I am very late posting this response to last Wednesday’s 100-word challenge, but when I saw the photo this is the story that came to mind. You can check out the other responses at Crimson’s Creative Challenge.
Goodbye, Charlie
A great day for boating, Jayson thought. And good riddance to that nuisance.
Venice gazed out to sea. “Hope he doesn’t get lost.”
“He’ll be in heaven.”
“I hated to let him go. Charlie’s so cute — in his own way.”
Jayson rolled his eyes. Vicious little monster.
“Such a long way. And what if he meets a shark?”
“Charlie’s a fighter.”
Venice waved one last time, wiped a tear and climbed into the truck.
Someday Jayson might tell her that piranhas, freshwater fish, can’t survive in salt water. Today he’d let her picture Charlie merrily swimming back to the Amazon.
NOTE:
By and large, I strongly oppose dumping unwanted pets. This awful practice has caused so many environmental issues and introduced invasive species, to the detriment of native creatures. And fish are easily enough euthanized in a merciful way. But when it comes to piranhas, please leave them in the Amazon! 😉
I couldn’t imagine what was happening until right up near the end. Great job 🙂
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That was deliberate. 😉 Thanks for your comment.
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Like how you saved the reveal to the very end. Even when I began to guess that Charlie was a fish, I sure didn’t think it a piranha. And who keeps a piranha as a pet?
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Thanks. Sad to say, some people do — and someone once dumped one, too. A fisherman pulled a live pirahna out of Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes, some years back and it sure didn’t swim there.
The trouble with pets is that we don’t know the future. In a year or two the owner may mature, or outgrow the crazy pet that was a novelty for a time. Or they move and the new place/job isn’t suitable for their pet. Many pet stores will take fish back if people don’t want to keep them any more.
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I’ve read somewhere that the medieval tales of local dragons (if which there were several near to where I live) were in fact crocodiles brought home from Egypt and thence escaped.
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That may have happened, but the tale would have had to swell a lot in the telling.
I know this is a much-debated idea, but I do believe there were at least some dinosaurs seen by men. I think geological evidence will bear that out. And I’m inclined to think that some “monsters” and dragons were the remnants, in people’s minds, of actual dinosaurs their ancestors once saw and described. The “fire-breathing” was added for effect. 🙂
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Can’t have a dragon without it breathes fire!
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For sure!
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You caught me too! Nice one. I completely agree with your footnote too.
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Thanks for your comment. I hate to see any creature suffer…well…in this case I’ll make an exception for piranhas. Though I doubt Charlie survived long enough to feel much misery.
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