By Hope K. Martin

This Story Won Third Prize in Our Contest

Learn More About Our Contest Here

I’d never seen anyone do that before. Kill something. Well, it was already dead but, kill it again, you know what I mean? You’d say I was enabling her, when in fact, I didn’t agree with it; I was just too captivated by her to tell her no, which is different.  

I had a feeling she felt nothing when she killed it. I watched her do it, and she watched me watch her do it, and it looked like she felt nothing because her eyes sort of glazed over. I didn’t understand this at the time, but Zoe didn’t feel much at all, and I don’t think Zoe felt much for me, either. 

We walked parallel to the sea foam, clad in our black swimsuits and a layer of sweat, until we reached what we called “The End,” which was just the rocky edge of the dock we weren’t able to climb past. I stopped and dug my painted toes into the seaside, and the waves swallowed my feet as Zoe turned around and strolled along the opposite side of the beach. When I caught up, that’s when we saw it. 

The dead thing was washed up on the sand beside some seaweed, shriveled by the Texas sun. I call it “thing” because it could’ve been anything. I didn’t know enough about what was swimming in those waters to say. Maybe it was a trout? I’d seen those before. I caught one once on a fishing trip with my dad, using a piece of deli ham as bait. But this thing’s head was mangled, its body deformed, mostly nothing left but protruding fins. I guess it was a fish after all, but I’ll never know what kind. 

Zoe pointed. I watched the flies buzz as she grabbed a stick and poked the lifeless corpse. I shaded my eyes with my hand and scanned her freshly tanned skin as she flipped the fish onto its side. Her back glistened with the slick of sunscreen. Her fingers, alluring extensions of her long, slender arms, grasped the weathered stick with a firm grip. I was spellbound. I’d always been spellbound with Zoe. Something about those dirty blonde tendrils that kissed her cheeks with each exhale of the wind, those little freckles I counted on her shoulders, and how, each time, her dimple greeted me as she pursed her lips; it all made me fall harder, and as we stood there, toes nearly touching, I dwelled on the years I’d spent pining, my mind lingering on the way her sand-covered palms felt just the same as they did when we were kids, and my gut twisting when I remembered she was always the one to pull away first. 

I heard a squish as I looked back down. In one swift motion, Zoe had jammed the stick straight into what was left of the fish’s pale and exposed stomach. I averted my gaze, felt sick as I winced. A grin crept up on her face as she flung the stick aside and walked away. I looked back at it, with its bulging gray eyes, and once gaseous, now deflated gut. But it was already dead, Zoe, I thought. It was already dead. To kill it again, well, what was left of it anyway, that, I couldn’t tell you why. I nearly told her to stop, but she wouldn’t have liked that. 

Zoe trekked back toward our towels. A sigh escaped my mouth as I mourned the fish. To think it was mangled before. I thought maybe I’d bring it back to its home as an apology, and I imagined myself pushing it out to sea, sending it off into the salty waters and watching it float away like a Viking funeral. Kneeling, I scooped up the fish, its scales scratching at my palms, and wrapped it in seaweed. The stench was indescribable. An eye dislodged, fell, and rolled away as I plodded along toward the water, and then there I was, holding this dead fish, watching Zoe as she ran fast down the shoreline, away from me. I took a few steps into the murky water. You couldn’t see a single thing in there. There could’ve been dozens of fish just like this one swimming circles around my shins. My hand traced along the dead fish’s back, salt and slime coating the pads of my fingers, and as I said goodbye, Zoe was nothing but a small blip, as though miles and miles away. 

I watched her. Tears swelled in my eyes, coming just up to the cusp but never falling, collecting there on my waterline, like I was too stubborn to release them, too hopeful I could draw them back in and not face the truth of crying over what was left of Zoe. Just before she dove head-first into the waves, she stood in the waist-high water and glanced over her shoulder in my direction. For a moment, I thought I saw her smile, but she was gone before I could really convince myself she did. Zoe didn’t like me anymore. Maybe she never did, and I don’t think I really liked her anymore either.