Two Dead Fish

In my dream, someone gave me two dead fish: a perch and a small ling.  The fish were in a plastic sandwich bag and not yet eviscerated.

You might think I would recognize who gave me the fish, but I did not.  My dreams are always strange and disjointed and comprised of only a few conspicuous details in an otherwise nebulous environment.

For no outward reason, I carried these dead fish with me throughout the day, the pair of them squishing around within a plastic bag inside my coat pocket.

I kept checking on the fish throughout the day.  A day devoid of feature beyond the fish.

Having the dead fish in my coat pocket did not strike me as particularly unusual or unpleasant.  By the end of the day, however, the pretty silk and butter skins on the fish had turned dark and papery.  The eyes of the fish had glazed-over and turned a pale gray.

I woke from this dream feeling calm and rested.

Apparently, carrying around two dead fish suits me just fine.

—Mitchell Hegman