Flash Fiction: "Mitch" by Brendan Isaac Jones

When I was nine I netted a small fish in the Loyalsock River. I put him in a bucket and called him Mitch. My father let me keep my fish, but by the time we got back to Philadelphia, my new pet was dead.

Not ready to let go, I put Mitch into a Ziploc bag and stuck him in the icebox. Each afternoon when I arrived home from school, I made a beeline for the kitchen and took Mitch out for a swim. I filled the bathtub and sailed him around him in great swoops. SHWEEEOO! At a certain point, Mitch thawed and softened, and I was forced to return him to the freezer for a couple hours before he was ready to go again.

This went on for four years.

In one family picture, my sister rubs her cheek against Moses, our cat, my father holds the collar of Pete, our chocolate Lab, and I hold Mitch out proudly in an open palm. There he sits, staring out of his Ziploc bag, his silver scales reflecting the white of the flash.

At 13, the two small indentations on either side of Mitch’s body where I put my fingers began to meet one another. Most of his scales had flaked away and he had become sand-colored. That winter, following a terrific argument with my father, I buried my fish in the frozen ground. I found a stone and scrawled in chalk: Here lies Mitch, dear fish, August 19, 1985 - January 4, 1989.

Dead or alive, I loved that fish. His life was measured not by heartbeats, but by how long he was able to swim in my hand.

Born in Colorado, Brendan was raised in Philadelphia. In 1997 he moved to Alaska, where he worked on fishing boats. He received a B.A. and M.A. from Oxford University. He has been a resident at the MacDowell Colony, has published work in Narrative Magazine, and recorded pieces for NPR. He lives in Sitka, Alaska where he is finishing his first novel, The Bell Ringer. 

Read more flash fiction from Cheek Teeth here.