It was a cloudy day when a friend of a friend walked down by the loch with his fishing pole. He wasn’t planning on fishing. Not exactly. He felt a presence near him, though he wasn’t sure if someone else was there. Perhaps the presence pervaded the lake. That would be splendid, indeed. Perfect, given his circumstances. 

A stick cracks behind him. Someone is there. Someone is walking up behind him. The man jerks around quickly, holding his fishing pole up at his chest like some sacred weapon to ward off whatever awaits him. Nothing is there. He squints at the distance, spotting a stray goat, and nothing more. He hears something behind him again, and jerks back the way he was facing towards the water. It was empty and vast, and he knelt down in the dirt to touch the water. It was cold, and his hand burned in its raging chill. He felt a salmon nip at his hand, and he whipped it around in an attempt to grab the fish. It only barely escaped his hand. 

The place was strangely empty. Usually it was bustling with people, hoping to get a picture of the water or go fishing or catch a glimpse at the Loch Ness Monster, which the man was convinced was fake. But waters had been receding and freezing and the snow had just melted into the dirt, and it’d be strange if anyone actually wanted to come. 

Still, the man couldn’t shake the feeling that someone– something was there, watching him. He heard it again: a crunch of the broken grass and the breaking of a stick. What animal was out here, circling him? He stood, cracking his strained back. It was windy, and the creases in his face coursed with the cooled air, making him feel ethereal. He turned slowly, hearing the footsteps of something that had to be invisible. 

“I know you’re there,” he called out, in a voice that was deep and booming. He heard the goat jump away at his sonorous sound. “I am not afraid.”

He was afraid.

The sound of crunching, sloshing steps got louder and closer, waltzing toward him like a song, slowly, step by step, bouncing and dancing at him. He couldn’t see where it was coming from. He looked around. There didn’t seem to be anyone there. 

Suddenly, something poked his back. Something small, and pointy, with its own tip top and stick. He could feel the tip of a fishing pole on his skin. 

“Marty,” a masculine voice rang out jovially, from only a few feet behind him. The man– Marty– lurched forward and spun around, only to see his old buddy Acheron offering him a handshake. Marty analyzed his shirt: synthetic polyester, clearly. A strange fishing shirt. A terrible fishing shirt. It was blue, and he wore a vest over it, with chemicals that Marty was sure he had been pouring into the water to attract fish. It disgusted him. 

He took Acheron’s hand, still. His grasp was firm, and he looked young and cleanly shaven, though Marty knew they were the same age. His hair was cleanly brown, with not a gray bit in sight. His smile was friendly, he knew, but it was brief, because his expression stayed stern and cruel. Marty wasn’t sure how his old friend Acher had recognized him. Clearly staying just behind him, he hadn’t even seen his face, which he was sure was unrecognizable after ten years either way. Time had done him wrong. Previously a handsome young man, an unruly gray beard enveloped the lower half of his face, and the hair on his head was falling out. His eyes and hands were creased, and he stood with a slight hunch. Marty had grown old. 

Acheron laughed. “Good to see you, old friend,” he bellowed, his accent thick. “You look, eh,” he stammered. “Different.” Marty squinted his eyes, wrapping his cellulose coat tighter around him. 

“What are you doing out here on a day like this? It’s cold.” Marty asked, putting a hand on Acher’s bare forearm. It was covered in hair. Acheron squinted at him.

“What are you doing out here chittering? I don’t think there are any fish here today. I’ve tried, but I got nothing up north of the Loch.” Marty stared at the tip of his finger that had been nipped by the salmon only moments before. There were definitely fish. But that wasn’t why he was here. 

“I’m here for The Scotsman. Reporting for Nessie sightings. Haven’t seen anything though. I don’t believe it. Gotta keep an eye out still.” He stared out at the water while speaking in an almost sovereign way, though truly he just decided to avoid eye contact with Acheron. Acheron just grunted, and walked a few feet to the edge of the water, nearly still, rippling through the center. He knelt down just as Marty had a few moments earlier. He brushed his hand over the surface, feeling the movement, and brought his knee to his chest. 

“More fish over here,” Acher commented to nobody in particular. Marty thought he was just talking to himself. A breeze picked up, and Marty watched as Acheron’s shirt blew in the wind underneath his vest. He could only imagine the bits of fibers that fell into the water. 

