Free The End of the World by Paddy O'Reilly

two hours a day now. We had booked into a health resort and I lay in the spa pool alone each morning. The glass walls enclosing the spa room were greasy from the constant rain. Roy sat on a chaise longue at the side of the pool and read to me from the newspaper. He thought the water might relax my muscles, but it only sapped me of liquid and left me cramped and wrinkled. I told him I didn’t want to do it anymore and he started to sob.
    ‘I don’t know what to do for you,’ he shouted at me, as if it was my fault.
    ‘Get my mother,’ I shouted back. ‘Or take me to her.’
    Roy cringed. He had never heard me shout before. My voice was so loud that the staff in the next room fell silent. Roy looked into the murky blue of the pool.
    ‘I tried,’ he said. ‘She’s not interested. You should forget about her,’ he said, still not looking at me.
    I watched my skin wrinkling in the water, the white ridges forming on my fingers, the fine hairs on my arms drifting in the current. Roy pulled off his shoes and socks, then his suit and his shirt and tie. He waded into the pool with his boxer shorts billowing around his skinny legs. He came to where I sat on the floor of the pool and he slung his arms around my neck and floated above me in the water.
    ‘FutureGirl,’ he said softly. ‘FutureGirlbaby.’
    I felt a lurch of love for him. He knew how small I felt inside. A tiny essence encumbered with a big, stubborn, beautiful body.
    ‘What am I, Roy? Was I made for something, some reason?’ I whispered, sniffing the sharp scent of his hair and the chlorine in the air.
    ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’
    He lifted his arm to reach further around me and the water slapped against my chest. I looked down and, as I watched the waves lapping at my breasts, I noticed the new bluish tinge to my skin.
    ‘I’m blue, Roy,’ I said.
    ‘Your heart’s wearing out, FutureGirl,’ he whispered.
    I leaned my head back on the rim of the pool. Roy’s hands touched the small of my back and lifted me to float in the water.

The Rules of Fishing
    ‘Obsession can lead to chaos,’ Mr Kato said to me once. We were sitting and rocking together, two men in a small boat off the coast of the island of Honshu.
    ‘Take me,’ he said. ‘I am obsessed with fishing. Fishing ruined my life, threw everything into chaos. Fishing got me thrown out of America, and then out of my job. Now I am a poor landlord. I have nothing left but fishing. Now I am a careful man.’
    I needed to distract Mr Kato. If I let him go on, I would hear another retelling of the story of his persecution in the US. When he lived in a backwoods town near a Japanese car factory in the States, Mr Kato regularly caught, fried up and ate members of several species of endangered fish. According to Mr Kato, the park ranger spied on him while pretending to befriend him, and the neighbours reported him only after they had sat at his table many times and enjoyed his hospitality–including dishes featuring the fish they supposedly wanted to protect.
    If he told that story again I would have to ask him once more–because he had never fully explained his actions–‘But why did you do it again, and then again?’ And he would look at me as though I was a fish, a stupid, ignorant fish, and tell me that only a Japanese could comprehend the principle of his act.
    ‘The Japanese have lived by fishing for centuries. It is our custom. It is our life. This is the way we learned to live,’ he would tell me. Then he would add, ‘But now, now I am careful.’
    ‘I was wondering, Mr Kato, are there any rips around here?’ I asked.
    ‘Rips?’ he said. ‘Rips? Paper rips? Rip offs?’
    ‘Strong currents, dangerous currents under the surface,’ I said.
    ‘Oh yes. All over Japan there are dangerous currents under the surface. Young men like you must take care,’ he answered, and laughed.
    The sea was slightly choppy that bright winter day. The boat dipped and rose under the