in the aquarium
I
We were starving, and the grocery delivery was days late. My roommates and I had been bickering over who would call, who would be the best complainer in order to elicit the most swift response. I was given the duty, after a group vote, anonymously written down on paper and put into one of our empty serving bowls. They were all empty, so we had our choice. Someone thought that red would be the best. Another thought green. Finally, after agreeing that both colors were too reminiscent of the winter holidays - it was summer, and a really hot one which only added to our frayed nerves - so it was decided that the blue one would be best. It reminded us all of water, and seemed to temporarily cool us off, for a little anyhow.
After being told by the grocery operator that the delivery was scheduled and on its way, I had asked for an arrival estimate.
“We cannot tell, due to a variety of reasons,” the woman said to me, apparently tone deaf to her own lack of enthusiasm.
“But even a rough estimate? We’ve been waiting here for literally weeks, and we just need that delivery!”
“I’m sorry, but we cannot give you an estimate due to a variety of reasons.”
I hung up and reported back to the group that it was on its way, and we should be fine by dinner time. It was about late brunch hour at the time I said this, and I figured my own estimate was a safe one. Anything after that would be unusual business hours, even for delivery.
“Well, I for one can’t fucking wait for dinner!” someone said, but I couldn’t tell who. It was a guy, that I know.
“There must be some crackers or something somewhere,” one of the girls said. “Can’t we try to find something?”
“There’s nothing in this house. Nothing at all.”
That last one was the one I hated the most. He liked to show off, and always had an air about him that bugged a lot of us, but he always seemed to manage to pay his rent before the rest of us. He always seemed like he was gonna show us. He stood there against the kitchen wall like he was some kind of wall-genius, the only one who knew how to keep it up.
II
As the waiting continued, we tried to find things to do to pass the time.
I decided to visit with my favorite, the youngest girl in the house, I think she was 19, or 20. Young enough that she needed a fake ID to go out with us, I knew that.
She was sitting in her room, on her bed, watching the aquarium that she had brought from her childhood home. Inside, there were five fish, each one a different shape, color. Basically, five different fish.
“It’s really hot today,” I said, just sticking my head around the doorway.
“Yeah, it is.” She didn’t look away from her fishy gaze. Her voice sounded sweet, but a little dead. Like a too-ripe banana.
I watched her watch her fish swimming in circles, around and around each other. I watched her as she bit her lip and said:
“They were my mothers.”
III
The later it got in the afternoon, one of us managed to realize that the maid was about to come. This was a service we found somehow, I think it came with the house actually, I don’t remember. But we all appreciated it, even if we had never seen her. The thing with her was that we were all supposed to remain in our separate bedrooms while she did her thing. This was the main term of our agreement, and since she was cheap - in fact, I don’t think we paid her - and we never noticed anything strange other than a clean house after she left, we figured it wasn’t too much to ask. Sure, we all thought it was weird, but I’m not one to complain about small sacrifices for free service.
We all put ourselves in our rooms, shutting the doors behind us.
In the room of the guy I hated the most, I heard the sound of some sort of Minimalist music playing. It was the kind of maddening repetition that made us all hate him more, the way he would go on and on about it, talking about slight differences in sequence and the subtle maneuvers of tone and color.
In the room of the girl I liked the most, I heard splashing, a scream. And then a door slam. And then sobbing.
I stayed in my room, like I was supposed to.
IV
Once it was fine to come out of our rooms, after the place was clean, we did.
The house was unusually spotless. She had outdone herself. That, or we were so crazed from hunger that our eyes were playing tricks on us. Either could have been the case, now that I think about it.
I don’t have much to compare it to now.
In the main living room, where we kept our dining table placed squarely in front of the large picturesque window that overlooked the ocean we lived on, our eyes could not possibly have been deceiving us. The table, polished and sparkling, was filled with our groceries. Piles of fresh whatever you may have wanted. I didn’t recall even placing such a huge order. The table seemed to buckle under the weight of it all.
We looked at each other only for a minute before each of us ran - flew, really - to grab all that we could. We were tearing into each loaf of bread, raw meat - pineapples! - to the point where our gums were starting to bleed from the sheer force of our feeding. One of the girls slipped on some spilt juice, and began lapping it up face down on the floor. The oldest guy in the house tore at some brisket like it was his blanket during a particularly rough nightmare.