A fish mouth peeked through the surface. Another salmon. Marty thought Acheron might try to grab it with his bare hands. The atmosphere was angry. It was sad and cold, and Marty was drained. Acheron seemed like a cruel villain, in his deadly shirt, wrapped in evil substances. Wind blew harder. Acheron pulled a small glass bottle from a pocket on his chest. It was glass, with a thin neck and a cork on top. Marty was sure it had once held a liquor of some kind. Acheron popped the cork and poured an unnaturally bright blue liquid into the water, and it spread throughout. As he leaned forward, his knee cracked a bottle in another one of his chest pockets, and a red liquid exploded on his shirt. He winced.

What seemed like hundreds of fish began to come to the surface, racing and fighting for this attractant as it sank to the bottom and flowed outward to the middle. Marty gasped as two small trouts died and rose to the surface. Acheron took his net and scooped up probably fifty fish– half dead– and put them in a little plastic box. He sighed angrily as he set it off to the side and began to take off his shirt. Marty watched in disbelief as he took it over his head, bare-chested in the cold weather, and began to wash the red off his shirt in the water. Fish were attracted and nipped at his fabric. Marty could see threads and fibers fall off his shirt and float out towards the depths of the loch. He yelped.

“Lord, laddie!” Acheron turned back. “You’re going to infect the waters with your horrid microfiber shirt, ya nyaff!” Marty stormed toward him, ripped the shirt from his hands, and stuffed it in one of his large coat pockets. 

“Ah, gee Marty. It’s cold. I want my shirt back.” He stood up. “Just here for the paper, eh?” He ripped a pen from Marty’s hand. “Put this in the paper!” Acheron broke the pen in half and threw it into the middle of the loch, raining black ink on its way down. Marty gaped. Acheron reached in Marty’s coat pocket, grabbing his shirt quickly and throwing it into the water with the pen. Marty ripped the black wooden-fiber gloves off his hands and threw them on the ground. He watched them break into bits,  bursting with life. Acher’s face was tense, like a small angry child. He huffed and his head turned red, the rest of his body a pasty, pale white, only worsened by the cold. 

“Lookin’ a wee bit peely-wally,” he said, and with his now bare hands, Marty pushed Acheron. He tripped on the gravelly sand and fell backwards into a shallow bit of the water. Acher seethed with anger and stumbled over his feet getting up. Marty glanced at the sky. It was going to rain. A pale gray enveloped them, and fog was rolling in over the water. A dreich day, indeed. He wasn’t prepared when Acheron had gotten up and reciprocated his push, shoving him towards tall weeds in the near distance. He grunted raspily. The creases on his face creased further.

“You’re the reason anemones are suffocating! Fish are getting cancer from this!” Marty yelled crossly. 

“You’re dramatizing this!” Acheron yelled back as they wrestled with each other’s arms in the air. Marty knew he was dramatizing this. He knew he was acting childish. He didn’t care.

Suddenly, fog rolled over their heads, covering the expanse of the loch. Marty could hear whistles and moans come from the liquid domain– pitch black now and diluted by the clouds that hit the ground. The wind whistled in their ears, and their arms relaxed as Acheron turned around to examine the place. Clear only moments before, it felt like a mystifying deity had just passed, leaving its soul to weep over the water. Then a trunk— no, a neck— poked out of the water in the distance. Marty gasped. He could see its slick head, round, unlike anything he’d ever seen in Loch Ness. In fact, it was unlike anything he’d ever seen before at all. Except in pictures and tales. 

“Nessie,” he whispered in awe. Acheron stood, body towards Marty, head towards the water, with his face long and his mouth agape. Nessie waded through the water, twisting her neck, whistling and moaning a sacred tune that was carried through the air. She dipped her head beneath the surface, came up for air, and passed out. Nessie was not real. Not anymore. 

***

Reporters came once Marty’s paper was published. It had been a week since Marty had watched the passing of the infamous Loch Ness Monster, and he stood surrounded by reporters and scientists on the shore of the loch as they stared down at Nessie’s bloated corpse. Acheron was there. Marty shot him a harsh glare. Trucks pulled up on the shore and men in bulky hazmat suits came  up to the carcass, put it on a mat, and dragged it into the back of the large white truck. The smell was wretched and Marty knew his face was as white as a sheet. He coughed as the large body was transported. His eyes burned in its horrid air. 

