Catch!”

That’s your only warning before twelve ounces of half-frozen beer nearly hits you in the face. You’re lucky to get fingers around it before it has the chance to cause any damage.

“Nice! You need more bait?”

You, in fact, do not. It’s been nearly an hour and you’re still on your third worm—the other two having fallen off of your hook from boredom rather than from anything more exciting, such as being bitten by a fish.

“You sure about your ‘Special fishing spot’ here? Seems to be sort of short on something important. Y’know, fish.” You ask, but your companion doesn’t answer. The particular river bend you’ve been taken out to is quite pretty, you have to admit. Willows overhanging the shores droop towards the lazy bend in the brook. The water is going just fast enough to prevent it from being a mosquito nursery, and the forest on either bank is impenetrable. If only there were fish, it’d be the perfect spot.

Five minutes pass before there’s a response. Almost as if waking from a nap, your fishing companion stirs. Even when he’s awake, sometimes it’s tough to tell when Nile is paying attention. The big gator’s face is stuck in the permament toothy grin, as if it (and the rest of him) were simply in a state of permanent stasis—waiting for anything interesting to happen. Slow as an earthquake, he shifts on his sagging hammock-chair and takes a long sip from his own beer. “Not about the fish. It’s the privacy.” The bayout boat you’re both sitting on bobs, lower on his side than yours.

“And the company.” He continues. Slitted eyes spin towards you. It’s a difficult gaze to read. You’ve known him for years, and never been able to quite put a pin in his personality. He’s loud and friendly, but reptilian faces are perfect for poker. Then again, maybe that’s for the better. Of all of your dad’s drinking buddies, Nile’s the only one you’d be willing to risk a day out with.

The day had started typically enough. His pickup truck had rattled alongside your apartment building, engine loud enough that you could hear it clearly even from the third story. You’d been down to meet him even before he’d figured out how to ring the right buzzer.

“Hey squirt! Yer dad’s told me to make a man of you!” His guffaws were uncomfortably loud for six thirty in the morning. You hope it didn’t wake any of your neighbors. “Nah, I’m fuckin’ with you. Ready to catch some bass?”

And here you are, doing exactly that. Except you aren’t. This river and bass seemed to have a falling out some time ago, and when bass left it took all its fishy relatives with it.

But maybe Nile was right. What would you even do with a fish if you caught it? Presumably eat it for dinner. For a moment, you wondered wither Nile just ate them whole. Just tossed them up into the air, opened that massive, long toothy grin, and snap! No more fish, and one fat, happy gator.

He seems to notice your attention, and his slitted eyes narrow.* “Oy, you already finished your beer? Help a guy out. Got an itch on my belly and no hands left.” True to his word, he’s got his fishing pole in one hand and half-finished beer in the other. He could put down the beer, but the gator’s got such an advanced stage of lazy sprawl going on that you could forgive him for not putting in the effort.

You reach over to the broad expanse of flat-banded scales that are Nile’s belly. Laying flat as he is, his paunch has compressed to the sides to fill his hammock, almost as if he were a liquid rather than a solid. Across his front he’s a soft, leafy green, rather than the darker shade over his back. His shirt is unbuttoned, letting the sunlight warm the broad belly-band scales.