few turns that were unexpected to me. As a writer, I love surprising myself. If I have trouble knowing how to get Ranae out of her situation, then I think it’ll be harder for the reader to predict (or in this case for the listener to predict). I also found myself writing details about the fisherman and his home that I didn’t understand at first, it was just kind of subconscious babbling. But then I started to refine and reshape those ideas which allowed me to understand what my brain was trying to get across when mentioning these things. So I will talk about a few details of the story, but I’ll try not to give away too much of the author’s intent so that way, you know, you can still walk away with your own little tidbits here and there.

The front door was an interesting detail I returned to because I’m a believer that if it’s not important to the story, you shouldn’t add it. You know? If the story is mainly about two characters and you got a third character who doesn’t do something, you should really take out that third character. Because I hate passive characters, who are just there to, like, watch something. Or just there to comment on something. I do think you should make them active, you should make them do something or give them a goal. The front door was interesting because I was going to cut it, but then I said “What is my brain trying to tell me,” essentially. And what I understood about it eventually is that it is a further look into the fisherman and how he deceives. He starts off the story by deceiving a fish using a lure. The front door is a work of deception. You know, it’s sun beaten, it’s worn, it’s old, it’s tired. But inside the home, there is a solid steel door that is maintained so well that it seems like it’s brand new. So that is another representation of how he uses deception to “hook the fish” so to speak. Which, in this case, would be Ranae. And Ranae runs out the front door as a symbol of her recognizing the deception and being freed from the manipulation and the prison that the fisherman used to deceive her.

Uh, what else? There’s the shoes. The wall of shoes and photographs. That was an idea that came to me as I started imagining the room of the fisherman. And the shoes represent the ability of the women to get away. So to the fisherman, it’s his way of taking away their ability to leave. Take away from this story your own interpretation of it, but there are multiple ideas that reflect themes that I was conscious of while writing so. Yeah, anyway, if you have more questions or if you’d like me to talk about more stuff you can send an anonymous text message to the podcast asking a question and I’ll answer it on the next episode. So feel free to do that if you have more questions.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Poe Show. Remember to give this podcast a 5 star rating, follow and subscribe, and send a text message to the podcast using the link in the description to ask questions or suggest stories for another episode. Follow on TikTok @poeshowpodcast and on Instagram @thepoeshowpodcast, and on Bluesky @thepoeshow.bsky.social.

That’s all for now, but you’ll hear from me again on the next episode of The Poe Show.