Kreeg Kaster stands by the river near his home, and punches a fish as it jumps through the air. He prefers a catch that fights back. It will be a most delicious, delectable dinner. Indubitably. With laser focus, he locks in and kicks the fish into his fishing bucket. It is his seventh catch of the day, and it is 7am.

  Jef stares from the distance, hiding deep within the reeds on the riverbank. He is salivating, and drool drips viscously from his maw. He hasn’t eaten in 4 hours. As the old man jumps back to the stone in the river's center, he leaves the bucket exposed. Jef crouches down, crawling on his tummy. As he removes the fish from the bucket, a shadow falls over Jef. The old man looms over him, epically!!!!!

  Kreeg looks down at the boy, epically chill. He wags his finger at the boy. “Tsk tsk tsk. If you wanted fish, all you had to do was ask. I am just Kreeg, a chill guy.” Jef’s eyes go wide as he stumbles, spooked by Kreeg’s fish punching and intimidating aura. He rolls away from the man, and right into the raging river waters.

  Kreeg watches on as Jef is pulled away by the water. A chill guy like Kreeg watches aimlessly. He’s too chill to worry himself with the potential death of a child. Unfortunate soul. Soon to be devoured by the raging waters. Turning away, back to punching the fishes, he wondered if there would be truly anyone strong enough to challenge Kreeg Kaster. It shouldn’t have surprised the old timer, not with how fishes are. Defenseless scaly buggers with eyes too big for the sides of their heads and lips that looked as if they had kissed their mothers far too much, despite how they were so ugly that even a mother could not love them. Fish. Ugly little creatures. Perhaps that’s why Kreeg wished for one to present a challenge, to prove him wrong.

  As Kreeg continued, the rising sun soon turned into the setting sun. A pile of lifeless, bloodied, even uglier fish had formed on the sandbank, the waters still raging on but now turning red as it passed the chunky sand. A blood sandcastle could’ve been formed, but that was not Kreeg’s goal. Goal needed a challenge. He desired it, more than any woman, any man, any thing, he desired to be faced with anyone strong enough to face him.

  “These fish know nothing of challenge! Why won’t they fight back?!” Kreeg howled. He knew why, but refused to believe. If evolution was a thing, let them evolve to face him! They need to! They need to face him if he was ever to stop hunting their kind in these bloodied waters! Why couldn’t the fish deliver on this one thing?! Kreeg just kept going, grabbing fish and punching them to death, their buggy eyes bugging out over and over and over. But not one could ever satisfy his bloodlust for a challenge. Was that all that Kreeg was? An old man, divorced due to obsession, abandoned due to it, lost due to it all? Was that all Kreeg would ever be? A fishpuncher?

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  “You know not of what you do.”

  Kreeg stopped. What was that? That voice… familiar but distant…

  “You seek only disaster. You seek something that can not and will not be.”

  “Who dares speak to me?! I am Kreeg Kaster! I’ve been punching these damn trout for over thirty years now! I know what I seek! I seek challenge!” Kreeg called out, but there was no one there.

  “You crave flesh upon flesh, but that can never be. You know it to be true. You have not feasted, Craig. Feast. You know not what you seek, so rest.”

  “I am not this Craig! I am KREEG!” Kreeg roared. Dinner. He had forgotten all about it, after so much punching he had forgotten why he had come to the river in the first place.

  “Have you forgotten what you’ve done, who you are? Has this truly rotted identity truly made itself you?”

  “I haven’t forgotten anything!” Kreeg… Craig… no Kreeg, yes, he remembered! He knew who he was! And no disembodied voice would tell him otherwise.

  “Craig…” The voice said… but it was close… and in number. It was no longer a voice, but voices, all speaking alike but from all around… no, not all around, from behind him. Kreeg whirled around.

  There, standing, was a man, no, not a man, but a man-shaped thing, a man made completely of the brutalized bodies of the fish pile. Those eyes blinked from every part of the thing, mouth gasping for air, gills pulsating, fins dancing. There was no real face, just dozens and dozens of fish faces spread all across. It stood there, arm outstretched, hand of twisted fish guts and bones and scales opening and closing, grasping the empty air.

  “Craig… look at what you’ve done. You should feast, Craig. Feast upon us. Feast Craig, feast, feast feast feastfeastfeastfeastfeastfeastfeastf-” The creature’s voices gurgled now, blood pouring from each bloated pair of lips, oozing down the scaly, breathing skin. Craig began to walk backwards, eyes wide in horror. The creature began to shamble over, each leg seemingly puppeteered by a different entity, as if each part was trying to move by itself but was stuck to another sentient entity. With every awkward step the creature took forward, Kreeg stepped back. But he knew he couldn’t do this for long, as Craig was aware of the waters behind him. But those waters… they now were full, full of rotting fish corpses. Each opening in the water revealed red, iron blood red, staining any actual water that Kreeg could see. Craig was cornered.

  “Look at what you’ve done to us, Craig, look at us. Why would you do this? Why?” The creature asked, reaching out, and now Craig had nowhere to go.

  “I’m.. I’m sorry… please… please…” Craig pleaded, though he didn’t know what he was sorry for.

  The creature finally had reached him. By now the creature was covered head to toe in the blood it poured, and as it grasped Craig’s shoulder…

  ~

  Craig McKaster awoke, the ship around him bobbing with the sound of the storm around it. Waves crashed upon the side of the boat, the sickening smell of fish all around him. Craig groaned and sat up, looking over at the photo of his wife and children.