Jake had recently taken up a new hobby: fishing! He spent most of his weekends out on the water, and sometimes, he even sat there for hours at a time.
One day, he decided to try out a new lake that was a few hours away, and he was really excited about it.
What he didn’t know was that his excitement would soon change to horror…
There, he would make a catch that he was going to remember for the rest of his life…
His first catch!
Jake’s face lit up when he felt the rod bend. Finally! He had been waiting for hours without making a single catch, and he almost thought there was something wrong with this lake.
He was almost ready to give up and go home, but now, his patience was rewarded. Or, well… “rewarded” might not be the right choice of word here, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
He had no idea
What Jake really should have done was throw his rod into the water, get on land immediately, and go home!
But of course, he didn’t do this, as he had no idea that this particular catch was going to end in disaster.
He was too excited to see what kind of fish he had caught, but soon enough, his excitement would turn into panic.
He was curious
He reeled the line in as quickly as he could, not wanting to wait a second longer. When the fish finally came to the surface, Jake grabbed it and put it in the bucket next to him.
He always returned all the animals he caught into the water, but not before taking a good look at them.
And this fish… It was unlike anything he had ever seen before!
A strange fish
Jake carefully picked it up and held it in his hands, turning it around to get a closer look at it from all angles.
“What are you?” he whispered, and he quickly put it back in the bucket. He hadn’t been fishing for a very long time yet, but he recognized most of the fish that he caught.
However, this one was something entirely new.
Searching online
He wiped his hands and grabbed his phone, wanting to look it up online. He soon found out that this was probably some kind of flying fish, but he could not find anything about this exact breed.
He scoured the internet and looked through every website he could find, but he found nothing that answered his question.
A forum
Finally, Jake decided to take an easier approach. He took a picture of the fish and posted it on an online fishing forum, asking if anyone knew what type of fish this was.
He put his phone back in his pocket, put a worm onto his fishing hook, and threw the line back into the water.
Now that he knew the lake wasn’t empty after all, he was willing to give it another shot while he waited.
Focused on fishing
He was going to keep the strange flying fish in the bucket for a while. It was the most interesting catch he had ever made, and he wanted to enjoy it at least a little longer.
However, he was so focused on looking for movement in the lake and trying to catch another fish that he forgot about the flying fish for a while.
Checking his phone
About an hour later, he finally remembered to check his phone again. As he unlocked it, he saw that he had a few notifications about comments on the picture that he had posted earlier, and he smiled.
“Yes!” He quickly opened them and started reading, hoping that someone had answered his question.
Reading the comments
He was a little bit disappointed when he saw that most of the comments were from people who were just as curious about the fish as he was.
“Wow, I’ve never seen this before!” someone commented, and another user asked, “Please give us an update when you find out what this is.” But there was one comment that caught Jake’s attention.
Sending Mark a message
One user named Mark had commented, “Get away from there, now! What do you think you are doing?!” Jake frowned as he read this, and he decided to send him a private message.
He had no idea what it meant, but it was certainly a strange thing to comment. He texted, “Hey, I saw your comment on my post.
What do you mean by that?”
Ten more minutes
He waited for a few minutes, occasionally glancing at the fish in his bucket, but the person did not reply.
Jake sighed and told himself, “It’s probably just a prank. And anyway, if I don’t catch anything else in the next 10 minutes, I’m going to search for a different spot.” The day wasn’t over yet, and he still had plenty of time to start over somewhere else.
Completely silent
Ten minutes went by without any movement at all. This was when Jake realized that it was completely quiet around him.
The usual chirping of birds that he could hear around him whenever he went fishing was missing now. He hadn’t noticed before because he was so focused on that strange fish, but now he couldn’t ignore it anymore.
