Patrick Bradshaw, fiction 2a "Red Blood like Watercolor"

[patrick.j.bradshaw]

Patrick Bradshaw

11/5/2012

Fiction 2a

Creative Writing

Jeb Wyman

Red Blood Like Watercolor

Most of this is going to be more or less true. I am not sure if this will stick to the mind like a pesky fly that simply won’t stop buzzing by your head or if it will wash away like spit on the edge of the beach. In fact, months after it all had happened, the guy will get stoned and have sex with some girl and he’ll feel something heavy in his chest and he’ll want to cry, not like a man but like a child who had done something horribly wrong but nobody was there to see it. And the girl will say something like “it’s just a fucking fish” and he will look at her in his nakedness and have nothing to say except “You’re right. I know. Of course.”

It was close to the end of summer. It was the second time he lived at that house; the old 8-bedroom, dinghy mansion on 13^th and Mercer. A lot had happened since he had lived there the first time. He had been fired from the garden store for sexual harassment and for smoking pot on the job, even though he had loved it there. Thought working with plants was the most peaceful experience ever. He had to live with his sister up north for a while and things just got worse. His parents filed for bankruptcy, lost their house, meanwhile his father’s health had declined and he passed away. That was two years ago. He still gets stoned and listens to his dad’s old records in his room. In panic or desperation, he took out a couple of loans and started going to school. He needed to do something to get over that longhaired girl, his dad, that whole dark time needed to wash away from the sands of existence. The room had been painted red since he had been there. A demented red, he thought. Red room, redrum, he thought.

The sun was out and the air was cool, the day was a bright yellow. Two of his roommates, the only two that seemed to get along probably because they were young men and shared a fondness for weed and bikes—they were biking to the international district. The blonder one, the waiter—he had just bought an expensive aquarium. He had ordered coral from halfway around the world and it came in boxes. Every time a box was delivered to the door, the blonder one would light up like it was Christmas. So that day, the three of them, the waiter, the son of a scientist, and our main character, were biking to a pet shop in Chinatown. They biked like three seagulls in formation from the top of Capitol Hill. It was a clear day.

They locked their bikes nearby the pet store. When they got there, it didn’t look much like a pet store. There was a small alcove that had cages of hamsters and mice, but aside from that, the majority of the store consisted of rows and rows of fish tanks. Slightly jealous or somewhat inspired by his roommate, he decided that he would get a fish of his own. “It’ll be good to have some life in my room” he thought. It didn’t take much to justify a 5-dollar purchase. He recalled a little fishbowl he saw in the kitchen. Bettas don’t need much, he remembered. His sister used to have one and it died after a year, but he was sure he would be able to keep one for longer. He asked the shopkeeper to pick one out for him. By having someone else pick one, he reasoned, maybe he had a higher chance of getting a magic fish; a fish that could communicate, one that would interact. The shopkeeper went to the back of the store for a moment and when he came back, he held a small plastic soup bowl and in the bowl was this shiny, blue and purple fish. It’s fins looked tattered as if someone had taken a comb and scraped away wet seaweed on the ground. But when would spin majestically in its bowl, it was hypnotic—as if some Geisha was waving blue and purple fans in a secret show. He accepted the fish and along with it he bought some fish pellets. The fish was placed in a plastic sack and when they left the store, he tied to the back of his bike and they biked back to the house.

During the bike ride back, he could only think about the fish. “I am sure what I have is a magical fish. I only need to take care of it. Sing to it. Make sure I give it everything and he will be a good fish and he will grant me wishes” he mused to himself. He thought of the videogame Pokemon, the one where you’re told that you “gotta catch them all”. He remembered one of the creatures you’re supposed to capture, a magic fish that had the power to whisk other creatures away with a splash. If you played with this creature enough, it would eventually evolve into another creature. A giant blue sea serpent named Gyarados—a terror in the ocean. He thought about this dragon and felt that it would be the best name for his fish. When he got home, he found the glass bowl, placed in it some rocks from the garden, poured water in it and dropped Gyarados into his new home.

Later that day, in his room, he will get stoned and listen to his dad’s music. He will stare at the fish in his bowl. He will think, “I’m going to take care of you. I am going to show you everything buddy, just you wait.” And as he would think this, the fish will gesture back by dancing or waving his fin, or blowing bubbles of his mouth in response to all these promises. “You are a beautiful creature, I am so excited that you came to me.” He thought. “I am going to show you everything.”

Some days after school he would pick up the guitar and play for the fish with the late summer light perforating the curtains of the window. Sometimes the fish would seem to dance in the pale glow of dusk. Some nights he would be stoned and have conversations with Gyarados; mostly about the weather. Sometimes about music, usually about the Bossa Nova his dad loved. “The music sounds like a swaying ocean to me” he would tell the fish. And some nights he would take a jacket and the fish bowl and walk out the door. He would show the fish the street he lived on, the store he went to for groceries. For how else would Gyarados see the world? He thought. And the fish would gesture, waving a fin, or spinning in a circle. Sometimes he would blow a bubble.

