Jess Simms
(Honorable Mention, 2025 BWR Short Story Award)
Milt Wurtzman didn’t think anything of it when he saw Larry Gaines’ boat missing from the dock the day he disappeared. It was just past dawn on a Sunday morning in September, when the trout in Mahoney Creek were revving up to spawn and ready to lunge for anything that looked like food. And this particular morning was perfect for fishing—air crisp but not too cold, a low overhang of clouds threatening rain, and the Steelers didn’t play until four. Plenty of time to get in a few hours on the water and get anything he caught ready to throw on the grill at Donnie Puett’s house when he went over to watch the game.
Larry’s boat was still out when Milt came in with his catch, but it wasn’t until halftime, when Larry still hadn’t shown up at Donnie’s, that Milt started to worry. Larry wasn’t the most punctual fella, but he never missed a chance for free food and booze. Milt told the guys about seeing his boat out, and Donnie called his brother-in-law who worked highway patrol, asked if he could check the docks. Larry’s hatchback was still there. His boat still wasn’t. By then it was dark but, come morning, law enforcement found Larry’s boat, empty, a mile or so down the Allegheny from where Mahoney Creek fed into it. Nobody said it, but everyone figured that probably meant Larry had found his final resting place somewhere at the bottom of the river.
At least, that’s what they figured until, some six weeks after he’d gone missing, Larry Gaines walked up the front steps of Our Lady of Mercy for Sunday morning service, which wasn’t a normal sight even before he’d been presumed drowned in Mahoney Creek. He was dressed nicer than Milt had seen him since his third wedding, not just a tie but a suit jacket—that fit—and with a woman nobody had seen before. She was at least a decade too young to be hanging on old Larry’s arm and wearing a dress with a neckline that made the altar boys ogle and stammer. She had the wide, inviting eyes of a fifties starlet, skin so smooth it almost shimmered. The church ladies stared and whispered about her clothes, her flirty smile, those pink and blue streaks in her hair that marked her a city girl; folks around Mahoney Creek stuck to the hair colors God gave them, or at least close enough nobody could call them out on it.
When Milt asked Larry what had happened, he just said one minute he was fishing and, next thing he knew, he was in a hospital down in Pittsburgh, not sure of how he got there or where he lived or even his own name. The woman on his arm had been his nurse. Larry claimed they’d fallen in love and she seemed to agree. She was why he’d remembered his life—or most of it, at least, except for that day or so that was all folks really wanted to know about—and he’d come back to pick it up again.
Thing was, there wasn’t much of a life for Larry to come back to. Someone else had been hired to take his shifts at the plant where he’d worked with Milt and Donnie, and everything from his apartment had been boxed up and sent to his second ex-wife—the one he was still friendly with—so a new tenant could take the space. But he hadn’t much liked his job at the plant, anyway, and that apartment was a shithole, Larry told the guys when they met up at Duke’s Tavern the Friday after he came back. Him and his new lady—Naida was her name—had gotten a room at the motel by the highway while they looked for a place. To buy, not to rent, which to the guys meant Naida must have come from money; everybody knew Larry’s third ex-wife had taken everything except the boat in the divorce.
For about a month, Larry’s reappearance was the talk of the town. But he was just living his life, and pretty happy, from what anyone could tell, and there wasn’t much interesting in that. Anyway, Milt had his own things to think about. His oldest had her first kid in November—Milt’s first grandbaby—which brought the whole extended family in to celebrate the First Christmas. December was a whirlwind. Now and then Milt would meet his wife’s eyes and see her wearing the same bewildered smile. Milt knew he was old enough to be a grandpa—Donnie had been one for five years, now, and they’d graduated the same year—but he couldn’t make sense of where the years went. Felt like yesterday he’d been twenty, newlywed, working his first shift at the plant and sure he’d be there a year tops, maybe two. Now here was his grown daughter, asking when he planned to retire while she rocked her baby.
There’s not room for much else in a mind carrying those kinds of heavy thoughts, and—looking back—that’s why Milt figured he didn’t notice Larry changing. It was Donnie who pointed it out, nudging Milt’s arm one night at Duke’s and smirking that Larry’s new girl must be really taking care of him. Then Milt saw it, clear as day: their old friend didn’t look a day past thirty-five. His mostly gray hair had reverted to mostly red and the crows’ feet had disappeared from the corners of his eyes, even though he smiled more, flashing teeth whiter than anyone’s who’d smoked and drank his way through five decades had a right to be.
Milt had a different theory. It wasn’t Naida’s doing, he thought. It was Larry getting away from that damned plant. Instead of going back to the grind, Larry and Naida had bought the old hardware on Main Street and reopened it, moving in to the apartment upstairs. Milt couldn’t help some jealousy at that. He’d dreamed of opening a business back in his twenties. Nothing fancy, just a little shop where hunters and fishers could get gear. He’d daydreamed of folks asking him about lures and reels and how to use a turkey call—and actually listening when he answered, not the smiling and nodding of the too-young managers in the plant but the rapt attention of people who understood the value of experience. Except, back then, Milt had a family to provide for. Folks had told him it was a dumb risk to open a business in a dying town, that he should keep his steady job, and he’d listened. Now his kids were grown, and Larry’s success had Milt pondering questions he hadn’t asked himself in years.
And so, the first week of March, Milt quit his job and took himself down to the Loan & Trust to buy the boarded-up Blockbuster catty-corner from Larry’s hardware store. Over the next month Milt and his wife fixed it up, and realistically Milt was working more than ever but he’d never been happier to put in overtime. The store had its grand opening the weekend after Easter, and Milt visited Duke’s for the first time in weeks to celebrate.
