Chapter 6

 

As a teenager, Bob Joined a gang of ruffians who's primary task it was to play the very popular, yet dangerous, Dive Bomb the Schools of Sting Rays, a devious and harmful exercise where teen boys jump off the docks into the schools of stingrays in an effort to take a few out. Usually a well placed heel to the head would render the desired effect, but every so often, the rays would get in a point or two by the quick thrusts of their venomous tails.

 

 

One day at the conclusion of such a game, as the gang was dispersing to go about independent rebellious activities, Bob happened to notice a priest walking along the pier.

 

 

"I saw what you were doing to those poor animals," the priest shouted out to Bob in his Evangelical quivering voice. "But soon you'll come to know that what ye do unto others shall also be done unto ye."

 

 

"Kiss my hairy dick, you slimy money pinching TV charlatan. Take your preaching hole to Jesus. I'll jump on sea life any time I please and there ain't nothing you can do about it." Bob began to vigorously rub himself dry with a towel. The Father approached him where he stood and continued the sermon.

 

 

"Thy evil ways must be repented for. I pray for your soul, oh torturer of fish and flesh. Perhaps in the future, the Lord will endow thee with the wisdom to see the errors of thy ways. After all young devil, how would you like it if I did this." The preacher bent down, got himself a fist full of sand, and hurled it into Bob's eyes just as he moved the towel away from his face.

 

"God, my eyes. My eyes!" Bob screamed.

 

"Suddenly not so funny, the pain of suffering. Imagine how hurt and angry thy would be if I did this!" The priest grabbed Bob by the ears and pulled and tugged. "This ear tugging is to show you that pain can be very hurtful. It's not your fault, poor misguided instrument of Satan. You are an innocent in this morality play we call life. You can't help that the devil is inside you. Your parents did this to you. Society did this to you. You were made into a rapscallion and a hoodlum but today the Lord has sent me, on behalf of the sting ray, to knee you forcefully in the man's place of shame."

 

 

The man of the cloth pumped his sturdy knee into the soft and sensitive tissue known as the balls, and sent Bob to his knees in the misery of hot and cold flashes coupled with blinding white and yellow bursts of throbbing intense pain.

 

 

"As I strike you down, Bob McGillicuty of Nazareth, see the vision of Mother Mary of God and weep for the fish, for your evil ways shall be cast out of you this very day as I break your nose with my holy elbow of redemption." The Reverend brought down his arm again and again until Bob was a bleeding broken nose boy.

 

 

"Do you repent? Do you repent?" asked the priest.

 

 

"Yes! Anything to get you to stop beating me."

 

 

"I say again, do you repent? Say it like you mean it."

 

 

"YES! I'm sorry! I was just doing what my peer group told me to do. How could I resist? They were going to call me chicken." Bob's face became flooded with tears. Suddenly the beating stopped. The reverend clutched Bob's shirt at the shoulders and held him close, face to face, eye to eye.

 

 

A cold silence commenced, and then he spoke.

 

 

"Listen to me boy, it is no accident that I am here with you right now. The universe has many mysteries untold to you. Ask yourself, why do one eared people still know from which direction sound comes? Why can a multiple personality sufferer get drunk, and then suddenly become sober when another personality surfaces. Did an alien space craft really crash in Roswell, New Mexico, or is the Government covering it up? Where is President Kennedy's brain? Boy, life is Karma. You will receive ten-fold what you dish out. Don't be surprised when one day, you're just minding your own business and suddenly sea life drops down upon your head from above. Unless you change your ways right now by quitting your gang and finding your higher self, I'm afraid you stand to lose yourself in a fog of disillusion and regret."

 

 

 

The preacher continued, "You must understand that people are lonely little islands separated by distance and water. But islands have a few things in common. They all have sand, and somebody is usually stranded on them. So start loving yourself right now, and by this you will love others. Stop focusing on our differences and by this you will start focusing on what we have in common. Just because a sting-ray is triangular and has not much of a personality and poison barbs on its tail, that doesn't make it wrong."

 

 

"Yes, Reverend! I'm suddenly beginning to see." Bob's face became flushed with joy as the light of sudden awareness and enlightenment flooded into his brain. "I must love everybody and treat them as I wish to be treated. No more shall I harm another fish. I shall learn to love and protect them. I shall found a new organization specifically to protect and empower fish with all the peace and love they deserve. I shall learn the ways of Karma and make my living through giving instead of my making from taking. I shall love even mine enemies and learn to turn the other cheek. This is the break I've been waiting for! Thank you, mysterious priest. You have saved me. You have shown me a different path, and that path is good."

 

 

"Great." the preacher replied, "Glad to hear it. Oh, and here's something for your face!" The Reverend jammed his boot heel into Bob's mouth until the back of his head was buried in the sand. Then he stole Bob's wallet, ran into the lighthouse and killed as many people as he could with his machine gun until old Barney, Beach Security staff of one, managed to draw his heavy Colt 45 and pump a couple of lugs into the man's neck.

 

 

In his last words before biting the big one, the reverend was heard to weakly say, "Tell the boy, this is just what I was talking about. On a divinely inspired whim, I went and shot a bunch of innocent people who just wanted to see how a lighthouse works, and look what happened to me. I'm not even permitted the dignity of shooting myself in the head. Some old fuck with a gun, probably couldn't hit the broad side of the Great Wall of China, pegs me twice in the neck, directly in the jugular. What's the chance of that? That's not luck. That's God talking through the barrel of a gun. Tell the boy… Argelouf… haack… wrahank…"

 

And that's how Bob McGillicuty became the founder of the Rare Fish Society.

 

The End

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