Fly Fishing
written by: Jo Kerr
On the day they arrived, I knew something had changed as soon as my eyes peeled open.
As I woke up there was no sound of Mum clattering in the kitchen, no call to hurry up and get ready for the school bus, no kettle whistling, or coffee scents wafting through the house, and no humming from Dad as he read the paper.
I crept out of bed, stealthily squeezed the door open enough to slip through, and edged down the hall on my tiptoes. Something about the silence demanded I didn’t break it, like a held breath.
In the lounge Mum and Dad were motionless, staring out of the window. Mum held a cereal packet in her hand, tipped to the floor, chocolate-coated contents all over her slippers.
Dad’s paper was scrunched in his hand, not even opened beyond the first page.
I followed their frozen stares. There was a tall metallic structure wedged in the trees in the Town Hall garden, one oak bent away from it and nearly toppling. Sunlight fractured from the strange object’s surface, rainbow hues running up and down its length.
I wondered if it had landed last night while we slept, but as I looked at its base, I realised it had erupted upwards, not crashed downwards. Soil fell away from it in waves, like ripples in the pond in the park when a fish sucked down a fly.
We stared, not realising that we were no longer the fish in our little pond, but overnight had become the flies.
- Fly Fishing - January 1, 2025
