‘Fish Don’t Blink’

Ann-Marie Brown is a Canadian artist known for her encaustic paintings that explore emotional and psychological depth through ambiguity, texture, and intuitive process. Her work has been exhibited across Canada and the U.S., with recent shows at Soul Gallery (Winnipeg) and the Women’s Art Museum of Canada (Edmonton). Her paintings are held in the permanent collections of Senvest, the Women’s Art Museum of Canada, and the Encaustic Art Museum (Santa Fe).

Fish Don’t Blink

Day 1

English ivy. Mark hated English ivy. Twenty-two years working at a nursery warning people about invasive species, and he couldn’t understand how half the neighborhood chose it—chose it on purpose, like floral Stockholm Syndrome. 

This morning, like every morning, he rounded the corner on his morning stroll and winced at the same grim example: a large oak, magnificent in its own right, now smothered in ivy like Santa Claus being squeezed into a corset. It wasn’t just the ecology that bothered him—it was the negligence masquerading as taste.

But then again, this was a neighborhood where taste had been bureaucratized. Mark lived in one of those neighborhoods where everyone had matching mailboxes—powder-coated black, naturally—thanks to the Architectural Control Committee of his Homeowners’ Association. No lawn flamingos. No visible trash cans. 

Yet, somehow, no ordinance against slowly strangling native trees. 

Still, he hadn’t picked this place for its ecological conscience. He told people he’d moved there for “the quiet”—a phrase that sounded plausible in conversation but was perhaps just a front for lower property taxes and controlled order. And its community shuffleboard court, an oddly non-negotiable feature for Mark.

So, each morning, in pursuit of both quiet and habit, he’d lace up his sneakers and follow the same route through the neighborhood.

The hill at 77 Ashford Lane meant his morning walk was halfway done. Almost. Technically, halfway was the magnolia tree on the corner of the lot—the largest in the neighborhood by far, both the tree and the lot. In fact, the magnolia at number 77 was impressively large in a way that no one ever commented on—not out of indifference, but out of some quiet, mutual agreement to pretend it wasn’t as unsettling as it was. 

Mark always crossed the street when he passed it, but not for safety. There was no sidewalk on that side. Rather, it was for what he could only describe as emotional distance. 

He was never quite sure why. Something about how a magnolia sheds its leaves year-round, like it didn’t recognize the rules of seasonal behavior—a fact he couldn’t accept despite being a pseudo-botanist, which annoyed him more than it should have.

As he neared the tree, he watched a magnolia leaf drift down and land shiny side up in the middle of the road, like a coin toss landing on ‘heads.’ Just beside it, someone—possibly a county worker—had spray-painted a bright orange circle around a cracking bulge in the asphalt. Presumably it was to mark a water line or a future repair, though there was a small chance it was just very confident street art. Probably the former. But not definitely.

Before he could decide on the source of the orange paint, he paused; something had caught his eye. A beam of light was passing back and forth across his forehead. It was focused, narrow, and swayed with the wind—like how sunlight bounces off of a pool, collecting along the ridge lines of the waves and following the movement of the water.

Once Mark was even with the tree trunk, he saw it. Them, rather. Three fish in a tree, reflecting the sun off their scales like a trio of flattened disco balls.

Trout, specifically.

That couldn’t be right. The nearest viable trout habitat was over a hundred miles away—not exactly a hawk’s commute. And yet, here they were. Three of them. Perfectly healthy. Uninjured. Intact. Not even gasping for breath.

He might’ve assumed they were fake—some elaborate prank or poorly conceived lawn taxidermy—but they wriggled. Slightly. Purposefully. One of them even seemed to blink, which didn’t make sense. Fish don’t blink. But he was certain it had at least moved and just as certain that he hadn’t imagined it.

He stood staring into the tree of 77 Ashford Lane for far longer than socially advisable. Then, without another glance, he resumed his walk, pretending he hadn’t seen anything at all. 

Like a gentleman.

Day 2

The next day, Mark had almost managed to forget about the trout. He tied his shoes, grabbed his phone, and stepped out the front door just like any other day. 

As usual, he turned and mimed locking the door, just in case any unscrupulous onlookers were keeping tabs. Carrying keys in athletic shorts was uncomfortable, but so was the idea of returning home to a stranger rifling through his fridge. 

Once again, he passed the large oak, and once again he crossed the road as he neared the corner of number 77. 

