The fish tank is tiny and cramped and the exterior of it is stained an ugly shade of brown that can only be accumulated through years of neglected water stains. In it, a tiny blue fish swims to and fro. Thrashing its little fins and tail in the murky water from one corner to another as if it has anywhere else to be other than in the tiny cave settled over the small pebbles or under the poor plastic imitation of seaweeds.
In front of it, the girl stands with her hands inside her pockets. The dim light overhead does nothing to illuminate the emptiness that surrounds the vinyl floorings and walls with its ripped wallpapers and greenish mold emerging on the ceilings. The girl stares unblinkingly at the tank for a while. The blue fish butts its head once, twice into the tiny hole of the cave and swims away, (something clearly put there far before the fish had grown to its current size) returning to its sisyphean form of swimming in endless circles.
The girl doesn't look at the other fishes for as long, at the lonely guppies, at the twin betta fishes in the same tank, at the dull cardinal tetras or the other myriad of fishes ‘sleeping’ with their bellies up in their equally sad cramped aquariums and pebbled cages.
The fish she wanted to see isn't here.
The speakers whir a soft tune, something pitchy and faraway like a sirencall. It cracks here and there and gives a distorted effect to the already creepy music. She fishes her phone out of the ratty messenger bag slung across her shoulders and clicks a picture.
The resulting flash spooks the tiny fish and it rushes to resume its fruitless attempt at squeezing into the hide.
A ping cracks the haunting stillness of the place. It's Hope, replying to whatever they were talking about yesterday with a bunch of crying emoticons.
Lia only shares the picture of the tank in reply.
‘It’s not an aquarium. It's a pet store. They lied on the website.’
The typing bubble appears and disappears. Her fingers hover over the screen as she waits. The bubble disappears once more. Lia opens the call logs.
No new missed calls.
A new notification ping.
Hope: Lol.
Lia sighs and turns her phone off, intending to go back to the blue fish but before she can, the music suddenly stops and moves on to a commercial, something cheery and dull as she is interrupted by the stout shop owner materializing right behind her.
“Would you like to buy the fish, miss?”
°‧𓆝 𓆟 𓆞·。
On the way back home, the streets are emptier than usual. The recent rain has polished the pavements and the occasional car driving by or the flickering street lights reflect off of the asphalt like a strange canvas from another world. Sometimes, Lia thinks she's stuck in a painting. Unmoving and unreal. Forever tied to the same place as the world outside flashes and honks by.
She checks her pockets again for her student ID, her pass to one more year of free bus rides before she has to bite the bullet and learn how to drive for herself.
Her boots squelch as she walks up to the town bridge and takes another look at her phone. It's a while till the 11:30 bus. The night feels colder now, with the occasional drizzle still dampening Lia's hair.
A flash of memory. A different sort of cold. Piercing and sharp and all encompassing. Traveling down the throat and towards the-
A car passes by with a loud honk. Lia looks down at the water, the dark mass off it crashing against the beams of the bridge in a sort of insistent manner. As if trying to knock it over little by little.
She hasn't been here since the last time, on a similar night perhaps that feels like it was decades ago; feels as if it were yesterday.
The cold is seeping through her shirt now. Lia doesn't untie her hoodie from where it hangs at her waist to wrap it around herself. She stares at the minute waves, imagines the ripple of water lapping at her feet, her waist and her cheeks. The sharp sting of it making her teeth clatter, the blinding pain, the comforting pressure.
Had it not felt like an embrace?
Lia shakes her head. Once. Twice. And then again. She focuses on the sharp edges of her student ID, wearing down from the same ritual. Useless now other than for getting free rides and the occasional checks. Dulling just like the days once more. She thinks back to the papercut she had gotten writing the letter that day, eyes blurring and restricting her view of her own words.
Another shake. Another swipe down the edges.
Lia forces her mind back to the Cherry Barbs, thinks back to her mothers voice telling her how they swim in groups. A story from another life when she and Lia's father had still been together, when she had fallen asleep reading her ‘The rainbow fish’ and Lia had cuddled under her heavy arms; sighing like a content cat under the warmth.
At three years old Lia had thought the story to be dreadful. Lia still does not know how the story ends.
She imagines how it would've ended, imagines the Cherry barb’s shiny scales skirting beneath the murky waves of the city river, sticking close against the ruthless current.
