Fiction: Group 4
Winter brought in those angry, cruel winds once more. The lashes of wind against his frailer body brought
silent screams of agony from his bones and his blood would have boiled if it had not been nearly frozen
solid. Despair and illness crept through his windows as he slept, into his dreams and resting body to increase
itself each day. Soon his every step elicited a scream from his body, a sentiment seemingly felt by the waters
as well. When previously the inky blackness of the night sky would be seen only at night in the waters, oily
sheens could now be found in the day too. The fish reacted with disgust at the decaying rivers, fleeing it to
other areas or giving up suffering in the black treacle of the slow currents into the bittersweet release of
death. Days would pass where the aging angler would become so incurably weak that his routine was halted
by days bedridden, where lack of food made him all the weaker the next time sickness struck.
The cloudless skies he would see above him became stained with the burnt offerings to some sick master
upstream as did his lungs. His breaths grew more and more difficult as what were once telltale signs of
something 'off' became immediate signs of time running out. The last outing was set for seventeen days after
the year became another, when he knew he could sustain himself no longer. Days trickled by until the final
he would experience came about.
His preparations for leaving were simple and brief. A tidy home left for his spirit when it escaped. A
comfortable bed made in his optimistically small fishing boat. A fishing rod to let his beloved escape guide
him gently into oblivion. The sun glimmered weakly on the river's surface, not as lovely as it once had
when the man and the water were young, but it fought to give that slight condolence to the lost lives of the
times past. The boat bobbed off into the river that day, carrying the forever resting body of the fisherman.
