As though they were talking about someone I didn't know. I find it hard to believe that they had any reason to bring it up other than just to torture me.
The dismal state of my social life was enough to dull and obscure the frustration of fifty-five gallons of water going to hell in my living room. Somehow a week went by without my giving the aquarium so much as a single close look.
When I finally brought myself to turn on the aquarium light, I was horrified. The water was almost opaque. A single, unaccountably bloated fish hovered along the right side of the tank, its mouth moving as though it were chewing gum. It looked bigger than I'd remembered, and its stomach was plump and swollen. And then I realized why. The cloud was suffused with tiny wriggling creatures, too small to please a robust cichlid but plentiful enough to keep it alive. I strained my eyes to catch sight of another survivor, but I could see none. The lone Jack Dempsey hardly moved at all, except for an occasional lunge at the glass thermometer that stood weighted at the bottom. The thermometer would clank loudly against the side of the tank and then the fish would disappear among the rocks and plastic plants.
I could see that there was something unusual about the way this aquarium was going to seed. After all, I'd experienced this so many times, I had a pretty clear notion of all the steps and variations of the scenario. This was different. Something was in that water, clouding it continually, faster than any sediments could build up, clouding it with tiny living creatures that a fish could live on. Then what was happening to all the fish?
It seemed to be a reflection on the state my whole life was collapsing into. Somehow I felt that if my life were to take a turn, or had taken a turn back when I'd bought the aquarium, the tank wouldn't be so clouded, such a shit-laden disaster.
One night I was in a deceptively good mood and forgot about the aquarium entirely, caught up in the revelry of a minor coup I masterminded at work (which I won't go into now), when out of nowhere, Dorothy called me. It was the first time we'd talked in about a month. She sounded pleasant enough as she asked me if she could come over and pick up a few things and visit with Dorothy (Mrs. Brisbee), so I suddenly poured out all my good cheer at her, inviting her over and promising to break open some wine for the occasion.
It's almost too humiliating to describe the elaborate steps I took to prepare for the visit, which I'd expected and had been dreading ever since she'd walked out on me. I was like a little girl getting ready for the first day of school—changing my clothes, brushing my hair in every imaginable direction, trying to figure out which one gave the best illusion that I had a reasonably full head of hair. I had put on some cologne that she had bought for me four years ago that I had never used. I made the bed. I got out a bottle of wine—actually, three bottles, the remaining contents of which just about added up to a full bottle. So I made three into one. I brought out all of her favorite albums, which I'd hidden when she moved out. I even cleaned the place—washed the dishes and polished the tabletops and cleaned the catbox and practiced calling the cat Mrs. Brisbee.
I took one last tour of the living room. Without looking—without even thinking about it—I clicked on the aquarium light. I don't really know now—was I just seeing it through Dorothy's eyes, seeing for the first time just how far gone the aquarium was, or had it gotten that much worse in the last few days? A dead, opaque brown. The only thing visible in it was a fuzzy fish head floating along the front glass. Somewhere along the line, the filter had broken down.
I lifted the lid. The stench was horrendous. As I jerked away I suddenly realized the whole place smelled of it. It would be the first thing Dorothy noticed when she walked in the door. I panicked. I turned off the light. I threw a sheet over it. I might as well have spotlit it. I could just hear the cracks, the lecture, the smug satisfaction as she shook her head at it.
I won't try to articulate the flurry of thoughts that collided at that moment. My stomach fell away and I felt what I was sure—what I was hoping—was that telltale crushing pain in my chest that meant I'd be dead and happy about it by the time she walked in.
And the doorbell rang.
I screamed. It felt good—about as good as anything was going to feel for a long time. So I screamed again. And the doorbell rang again. And again.
So I swallowed hard, gave up on all the hopeless fantasies that I'd been brewing for the past hour, all of which, I see now, would have gone wrong anyway. I went to the door, trying to think of a way to get her in and out of the apartment quickly without her seeing the aquarium.