“What killed it?” A woman walked up to Marty. Her voice was high. Her accent was foreign, and she stumbled on her toes as her heeled shoes caught on the thick stony gravel. Curly red hair bounced on her shoulders as she spoke. She angered him. Marty sighed.

“We don’t know, exactly,” he answered, aggravated. “Why do you think we’re doing a necropsy?” She stared at him as he spoke into her microphone. “But for such an ancient, legendary beastie, we’re sure it can’t have been natural.”

As he got into his broken little car off the shore of the loch, the reporters followed him, getting in their little cars and extravagant limousines around him. They were headed to the lab, where Nessie would be opened and gutted on a silvery, sterilized table. The air was heavy, but it was sunnier now— sunny as it could be in the depths of the winter. The atmosphere was cold, but the sun beating down on their faces was the first pure warmth they had experienced in what felt like years. Acheron sat in the passenger seat of Marty’s old convertible. The moment was tense. Marty knew what he was thinking.

Had Acheron killed Nessie? Was it a fisherman, perhaps? Maybe it was the actions of the world as a whole. They were about to find out, and Marty couldn’t fear it more.

They approached the lab, the others trailing behind them. It looked like a large gray cinder block with windows. Clouds rumbled overhead, blocking the sun from touching their skin once more and warning rain. Marty and Acheron rushed out of the car and into the lobby of the building, wanting by all means to avoid the rain. They sat in chairs next to each other, still bitter, waiting for service as reporters piled in. The walls were gray-painted brick and the floor was a sleek white tile, and there was a woman filing papers and clacking keys on a computer behind a rounded desk in front of them. She didn’t look up until reporters stampeded in the small room and squabbled over who got to ask Marty questions. She tapped the tip of her pen against her clipboard and snapped a bubble of gum.

“Martin, er,” She sighed. “Aitkin?” She drew out the last syllable of Marty’s surname then continued to chew loudly on her gum as she looked back down at her clipboard. Marty had walked up to the desk in front of her, Acheron trailing closely behind in an attempt to escape the smothering crowd.

“Yes, that’s me,” Marty told her, avoiding eye contact as she looked up at him. 

“We were,” she paused to blow a bubble with her gum, which promptly popped as she began to speak again. “Expecting you.” She looked back down and pointed to a hallway. “104.” 

“Can Acheron tag along?”

“Mm.” 

Marty rolled his eyes and started towards the hallway. Acheron followed. And when the crowd tried to follow Acheron, the woman finally looked back up from the clipboard. “Hey, hey! No no no no no no no no no!” Marty could hear her shout in the distance as he rushed down the hall. 

Away from the crowd and the commotion, Acher walked alongside Marty down a seemingly endless hallway. The walls continued in a gray brick, though the tile of the lobby had tapered off into a professional-looking dark gray carpet. The lights were dim and flickered overhead, and a soft buzzing pervaded their surroundings. It rang in Marty’s ears, reverberating throughout his skull and uniting with his heartbeat, which pounded against his eardrums. He thought he might go insane. There were no windows, and the place was in utter silence, but Marty knew it was raining. 

99, 100, 101, 102, 103… There! 104. 

Marty counted the doors silently under his breath as they passed. His head twisted to the side with each one. Each door was the same smooth dark metal that complimented the carpet. It was unsettling. Marty thought he might have lost his eye for color until he came upon room 104, and opened the door to see Nessie’s large gray-blue body, splattered in red, laying dead as ever on a lavishly big table. A window was placed in the center of the wall. Marty was right. It was raining. He was cruelly bombarded with the dead stink of the beast upon entering the room; it was terrible, and a worker in a mask came up and offered masks to the two men. Of course, they accepted happily.  

Gray metal cabinets on either side of the window enclosed a cabinet under the window made of the same metal. All daylight was siphoned through the small opening, and the light overhead was blinding and fluorescent. Marty squinted. Leaving a space for Marty and Acheron to watch the procedure, medical professionals, scientists, and apprentices surrounded the table with scalpels and metal sticks and jars and headlights, preparing to cut into Nessie’s corpse.

They poked around at her skin— small scales. Some had fallen off already, gruesomely exposing her soft skin and muscle tissues. It was a terrible sight. Marty did not want to be here. He had no choice, though. He was instructed to write a report on the necropsy— to observe it himself— and he would surely lose his job if didn’t. 

