The Land Fish
by James Hanna
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
Had his embarrassment been confined to his emails, Mason might have been able to stand it but, when he checked his book’s ranking on his Amazon author page, his shame multiplied tenfold. The Land Fish was ranked thirty-fifth among the Top One Hundred Kindle Books, and among the Kindle Romances, it was rated number one. Number one over books with titles like Bound by a Billionaire.
Even more distressing were the hundreds of Amazon customer remarks. Comments like: “I’ve never been so moved” and “Please write more stories about Megan.” Who were these brain-dead dilettantes who had fallen in love with his book? As he scanned the reviews, he felt as though he were being eaten alive by zombies.
But Mason’s humiliation had only just begun. After the book had been out for a month, an executive from Walt Disney Pictures phoned him. The executive, who sounded like he was twenty years old, offered to buy the movie rights. He also mentioned that Jennifer Lawrence was interested in playing Megan McCullough. Jennifer Lawrence! His celebrity crush! Mason blanched at the sound of her name. Hadn’t that wretched book done enough harm without dragging down Jennifer Lawrence? It was only at his wife’s insistence that he agreed to look over the contract.
When a contract for ten million dollars arrived in the morning mail, Jill took one look at the figure and slapped a pen into his palm. “If you turn it down, I will leave you,” she threatened. “It’s high time your writing made money. Since I’ve supported you for forty years, I’m vested in that book, too.”
“They want more than just one book,” complained Mason. “Hollywood makes series now. That means they want me to write three more Megan McCullough books.”
“Well, write them,” Jill ordered. “It’s not like you have anything better to do.”
May Jennifer Lawrence forgive me, thought Mason. May God forgive me, too. Clutching the pen as though holding a snake, he signed away his soul.
* * *
Although he had become an outcast, Mason kept attending his critique group. And he kept reading chapters of The Land Fish to unreceptive ears. He was losing hope that he would get the group to understand the joke, but the mocking stares he drew were better than the trauma of being alone.
When alone, he was forced to suffer an even more crushing defeat. When alone, he was forced to realize his abasement knew no bounds. Because, when alone, he was forced to admit that he dearly loved The Land Fish. He loved its archaic sentences, its ornamental style, and he loved Megan McCullough so much that she seemed like a long-lost daughter. Oh, fortune, what have you done to me? he thought as he sat in his den. Oh, muse, why did you program me to be a writer of pulp?
When the movie came out, the guardians of culture descended upon it like locusts. The critic for The Boston Globe wrote, “I watched my colonoscopy on television. It was more interesting than The Land Fish.” The critic for The Washington Post wrote, “A beached whale of a movie. This flop makes Beach Blanket Bingo look like Citizen Kane.” And the critic for The Wall Street Journal, in the cruelest jibe of all, stated, “Even Jennifer Lawrence could not salvage this drippy script.”
And yet the movie grossed thirty million dollars in its first week of release. Theaters showed it on several screens to accommodate surging crowds, and adolescent girls carried canes so they could feign Megan McCullough’s limp. “I love it,” gushed Miley Cyrus, Disney Pictures’ greatest star, and Megan McCullough dolls soon appeared in Walmarts all over the country.
As though branded with the mark of Cain, Mason would not come out of his den. He shut down his Facebook and email accounts, refused all visitors and committed himself to a life of isolation and booze. In booze, he could blur his wretchedness. In booze, he could soften his shame. In booze, he could glimpse the specter of the writer he might have been.
At Jill’s insistence, he sobered up long enough to attempt to write a sequel, a tale he hoped to call Megan’s Daughters and infuse with some quality. But his fingers froze as though atrophied when he placed them upon the keyboard, and he returned to the bottle as inevitably as a frog hopping into a lake. His drinking became so heavy, his temper so epic and harsh, that one day Jill came into his den and said she was leaving him. “You were annoying enough as a failure,” she said. “In success, you’re impossible.”
“Success will always elude me,” said Mason. “I’m a writer of drivel and crap.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Mason. You’re no longer a writer at all.”
“Better a fruitless life,” Mason said, “than one of broken success.”
“There you go sounding like Megan again. Must you be so melodramatic? I doubt that you would know success if it grabbed you by the throat.”
“If I can drink myself to oblivion,” said Mason, “that would be a success. If I no longer hear my miserable muse, that would be a success.”
“Fine,” replied Jill. “Stay drunk if you must. But you will hear from my attorney.”
* * *
After Jill left him, Mason spent three months moping in his den. He no longer bathed or answered the doorbell, he let his hair grow wild, and whenever he felt the urge to write — to tap his creative spring — he lay down on his unmade bed until the feeling went away. Where once he had ridden the rapids of a leaping imagination, he now dwelled in a stagnant swamp in which he hoped to drown.
On the day that his boozing caught up with him and he suffered a fatal stroke, he sighed like a faucet and went to his bed. At last, at last, he thought. But he felt no relief as he lay there and waited for death to come. Yes, an otherworldly light was streaming across the floor, but the woman who hobbled toward him seemed the unlikeliest of escorts. Her jet-black hair was as disheveled as his, her eyes were hollow and sad, and she stared at him like a jilted bride as she sat on the foot of his bed.
“Why did you let me go?” Megan asked.
“I had no choice,” replied Mason.
She locked her eyes upon his and spoke in a tiny voice. “I cannot fault you for scorning me, sir. I am feral and cruel as the wind. But are my transgressions so loathsome that you would take my life as well?”
She was gazing at him with pity and sternness, yet he felt only unbridled love. Pygmalion could not have loved his statue as much as he cherished this small, unkempt woman.
Her eyes were now sparkling with tears, and a barb crept into her voice. “I had so many adventures to come. Will you write them now, Mason Trout?”
“Does it matter now?”
She frowned like a critic. “Why wouldn’t it matter, sir?”
She still has her temper, thought Mason, but I love her in all her moods. Were she my very own flesh and blood, I could not love this woman more.
“May I quarrel with my daughters?” she asked. “May I lash horses across the moors? May I spread my legs for scoundrels after my husband dies at sea?”
“I’ll write them, damn my soul,” Mason said. “You’ll break a hundred hearts.” He knew now he had never been worthy of her, this brave, impossible woman, and he experienced the deepest of gratitude when she chuckled and lowered her eyes.
“Then come, sir, the Highlands await us,” she said. She slowly rose from the bed. Taking his hand in hers, she led him toward the light.
Copyright © 2025 by James Hanna