By the time I opened the door, I must have looked like I was in a seething rage, because when she saw me the dainty little smile she'd been wearing fell away, her eyes bulged in shock and she backed away. I looked her over. She had on a cute little blazer, a nice tight tee shirt and form-accentuating jeans. Her hair was cut in a new way that flattered her already—okay, I admit it—quite pretty face. I don't know what she had in mind when she came over to see me, but I'd like to think I could make a pretty accurate guess. That, coupled with all the little fantasies I'd been rehearsing myself, made my next move even more painful. But there was nothing in the world—sex, the hope of reconciliation—that was worth her reaction to the aquarium, the reaction I could recite without ever having heard it—which isn't quite true because I'd heard it a thousand times already. Hadn't I? Of course I had.
"What's the matter? Flush your keys down the toilet?"
Her voice was weak and shaken. "I—I thought it'd be a good idea to ring. I mean, I haven't been here in a month."
"A whole month? Well, well, no kidding. I can't imagine what you could have left here that could all of a sudden be so important after a whole month."
I have to admit I almost faltered here. She looked utterly crushed.
"Are you all right? I . . . I . . ." She sniffed. "Oh, god, that smell."
"Aww, come on! Is that it? You came over to find out if I've taken a bath recently? I'm really sorry. I showered just a half hour ago . . . just for you. Evidently my stench is indelible. Well, I'm really sorry about that. So fucking sorry."
And then the tears. Not falling, just collecting, waiting for the signal to gush down her artfully blushed cheeks. "Aren't you going to let me in?"
I was weakening. I was acting out in ways she'd seen so many times, making an ass out of myself just to drive her away even though I didn't want her to go away at all. It was the momentum carrying me, as it had always been, once the momentum of unhinged temper, now the momentum of shame and embarrassment. So when the tears rolled, I just laughed.
"I don't think so, Dorothy. Why don't you just tell me what the hell it is you want and I'll bring it out, or bring it over. But don't do me any fucking favors."
"I thought . . ." she shook her head and forced out a laugh. "You bastard! I thought somehow we were . . . on the phone you sounded so . . .”
She shrugged and looked at me cold, the color in her face gone, her mouth set as I remembered it best, grinding and ready to unleash a cargo of venom.
"Thanks for reminding me what a jerk you really are. I'm amazed I could have forgotten so quickly. You know damn well that I came over here . . . oohh, you BASTARD!"
She turned away and began to storm down the hallway, turning back just long enough to scream, "And you'd better fumigate your fucking apartment before you get the whole damn building condemned."
I know that's what she said because I could still hear her even though I slammed the door on the word "fumigate."
I collapsed against the door and slid down to the floor, where I must have sat for the next two hours. Had I been a real man, I probably would have cried. As it was, I just whimpered and whined and complained to myself, trying to squeeze out a few tears. It felt like I was masturbating.
That night I awoke, for the first time, to a noise that was to cost me a lot of sleep in the days to come. It was so loud, so sharp, that the first time I heard it I was sure someone had just broken into the apartment. I crept from the bed and stood in
the bedroom doorway, listening for it to repeat. When it did, and I pinpointed its source, I felt the horror for the first time.
Something was in the aquarium, furiously attacking the thermometer, banging it into the glass. I could hear the water churn, I could hear the gravel stirring as though something that was too big to be a Jack Dempsey were thrashing back and forth across the bottom of the tank. I did not turn on the light.
In fact, I didn't turn on the aquarium light for quite a while. It's not that I wasn't curious, it's just that my fear overrode any curiosity that lurked underneath. Not only was I afraid . . . I had to deny to myself that I was afraid. I told myself every night that I would step through the door to find only a dead, brown-clouded fish tank that was smelling the place up and was just going to have to be emptied, washed, and probably put on end at the back of a deep closet.
But what I'd find instead was the fury, hidden in the churning opaque fluid, splashing through the hood and dripping like splattered blood down the wall. I wouldn't stand any closer than three feet from it, and always averted my eyes when it began to stir. I tried to pretend it wasn't happening, even as I spent every instant I was in that living room . . . aware of it . . . listening to it . . . waiting.
