It's Still Life

Dead Men Don’t Drown: Epilogue

A Six Mystery

Every family spins a yarn and learns to live inside its shape, each retelling pulling the ends a little tighter… until someone starts bending the floorboards.

My name is Fenella, and my story begins beside the sea, where salt settles into windowpanes and door hinges alike, preserving some things while quietly erasing others.

But I learned that what disappears beneath the tide is not always what is lost. Truth behaves like the tide itself, leaving fragments in unexpected places while carrying the rest beyond witness.

Perhaps that is why old houses, forgotten objects and quiet harbours unsettle me; they never seem entirely empty, only waiting for someone to notice what has been left behind.

This is the story of two Wally Dogs, ceramic Staffordshire spaniels, a fisherman who never came ashore, and the day I discovered that dead men don’t drown.

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Note: Wally Dogs (aka sømandshunde) are Staffordshire ceramic spaniels traditionally sold in pairs. Popular with Scandinavian fishermen, they were brought home as gifts for their wives and placed in a window facing outward while the husband was at sea, then turned inward on his return. They later became known as “Love Dogs”, as their direction was said to signal whether a husband was home. They remain a familiar sight in fishing communities in Scandinavia and along parts of the Sussex coast.

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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “Yarn”  Some images created with Midjourney; all writing is authentically my own original work.©Misky 2006-2026.