Seeing Larry again almost killed Milt’s good mood. His skin had paled more than Pennsylvania winter could account for and it had this kind of fish-belly clammy sheen. His hair was still red but limp and patchy, and his eyes looked like they were bulging from their sockets. But when Milt took him aside to ask how he was doing, Larry said, “Fantastic!” with the kind of beaming smile that didn’t leave much room to question it.
Donnie suspected drugs. Milt wasn’t convinced. For one thing, Larry and Naida’s hardware store was thriving. It was busy every time Milt stopped in and always opened promptly at nine, sometimes earlier if there was a customer waiting; Milt didn’t figure junkies could maintain that kind of schedule. Besides, Naida’s beauty hadn’t faded. Her hair still gleamed like freshly tooled copper between the colorful streaks, her skin the same pearly smooth.
Whatever was going on didn’t keep Larry from fishing. Milt mostly knew he was out by his boat’s absence from its slip, but now and then, on the water, he’d spot Larry in the distance and they’d share a wave before Milt motored off to an unoccupied pool. One morning in mid-summer, Milt came upon him swimming laps across the murky width of the creek. Milt called out and Larry stopped, treading water while he waved like it was the most normal thing in the world. For a second, the way the light hit his hand, Milt could’ve sworn there was webbing between his fingers.
When Milt thought back, he was pretty sure that was the third to last time he saw Larry.
The second to last time Milt saw Larry was in late August, just a couple weeks shy of a year since he’d disappeared. Milt was in his shop’s back office, nose-deep in end-of-month invoices, when the kid he’d hired to work the register came in leading a red-eyed Naida. Larry needed his help, she said, leading him across the street and up to their apartment’s bathroom. Milt wasn’t sure what to expect, but certainly not seeing Larry in the tub, completely submerged—even his head under the surface—and dressed just in his tighty-whities. At first Milt thought he’d drowned. Then Larry turned toward them, his hand snaking from the water to grip the lip of the tub. Up this close, there was no mistaking the translucent, seaweed-colored webbing between his fingers. And that wasn’t all, Milt saw. Larry’s feet were more like flippers, stretched and flat and pliable. A row of reddish-gold scales now covered the skin from Larry’s chin down over his chest, to either side of them a set of pulsing gills that released a stream of bubbles into the water as Larry pulled himself to sitting.
Milt had been raised that it wasn’t polite to stare, but who could help it, in that situation? And he wasn’t sure what he could do except stare, anyway. A doctor was what Larry needed, or a biologist, maybe—some kind of scientist, and Milt had never pretended he was smart enough for that. But Naida just told him to grab Larry’s shoulders, that they’d carry him together to the hatchback, and Milt looped his elbows under Larry’s armpits, doing his best not to touch his slimy skin. It just wasn’t the way skin should feel, though Milt kept that thought to himself. No reason to make the guy self-conscious.
They loaded Larry in the back, Naida sliding behind the wheel. Milt figured they’d be going to the hospital, but instead she turned the other way, toward Mahoney Creek. Larry was docile in the flattened rear seat, making wet gasping sounds, his eyes rolling at passing traffic, until the road arched into a bridge. At the sight of the creek he started to buck and flop and Milt couldn’t think anything except fish out of water. He kept thrashing until Naida parked beside the dock and leaned back between the seats, smoothing the last scraggly tuft of red hair from Larry’s forehead to plant a kiss between his bulging eyes. That calmed him enough Milt and Naida could carry him to the end of the dock. Milt lowered Larry as close to the surface as his old knees would allow before letting go. Larry still did a bit of a belly flop but he surfaced quickly, poking his head above the water and gurgling what might have been a thank you.
The guys all thought Milt was yanking their chains when he told them about the tub and the drive and the docks. Then Donnie saw Larry swimming alongside his boat when he took the grandkids fishing over Labor Day weekend, and he wasn’t the only one. There were enough sightings the local news ran a story about the Fish Man. By spring Larry was a local legend, folks coming from as far as Columbus to catch a glimpse. It was Naida who came up with the design for the t-shirts and mugs and keychains and, soon enough, just about every store on Main Street had some kind of Fish Man trinkets by the register. Duke bought the run-down hotel next to his tavern, turning it into a charming bed-and-breakfast that was full more weekend nights than not. The other empty storefronts along Main Street sprouted restaurants and boutiques and antique shops and it was like someone had turned the clock back to before the steel mill closed, when the town still bustled like a place with a future.
Most people assumed Naida would head back to Pittsburgh with Larry gone. Even Milt was surprised she stayed, at first. But then he started to notice Larry’s boat missing, now and then, when he went to the creek in the mornings—bright and early, before the crowds looking for Larry could scare away all the fish. One day, finding his usual pools already swarmed with tourists, Milt continued down Mahoney Creek toward where it fed the Allegheny, looking for a new place to drop his line. Before he found one, he saw Larry’s boat anchored, empty, in the middle of the water. He killed the motor and stood up, ready to dive in—but Naida wasn’t drowning, and she didn’t need saving. She and Larry were floating on their backs side-by-side. Where her legs should have been was a scaled tail ending in a scalloped fin, its speckled, silvery length more like a salmon than any fish that lived around here. Larry’s tail was yellow-green like a bluegill, but that made sense; he was a local through and through. And to each his own, Milt thought, sitting down and heading back toward the docks. Larry had damn well earned some peace, he figured, and Milt didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone—human or otherwise—looking as happy as Larry did, floating in the gentle current with his girl at his side.
Jess Simms is a freelance writer from Pittsburgh, PA, where they’re a co-founder of Scribble House and the managing editor of After Happy Hour Review. They are the author of the flash fiction chapbook Cryptid Bits (Last-Picked Books, 2024) and have published stories and essays in Mythaxis, Orca, SLAB, Atlas Obscura, Rinky Dink Press, and elsewhere. Find them online at https://jesssimms.com.