A Kind of Fishing Rod (or: My Pitch for a Twilight Zone Episode)

Picture of a man, one Jessie Michael Fitzpatrick, who possesses himself an absent conscience, believing that all game was fair game, even if that meant lying, cheating, or stealing from the common man. He’s familiar between what’s right from wrong, but doesn’t recognize it as a necessary guideline, more an incomprehensible figmentation of the human psyche. This doomed mentality will soon lead him straight into a nightmare of supernatural origin, because he is about to enter—the Twilight Zone.

***

The pier was not initially the intended destination for Jessie, originally on a path for the city park to pick out a lone stranger for some petty cash, but a blistering sunny day had influenced him otherwise. After all, a con needed a day off every now and then. He would go alone, as he had gone through his whole life, not so much as a close family member, partner, or even best friend to attach himself to. He never needed companionship, with his days and nights spent pick-pocketing, gambling, and roaming red-light districts, any relationship of any kind was doomed to fail. Yet, he was content, somewhat enjoying the ever action-packed nature of his existence, romanticized by his dependence upon snowflakes and brown.

This day, he promised himself, would be a break from his usual activity. He hadn’t the energy, nor motivation, to hustle anyone on a hot and humid day like this one. Plus, he could use the easygoing aura of the beach. Jessie walked along the sidewalk that lead to an oddly calm pier, which often times was bustling heavily during this time. Along the path, he ran into an array of street venders, selling all sorts of products, this one sold handmade pottery, and that one sold stuffed animals of all sizes. Jessie aimed his eyes low to try and lose the attention of the venders, not in any mood to converse with any of those sweaty, sunburnt, straw hat wearing dorks. He had not succeeded by any extent.

“Hot dogs! Hot dogs!”

“Boogie boards! All different styles!”

“We got postcards, postcards over here!”

They we all idiots to him. Not granting a single vender the prize of his attention, he walked on. That was until an old man stopped Jessie with a friendly hand on his shoulder asking,

“In need of a fishing pole, sir?”

“Hands off me gramps,”

“Apologies son,” he gently removed his hand from over his shoulder, “Just being friendly, ‘was wondering if you’d like to browse my inventory here?” The old man motioned to his set up arrangement of many different types of fishing poles, from primitive wood carved models to more modern steel rods.

“Not interested,” Jessie assured, passing over manners for a blunt, straight to-the-point reply.

“Come on now, you didn’t even take a look. I have multiple styles here, spinning rods, bait-casting reels, ah and this here-”

Jessie was now annoyed and losing patience as he snapped back,

“What? No, no pops, I don’t give a damn about your fishing line sale. Hell, I don’t even fish myself, now let me get on with my day, if you’d please,”

“Oh but son, I haven’t had the chance to present you the biggest prize of mine, let me show you just one more,” The man turned and went to pull a fishing pole from his cart, clicking his tongue as he searched for a specific model.

“Gramps I swear to God, you try one more time to get me to buy a fishing pole, I’ll tear your whole operation here to splinters damnit,”

“Trust me kid, this is a special one, special in ability,”

Jessie’s tone shifted into a slower dialect, intending to make a mockery out

of the old man as he replied, “Special in ability?”

“Yessir, this here can catch more then some fishies. Mhmm, I’m telling you that this fishing pole can reel in treasures,”

“Treasure!?” He laughed mockingly,“You said that line can catch yer some treasure?”

“Indeed son, you wanna test it yourself? This one here charges one-fifty,”

“Pops, this outta be some kind of gag, a magic fishing pole? Is that what you’re getting at? You’ve gotta be off your rocker, nobody’s gonna buy your stupid lines alight? Have a good time digging your grave gramps.”

“Sorry to hear kid, I understand you’re in a hurry. Well, feel free to return if you’ve a change of heart son, God bless you.”

Jessie mumbled back to him just in earshot, “Unlikely,”

He walked around the back of the man’s vending stand, turning to give it one last look, specifically the outrageous, yet intriguing, claim of that one fishing rod. He looked back at the old man, who had his back towards Jessie after just flagging down another passing man to advertise his vending stand.

“It couldn’t hurt to experiment,” he whispered to himself, and with that he nonchalantly swiped the proclaimed “special” fishing pole.

Jessie walked up the pier to find a spot to test what could be so special about some old fishing rod, it seemed to him not unlike any other that he’d seen before. Settling on an area of the pier, he got ready to cast out his line as he thought to himself,

“This is incredibly stupid, what could this twig do that’s so special?”

Oh, he was stupid, didn’t even have with him some bait or anything to store what he could catch. Nevertheless, curiosity controlled him as he amateurly casted out his line. A passing fisher found Jessie so ridiculous that she couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle, covering her mouth, hoping he couldn’t hear. He could.

He had expected results instantly, though wasn’t sure what those results should be.

“Pfft, ‘special in ability,’” he murmured, “Ah, yes, this sure is a special fishing line,” He watched the line’s bob float on the calm ocean, it couldn’t get more exciting than this.

He was about to throw the entire rod into the ocean out of his own frustration when there was a slight tug coming from his line, followed by another more violent pull. Caught completely off guard, Jessie almost wasn’t sure what to do next, his hook had definitely caught onto something. He then sprung into action and started reeling in his line as fast as he knew how.

From the water, his hook surfaced and had indeed caught something small, brown, and square in shape

“A wallet?”

