Round 2 of this competition. I'm somewhere between fifteenth place and last. (When you get down that low, you're basically all tied for last, so no one gets any points.)
My assignment, if I chose to accept it (I chose to):
Genre: Comedy
Location: A greenhouse
Object: A goldfish
Object: A goldfish
Maximum number of words: 1,000 (mine's 993)
Maximum time allowed to write: 48 hours.
Fool's Goldfish
Sometimes I sit. Sometimes I think. Rarely do I do both simultaneously. This is more due to ability than preference. I can’t think if I have nothing to distract me. This is to say, if I sit down and concentrate on something, my mind manufactures its won distractions. Conversely, if I struggle to follow the traces of the tail of an idea, dodging obstacular thoughts and detour-inducing envisionments, the detritus of half-conceived ruminations, aborted foetal thoughts, abandoned ponderances, and discarded musings, the challenge of following that contemplation trail to the end is often enough motivation to reveal some real revelation.
Right now, I’m sitting.
That’s why I’m making little (OK, no) progress on the mystery – the mystery of the missing fish. Where does a fish go? My grandma says that all fish go to heaven – she’s a Pescaterian – but, I mean, I can’t even find a body. Where does a fish go? It has to be somewhere in the pond – doesn’t it?
Well, if I don’t find him before grandma gets back, she’ll send me to heaven. Or wherever God sends negligent fish homiciders.
But I’m not even sure he’s dead. But what else could it be? Harry jumped in his Geo Supermarine and took off for Marseilles?
I stand up and take what must be my tenth lap around the greenhouse. Three-quarters of the way through, I see Sally come by again. And, as usual, I’m struck by the feeling that I have no idea what enables her gluteus maximus to carry itself with such a regal bearing. I’ve heard women’s bodies described as defying gravity, but Sally’s also defies anatomy and structural engineering. What reproduction pressures could have selected for her rump to possess such divine deportment?
As usual, I thank and curse God for his rear-end work on this particular model.
Strolling along in the transfenestral light of the afternoon sun, I already feel dangerously somnolent. Catching sight of Sally makes me light-headed.
“Sally,” I venture.
“Hey, Malcolm,” she says, awaiting more. Or not.
I smile until she turns away.
“Do you…?”
“Yes?” she turns back. The sun filters through her nectarine-red hair and makes her eyes glow like liquid oxygen, the tittular freckles dusted on her smooth, pale face like candy crystals on God’s favorite red-velvet cupcake.
I can’t help but think that, even though a million of those freckles on my tongue would never fill me up, one would be all I’d ever need.
“Malcolm?” she asks again. Now she’s right in front of me. You got to watch these pretty ones. They have powers.
“I can’t find my gran’s fish.”
“Have you checked the pond?”
I just stare at her.
“He’s not in the pond,” she asks?
I shake my head.
“Well, then where could he be?” she asks, catching up.
I shrug.
“Well, what do we do?” she asks.
I like that, though I have no answer.
“What could have happened?” she asks. “A cat came in and stole him?”
“Maybe. But what cat? And how’d it get in? And how’d it get out?”
“I don’t know. What else is there? It emigrated to the Atlantic?”
“OK, what would you do if you were a fish?” I ask.
“Nothing. That’s why I’m stumped.”
“What would you like to do?”
“I don’t know – maybe go visit another pond? I might get lonely here all by myself.”
“But how would you leave? On your bicycle?”
“Oh my gosh – Gloria Steinam was right!”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.”
“So…?”
“Well, there’s that tube, right there,” she says, pointing to a tube that’s right there.
“But that’s for incoming water,” I say. “You think it swam up against the current to freedom in the water tower? It’s a goldfish, not a salmon.”
“Have you ever noticed that, when they start swimming against the current, salmon seem in a rush to die?”
“Like someone who’d write The Satanic Verses?”
“Aww, come on – you give Khomeini too much credit.”
“You give Muslims too little – look at what they did on 9/11. On 26/11.”
“Those guys were about as Muslim as the crusaders were Catholic.”
“Yeah, OK, but I give murderous sycophants appropriate credit.”
“Well, you shouldn’t – the dude who planned to kill Rusdie blew himself up hanging out in his hotel room.”
“Well, maybe he was repenting.”
“I guess we’ll never know.”
“Anyway, this fish needs to get found. The pump was down last night. Do you want to pursue the out-of-greenhouse theory or not?”
“Where’s this tube come from?”
“The coy pond in the garden.”
“Oh, God,” I say.
“Allah,” she offers.
“Brahman,” I counter, and we lose interest as we exit the greenhouse, and run to the coy pond.
She stands over the pond, shaking her head.
“He wouldn’t last a minute in here,” she says.
“I’m dead. He’s dead, and now I’m dead.”
“Wait – what’s that?” she says.
She reaches for a leaf that covers half of the tube that sends water into the greenhouse pond. Behind it is a miniature version of the behemoth fish boredly floating around above it.
“Grab him!” she says.
“I need a net! Protect him!” I say as I run away.
“They’re coming to me! They think I’m going to feed him!”
“Distract them!” I say as I run into the greenhouse.
I’m back with the net and I see her on the other side of the pond, tossing pieces of crushed leaf onto the water, surrounded by progressively less-interested coy.
I sweep the net down near Harry, flicking my wrist to pull some water back toward it, and then scoop.
Up comes the net, and in it is a tiny, shining fish.
I go back inside, putting Harry safely in a glass of water.
“Don’t drink that,” I say, my hand on the counter.
She smiles and exhales relief. Then, she collapses into my chest.
I grab the shoulder away from me and laugh.
“Exhausting, huh?"
She whispers into my neck, "Let's take a nap.”
