The Phisherman’s Tale

When all the fish had been fished away, I must turn my attention anew, to discover some alternate source of nourishment. I looked at the water, slosh sloshing against the side of my ancient coracle in empty pieces and decided to cast a new net.

A net I must spin up some clever traps to catch the unwary and insecure. Made of the finest software programming it grew. Not then a phisher of fish, but a phisher of men’s and women’s riches.

I set my face in stone. I put aside my trusty coracle and determined to use it as a hat in the downpours that are inevitable. I made then a boat of words, that is the first lie, I had no boat. I made my nets of spider’s webs, that is another lie, I had no nets. Only I was a lie and made light of it.

I set sail upon the troubled waters of the internet, clutching at each gust of information greedily until a weak link might surface beside me. I scrolled the sea of faces. I made friends, buying pastries and pretending to listen to their woes. Sometimes I wouldn’t want to be there at all.

After some, I valued the customers, pleading with them to drop the scales and swim free.

I wanted to, but I couldn’t understand it. I sent out a million questing enquiries to unnerve the nervous with false documents and promises of victory.

Somewhere along came phishes, laden with illicit plunder.

The waves slipped by, paved with plastic credit cards that had not been shredded in a pancake. The wind, of sweet nothings made, whispered in the ear, provided a framework of expectation. Blowing out its cheeks to buffet those at doldrum or unsuspect. Then, when the wind decided, strong by default, a tempest was born in league with the rising water and my not boat rose and fell according. Dipping and diving to alarm the hardiest or unconcerned. A great wave, seeded with misinformation, hit, and I was thrown wide. As luck would, I retained a life saver of paper weights about me, which bore me up and I could.

When I woke, I lay upon a rock in the, while the smaller wavelets, envying the great waves, played with my toes and fingers.

The grims upon the soft green verge were listened with baited breaths and wide.

I was at least not consumed, continued the Phisherman, but all my deceptions had been washed away and I was naked as the day I restarted my laptop, except for my clothes.

There was a phish, a very strange enchanted phish. They say it swam from near to far, very far, really far away. A little phish, not on a dish, but very pale was he. The phish came to my rock and, looking up from the salt, asked if I was or just the dream of a drowning man. I said I was fine, in so far as one can be fine, stranded upon a rocky place above the cold.

It, the phish, said, Let us talk of cabbages and kings, click here and all will be revealed.

No, I replied, I just want to go home. I shall never click here, there, or anywhere.

The phish said, The greatest thing that you’ll ever learn is not ever to click on strange links.

Home, I said and slipped off my rock of certainty and allowed the paper weights to bear me up. I had to swim here of my own accord and now I must ask the Fortuitous Fountain for confirmation that I am who I say I am and not an Estonian prince got lost.

Very wise, murmured the listening grims upon the grassy knoll, without a small wisp of understanding.

You are wise.

Thank you, said the Sphinx upon listening to the tale, That is not something that I have been called before.

Not you, the grims said it to the Phisherman who, bye the bye was not wise at all.

Oh.