A disbelieving John Bennett stumbled out into the river and its rushing current made his knees buckle, though he managed not to fall.

“Dear God, please stop that fish,” he moaned helplessly. Unfortunately for John and his wedding ring, the Lord did not answer his prayer and the catfish swam away.

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This story was kind of born out of a twenty year old prompt. A friend of mine once tried to get a group of us to play a game wherein he would introduce a prompt and someone would have to write a story around the prompt. One of the prompts in the game was “Dead God, please stop that fish” (or something very near to that,) and for some reason I have never been able to let that prompt go.

This three sentence story was my attempt to craft a very short story around it. I also had an idea about someone watching helplessly as an order of salmon was served to the wrong person (with the error creating large consequences.) 

I live in a part of the United States where people go noodling. In my imagination, a guy who was noodling bare-handed, and despite his wife’s stern admonition against, came to regret the decision.