Created by Ray Catfish
“It was a tale as old as the sea, of things that go bump under the waves, and a fish that took the bait.”
So shoot me.
I’m a sucker for stories like these, especially when they show a little wit. Not all of them do, of course, but “Farewell, My Lamprey,” a little bit of flotsam (or is it jetsam?) hit the spot.
It first appeared on our old pal Craig Terlson‘s writing Substack, attributed to — I shit thee not — Ray Catfish, whom Craig claims he’s “known” for years.
Uh-huh…
Anyway, it’s your typical anthropomorphic PI spoof, albeit one with a little more wink-wink than most. Private eye DICK FISH is, of course, a fish. And naturally he wears a fedora.
One day, he’s floating around his office in New Tide City when in swims Mrs. Lola Lamprey, a seductive dame with “more curves than the Marianas Trench.”
“And she knew how to use them,” Dick adds, just in case we were missing the point.
And we’re off to the races. There’s talk of “swimming with the sharks” and “spreading chum” and plenty of other fish-related metaphors, similes and gawd-awful puns. There are goon fish, a shifty Japanese spider crab, shark thugs, a jellyfish named Cairo, an erudite octopus named Cep “Fat Man” Gutman, and even a nightclub called The Sunken Frigate, where Diana Krill is “on stage, belting out her hit song ‘I Got You Under My Scales.’ ”
There’s betrayal, treachery, and more than a reasonable amount of trouble in store for Dick, plus more than a little whimsy, but it’s all in good fun, and supposedly a follow-up, “Red Herring,” is already in the works. There are also some enthusiastic blurbs from Henry Limpet and Charlie the Tuna, so it’s obviously all totally legit. Nothing fishy at all…
I guess I fell hook, line and sinker for this one…
SHORT STORIES
- “Farewell, My Lamprey” (March 2026, Craig Terlson Talks Story) | Read it!
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- “Oh mama I got dem cosmic anthropomorphic P.I. blues again…”
Going to the dogs and cats and worse…
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
Ahahahah…. yes, that was a super funny one!