Marty grasped Acheron’s hand tightly as a man in scrubs began to cut into the beast’s belly. He felt the blood drain from his skin, and thought he might pass out. Acher looked intrigued, and glanced quickly over at Marty, concerned, who thought he was actually going to die at the sight of this beast’s dead insides. His mustache curled up over his lips as if it were alive. 

“We’ve already examined her CNS,” a woman in a lab coat commented.

“Hm?” Marty heard her. He just couldn’t respond. His head throbbed.

“She has no adverse neurological conditions. Her central nervous system is in great shape— well, the best shape it can be in considering her circumstances.”

“Oh,” he tried his hardest to force a smile, but his beard just twitched. “Wonderful.”

“We believe she might have consumed something, or came in contact with some sort of chemical. Confusing, though, because we’ve monitored the loch closely. There haven’t been any extreme solutions poured in, other than fishing liquids and bloods.” Marty shot a glare at Acheron, who loosened his grasp on Marty’s hand and seemed to slump further into his shirt. 

“Let’s just hope it was old age.” Marty looked back down at the floor, as if looking away could lessen the persistent squelching noises. 

“Oh, look at this,” one of the doctors performing the operation whispered to the doctor next to her. She pointed at something inside of Nessie with a small metal tool. The doctor next to her furrowed his brow. 

“Is that–” he muttered. She looked up and nodded. 

“What’re you seeing?” Marty asked, pulling his notepad back out. The man turned his head from the woman and towards him.

“Come look,” he gestured for him to come. 

“Oh, I’d rather not–” Acheron let go of his hand and shoved him toward the animal. He stumbled woozily, feeling sick from the scent of death in the room, and grasped the metal table the beast lay on to regain his balance. The doctor gestured at him, then pointed at some stringy material in what appeared to be where Nessie’s blood would flow. 

“Microplastics,” the woman doctor commented. She took tweezers and pulled out a clump of tiny clear fibers. “They’re acrylic and polyester fibers. The kind you’d find in your shirt.” Marty was leaning over the gruesome thing, and he could see more of the fibers lining her insides. He felt his eyes tear up. Maybe because he was looking at the terrible death of a sacred beast, or maybe because her skin particles had gotten in his peepers. Either way, he had to straighten his back when he felt the salty liquid begin to drip down his face. 

He stepped back. “We’ve been finding them more and more in water creatures lately,” the woman said. Marty grabbed the wall behind him as he staggered, imagining the many several animals’ guts they see on the daily. He wondered how many had ingested plastic fibers. A lot, he imagined. Acheron raised an eyebrow at him, and Marty stared at his shirt. Synthetic polyester once again; the same fibers they found inside Nessie. 

“I know,” Marty said, slightly aggravated, readjusting his posture to stand tall and professional. “It’s why I only dress in cellulose-based clothing.” The doctors glanced at their coats and scrubs, probably made of the same material they were villainizing. 

Marty grabbed Acher’s hand once more as they began to cut into her digestive tract. It was green and yellow and red and they cut through the layers. A couple scientists holding clipboards muttered to themselves indecipherably, as their pens moved rapidly on the paper. Marty was grateful for its scraping noise: it gave him something to focus on over the muddy sound of poking at organs. He shivered. 

“Oh!” A doctor exclaimed. “Oh, this is most peculiar.” Taking tweezers in his hand, he lifted out a large chain of the same substance that was in her bloodstream. Microfibers. Another doctor held a small plastic dish underneath the whopping clump and the first doctor lowered it in, then poked around at it for a moment before it was taken away. 

“Were those microfibers? How long were they accumulating in her digestive tract?” A young woman with a clipboard asked. 

“Months, I’d think,” the doctor replied. “We’ll send it to the lab for testing.” Marty looked over at Acheron, who furrowed his brow in concern as he glanced down at his shirt. Marty squeezed his hand reassuringly. In anger. In trust. He knew that Acheron knew now what he had done.

But it wasn’t just him. And it wasn’t just Nessie. Staring at the clump of death that had accumulated inside the Loch Ness Monster, visions of thousands of fish and anemones that died and fisherman and citizens in their lethal shirts danced around in the heads of those who stood in front of the dead beast. When they would get home, they knew they’d bag and throw their clothes away. And they feared.