Uncooked: Freewrite

Below is a five-minute free-write exercise we did in my Spring 2020 class. Professor Gillian provided two news headline images and told us to use one (or both) as flash fiction inspiration. I titled mine Uncooked because when I read mine aloud to the class, a classmate said, "That was cooked!" which I found ironic, given the raw fish.

Dad bought us fishing poles and a little black boat a few months back. Guess he thought thrusting outdoorsmanship upon me and Mom would ease tensions in the house. Peace by nature, so to speak. Family therapy in a 12x4-foot secondhand boat, sitting under the July Louisiana sun, hoping mosquitos smacks on my face or prolonged exposure to bug spray's ineffective and nauseating scent might jolt me out of the nightmare, waiting hours for lines to tug— hours of forced conversation during which I thought Mom might any second skewer Dad with her pole and chuck him overboard to see if any fish would consider him bait. She restrained herself, I restrained the urge to swim home, and Dad restrained his awareness that we wanted to go someplace climate-controlled, or at least back to the tents. Determined as he was, Mom and I strived to meet him halfway in the impromptu fishing-boat-sauna-peace-summit.

Then the rain erupted. Refreshing at first, but the lake flooded so quickly that, by the time we rowed back to our campsite, it was underwater. So was our house, by the time we rowed there. Our boat would have been underwater, if not for the wide, forest green tarp Dad brought in case of rain. Unfortunately, he neglected to imagine how the tarp would stay over us, so we sleep, fish, eat, row, and do whatever little else there is to do on this forsaken boat in shifts. One of us stationed on the bow, one on the stern, both holding the tarp, sometimes with our hands or with our fishing poles, to rest our arms which are made of ache. The rain falls too fast for us to bail. A tarp was a wise purchase, and the once absurd boat turned out to be a fortuitous investment as well, given it’s been a month and we still haven’t found dry land. Plenty of fish, though, and plenty of rain, like heaven's shower handle is stuck and turned to ‘On.’

Hours we used to spend waiting for fish to bite are minutes now, even though our bait is long depleted. Fish galore swimming in the ever-expanding lake— maybe it’s become one big ocean— and in one of our two coolers. The second is for drinking water. Nothing to use as a stove so, for a while, I thought we might starve, but hunger’s a funny thing. We eat raw fish like bears. On second thought, we’re still more civilized. They eat fish live. We let them suffocate before biting and choking down hellish coagulations of scales, uncooked protein, blood, and suppressed vomit.

If the rain ever stops, I’ll never eat fish again and will find a desk job with a roof.