Don't go in the Big Hole River (Tale of the Wer-fish)

It was seven years ago this summer, that my views of life was obscured and altered forever.

It was a hot August afternoon in Butte, and Poey and I were sitting on my front porch enjoying a Dirty Thirty of Hamm's. We were bored and stoned and getting slowly drunk, and no ambitions for the rest of the day.

My brother, Brian was in summer school, and had ditched to hang out, and was currently washing a sink full of dishes for 4 and a half beer's.

Dave, a friend from down the street, walked up the hill with his basketball, tempting us to go shoot some hoops, but seeing our beer, decided that it was too hot to play.

Finding activities for hot summer days is hard to do. Once one has started drinking, one is inclined to stay drunk, and the odds of finding something to do whilst drunk greatly decreases from there.

My brother joined us for a few moments as he poured empty beer cans, half full of mold, on to the neighbor's lawn. To this day we can't remember her name, but she will always be known to us as Crack-Bitch Neighbor. Her lawn was a personification of what we though of her, and many a puke buckets, two-week-old left-leftovers, and booze swelled bladders had been emptied onto her lawn.

Shielding his face, and gagging at the stench, Brian suggested, while retching, that we go floating.

We were all too lazy to suggest something else, or object, so our plan was set in motion.

I loaded up my mouth with gum and mouthwash and distracted Poey's aunt with questions about her art collection, while Brian and Poey backed up in the alley, and "liberated" her raft into the back of Poey's truck. Dave was on a specific mission to get a bottle of booze, but was rejected from the State Liquor store for being too drunk. Maria at Maloney's was kind enough to sell him a bottle of Bacardi Gold.

After a quick rendezvous, we loaded up into my convertible and Poey's truck and headed south for the Big Hole.

Back in the good old days of open containers, we preformed several James Bond-ish acts of passing beers from vehicle to vehicle while barreling down I-15. The long boring drive from Butte flies by when your holding on to your passenger's legs to keep him from falling out of the vehicle.

We parked my car at the pull-out point by the bridge, and headed west to a good place to put in. Poey forgot to get batteries for the pump, as by default, Brian then spent the next half-hour hand-pumping up the raft.

Bungie-ing in the cooler, we set off at a lazy pace down the Big Hole.

We passed by several fishermen until we got to the "Sink". I had almost drowned the summer before trying to do a little Kayak tricks in the "Sink". On the brake of the Sink is a nice deep hole, perfect for swimming.

As we pulled up, it dawned on us that we were in such a hurry, none of us had bothered to properly dress for swimming, as we were all wearing our civilian clothes. We were by no means modest, Brian and I had grown up the "country way", and Poey was just an expositionist, so none of us had problems going skinny dipping. Plus it was a quiet day on the river, the odds of running into someone was slim to none.

As we were stripping down, a huge, two foot long fish jumped out of the water and landed on Dave, nearly knocking him out of the raft. I had my back to him at the time, and I heard him scream. I turned to find the fish sucker-locked onto his arm, and Poey attempting to grab the slimy thing. Blood began to pour from the fish's mouth, and Poey then began to whack the fish with an aluminum oar, which was difficult to do, because:

1) Poey was drunk, as in Poey Drunk. The half hour that it took Brian to pump up the raft, Poey had argued with both Dave and I that he "knew what he was talking about". Neither Dave nor I knew what the argument in the first place; we just nodded, knowing that he was Poey Drunk.

2) Dave was screaming, flailing his arms, seemingly intent on flying then on removing the fish from his arm.

Brian saved the day by stabbing the fish in the side with a golf club that had been broken, and we were planning to use to anchor the raft to the shore. The club handle impaled the fish, and Brian grabbed both ends and pulled, while Dave punched the fish on the head.

Finally the fish relented it's suckering of Dave's arm, and Brian threw the fish to the rocky shore. Still a man on a mission, Poey jumped from the raft in his underwear, and began to assault it further still with the oar. Maybe it was his drunken state, but he reminded me of the Monkeys at the beginning of 2001 Space Odyssey, thrashing about with the oar.

