Life Imitating Art: Eel Edition

Sometimes, a year after you write a horror story about two-headed eels in the Chicago River, a fisherman catches an eel in that same river:

Several local news outlets reported on the catch, because it’s kind of a big deal. It means good things about the health of Chicago’s once-polluted waterways. American eels are born in the North Atlantic ocean, and those suckers travel for years and years, miles upon miles, through the Great Lakes and other waterways, to reach their ultimate fresh-water destinations. According to Friends of the Chicago River, the Great Lakes population of American eels had declined more than 90% over the last 50 years due to habitat loss, dams, and overfishing. Now it might be coming back.

While writing “The River’s Revenge,” which appeared in Red Line: Chicago Horror Stories, I searched for the perfect critter to get caught in an underwater trap and scare the bejesus out of the people who found it. I quickly settled on eels, but my fictional eels’ two-headedness came later, when a song randomly led me into a store that sold me this ring:

That’s how creativity flows sometimes. You take inspiration from what you find around you.

Anyway, fisherman Ben Gorahschenko’s eel had only one head. But he threw it back to swim another day. So the next time you’re kayaking, pontoon-boating, or taking an architecture tour, keep an eye out. You might see one of these wiggly creatures yourself, and if you feed it some neon-green relish from your Chicago-style hot dog, who knows what could happen.