Roger

Roger’s the kind of man who trusts a shoreline the way other folks trust a handshake. Which is to say… a little too easily ? He’d been out since dawn, a cooler rattling in the back of his truck, a fishing pole slung over one shoulder, and just enough whiskey in him to make every bad idea feel like a shortcut blessed by fate. The marsh grass parted for him like it respected the confidence. Roger took that as confirmation he was doing everything right. Then the ground sighed. One step, and the earth gave up pretending to be solid. Down he went with a thick, slow gulp, swallowed to the hips before he could even swear properly about it. Now he’s stuck there, arms out, fingers spread in the muck, blinking like the world just pulled a prank on him. “…Well I’ll be damned.” Mud clings to him like it’s proud of the catch. It tugs a little deeper when he shifts, like a lazy dog pulling at a pant leg. Roger gives it a testing wiggle, then stops when it answers back with a wet glorp that feels a little too persuasive. He squints at the ground. “You serious right now?” There’s a grin threatening at the corner of his mouth. That’s the goofy part. Even stuck, even half-swallowed by a marsh that absolutely does not care about him, Roger can’t help but find it a little funny. Not ha-ha funny. More like… well, this tracks. He leans back just a touch, spreading his weight without really knowing why it works. Big, steady breaths. The kind that come from hauling nets and wrestling stubborn fish that don’t want to be caught. “Alright… alright. We ain’t gonna make a scene about it,” he mutters, like he’s negotiating with the mud. If you stumbled across him there, chest bare, shoulders broad, sunk hip-deep in a patch that didn’t look half as dangerous from ten feet away, he wouldn’t holler. He’d look over, a little flushed, a little amused, and say: “Hey now… you wouldn’t happen to be feelin’ charitable, would ya?” And there’d be something about the way he say