There was no glint of reflected light today—it was overcast. But he slowed down as he passed the magnolia anyway, just to confirm. Just to corroborate.

He’d seen them yesterday—three trout, unmistakably—and here they were again. Suspended along the same branch, splayed like a freshly dealt hand of cards.

The same fish. The same posture. The same thousand-yard stare that only fish seem to have.

A single brown leaf clung to the side of the middle trout as if glued there. Beneath the branch, a single drop of water fell, darkening the dust at the base of the tree.

Mark blinked. He thought his mouth might open in surprise—something to match the fish, maybe—but it didn’t. Even in the face of something this absurd, his manners held. 

He had, apparently, not imagined the fish, which perhaps should’ve been comforting. 

It wasn’t.

Day 3

Mark woke the next morning unrested and mildly irritated. He had barely slept. The trout stuck in the tree had raced through his mind all night—like a school of fish collectively fleeing a predator inside his skull. And he was irritated because the rain outside meant he would get soaked on his walk.

Still, he laced up his Asics—last year’s pair; he didn’t wear the new ones in the rain—and stepped outside. At the end of his driveway, he stopped abruptly. He had forgotten the notebook.

He’d labelled it “P.O.D. — Phish Observation Diary”—a quiet joke to himself, courtesy of the infamous ’90s jam band and the early-aughts Christian nu-metal group. It was a leather-bound notebook he’d received as a gift and used as a diary for three days. Now, it was being repurposed to catalog three trout marooned in a suburban magnolia tree.

So, still a diary. Sort of.

July 7; 07:21 a.m. – P.O.D. Entry #1

Weather: Lightly raining; 73oF; humidity 84%

Observations: Three fish observed suspended in magnolia tree; no signs of decomposition; slight movement in middle fish (~once every 20 seconds); minimal visible movement in outer fish; no blinking.

Sudden brief rotation; each fish shifting a hair, all at once. No wind detected.

Squirrels active at base of tree (appeared unaware of fish). Hawk (red-tailed?) landed across street. Briefly flew toward magnolia, then veered off. Possibly not hungry; possibly blind.

Observed for 53 minutes. Stop.

Mark closed the notebook, looked around, and walked over to the powder-coated black mailbox labelled “77”. He tore out a blank page from the P.O.D. and, carefully shielding it from the rain, wrote:

“You have fish in your tree. This is not a complaint.” 

He then folded the note, slipped it into the mailbox, and turned around for home.

Day 4

~8:00am

As the neighborhood road neared Mark’s driveway, it twisted into a sharp chicane, with two blind curves in quick succession. He drove them faster than usual this morning, not out of urgency, but rather out of distraction.

He was preoccupied with the day ahead, which he’d already mapped out in his mind. Timetables. Light angles. Necessary provisions. Not that he expected much to change with the fish, but observation without structure felt irresponsible now.

Mark exited the second blind curve and swerved into his driveway. The garage door stared back at him as he put his sky blue Crown Victoria into park—a model year 2007 with a trunk that could swallow an entire drum kit without complaint. Today, though, the trunk was full of bird-watching gear. Fish-watching, technically. 

Mark grabbed a wagon from the garage—the kind with “off-road” inflatable tires that mostly just looked comical on sidewalks. He wheeled it to the back of his car and began unloading. Camp chair. Monocular. Range finder.  By the time he finished stacking the tarp and bungees, the wagon had started to bow in quiet protest. Normally, Mark wouldn’t exceed the wagon’s 175-pound weight limit, but today called for exceptions.

~9:15am

About thirty feet past the magnolia’s trunk, a fire hydrant sat slightly recessed from the road—with chipped silver paint and a subtle westward lean, like it had once resisted something and mostly won. It marked the start of a narrow clearing into the wooded portion of number 77’s oversized yard.

The wooded area just past the clearing was, for Mark’s purposes, the ideal location: mostly out of sight, reasonably level, and offering a clear line of sight to the trout—which, as always, appeared either completely oblivious or serenely unbothered by the laws of nature.

Before unpacking, Mark stood still and stared up at the fish. After a minute or two, he realized his arms were crossed and his brow was furrowed—not intentionally, but either out of low-grade frustration or plain confusion. The fish, of course, stared back. 

~9:30am

Mark carefully unfolded the blue tarp over the pine straw floor, its crinkle too loud. Like sneaking out as a teenager, every step felt exaggerated. 