I was standing there, gorging myself on some spinach - why I cannot say, other than it just looked so fresh and clean - when I noticed my favorite standing in the corner, absolutely pulverizing what looked to be a full sized turkey. She was shredding it with her teeth with an almost uncontrollable glee. Bits of skin were dropping all around her, flakes of white flesh flying like a dust cloud all around her. I can still remember the sound of her crunching the bird’s very bones between her molars.
And then, from across the room, the guy we all hated lunged straight at her, knocking another one of the girls right on her ass. He grabbed the bird body, ripped it from her hands, and began beating her against the head with it. None of us could move, our bodies stood still, holding bits of whatever it was we had been eating in our hands.
He was ripping bones out of the bird, brandishing them like knives, sawed into her, scoring her skin, tearing at every flap. He would pull at the loose bits, there were quickly many, and stuff each one in his mouth, forcing a new one in before finishing the last.
She never screamed. Her eyes were watching him devour her, but they didn’t seem to mind. It was the same sort of look she had while watching her fish swim and circle around each other.
Eventually, she fell to the ground like a sack of bulgar.
He stood above her, chewing and chewing what he had taken from her. He swallowed heavily, stuffed so he was with her bulk and extranea. He grabbed down, at the flap of her lips, and quickly tore them along with half of her cheek, exposing her teeth and tongue. It left the image of a grisly and unwelcome smile.
Before stuffing her lips in the place where she was going, he waved them to the room, flapping them in all of our general directions.
“She never said one nice thing to me!”
Squishing them deep between his own lips, a macabre kind of kiss, he started to laugh. And in laughing, lost a grip on what the lips we doing, where they were going. He started to gag, hoarse and guttural, then wheezy and weak.
And then nothing at all.
V
Those of us left were left with a mess.
None of us figured that we would get this cleaned up any time soon. We all stood there, looking away from each other, from the carnage a chaos that was hanging around us. There weren’t that many places we could look, so some of us just closed our eyes.
The smell alone was enough to make two of us puke, without even trying to make it to the bathroom.
One by one, we shuffled our feet, and one by one we started to silently return to our rooms.
I thought it would be best to rummage through what was left on the table, to see what I could forage for the future, not knowing when our next delivery might come.
I knew I didn’t want to be the one to call next time.
I took off my T-shirt, to use it as a kind of bag, and stToarted collecting what canned goods I could find. I didn’t know what I was planning on doing with them, I didn’t even know where an opener was in the house, but figured I would find something to use if it came to it. I stuffed my pockets with dinner rolls and a stick of butter; a tube of chocolate frosting.
Moving aside some bunches of bananas, which never interested me, I found the stained invoice for the order. Staple to it, was a typed out note. It read:
to the owner(s) of the aquarium in room 3B -
it is our wish to make it clear that what happened in the aquarium earlier today was for your own good. your lease clearly states that no pets are allowed in the building, and the aquarium was a clear violation of this agreement. it is our belief that if you cannot take care of yourselves, you have no business attempting to take care of others.
we hope that you agree with our assessment and solution to the situation.
sincerely,
the management
I remembered, while the cleaning lady was here, the sounds coming from the room of the girl I liked, the girl that laid in the heap in the corner. She was the only one of us that I knew of who had an aquarium. I didn’t know the house had named rooms, but it was my guess that she had lived in what was called 3B.
I went to go to room 3B to see what had happened, what could have caused the scream I had heard from the girl I liked. Inside room 3B, I didn’t notice anything odd at first. Then I looked in the aquarium.
In the aquarium, the 5 headless bodies of the 5 different kinds of fish were floating at the top. At the bottom, nestled into the colored rocks that lined the aquarium floor, the five different heads of each fish, their eyes all staring up, mouths agape, as if in in chorus singing a useless requiem for their useless bodies.
I reached in and grabbed what I could of their limp and slippery carcasses. I wanted to give the girl I liked something she liked near her, something to keep her company.
Back in the main living room, where the damage had been done, I laid the bodies of the fish on top of what was left of her. I opened up one of her hands, a cold combination of rigid softness, and laid the heads in her palm. In a way, they looked like they were kissing her gashes to make it better.
I stood up. I thought that looking out the window, to the ocean waves below, might soothe me some, and at least for the time being make me forget what it was that surrounded me, since we’re all surrounded by water, really, and that certainty is comfort enough.
But when I looked out the window, I didn’t see the ocean at all. All I saw were eyes. Two huge eyes, blinking and blinking and blinking right back at me.
