IT WAS THE THIRD TIME tonight that Andrew had been awakened by a bad dream. A dream in which goldfish the size of cantaloupes either swam, flew, or both, he couldn’t tell. But what he was sure of was that it was a lot of them. And that they were everywhere - flopping on the pillows, the floor, descending from the ceiling, the corners of the room. Each time he woke, he drifted to the kitchen for the comfort of a snack. This time it was a box of Oreos.
The mouthful of cookies was already dissolving when Andrew reached the edge of his bed again, fishing at a clump of dewy chocolate in the cleft of his jaws. Then he gently sat, careful not to wake his sleeping mother.
The single bedroom apartment had been all Andrew and his mom, Constance Jean had known since they moved from Wichita, Kansas. It was four months by now.
“Picked up and gone,” was the expression used when people back home described how hasty she’d been in suddenly moving away.
For the most part, the apartment remained unfurnished, other than the dusty floral patterned davenport Constance Jean couldn’t part with. The radiator knocked, the ceiling was starting to sink because of an untreated leak in the apartment above, and the springs within the twin bed mattress the both of them shared jammed Andrew in the back. He’d grown accustomed to the discomfort. In fact, he could sleep through the pain, but shaking this goldfish nightmare was something Andrew couldn’t do.
He looked around the room unable to count the amount of splayed fish, which to him, at blurry first glance looked to be a large orange mash of a thing.
As she slept, he glared at his mom and wondered why the cold slime of the fish that lay smack dab across her face hadn’t awakened her. And right then, he was unable to convince himself that this fish haunting was in some way, her fault. He could feel a bit of anger rising, so he lay on his back and wept, trying hard to ignore the weight of a fish flopping at his feet. He tried to snivel in silence but each time he took a breath his chest tremored.
Through the plastic thickness of the curtains, a streetlamp buzzed outside. And across the room, the gauzy glow of the now empty fish tank bathed his wiry frame in light. All that was left inside the tank was a bed of sea glass along the bottom, and a tiny bamboo plant — its leaves moving with the manufactured current of the filter. An everflow of water.
Andrew wasn’t yet ready to cut the power to the tank. It hadn’t been more than five hours ago that his pet goldfish, Hank, was gleefully swimming the entirety of its habitat, curiously investigating the appearance of each new bubble. Andrew enjoyed the way Hank would anxiously nip the water’s surface when it thought it was about to be fed.
He sobbed a little louder this time, pushing back against the memory of Hank’s white belly among the onion skins and dust pile his mother had scraped into the garbage can. He looked back over his shoulder and quietly grumbled at her. By now, she wore what looked like a smile to Andrew. He gasped. How mindless, he thought, was her movement as she flung Hank’s lifeless body in the pile with the rest of the trash. Had she any guilt?
It was Andrew who fed Hank bread, but it was his mother who never told him not to.
He reached over and unplugged the tank. “It’s over,” he whispered. And in that moment, the many goldfish in the room vanished. Andrew lay back again. Then his eyes fell softly sleeping.