As I attended to Dave, applying my entire First Aid knowledge, and pressure to the wound, Poey made sure the fish was dead.

Dave had gone pale, which I assumed to the loss of blood, and I made him lay down with his feet elevated, and we covered him with our clothes.

Not wanting to let a friend nearly being killed ruin our day, Poey, Brain and I left Dave and jumped into the water.

The current had carried us down-stream a few yards, and we were having fun playing, but keeping it respectable since we were all naked.

A while later, Poey grew cold from the water and ventured back to the raft to get a beer and warm himself in the sun. I had found a large rock that had a stair shape to it, and had settled down with my feet in the water. From our vantage point in the swimming hole, the raft was out of our view, obscured by the large rocks.

I then heard Poey yelling, and scrambled to the top of the rock to see what he was yelling at. Time froze as I realized that he was yelling for us to hide, as a raft full of women of varying ages had come upon us. There I stood, naked and reflecting the sun like a flagpole, as the heads of eight or so females passed the rock I stood upon. Not a word was spoken as they passed, and I can only imagine they had the same thought process going through their heads as when Marge saw Mr. Burns getting out of the shower.

The water was extremely cold.

I heard that some dudes shave their cocks to make them look bigger.

I just used to put doll furniture in my bedroom.

That is until my latent Italian genes kicked in when I was about 20, and I began to get an Austin Powers-ish rug sprouting from my chest, and something akin to a wild animal that obscured all of my genitalia. Since then, I have had to do routine maintenance, keeping the animals at bay, so to speak.

So standing there, soaking wet on the rock, I might have been nothing more than a gangly first grader, looking like a deer in the headlights as the ladies passed. My brother, all the encouraging and sympathetic fellow, nearly drowned from laughing so hard.

I then decided that I would deal with soggy underwear on the way home, and went back to the raft to put them on.

Dave was not doing so well, he was shivering despite the sun and clothing piled on him, and his face looked ghastly. He was going into shock. We decided to pack it in.

As we gathered our things, we noticed that the remains of the fish were gone. The only evidence was a bloody golf club. Poey was given two demerits for being unable to kill a fish.

When we arrived at the bridge and drunkenly pulled the raft to shore, I realized that I had brought my keys with me on the ride to the put-in, and had left them on Poey's dash. I was cursed and berated by my friends, and given four demerits for being a fucktard.

We pulled Dave from the raft, and some bystanders saw his condition, and offered to give Poey a ride to get his truck. The gaping sucker-wound on Dave's arm hadn't coagulated, and blood still oozed forth when the makeshift bandage was removed.

We raced back to my house, and I gave Dave a proper wound dressing, and made him some Ramen Noodles. We propped him up on the couch, and discussed taking him to the hospital to get checked for Rabies.

I had no idea that we were so close, but so far away.

Dave slept on my couch that night, and in the morning, seemed well enough, but complained about having wicked nightmares.

A while passed to late September when the subject was brought up again. The Weathaman and I were preparing for another BBQ, and the girls watching movies on the Dan'aCinaplex, as the sun set.

My back door flew open with the evening breeze, and there stood Dave, both hands holding his neck as if he was about to choke himself.

"I can't breathe!" he rasped. I laughed and made a flippant comment about his attempt to strangulate himself. When he dropped his hands from his neck, I knew he was serious.

His neck had bloody cuts beneath his ears.

The Weathaman looked wide-eyed, and sent the girls to the store, while I shoved Dave in the bathroom.

Jenny looked at Dave sitting on my toilet, and made a wretched face and exclaimed, "Ewww! What happened to him!" as Dann shoved them out the door.

Dann and I examined Dave closely. He had three parallel cuts beneath his ears running almost to his collarbone. It looked as if he had worn a razorblade turtle neck.

"I can't breath!" he rasped again. Dann poked one of the cuts, and noticed that they moved when Dave tried to take a breath. "They look like gills!" Dann yell and then dumped out the cup that held our toothbrushes, and began to fill it with water.

"And look at this..." Dave wheezed, showing me his hands. A slimy flesh colored webbing expanded between his fingers.

