THEME 1.05: Reverse Mermaid

Under the moon's glow, I cast my line into dark, choppy waters, fishing for stories. Something stirs beneath—a ripple, a glint—something waits to be caught.

Two eyes break the surface; its scales reflecting the moonlight.

Is that a fish... or a man? It’s impossible to say.

 

Reverse mermaids, strange and unsettling, haunt these depths. Unlike their traditional counterparts, they defy expectations, caught between two worlds in a form that exemplifies the absurd. They are symbols of transgression and transformation, urging us to embrace the parts of ourselves that

don’t fit neatly into established categories.

 

Stories are out there, waiting to be reeled in. With a bucket of maggot sandwiches and the patience to wait, we're ready for whatever surfaces —absurd scenarios, monstrous creatures in mundane lives, or vice versa, powerful transformations, quirky individuals, nightmares and hallucinations out in the daylight, worlds flipped upside down, and tales of two halves

that proudly let our freak flag fly.

 

The Catch of the Day includes stories, scripts, poems, flash fiction, and songs that champion the eccentric, unique, and unexpected, leaping from the surface level, and pulling us, kicking and screaming, down, down, down

into the realm of the extraordinary.