You Wish! (a parody of "The...

I swallowed the worm and immediately felt a sharp pain in my throat. Aw, not again!

A violent jerk pulled me above the water. I turned to the overalls-clad fisherman at the other end of the rod and wriggled my tail. I screamed, best I could with a hook in my lip, "No! Don't eat me!"

The pier fisherman jumped in surprise, and I swayed wildly on his line. "Aaak! Demon fish!" He looked around the pier and picked up a heavy stick. "It must be destroyed!"

I struggled to get my fins together and hoped the fisherman would realize this was an attempt at praying for mercy. "I'm not a demon, I'm a magic fish. I can grant you a wish."

The fisherman put down the stick but appeared otherwise unconvinced. "And then what? I forfeit my soul?"

"No, Fisherman, nothing like that. All I want is for you to throw me back!"

He frowned. "First of all, the name's Fred. And as I recall, you first said not to eat you. Now you want more. You want to be thrown back."

"Kind of the same thing, isn't it, Fred?"

"Not really. Maybe I didn't want to eat you. Maybe I wanted to hide you in my neighbor's house. So I can stand off and snicker while he's trying to figure out where the smell is coming from."

"If you hate him that much, I could turn him into a goose for you."

"I don't hate him. That was just a for-instance. The point is, I don't like where this is going. You keep changing the deal."

I groaned, then twitched from the hook poking into my throat. "Listen, you're not understanding me. I can grant you anything you ask."

"And you don't want my soul."

I shook my head. And most of my body.

Fred glared at me, then shrugged. "All right, I want a bigger house."

"Okay. Good choice, Fred."

Fred held up a hand. "Whoa—and when I say bigger, I don't mean by a brick or two."

"All right."

"And I also don't mean bigger like the one on top of the beanstalk, you understand me? I want a mansion for normal-size people."

"I got it. I got it." I curled up my tail and concentrated. "Okay, it's done."

"What, that's it?"

"Pretty much." I smiled. "So, can I go back now?"

Fred's brow furrowed. "Let's . . . take a little walk first." He picked up his tackle box and carried the pole—and me—back to shore. "I'd rather not show up at my old shack and tell my wife I let our dinner go because it said we were living in a mansion now."

"Uh . . . okay." I forced a smile, but with the fierce sun beating on my fast-drying scales, I started to wish I could sweat.

He reached the road. "And so we're clear, Demon Fish, I didn't promise you my soul."

"I'm not a demon!" I choked the dust out of my gills. "My name is Iggy!"

"Whatever, Ig. Sounds like a demon name to me."

As we approached a small shack, Fred frowned. "What do you know, Igs? Looks like the same old place to me."

"Well, yeah. For now."

"For now? Back at the pier you said it was done!"

"I meant it would be done." I shrugged my fins. "It, uh, usually takes overnight."

Fred's face turned as red as I imagined my scales were getting in this heat.

"Listen, I'll stay with you until it happens. Just put me in a bucket or a tea kettle or something. Come midnight—or maybe it's sunrise, I forget which—"

Fred jammed the handle of the pole down into the moist dirt. The rod stuck up vertically, and I dangled from the end.

He shook his fists. "First it's don't eat me. Then it's throw me back. Now I have to put your smelly carcass into a perfectly good tea kettle—"

The squealing of a stocky woman running from the shack interrupted him. "Fred! We've just won the lottery!"

I smiled at Fred. "There. It's happening already."

The woman shrieked. "Aaak! Demon fish!"

I sighed. Did I have to go through it again?

As the woman reached for a large rock, Fred stopped her. "Madge, it isn't a demon. It's a magic fish named Iggy." He looked at me. "Or so he says."

I'd been trying to conserve my voice, but I had to speak up. "But, the lottery!"

"Oh, you're going to take credit for that?" Madge leaned over to my eye level and grinned. "I've played Mama's prison number every week for the last six years. Always knew she'd pay us back somehow. It's been my life's wish."

"See? Wish granted."

Fred yanked up on the line. "But they picked the winning numbers before I wished. And besides, that wasn't what I wished for."

Madge scowled. "You made a wish? Don't tell me—a bigger house?"

Fred rolled his eyes. "Well . . ."

Madge waved her arms. "How many times do I have to tell you, Fred? A big house just isn't worth the upkeep! And besides, I've finally got seed money so I can run for mayor. How will I ever convince the townspeople I'm one of them if we don't live in this miserable shack?"

Clasping his hands, Fred looked down. "I'm sorry, Madge, I guess I wasn't thinking . . ."

Straining my gills, I entreated Madge. "You . . . want to . . . be a leader? I . . . can . . . make you . . . queen . . ."

"Queen? Don't be ridiculous. Queens always get overthrown, it's a fact of history." Madge swatted me away.

As I swung like a pendulum, I gasped out my last desperate plea. "Okay. I . . . don't . . . us-u-al-ly . . . do . . . this . . . but . . . do . . . you . . . want . . . to . . . be . . . like . . . God?"

Madge turned back to me. "Why would I want to be like cod?"

I flapped my jaw, but my throat was dry. No more sound came out. Fred and Madge stared at me for about a minute until I'd stopped swinging.

Finally, I heard Madge break the silence. "Whew. Didn't think he'd ever shut up."

Fred pulled a knife from his tackle box, and I quivered. "Shall I start cleaning him?"

"Nah, he's such a liar, he probably tastes terrible. Throw him back."