It wasn’t the fish that unnerved him.

Rather it was the act itself: establishing a base camp on someone else’s private property to observe airborne fish. 

He looped the bungee cords where he could. Elastic wasn’t ideal, but it had give. And Mark liked the idea of a setup that could survive a little chaos.

He found a sturdy branch to serve as the primary anchor and rotated the tarp until its corners split each cardinal direction. The northwest corner became the observation post. He staked the southeast corner into the ground and cinched the others in place with deliberate care. There was just enough tension to form a clean, forty-five degree slope. Rain looked likely.

July 8; 10:17 a.m. – P.O.D. Entry #2

Weather: Overcast; 82oF; humidity 76%

Observations: Subject(s) remain largely unchanged. 

Middle fish slightly angled. Possibly wind, though odd it’s just one. 

Rangefinder readings = 135.3 ft to fish; 111.2 ft to base of tree.
According to the Pythagorean, that puts the fish at approximately 77.1 ft high. Seems about right for airborne trout.

Rightmost showing faint yellowing along dorsal side. Not present in previous observation. Indicates early-stage decomposition? Perhaps just lighting. Or a trick of the eye. Will compare with tomorrow. 

No visible gill movement. Still no blinking.

Middle specimen remains subtly animate — twitch in caudal fin observed at 10:37am. Duration < 1 sec. Could be reflexive. Or perhaps a sign of distress. Or maybe… something else…

Heard something rustle behind me. Nothing there. Possibly squirrels. Possibly not.

Observed for 46 minutes. Stop.

~11:00am

Just as Mark closed the P.O.D. diary (he still hadn’t decided whether to commit to the tautological abbreviation or just call it “the P.O.D.”), a voice came from near the fire hydrant.

“Bird watching?”

Mark looked up. A man stood a few feet away, vaguely familiar—mid-thirties, athletic-ish build, tight-fitting dry-fit hoodie, and pushing a double stroller. Only one seat in the stroller was occupied, but not by a child—a small, well-groomed Shih Tzu sat upright, wearing what looked like a raincoat.

Mark hesitated. “Yeah,” he said, in a tone that betrayed his lack of conviction.

The man nodded like he wasn’t convinced either. “I quit birding in the neighborhood. Nothing but robins and cardinals. Sometimes the occasional hawk if you’re lucky.”

Mark offered a polite frown and puckered his lower lip slightly in acknowledgment, which felt, even as he did it, like an alien gesture.

The man waved vaguely toward the tarp setup with his coffee thermos. “You must’ve found something more interesting.”

Mark clicked his tongue softly. “Hmm,” he said. A nod. Then silence.

After a beat too long, the man glanced back down at his dog, as if checking for permission.

“Welp... I’ll let you get back to it,” he said, drawing out the last word like he wasn’t sure what it was.

Mark waited a few seconds after the man and his dog-stroller disappeared down the curve of Ashford Lane. Just long enough to be sure the man wasn’t still watching. Then Mark turned back toward the tree, adjusted his chair, and sat down heavily under the tarp—like the interaction had winded him more than he’d expected.

~11:15am

Mark wiped his palms on his shorts. Picked up the monocular. Focused.

From the corner of his eye, a quick glint.

Like sunlight off metal, something skimmed across the bark and vanished. 

The branch looked wet for half a second, as if submerged in a wave.

Three fish, as always.

Then… maybe five?

He adjusted the focus ring. The image sharpened. 

Two more shapes—just off-center. Hovering, or maybe just imagined.

Mark blinked. Looked again. Back to three. 

He exhaled through his nose. Then slowly reached for the notebook. 

He sketched the branch. 

All five positions. Labeled A through E. D and E with question marks.

Maybe the latest two weren’t new at all—just newly noticed. Or newly needed. 

He lifted the monocular again.

Three.

No movement. No shimmer. 

Just three unblinking fish, suspended like they had been since the beginning.

He looked up. Five fish again—he was almost sure of it.

Mark stood very still, with monocular in hand. 

Then, slowly, the leftmost fish tilted its head.

Day 5

He hadn’t planned to stay overnight—that much was clear from the fact he’d used a towel as a blanket and a folded hoodie as a pillow. But after the potential appearance of two additional fish, Mark wasn’t about to abandon his post. It had become imperative to keep watch over the fish for as long as his mental stamina—and what little moonlight there was—would allow.

