He Casts His Line

A Flash Fiction by Joyce Bingham

Second Place WestWord Prize 2025

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

He Casts His Line

from his boat, praying for fish. The night is deep, the silence absolute outside his spacesuit. He listens to the whir and click of his air supply as he breathes. This spacesuit has become like home. When he wriggles into its nooks and crannies, it feels like his mother is giving him a hug. One of her hard close hugs that left him breathless and his jumper smelling of her talc; ghost bruises of her buttons embossed on his skin. And father, not a touchy-feely man—he liked nothing more than to give his sons man advice, as his hand squeezed their shoulders and bought them a beer. He still treasures each of father’s one liner comments. Enjoys the feel of them on his own tongue.

Nothin’ better than a singin’ fishin’ line.

Everyone he knows is so far away now. Years away. So far. Voices from earth reach him with star-sized gaps of time, and he sees them age fast, the images freezing and thawing with the signal. He cannot see the Earth now without using the computer to pinpoint its faint light. Missing this orb was more of a wrench than he’d supposed in all the thrill of intense training, selection, and then take-off. His boyhood dream was to travel the stars, and now he is here. Some days he wishes it had remained a dream. He feels adrift—alone in a lifeboat, moving away from everyone he had ever known. Above him, there are stars he is not accustomed to in the red and purple sky. He decides there is a fish constellation, its tail to his left and its mouth twisted over to his right. Its eye is Saturn, so far away he can’t see its rings without a telescope.

Keep tha coast in yer sight, laddie.

Rations are plentiful, but his tongue remembers flavours not available in space, like egg sandwiches, buttery and silky smooth on soft white bread. Tastes that don’t freeze dry too well, like pan fried fish straight off the boat, with a few langoustines to add a further punch of the sea. Tastes of people he thought he’d never miss, like Tanya, who used to pinch his crayons at school—he dreams of her. Tantalising most are the people he didn’t realise were insignificant, like a child’s drawing in the sun, fading away, their faces indistinct and names misremembered. He squishes a maggot onto his fish hook. It will dry out in this atmosphere if he doesn’t look sharp and cast the line.

Ye need tae git the pan roastin to scald fish skin, crisp it up.

Over the years, there were seaside feasts with his siblings on the bench overlooking the harbour; no sandy picnic nonsense. Deep fried, battered haddock and thick cut chips wrapped in paper. The smell of vinegar vibrant, scenting his hair, his clothes, the feel of salt crusting his greasy fingers. Later there were beers and lassies, but the same supper before the last scraps flung across the water for the gulls. Archie skippering the trawler, waving goodbye on his last visit home before the stars. His sister Margaret with her smart suits and lawyer briefcase, pecking him on the cheek, like he’d be back the next day. Now on a distant planet he bobs about in a pretend boat on a lake of dust, his breath hissing inside his spacesuit. His net empty. The line slack.

Fish dinae ken your hunger, jist their ain.

Around him, the tranquil sea ripples as his boat passes along, and the craters’ cliff edges stand tall. There is no wind, no waves. He strikes out for the landing craft and the beginnings of the settlement. It takes genuine effort to move in this gravity. His children will raise their eyebrows when he tells them about the gravity he was born into. They will laugh at his one-liner comments and he will give them breath crushing hugs, leaving the fleeting pattern of his spacesuit across their skin. But for now, it is just him. Just him. Later, he’ll return to the boat and cast off again. Even though he knows there are no fish on this planet. But there is a new constellation in the sky; shaped like a fish and it’s called Robert, after his father.

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Author: Joyce Bingham is a Scottish writer whose work has appeared in publications such as Flash Frog, WestWord, Molotov Cocktail, Raw Lit, and Sci-fi Shorts. She lives in Manchester, UK. When she’s not writing, she puts her green fingers to use as a plant whisperer and Venus fly trap wrangler.

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