Awakening in Gold

Jack woke up to find his head encapsulated in a fishbowl-like hangover brought on by too many canned margaritas the night before. His wife and daughters had been away twelve days of a two week trip to visit the in-laws, and he’d already plowed through almost a hundred of the devilishly-alcoholic salty sour little cocktails. Jack didn’t normally drink, but at the bottom of each can was a code redeemable for FanPoints on his preferred sports betting platform and it seemed wasteful to pour them out. With some chagrin he checked his phone, seeing the deposits he’d made the night before. Bad luck follows me, he thought.

Being drunk made the betting more exciting, though having the thrill of hitting a six-leg parlay offset by waking each morning feeling like a near-death desert-dehydrated explorer cut into the experience as a whole. Jack had been phoning it in during daily work-from-home shifts while Jill and the girls were away, but it was hard to feel motivated professionally when his company was undergoing a patent-motivated hostile-takeover by a tech mega-corporation and he was unlikely to have a job come Christmas.

Jack made his way downstairs to the kitchen, and soon the smell of coffee brewing fought with the nausea-inducing tequila tang rising from the recycling bin. As he waited, he finally examined the Honeydew List that had been left for him on the refrigerator. In 36 hours his family would be home. Was that enough time to complete a hodgepodge of chores including: hang shelves in Dawn’s bedroom; hang TV in Eve’s bedroom; and finish installing indoor security system? Something at the bottom of the page caught his eye. There, surrounded by gold-star stickers in Eve’s child-scrawl was: “DON’T FORGET TO FEED GOLDIE.” Not one single thought of the glassy-eyed goldfish that lived in a bowl on Eve’s dresser had crossed Jack’s mind since they’d been gone.

As Jack dashed up the stairs, he recalled fish funerals of his own childhood. He knew that such experiences are training-wheels for grief, inevitable stepping-stones for children to bruise their expectations on as they develop a greater understanding of how harsh and cruel the world can often be. Despite the importance of such lessons, he longed to protect his daughters, and so he knew that if Goldie had expired due to his negligence, he would merely acquire a doppelgänger from the pet store to stave off the knowledge of heartbreak a while longer.

Arriving in Eve’s room, Jack found Goldie hanging limply just under the surface. Muttering prayers, Jack pinged the nail of his middle finger hard against the glass several times. Just when he was certain that poor Goldie was destined to be flushed and replaced without a trace, a tremor rippled through the little fish’s body and the bug-eyed creature began swimming. Jack reached for the container of fish-food next to the bowl, but before he could pop open the lid, a soft, but distinct voice burbled up from the surface of the water. “It sounds like the end of creation in here when you do that, Demonic Leviathan. Must you torment me in my final hours?”

“How can you talk?” demanded Jack, wondering if he had gone mad, hoping it was the lingering effects of the margaritas.

Goldie’s fins moved meekly as he bobbed near the surface. “Perhaps this is a gift denied devils like you, Archon, but as mortals like me begin to pierce the veil of death, certain cosmic knowledge is endowed within us to lubricate the cycle. It may be the hand of divine justice that allows me to now accuse my tormentors in their own infernal tongue.

I have seen that I am a quantum speck in the All-Fractal, imprisoned in a perception of reality created for me by demonic entities who cruelly provide me with a mockery of my ideal environment and lifestyle, denying me any chance to be the best version of myself or, indeed, anything more than an object on display or whatever it is I am to you. Why have you done this to me?”

Jack thought about this as he shook a fair amount of food onto the surface of the water. “We use pets to teach our children empathy,” said Jack, too stunned to provide any answer but the truth.

Goldie began to laugh, swirling weakly beneath the flakes of food. “Empathy?” he said, “What twisted devil’s logic is this?

“Please eat,” said Jack.

“If I live, my captivity continues,” replied the fish, “If I don’t, I shall move on from this existence of horrors and go to the Great Pond Beyond.”

“If you eat, we will release you,” offered Jack.

“Bargaining with demons is rarely wise,” replied Goldie. Jack didn’t know what to say. He had never been made to feel this way before.

“I choose to live,” continued the fish, “not because I trust you to keep your word, but only because during the course of my visions I saw your bowls as well. You believe you are free, yet you toil and suffer for masters beyond your ken and comprehension. Compared to me you are powerful, and fears and insecurities cause you to inflict yourselves on the powerless, but your perceptions are limited and you cannot see your bowls. Cruelty is the currency of your kind, but it is inherited, and you are all too blinded by your wicked machinations to realize that, just like me, you are merely objects in the palace of something greater and far more terrible, which benefits from your misery as you do from mine.”

With that, Goldie began to eat ravenously and would not speak again. Jack wandered to the window and looked up at the sky. It felt like there was something looking back at him. His phone dinged, advertising the day’s available parlay bets.