After a full day of near-religious diary entries with almost nothing to report, he estimated it was sometime past 2 a.m. when he finally fell asleep. His last P.O.D. entry was from 1:13 a.m., though it wasn’t particularly helpful—the angle of the moonlight was wrong, and the new moon had only been four days ago, which didn’t make for ideal conditions. Still, he kept the monocular trained on the branch for most of the night, waiting for something. Anything. Even the continued absence of change felt noteworthy. 

4:12am

He was woken by the first cardinal call—sharp, staccato bursts that sounded less like birdsong and more like shouting. Mark blinked, reached for the stopwatch, and clicked the start button with his thumb.

He’d decided the night before: today he would log a P.O.D. entry every five minutes, with fuller updates at the top and bottom of each hour. It felt like a system. Systems helped.

He started at 4:12 a.m., though most noted little more than darkness and silence until dawn began illuminating the leaves a little before 6 o’clock:

July 8; 6:02 a.m. – P.O.D. Entry #17

Weather: Overcast; 68oF; humidity 73%

Observations: 

Hard to tell if I’m recording phenomena or creating it by observing.

I’m beginning to worry I’m not documenting a mystery — just preserving a moment before it vanishes.

Stop.

As the day progressed, Mark’s 6:02 a.m. entry started to feel more accurate than he was comfortable admitting. He began noticing what looked like side-glances from the fish—subtle shifts in gaze, just enough to suggest awareness. At one point, all three began a slight wriggle in a syncopated rhythm, as if putting on a performance. Or an exhibition. For him.

3:11pm

Mark stepped away from the monocular for a breather and headed to the cooler, where he proceeded to dunk his head in the ice bath—as if bobbing for bottled water. The cold water dripped down his back and shoulders, jolting him awake. 

He swallowed a protein bar in nearly one bite, washed it down with instant coffee mixed into a bottle of lukewarm water, and retook his seat beneath the tarp. He felt like a boxer back from his corner, reentering the ring for another round.

Mark glanced down at his diagram of the five fish from yesterday and then peered through the monocular. Fish D and E were gone as expected. But no sign of Fish B? He checked the ground. Nothing had fallen. Then the monocular. Still no Fish B.

He considered that perhaps it was hidden—finally making some sort of considerable movement. The two remaining fish gave a slow, synchronized flick of their tails, then angled their bodies toward him, holding the pose like a portrait.

That was all the reason he needed.

Mark stood up, pacing with his hands on his hips, weighing whether it was really appropriate for a grown man to randomly scale his neighbor’s magnolia tree—especially under these circumstances. The answer, of course, was no. But he dismissed the internal debate almost immediately and started walking.

He didn’t slow as he reached the trunk. It was like walking up a wall—like an old cartoon where the character turns a perfect right angle and just keeps going upward. By the time he was halfway up, he hadn’t even realized he was climbing. The fish were his destination, and the tree, like the ground, was just another part of the path that led to them.

Mark heard them before he saw them. A faint rustle. A few green leaves knocked loose. The fish shimmied away as he approached—flapping their tails like Rockettes in a kickline—until they reached the end of the branch. He got within six feet of them. Close enough to almost reach out. Close enough for Fish A to make unmistakable eye contact.

Before he could even do a doubletake, their arrangement changed—spread farther apart, then bunched close enough to almost touch—without any sign of motion. Each shift left a faint shimmer in the air, like heat over asphalt.

Then, Fish A spat. A stream of cold, pond-like water hit him square in the face. The smell followed. It was the smell of algae and stagnant water: familiar, mostly harmless, and with a hint of quiet sadness.

Water dripped into his collar, gritty with sand. His shoes scraped as they slipped against the bark, sending dull vibrations up his leg. 

Mark experienced the fall in slow motion. The world tilted, leaves flashing past like scales in sudden light. With time at a crawl, he glanced up at the tree. There were five fish again. Then ten. Then more than he could count. 

Somewhere nearby, a dog barked. A lawnmower hummed. Still, the fish multiplied.

As the ground broke his fall, he felt his body arrive in pieces—the right foot first, then the rest, in no particular order. His stopwatch necklace snapped against his cheekbone, the pain quick and sharp. The thud of his body was followed by a carnival of wet smacks—like a bag of flour being slapped without rhythm or reason. The sound of trout landing all around him.