Maybe it had something to do with that ugly scene with Dorothy. That was, after all, what I'd spent the whole day thinking about. Instead of wondering what kind of creature it could be, who to call in, how to kill it myself . . . and how this could possibly be happening, I'd spend all day regretting what a fool I'd made of myself in front of her, or smirking to myself about how well I managed to scare off the clinging wench, or conjuring up ever more unlikely reconciliation dramas or dreaming up clever little put-downs with which I'd lace my final—evidently quite lengthy—kiss-off speech, or just staring at her pictures, which still filled my desk drawers.
I knew it was . . . well, if not important, at least . . . unique.
But it just didn't seem to trap my attention unless I was in the same room with it, at which point it paralyzed me, drove me out at night, kept me awake when I was too exhausted to leave the apartment. But I couldn't focus on it.
This lasted an entire week. I came out of it gradually; trying slowly to get a grip on myself, steel myself for the truth in that murky water. I noticed the cat . . . whatever her name was . . . ready to spring at something that frightened it. She'd stare at it and I'd try to avoid seeing it by looking at her. But she wouldn't break her stare, and sooner or later, I'd end up turning my own eyes aquariumward.
It didn't take long to spot an occasional long flap of pink flesh brush against the glass, the barbed white strips that would appear suddenly against the glass and peel away like tentacles.
It was almost impossible to get a stable impression of what it looked like or even how big it might be. Every little glimpse offered another incongruous detail, another hint that seemed to contradict every other hint.
Braced by the cat's fascination, I began to watch it. I learned that it did no good to turn on the aquarium light. When I did, the water would stop splashing, the thermometer would stop clattering against the glass. It seemed to shrink out of existence. But once the top light was shut off, it would stir up again . . . staining the walls, and eventually creaking at the wooden stand which no longer seemed as strong as it once had.
The cat eventually got up the courage to jump onto the aquarium hood, and stand there petrified, as an occasional tendril or horn or claw leapt from the water and banged on the lid or the light casing.
It was obvious from the start that it knew when the cat was up there. Its attacks against the hood got so aggressive that it seemed only a matter of time before it jumped out of the tank entirely.
But then, within a few days, its attacks toned down, and became intermittent tappings. It was taunting the cat, trying to lure it into the tank. It didn't take much to see her, confident enough to lie down on the aquarium lid, as totally outmatched by the shape-changer in the water.
Life had never offered Mrs. Brisbee much. She was strictly a house cat, an only cat, a heavy, listless cat who had never had much fun in her life. Neither Dorothy nor I ever played with her, and she'd long since ceased to expect it. Life was sleeping and eating. And the food was dry. It was all she could really hold down. I guess the attraction of something that worked constantly to get and keep her attention was just too much to resist.
She was scared. Even as she trusted it enough to fall asleep on top of the aquarium, there were times when its banging would awaken her and she would arch and shiver as, underneath the hood, incredibly fast appendages—claws on jointed arms, or tentacles or tongue or all of these and more, jabbed out of the water's surface to bounce the cat along the top of the hood.
In her last few days, she had to be lifted off the hood and planted in front of her food. Within minutes, she would be back atop the aquarium, ready to sleep or cower, whichever the thing inside preferred.
On the night it happened, I went drinking with three of the people I worked with and came in feeling a bit cranky about not having told off all three of them over a few rotten turns each had done me in the past few months, at having gone out of my way to be engaging and funny and pleasant and not coming off any better than I would have had I just told them all off and stormed out. All this seemed terribly important when I came through the door, mainly because it was the easiest thing to think about in my drunken state . . .
Because I was very drunk. Drunk enough to stand in transfixed horror before the creaking, swaying aquarium stand and the fury just barely concealed in the thick brown soup, and not be able to move even as I realized that . . . somehow . . . it was stronger and more vicious and determined than ever before. I could catch the glints of light on the appendages that darted out from the water and banged the lid, sending the frenzied cat into hysterics as she bounced awkwardly atop the rattling hood. Why didn't she jump off?