Indeed it was, the leather wallet was unfolded and pierced by the fishing hook on one of its outer edges, the whole thing dripping with saltwater. Jessie reeled the wallet all the way in and plucked it from the hook, while his smile wiped away at the realization that all the cash inside was drenched. He whispered a short,

“Damnit,”

But then noticed in the wallet’s sleeves were a credit card, ID, and enough gift cards to infer that its previous owner had a recent birthday party. This forced a smile to return to his face as he tucked the wallet into his back pocket. He wanted to believe that the fishing rod had something to do with this, it seemed highly improbable for any normal hook to catch a stray wallet from the ocean. With this in the back of his mind, he gave it another go.

“Come on now, what else you got for me,”

This trial was not as quick resulted as the first, and Jessie was quick to notice. In his head he was going back and forth on what he thought, if the wallet was some sheer coincidence, or credited to the occult.

“Umm, excuse me?” A gentle voice asked from behind.

Caught off guard, Jessie swung his head back to find a tall, college looking man whom was a subtle shade of red with shyness. He looked strangely familiar, he was the same person on the ID from the wallet. The man went on,

“I thought I had it just a minute ago, I must have dropped it or something,”

“No, haven’t seen it,” Jessie bluntly assured back to him.

“Oh, okay, umm, if you see it anywhere I’ll be walking up and down here if you could flag me down?”

Jessie thought of a quick way to get the man to beat it, bothered by his presence entirely. Jessie also noticed the man was blinking a lot, this annoyed him.

“Alright boy scout, listen, I’m sorry you can’t find your wallet, but as you can see I’m busy here,”

“Right, umm, yeah. I’m sorry, I’ll uh, I’ll go now,”

Jessie nodded his head and looked back to the ocean.

Just after a few moments, he felt a tug from his line, and quickly started reeling. Appearing from the water surface was a beat up stopwatch, it's gold chain wrapped around the fishing hook.

“What is this, 1963?” It was definitely an antique, gold in color and bearing a large crack in the surface “Who carries around this sort of stopwatch anymore?”

Slightly dissatisfied, Jessie threw the stopwatch back into the ocean, followed by another cast of his fishing rod. This time, the speed that the hook found a target was alike to when he caught the wallet. Anxiously reeling in, he quickly caught sight of another item he caught.

“Is that?”

Turned up was a small black case that latched onto his hook. Jessie grabbed it and opened it—an engagement ring.

“Jackpot,”

He went on to try and piece together the pattern: a wallet, a stopwatch, and an engagement ring. All relatively small items anyone could carry in their pocket. Pocket items, that must be it, he thought. Pocket items.

“Special in ability…”

It was now his fourth attempt with his special fishing pole, and Jessie was fully convinced that this fishing rod was indeed special, magic even, as silly as it sounded to him, able to snatch objects from the pockets of people nearby.

“That old geezer was onto something,” He cried out, overcome with giddy excitement of this new and simple way to pickpocket any unsuspecting passerby.

His expectations were building, and fantasies running wild; in less than an hour he could possess piles of wallets, jewelry, and other possible valuables. In the midst of these visions, he felt a buzz followed by a notification bell ring coming from his pocket, he had received a text message. Being the impatient man he was, he wanted to check what his messages said in that moment, but still wanted to keep his line in the water.

Not wanting to lose any potential catch, he held the fishing pole awkwardly between his legs, with his left hand holding onto the reel, while his right hand went to fish out his phone from his pocket. It was then that Jessie felt his line latch onto a new prize, which he was quick to try and reel in, but found some resistance and trouble in using one hand to operate a fishing rod. He assumed it was just because he was using one hand, not a problem, once he could get his phone out, he could use both hands then.

But, as Jessie tried to pull out his phone, he found immediate difficulty, struggling to shake the phone free. His expectations of the ease of both pulling the fishing line out of the water and grabbing his cellphone were completely disproven. He didn’t want to risk losing what he might have caught, and he was too anxious to ignore his notification bells. It was becoming embarrassing now, it felt as if his hand was stuck in his pants pocket, able to grasp his phone but not take it out. He tried for a big tug, with each hand’s respective struggle, then felt a piercing pain in the palm of his hand, and the continuing inability to pry out his phone from his pocket.

“What the devil,” He did a half spin, now getting angry, “Give me my damn phone, what the hell’s wrong with you Jessie?”

He felt more and more frustrated with every tug from his fishing line and the difficulty of getting his phone out. His phone wouldn’t budge, and the pain in his hand began to intensify

“Give it!!” He pulled, now focusing on his line.

“Give it!!” Another strained pull, and a now excruciating pain in his right hand.

“GIVE-”

S N A P !

Suddenly, his fishing lost all resistance. Unprepared, Jessie flew backwards, dropping his fishing pole and tripping over himself. His vision had turned blurry as his head slammed against the floor—attributed to an assumed concussion. During all this, a woman not far from him began screaming, then ran towards the shore yelling,

“Get help! Get help!”

He laid on the floor in a muddled state, feeling numbness throughout himself and bubbling nausea rising from his bowels. A sharp pain soon came over him, originating from his right hand. He was now gasping desperately for air as he rolled onto his right shoulder. That was when he sourced his agony, laying eyes on a mangled, bloodied stump where his right hand once was. Wincing, Jessie limply lifted his right arm into his chest, clutching it with his left hand.

He rolled left onto his back, then turned his head weakly to his left, where his fishing pole lay. Its hook had wrapped around a catch—a severed hand loosely holding onto a phone.

***

Mr. Jessie M. Fitzpatrick, a man once believing he was free from consequence, finds himself the unsuspecting victim of an… offhand reminder: that anyone willing to or partaking in a sidestep of moral justice and intrusion of the basic given rights of man, could find themself with a one-way ticket to—the Twilight Zone.

#beachthingz