I am a Labroides dimidiatus, or cleaner fish. Before my captivity, I would cohabitate with other fish, eating the harmful parasites that latched on to them, or their dead skin cells, hence cleaner. There’s a fact, for it wasn’t particularly fortunate or unfortunate to me although it might be to others, but there’s a fact that I am dying. I don’t blame the owners, for they don’t know any better. They didn’t know any better when they bought me from the stall in that market, and they didn’t know any better when they feed me fish food.
I think a lot about them these days, my owners. Two of them, a couple of foreigners, their movements I could only describe as “vague.” The largest act they had ever made were standing up to go to work and throwing themselves on the sofa with a big “THOOMP” when they got home. I think a lot about them because they aren’t too different from myself.
The stall was famous at the market, for the owner only came around once a month, each time with the promise of colourful fish from all over the world. “Goldfish, live to three months,” he would say to the customer. The plastic bags that housed me and my brethren were often sold out at the end of the day. The couple came just before the stall closed, with the owner practically forced me into their hands with some made-up sob story about himself and a 50% discount. The couple, foreigners like myself, did a good job of keeping up their smiles. I’ve never seen them smile since. Holding me between them, they fluttered around the market a bit longer before heading home.
To their credits, the couple was determined to raise me, not out of choice, but out of a sense of responsibility to another living being. As fish, I wouldn’t think twice about eating my own siblings or species. They searched for me on their phones, asking on forums what type of fish I was. “Slim, black body, blue stripe, straw-like mouth.” “Honey, someone on here said she’s an as-pi-don-tus ta-e-ni-a-tus. They eat other fish it seems.” – said the mistress. “I’m not about to buy another fish so she can eat them. Fish food should do.” – the master added unhelpfully. “She’s come all the way from Australia.” – said the mistress. “Won’t make much of a meal when he dies.” – the master made a joke. The mistress liked it.
That was how it went at first. They bought me a tank, filled it up with seawater (as recommended on the forums), and fed me fish food, three times a day. The mistress would look at me in the morning, then on some occasions at night before she went to bed. She would push her face up to the tank until all of her features were warped, her arms hugging the sides of the tank. She wanted to be free, like I was, she said. She would sometime said to the master that she felt a link between us, fish and man, whenever she looked at me, like a magnetic field.
Whatever connection she was talking about, it was lost mere days after. They still remember to feed me, three times a day.
I slept throughout the day and observed them when they were home. “THOOMP,” they would throw themselves on the sofa, their mouths agape, their backs pushed against the cushion, the TV was on but their eyes would scan the surroundings, as if they were afraid that the outside world might at any moment invade their home. At first, I felt guilty for peering into at these fearful creatures, but it was either them or the white wall. I chose to study the mistress first. I saw a lanky, awkward figure, an ape without any stability or muscle, supposedly a trade-off for a bigger brain. Supposedly. She had a slight hunch. Unlike the master, who pretended to pay attention to the TV, she pretended to pay attention to her phone. The eyes when she were looking at that little screen were clouded, completely different from those that looked at me those first few days.
I knew for a fact that not all humans were this quiet. The initial burst of affection of the mistress was proof their lethargy wasn’t innate. The mistress’ eyes back then spoke to me of the presence of a different life, of distance I could never understand, of depth that would make me dizzy. Nevertheless, those eyes were gone.
If you believe in evolution, all humans were once fish. Maybe the reason why I understood so much was so, because we were the same originally, we just took different paths. I imagined that you, that them, are aware, that at some point you have been made slave to your own bodies, your own rules. I could see the mistress calling for help. “Save me.” – I imagined she said as her face squished against the glass. What are you afraid of, to bury your selves in distractions? Perhaps the reason the mistress leaned so close to the glass was to avoid seeing her own reflection.
The fish died. We didn’t give her a name. We flushed her down the toilet. I loved her, how she would barely swim around, content to keep her attention to us. I can’t blame her, being so small in the presence of creatures so much greater than her own. They say fish can barely remember what happens to them three seconds before. Maybe she kept looking at us, then forgetting again. Alzheimer, we would call her that if she was human. When we first got her, I felt a strong connection. But the more I looked at her, the more I felt the bridge weakened, and eventually crumbled. What did I expect from a dumb fish?