“I think she’s dead,” stated Elias bluntly and apathetically.
We found her little body all chewed up today. Her breathing had slowed and I knew she was nearing the end. The male who swam next to her I could tell had no remorse. He’d been after her since day one. I knew it on Thursday, the day after we got them, and a wave of guilt came over me as I watched “Rhino” (the name given her by Keziah, my three year-old) as her body tried desperately to come up from the sideways position that it was now defaulted to, as it lay at the top of the glass bowl, the bowl that was home to her for only five days. Until now.
Now she lay in a separate glass, as the vicious male swam happily in his own feces in the bowl. I thought she should at least spend her last minutes without the fear of all of her remaining fins being torn off by Mr. “Shard,” a name prophetically given by Elias on Wednesday when we bought him at Petsmart in Bloomington where the fish man told us you can put a male and female beta in the same bowl. Total nonsense obviously. My friend Laurie told me the same thing happened to her female. The fish people at Walmart said the same thing.
Keziah was a bit devastated, that is until she found out we would go out that very minute and buy her a new fishy. As we all discussed the state of Rhino, she kept telling us to stop talking about it. I guess denial is the first stage of grief. She never hit the other stages because within an hour she was standing in front of the endless fish tanks at Meijer with her little red balloon, waving it in front of the fish, watching as they scattered in every direction. “I want this one,” she said, pointing to the huge orange fish in the first tank. We talked her into the ones on sale four for five. We ended up with five or six odd fish, including one of those sucker ones, a water filter, and some decorative background paraphernalia. Thomas tried to sneak a little fish castle in, but I talked him out of it at the cash register, due to the fact that the fish bowl is tiny and he already bought ancient Roman ruins last week at Petsmart, home of ill-informed fish man. Of course Keziah asked about it when we got home. I played it off and her three year-old mind quickly switched over to playing dress-up.
I should mention that Rhino hung on for a while. Before we left for Meijer, I sang to her and told her to swim to the light. By the time we were home tonight she was totally gone. I haven’t asked what happened to Shard yet. But I know for sure if he hasn’t been flushed already, that he’ll spend the rest of his life alone. After we found Rhino nearly dead, Elias wanted to kill him with a knife. I questioned if this wasn’t a sign of something deeper, considering I remember that commercial for a psych hospital when I was little stating all the signs to watch out for in your disturbed child, including “harms animals.” But then it came to me that I kind of wanted to kill Shard too, just not with a knife. So then we went into the whole conversation of having grace on Shard, even though he was a viscous murderer and a potential serial killer.
Our house is still now, with our little bowl resting quietly on the top shelf of the bookshelf near the fireplace. The filter is bubbling and a whole slew of fish are swimming happily. If it weren’t for Rhino’s death, they would never know this bowl, complete with ocean landscape behind it. Sleep well new fishies. Shard is gone (although I still don’t know how “gone”) and you are free!
