In the back of the muddy white Dodge pickup, the lifeless 34 pound salmon lay there drying up like one of the dull yellow banana chip slices, I had been craving since early afternoon on the car ride home. The long and thin freshly bought fillet knife with a cherry red rubber handle was carelessly plunged into the eye socket of the aquatic beast. The knife prying up the black emotionless eye seemed to release all the stench and foulness stewing and growing in the seemingly freshly dead creature. The smell, to be quite honest, made my bright red, sensitive, sun burnt nose wrinkle as the smell slithered like a sleek, sneaky vomit green African vine snake.

As I watched my uncle Garret rip the eye out of the already blood pooled, dark red hole of the eye socket, I remembered him saying, “Well 40 bucks huh? I guess that’s a reasonable amount of money for a 3rd grade boy.”

“It sure is! Should we shake on it, like real men do?” I said confidently. Our hands clapped together and firmly squeezed until I could see under my fingernails the red rushing out of them like the receding tides of the ocean we had been fishing at for so many hours.

After going over the bet once more to re-assure myself I wasn’t getting cheated, I held the ping pong sized eye in my hand and felt it drain its moisture and slime into the rough canyon-like cracks in my dry palms. I hesitantly raised my arm to my open mouth and could feel the sludge from the first layer of the eye scrape onto my sensitive bottom teeth. I couldn’t help from getting little hard goose bumps from hearing the crunch and cracks coming from in between the back of my jaws. It made me think of eating an extremely fat and gristle covered BBQ’d rib. After pushing the half chewed chunky eye down my throat with the back of my tongue, I quickly grabbed my grape soda and felt the suds enter and rid my mouth of the left over slime. Once I grabbed the two crumpled twenty’s from my uncles huge dirty hand, I sat and smiled while shivering from the thought of the experience.