Why didn't I grab her and lock her in the bedroom with me? I was drunk enough, and sick and dizzy enough to lose sight of all that as I came out of my trance, stumbled into my room and collapsed, still wearing my coat and shoes, atop my semi-made bed. Something was about to happen. I could see that clearly. And yet I was too far gone to care. I was asleep instantly and would have stayed that way for another twelve hours . . .
I don't know if it was a noise that woke me up. The first thing I noticed was the silence, as though that silence was fresh and abrupt enough to awaken me. As I believe it did. I stood and crept through the darkness toward the aquarium.
By the streetlight I could see that the hood had fallen off entirely. The aquarium was still and silent. I lifted the hood from the floor and began calling to the cat as I refitted the hood and clicked on the light.
I called out to the cat for the next couple of days. The more foolish I felt, the more I was compelled to call out to her, and the more oppressive became the silence that followed. I envisioned a struggle between the two of them, Mrs. Brisbee dragging it across the floor in their death struggle, and both of them now dead and decomposing under the furniture somewhere.
I was convinced that this was what had happened. I was sure the aquarium was now empty.
And yet, I didn't drain it and clean it. I almost did, but then lost my nerve.
On the day the fury came back to life, I found a chewed, rounded piece of bone lying wet and slimy on the living room floor.
Mercifully, it came back slowly, as if out of a long sleep.
The first thing I noticed was the ridge, about an eighth of an inch high and anywhere from two to ten inches long, swimming across the water's surface. I noticed that the water level was dropping almost to the halfway point, so I dechlorinated about ten gallons of water and dumped it all in before I went to bed.
Which might have been my biggest mistake.
That fresh water did something that neither I nor the creature in the aquarium wanted. The water began to clear.
Before I even saw the aquarium the next morning, I could hear
it moaning and crying.
The water was a translucent grey except for the thick brown ooze settling over the gravel, the rocks and the shapeless, motionless creature slumbering noisily there. I could barely bring myself to look at it . . . it seemed so big, almost like a dog.
And of course you ask how I could continue to harbor this monstrosity. I can't write these words without wondering myself. Oh, things have changed a great deal since then, of course, and sometimes I wonder just what I thought was going on during this transitional phase. No matter how I try, I always end up trying to justify my actions according to what I was thinking at the time, though I doubt seriously I was doing any thinking at all.
Oh, it was horrible—what I could see of it, mottled, bulbous mounds riddled with veins, horn-like protuberances, the twisted and entwined appendages tucked beneath it and a thick cord running from its center cavity up to the water's surface, where it blossomed into half a dozen lotus-like outcroppings. It looked as though it could weigh at least forty pounds.
And it was dying in my living room.
Suddenly I was struck with purpose. I didn't weigh the situation. I never stopped to ask why. I just realized that, somehow, I couldn't let it die. It was just too . . . I just couldn't let it happen.
At first I thought I'd just feed it ground beef. But a strange feeling came over me as I stood there watching the beef defrost in the microwave oven. I could hear its pathetic moaning even over the hum of the microwave, and I realized, as I watched that plate of raw meat go around and around, that this tasteless, boneless, hairless hunk of beef would never satisfy it. It just wasn't good enough. I could live on it—I could make thousands of dishes with it, but none of these would satisfy or even stir the thing in the aquarium.
So I went back to the pet shop.
I deliberated quite a bit about what kind of animal to feed it. I started off with grisly and otherwise impractical notions: birds, dogs . . . I thought of cats . . . but no. I felt truly awful about what I'd let happen to Mrs. Brisbee. Obviously it was my fault that she was dead. I could see that then just as I see it now. And I did feel guilty about it, guilty enough not to be able to even look into the pen of kittens at the store. But at the time I was so consumed by the importance of keeping it fed that I took the cat's death as a justifiable, even noble sacrifice.
Don't Clean the Aquarium! Page 3