That Easter Catch
Published on HivePostify by @gabmr · Thu Apr 02 2026
>#162 You only live once. What if your idea of just one existence changed forever? Sometimes people deal with experiences which might make them rethink their own beliefs. What would you do if you woke up one day being immortal? This topic led me to take prompt #162 for my new story.
[Pixabay](https://pixabay.com/illustrations/rain-woman-sea-ocean-waves-6639741/)
That Easter Catch
The grey sea was growing rough; one wave seemed to leap over another, unable to escape its inevitable fate of shattering into a thousand drops upon crashing against a bigger wave. That was the morning view from the Santa Acuarea pier during Easter.
Linda and her father, Bautista, were untangling the fishing nets in search of food. He said nothing would happen; she believed the boat wouldn’t hold up.
“My little love, there are no more fish,” said the father, shrugging his shoulders.
“Tomorrow there will be more sea to fish in,” Linda replied listlessly, her hands barely moving.
“We’ll suffer if we keep going without food,” the father answered with a tense, blank expression.
“How eager you are to see your only daughter suffer,” she shouted.
“No one rules the sea,” muttered Bautista with a furrowed brow and a face weathered by salt residue.
Linda just sighed deeply and said no more; her scarred hands continued to spread out the rough nets until they were completely loose.
“Do you really want to be swallowed by the sea?” Linda asked after an endless silence on the windy pier.
But her father seemed not to pay her any attention. Instead, he hoisted the two nets that would serve his work onto his battered boat and began walking toward the shore as if his feet were on fire.
“Has hunger made you deaf?” Linda shouted several times, her eyes brimming with tears, at her desperate father.
At her insistence, her dad turned to look disapprovingly at Linda and replied:
“You only live once!”
Then Bautista went on his way, cast his nets into the boat, and pushed it as if he had the strength of four men. He was the typical father who, in emergencies, became a superhuman.
The boat plunged into the water and emerged. The grayish sea of Santa Acuarea pushed Bautista back toward land again and again; after a while, he would emerge from foamy whirlpools, nearly drowned. Waves came and went, and several squawking seagulls swirled above his weary body.
Despite everything, the fisherman did not give up because his willpower was as solid as the oak crucifix hanging from his neck.
With his last breath, Bautista strained his arms so that the boat would leave the shore once and for all, even as a grotesque three-meter-high wave seemed as though it would leave no trace of anything. The nearly dying fisherman dove into his own boat, hoping to survive such a blow.
“You only live once,” he thought to himself before feeling the sea’s crushing impact.
There was a hazy twilight until faint rays of sunlight patted Bautista’s face; he opened his eyes, still largely unaware of his surroundings. The storm had passed, but a few waves were still rocking the boat. The sea had decided to spare the fisherman. His boat was still there, and so was he. Though they were not the only ones.
His consciousness gradually returned to the point where he realized he had ended up where he had arrived on his last fishing trip.
“It was You, Lord, it was You,” Bautista cried out as he sat up, gazing at the sky.
Out of nowhere, the boat was struck twice. First on the starboard side, then on the port side. Bautista’s spirit awoke in the restless calm of the sea surrounding him.
“Why did you go so far, Daddy?” asked a gorgeous young redhead, suddenly leaning her arms across the boat.
“How far our food has come,” laughed a dark-haired girl leaning on the other side of the boat.
“You’re not Linda,” Bautista denied in horror.
“I'm definitely your daughter. Pearly skin and voluptuous, don’t you see? From my stars, all the way down to my tail,” insisted the dark-haired young woman, showing herself off.
“I don’t know who the hell you are,” the fisherman raged.
“A little while ago, you came with me,” the redhead blushed, licking her lips.
“You wanted to fish us with your nets of love,” the other one burst out laughing.
Far from softening Bautista’s spirit, the chatter of these two young women only strengthened his resolve. In a rush of violent thoughts, Bautista remembered everything.
He hadn’t left Santa Acuarea. He had escaped from an island. He hadn’t abandoned his daughter Linda at the pier. Indeed, he had fled from mermaids who were waiting to drag him out to sea to devour his corpse.
Knowing this, the alarmed fisherman lunged to grab the anchor lying dormant at the bow of his boat.
Bautista hadn’t even finished placing his hand on the anchor when, behind him, he felt the roar of those monsters baring fangs from their long, rotten mouths, ready to snap their jaws shut.
As if it were a swordfish, Bautista lifted the wooden anchor and furiously plunged several of its blades into the terrifying mouth of the red-haired mermaid. Screams of pain erupted immediately, as the monster writhed on its tail.
However, any cry of victory was premature as the other mermaid sank her yellow, serrated teeth into Bautista’s left arm in revenge. No matter how hard the fisherman struck the monster on the head, it only took greater pleasure in its victim’s suffering.
The seafarer already considered himself dead as he watched so much blood pour out, but the translucent appearance of the red-haired mermaid and her increasingly muffled screams also left a gaping hole in the other’s battered chest.
Bautista, half-conscious, couldn’t believe his luck. The death of one meant the death of the other. The last thing he saw before fainting was how the elongated nails of the siren who had bitten him—and then the rest of her body—began to crumble like pieces of paper just before they reached his neck.
A little later, the man who had convinced himself he was dead opened his eyes wide. There he was, lying in his usual boat under a merciless sun in the eternal blue.
“I can’t believe paradise is also a sea,” Bautista thought to himself.
Feeling the sea breeze hitting his face, the fisherman felt a deep sense of peace. He was alive, but this new life was somewhat different. His body had changed. He felt somewhat more robust and impetuous. In fact, several areas on his torso, and especially on his left arm, had become somewhat scaly.
Bautista felt panic at first, but he soon saw that the crucifix was still hanging around his neck, and he understood that God had not abandoned him. He had simply chosen him to be one with the sea forever.
From time to time, the new Bautista would ease his homesickness by visiting the Santa Acuarea pier at night and leaving a bountiful catch scattered along the shore.
Neither his daughter Linda nor his friends ever saw him again. Tears of sadness made them miss him all the more, but their joy also bubbled up when they saw all the good food they were going to cook.
Bautista could no longer set foot on land, but his will remained anchored to watching as the town flourish like a reef right next to his beloved sea. He would no longer live just once, but he would live forever doing what he loved so much.
Pesca de Pascua
El mar arreciaba, una ola parecía brincar sobre otra sin poder evadir, sin embargo, su fatal destino de romperse en mil pedazos al impactar contra sus morochas. Esa era la vista matutina desde el muelle de Santa Acuárea durante un tiempo de Pascua.
Linda, y su padre, Bautista, desenmarañaban las redes de pesca para buscar comida. Él decía nada pasaría; ella creía que el bote no aguantaría.
Tags: #fiction#writing#inkwellprompt#theinkwell#flashfiction#sea#yolo