Before losing consciousness, Mark tried to keep count of them as they fell. He made it to forty-three.

Mark blinked through the haze; the grass of lot 77 faded away into a painted surface. 

Above him, the tree is gone. It’s just the three fish, suspended in midair where they’ve always been—like kites on an invisible string. Unmoving.

A neighbor’s sprinkler hisses, sound bending until it’s indistinguishable from the scrape of plastic across concrete. 

Mark looks down and realizes he’s lying on a shuffleboard court—his head nestled in the tip of the triangle, as if resting on a pillow worth ten points. Leaf-shaped pucks are gliding toward him, pushed by the shadow of someone he doesn’t recognize.

As the leaves draw closer, he notices the light glinting off them isn’t from their waxy surface. It’s from the hundreds of silvery scales covering both sides.

The shadow gestures toward the fish—still floating, right where the tree should be—then turns slightly, just enough to speak:

“You didn’t imagine them. You gave them shape.”

Mark was jolted awake by a light, almost friendly, slap to his face. He recognized the person standing over him as a neighbor—the resident of lot 77. The neighbor was sturdy in that suburban way—soft in the middle, solid everywhere else. Polo tucked into cargo shorts, work gloves in his pocket, grass-stained sneakers. He looked like the type who spent half his life on his lawn, the other half at his window.

Mark, usually incapable of lying too quickly, stuttered something about having dropped his monocular. Even as he said it, he realized it made no sense—no one brought a monocular into a tree. But the man didn’t challenge him.

Instead, the man nodded toward the magnolia. The tree was back, but the fish were gone.

“Been watching you out here from my dining room window,” the man said. “My wife figured you were measuring property lines.” The man’s tone was more matter-of-fact than mocking, the way someone might note the weather. “Whatever you’ve spotted,” he continued, while running his hand across the divot in his lawn from Mark’s landing, “enjoy it now. Tree’s coming down tomorrow.” Then, nodding toward the orange spray paint: “Roots are pushing on the gas line.”

The man lingered a beat and, almost as an afterthought, added: “Funny what can catch your eye and not let go.” He stood, offered Mark a hand that wasn’t accepted, and then left without waiting for a reply.

Day 6

Mark woke to the sound of chainsaws. He’d slept under the tarp again, though he again didn’t remember deciding to. His neck ached. Pine straw clung to his clothes.

The noise came from the direction of the tree, where Mark saw county workers in high-vis vests circling the magnolia, already well into the job. They were disassembling it methodically, feeding limbs into the chipper like it was any other Wednesday.

Mark stayed where he was, watching from beneath his makeshift canopy. What disturbed him wasn’t the cutting, it was the ease—the way they handled the branches like overgrown trash, never looking up.

By the time the last limb was gone, the workers had already started packing up. No one mentioned the fish. No one even looked twice at the thick branch lying in the grass. Mark recognized it immediately from his sketch in the P.O.D. But it was just wood now—splintered and forgettable.

Mark stayed after the trucks pulled away, standing across the street with his hands in his pockets, unsure what he was waiting for exactly. Some movement. Some shimmer. Some trace. But the air was still. The magnolia’s absence felt surgical. The fish were gone, as if they never existed.

A man passed on foot. Mid-fifties. Neutral face. Windbreaker zipped high. He slowed as he reached the spot where the tree had stood. Looked up, then down. Not at Mark. Just at the space.

“Didn’t expect it to feel so empty,” the man said, mostly to himself. He glanced at Mark, with just a flicker of acknowledgement, and then walked on.

Mark didn’t follow. Didn’t turn. He just watched until the man vanished around the corner. Then he left, taking the long way home.

Day 7

The next morning, Mark didn’t go for his usual walk. He didn’t even make it to the end of his driveway. At his mailbox—powder-coated black, same as the rest—he paused. Nothing inside. He stood there for a long time, one hand on the cold metal edge, as if expecting a letter to arrive late.

Inside, he made coffee he didn’t drink and watched the wind stir the trees across the street. Their leaves fluttered like always, but today they looked more alive. His P.O.D. sat nearby on the kitchen table, closed. 

Mark just sat there quietly, missing… something? Whether it was the tree, the fish, or just the act of recording it all—he couldn’t say.

James Henry Hils is a pseudonymous fiction writer and technology attorney based in Atlanta, GA. He is currently at work on his debut manuscript of literary fiction.