Dann pulled Dave's head over the sink and poured the cup of water on his neck. Dann and I looked at each other in horror as the water was sucked into the cuts, and expelled out of his mouth.

"He's turning into a fish!" Dann screamed. He stopped and cocked his head to the side and thought for a moment, before looking wide-eyed again. "He's turning into a fish!"

We grabbed Dave and drug him into our shower, turning the shower on, crammed the end of the shower head into his face. Dave's chest began to expand, and a look of complacency filled his face.
Dann and I never spoke a word as we removed Dave's cloths, even when after his socks revealed his feet atrophied and seemingly dissolving into a fleshy mass. Dann called a family meeting.

We left Dave gurgling in the shower, and retired to the kitchen. We discussed what was seemingly going on, what we thought and what we could do. Then Dann looked at the calendar. It was the day before a full moon.

Dave was turning into a Wer-Fish.

I called Poey and DC, and within minutes they had arrived. As we led them to the shower and opened the door, Dave was no more. A hideous creature lay on my shower floor, bulbous eyes, bony fins and sickening gaping mouth.

A gargled scream or a hiss roared forth and the form that was our friend shot its head out and tried to snap at Poey. DC, was standing near the corner, and was able to push the door closed, on the creature that once was our friend.

We, reconvened to the kitchen again, and discussed what we were going to do. All of us knew the curse of Lycanthropy, and how the affected individual that was our friend, for the next three days, was an evil being, our friend no more.

DC raced to Wal*Mart, and purchased a large inflatable kiddies pool, While Dann, Poey, and I constructed lassos out of rope and zip-ties.

DC filled the pool in the garage with the hose, while Poey reinforced the door and windows with 2x4s. We intended to hold our friend captive, until the three days of the full moon passed.

It was hard work, but we managed to lure the creature from the shower with a can of sardines, and lasso its fins and head. DC, being the strongest, acted like Steve Irwin, as we wrestled the creature through the kitchen, out the back door and into the garage, all the while it hissed and bellowed like a ravenous blue whale.

Placing the fish in the kiddie's pool, we bound it with zip-ties and a net made of clothesline, and replaced the water that was lost during the struggle to get the creature into the pool. We had to keep our distance because the fish would lunge and try and bite us with its gaping maw of razor sharp teeth.

For the next three days and two nights, we kept watch over Dave, draining the refuse from the pool, and refilling it with fresh water. We didn't know what to feed it, but we figured not to, since if it was weak with hunger it would be too weak to attack.

In a twisted, yet funny sense of irony was DC sneaking the creature Fillet 'o Fish from McDonalds, until Dann caught him. DC said Dave was already evil, and since he wasn't really a fish, cannibalism wasn't that bad of a thing.

I awoke for my shift to find Dave slowly deforming back into a human. Sad disfigured eyes looked at me, ashamed, embarrassed, and scared.

Once he could speak, we interrogated him, making sure that his mind was once again rational and free of Lycanthropy.

We had a long sad discussion of what to do, and how to help cure Dave. The only solution was to kill the creature that infected him.

Many afternoons and weekends we spent on the shores of the Big Hole, dressed in makeshift armor, armed with firearms, and fishing poles with silver hooks.

But to no avail, the full moon in October was quickly approaching with no sign of the evil fish.

Dave said he would rather commit suicide than change again, as the reversion was so painful, and the thought of harming someone else was sickening.

We put in place a contingency plan; similar to how we had kept Dave the last time he changed.

But, days before the full moon, Dave disappeared. We all mourned him, knowing that he had committed suicide. We found his apartment empty, save for a few items that he left for us, and a note. He said he was going off to the river to live by himself, and hunt the evil Wer-Fish that made him so.

Every time since that I go floating the Big Hole, I take along my .45, loaded with Silver bullets, hoping that I might find the cursed spawn that infected Dave, or by chance, find Dave and put him out of his misery.

I talked to some fisherman last summer that had seen a disheveled and erratic naked man swimming upstream near Wise River.

I wish that it wasn't Dave.