Eventually when it became colder, he ordered a small heater. It was a cheap thing covered in rubber, but it was the only size the small fish bowl would accommodate. In the wintertime he had read something about how betta fish needed a lot of space in order to flourish. So one day he found a large glass jug in the house and replaced the small bowl. “Now you’re living in a mansion little buddy” he thought. “You’ll love it here, I know you don’t mind living in such a tiny hole, but I think you’re going to love this new place.” Sometimes in the middle of winter, the fish would seem to fall asleep right next to the heater in the big glass jug. He would see this and think -- this is good.

And he loved his fish, or certainly, he spent a lot of time thinking about his fish.

And just like before, it was hard to tell what happened. Every now and then he lost sleep. Sometimes it was just for a night and those times were easy to get through. Sometimes it was two nights and he was still able to work or go to school if he had to. There were times when it was three nights and there were times when it was four nights and some days you couldn’t tell where his mind was. He would sit in front of the mirror in the kitchen and lose himself in his own reflection for hours. Could’ve been the weed that made him feel trapped in the darkness of the past. And he had gone to the hospital before and they would ask him if he was hearing voices and he would say “voices? I hear voices all the time, I hear your voice, I hear other people’s voices” and they would look at him grimly but it was a look that only communicated “I don’t know what’s wrong with you”. He would always get out of the hospital with nothing but a bill, but things were getting worse.

This time it was the 4^th day. He was thinking about the girl from work again. He was thinking about his dad and imagined losing him in a flood. His body was fighting sleep again and he was staring at his computer trying to do homework. He will have made it to school that day but instead of going to class, he would the sit at the park. He stared at the cross of a church until the cross grew a pair of eyes and a voice from the sky would say, “we have found you”. He would eventually stumble back home to his red room.

Night had fallen and he sat at his desk staring at Gyarados. There was a strange flicker, a snapping sound that had emanated from the glass jug. “We have found you,” he murmured to himself. Gyarados looked exhausted too. When normally he would energetically dart from the bottom of the jug to the top when food was dropped, this time he would slowly make his way to the top and simply floated down. Like a child who holds his breathe and pretends to die in a pool, sinking to the bottom.

The next part happened at 4 in the morning. He brought the jug down to the kitchen, intending to replace the water with clean water. But he looked at Gyarados. “Why are you suffering? You have this small bowl with no way to contact any other creature outside. You could never get a girlfriend, you could never do anything. You just sit there and wait for me to feed you. And now I look at you and wonder if you’re even there.”

He scooped out the fish from its bowl. It took a minute, as the fish would slip out of his hand every time he attempted to grab it. But when he managed to scoop him out, he held it in his right hand out of the water. And there was Gyarados in his hand, gasping for breath, eyes void of any meaning as if crudely drawn upon his glittering blue and purple-ness. His fins looked tattered in a way that was crafted and he could feel its heart pulse like a tiny clock on the flesh of his palm. He placed Gyarados on the wet kitchen counter and for a moment, it writhed there with life, though quickly gave up. He took out a large meat knife and pressed it against Gyarodos, right behind the eyes and gills, and pressed down. The body slipped a little bit but gave beneath the pressure. The head stayed intact as it was cleaved from the rest of the body and some red blood like watercolor bled down the counter; a bloody tear from the little body that still pulsated and coursed with life and pain. He saw this and pressed the knife down where he thought the heart would be so that it would just stop moving. But even then when the fish was in three pieces it seemed that the body was refusing this cold order to cease. It felt like hours before Gyarados appeared fully dead. And his three pieces sat, bleeding on the wet kitchen counter; a twisted still life.

Outside, the sun was starting to peak through the windows. His roommates won’t be up for another few hours he thought. He sat at the kitchen with his forehead in his palms. The fish looked like blue and purple foil, some beautiful streak of red that had been placed on the kitchen counter. The strange crackling noise still popped from the glass jug. The rubber coating on the heater was ripped, exposing some wire to the water in the jug. There was an electric current running in the water that was probably hurting the fish. And later on, sometimes that’s how he would justify it all to himself. Sometimes in framing the story for himself, he will look at it as a mercy killing.

Later on he would be strapped to the gurney. His roommates will have taken him to the hospital after he put his elbow through the upstairs window, and he will refuse to go and the nurses will tie him to the hospital bed for hours. He will scream and beg for food and wonder if he’ll get taken away and they will, they’ll take him away for a couple of weeks and say he has bipolar disorder and some form of psychosis. He’ll hear all sorts of voices but they’ll give him drugs to stabilize him and he’ll go home again to the red room and wonder what the fuck happened. He won’t be able to explain it. He won’t be able to explain it to himself, to his friends, and this girl will tell him “it’s just a fucking fish”. But he’ll remember the way it’s mouth blew bubbles and the way the fin would wave and catch the light of the lamp in his room. He’ll remember the long-haired girl, how she would stare longingly in the distance at the falling cotton of a dogwood tree from behind her desk. He’ll remember his old house, covered in red leaves in the middle of fall, the way his dad sat at his chair, drinking from a glass and listening to the music that swung and swayed gently in the living room.

He’ll look out the window and with a heart as heavy as a stone say, “Yes. You’re probably right.”