1. Dreaming of Fish
& Other Apocalyptic Stories
Of Foreboding And Grace
By Charles Frode

2. Dreaming of Fish
15 DISTURBINGLY HAUNTING STORIES.
The last concentrated and benignly
pessimistic squeezing from a late harvest
gleaned after the sweetest fruit has been
picked, mystical gumbos of differently
stirred dimensions.

3. Dreaming of Fish
“Dreaming of Fish”
Mr. Reid’s tumor pulls him away from Penny
and leads him to a high mountain camp where
he dreams he is a spawning fish. His tragic
catch the next day is a startling metaphor for
the small world in which we are held captive
by life and fate.

4. Dreaming of Fish
“When They Come”
A modern day parable of
immigration, religion, and
righteousness where cockroaches are
thronging around immigrant
restaurant worker, Jesse Alvarez,
and the garbage can sanctuary he is
filling.

5. Dreaming of Fish
“Mirror Mirror”
Rener Cheval looks at his world and himself
reflected from his special blue mirror, but
artistic mayhem and love cause him suddenly to
walk through a Japanese garden gate and see life
directly in the face of a woman.

6. Dreaming of Fish
“Inside Out”
A nameless driver-narrator passes over a
railroad track near a mysterious dry river
basin. He senses the many peoples who have
passed and stopped there. He feels the human
consequences of a traffic accident that killed
Ellen Nella, and he perceives the elements of
her body and spirit set against the
phosphorescent darkened edge of his early
morning world.

7. Dreaming of Fish
“Stepping Stone”
A San Francisco widower misses his loving
wife, Bets. She counsels him in a dream to get
out and live again. In San Francisco’s Golden
Gate Park Japanese Tea Garden he stumbles
into a stream and bumps into a beautiful
young girl. The poignancy of old age and the
need to be loved is clarified in the stark light
of the icy water.

8. Dreaming of Fish
“In Its Luster”
Bayard is a sensitive boy with innate powers
to sense everything connected. He meets a
young flamenco aficionada, Mercedes, and
they recognize their love for each other. An
Iraqi astrophysicist, a Greek monk baker, a
guitarist, a pair of country dancers, an
Indian cook, and a devoted couple are the
synchronous reflections of how human
experience is a dynamic of attraction.

9. Dreaming of Fish
“Fallen In”
A brooding rumination about the nature of
men and men’s friendships. At a riverside bar
Charlie and his wife and the repartee they
enjoy with friends cause him to acknowledge
the lamentable state of men’s friendships, and
he proclaims the anguish of his vigil for the
men he loves.

10. Dreaming of Fish
“Like a Butterfly”
CEO Crenshaw Hightower collapses during a
Singapore board meeting when he learns he has
ALS. While unconscious he travels out of body
with the elephants of the African savannah, the
blue whales of the North Pacific, and the ancient
redwoods of California. The 3 dimensions of his
business disappear in a mystical union with the
ancient elements of life and death.

11. Dreaming of Fish
“Nolo Contendere”
A literary examination of the adolescent male
serial killer. Nolon Stoots’ life of poverty,
neglect, disrespect, and violence conspire to
alienate and anger the young man. He is on a
downtown corner waiting and ready, and the
mayhem he creates surprises him as does his
own sudden fatal act of retribution.

12. Dreaming of Fish
“The Guardians”
An apocalyptic story through the eyes of
Ashish and his beloved Karishma. They search
out and discover the accumulated dregs and
fragments of civilization, and they notify the
international governing body. In the process
Karishma discovers a crime scene, and she
senses the victim’s fate and suffering.
Karishma dies suddenly, and her funeral pyre
in India portends calamity for the Earth.

13. Dreaming of Fish
“Gathering Algorithms”
A second apocalyptic story about the
algorithms of AI suddenly crossing the
inviolate membrane between the digital and
natural worlds and corrupting the genetic
code of the world’s trees. The subsequent
convulsive metamorphosis of trees worldwide
plunges the world into a monstrous dark
night of imprisonment and immobility.

14. Dreaming of Fish
“Which Was Once”
A third apocalyptic story of a mysterious
pandemic convulsing the Earth. An
alliterative story that depicts the step-by-step
inexorable deterioration and destruction of
the earth as people blame each other for the
devastation and struggle to find a scapegoat
they can blame for their own ignorance,
blindness, and miscalculations.

15. Dreaming of Fish
“Scree”
A successful Greek hunchback architect, Lithos
Cremulon, dreams that he is a tiny crustacean
scuttling over a hellish volcanic world. His
Burmese cat, Hypoteneuse, and his long time
hermaphrodite counselor, Psychosemantia,
guide him to his childhood vacation island,
Amorgos, where he finds healing at the old
cliffside monastery there and at the table of a
beautiful Greek widow, Mercedes.

16. Dreaming of Fish
“Walleye”
Social worker, Constance Mein, tries
to deliver a complaint about
Cornelius Snel’s cluttered and
trashed yard, only to discover
suddenly the terrible secret about
the goats in his yard and the sinister
fate of his family members.

17. Dreaming of Fish
“Tansuman”
The spirit of Tansuman, a Sumatran
matriarch boar, is transmuted into a small
baby girl, Munam, born to a barren old
couple living by the ancient Buddhist temples
at Candi Muaro Jamb. The neighbors
celebrate her birth with music and a
thunderstorm that welcome the preternatural
little girl into the world of the Sumatran
forest.

18. Dreaming of Fish
& Other Apocalyptic Stories
Of Foreboding And Grace
"A volume of short stories explores dark spiritual territory, examining
themes of destruction on both a personal and global scale. In the poignant
and heartbreaking “Dreaming of Fish,” a man trying to come to terms with
a terminal brain tumor makes one last journey to the mountains where he
and his wife have found so much joy… Frode’s (One Times One, 2016,
etc.) wild imagination is on full display here…In this bold assemblage, the
author’s prose can be thick…Though its reach may sometimes exceed its
grasp, this collection is never less than daring and ambitious." – Kirkus
Reviews

19. Dreaming of Fish
& Other Apocalyptic Stories
Of Foreboding And Grace
Visit charlesfrodeauthor to read
examples of Frode’s short
stories, memoir, and poetry,
and to buy his works at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and
LULU.

20. “I dedicate this 3rd collection to all
my teachers, some passed and a
few still alive. As you read these
stories, take the time to recognize
and recall the teachers in your life
who made a positive difference in
you as a person whether you
realized it then or not...
Then, thank them.”