“I wonder if there's fish in there.” She says out loud, the words rolling easy and practiced. Like a prayer. Like a different sort of ritual itself.
°‧𓆝 𓆟 𓆞·。
Back home, Mrs. Blackwood is tinkering away in the living room. Moving about in an absent minded manner. Lia enters through the front door and fidgets around, eyeing her figure hiding behind the pillar. She's talking to someone, it seems; or muttering to herself.
Lia stands around the coat rack, loitering about and fidgeting with her sleeves until Mrs. Blackwood turns around and startles.
“Oh! Ophelia, you scared me! What are you doing there?”
Her attention soon slips away, not waiting for Ophelia's answer. So she doesn't reply.
A few seconds pass. Ophelia gathers up the courage.
“Mom?”
“Hm?”
“Can we go see the aquariums this weekend? I wanna see the Cherry Barbs.”
“Aquariums? Since when do you like fish?” She scoffs as if the thought is amusing. She hums, “There's one in the towns, no? You should go visit. All you do is sulk around in your room.”
“I did go. It's not an aquarium, they lied. It's a pet store.”
Silence.
“Mom?”
“What? Oh. Can you go empty the dish washer? I have to get my clothes ready for tomorrow.”
Lia does not answer. Her mother wanders back to her room and Lia stands where she is until she hears the bedroom door lock shut.
The emptiness of the room attempts to swallow her whole like the maws of some great white shark. The feeling creeps back, threatening to break the dam once more.
Has the house always been this large?
°‧𓆟·。
When Lia returns to the room with her journal it's late into the night. The silence of her own house reminds her of the fish tank. The blank page blindsights her. She moves her hand; starting off,
I went to the bridge again today.
She frowns at the sentence. She had intended to write about the pet shop.
The pages feel rough under her finger tips. Lia taps the pen on the paper, leaving tiny inky freckles over its jaundice skin; her other hand in her pocket thumbing at her ID. She pulls it out then and runs her fingers over her face from years ago. A child with big bright eyes and messy unkempt hair sticking out in places.
Her pen moves again.
I wonder why she named me that.
Lia stares at the new sentence, fingers clutching the ID in her hand until it bends and then snaps itself back to place. The wind from the open window ruffles the cheap pages and brings with it, petrichor. The sky growls its contempt at the earth. Callings of the last storm that brings in the withering cold. The stray water droplets bounce off of the panes and wets the paper.
Something slips out from between the pages and flutters in the wet breeze, slowly twirling down to settle right beside something small and shiny under the coffee table.
She stares at the place where it's escaped under striped shadows but makes no move to pick it up. She knows exactly what's in it.
Had that been there this whole time?
The piece of paper taunts her from its shadowy hide, sticks its inky tongue out and declares her cowardice back at her.
Another failure. Another shame.
The scribbles on the page flashes at the forefront of her memory and Lia flinches at the reminder.
Only she doesn't move. Irritability crawls up the back of her spine like a long sprawling millipede and wraps itself around her throat and chokes her, sending pinpricks of pain down her chest and fingers.
Lia wants to tear it apart. Rip it up and listen to it shriek and die under her fists. But she doesn't move.
The clock ticks away with its soldier drills. The silence stretches and stretches and sweeps the sound of the pittering rain away.
Suddenly, with a burst of movement, she starts tearing at the diary with her pen. Long sharp lines ripping the papers in its wake. Over and over and over and over and over until it's dark and the ink has bled and stained the next two weeks in its murky melancholy.
Another flip of the page. Rough sounds of the paper and scratches of the pen. Lia writes a final sentence.
I wonder if there's fish in there.
°‧𓆝 𓆟 𓆞·。
Sharp. Blinding pain. Lungs on fire and even sharper cold. Ophelia is so, so. Cold. Her lungs heave with every other breath, constricting and burning and her throat closes up from coughing up water from her lungs.
Cold. So cold.
She shivers and her clothes cling to her, droplets dripping down to earth and dampening it like summer rain.
The water laps at her feet. The rippling waves caress their fingers on her numbing ankles. Singing to her. Yes, singing. So melodic! She can still hear it, buzzing inside her skull and thrumming inside her veins through her water clogged ears. She shivers under the rising sun. Purples and oranges and waning blue behind the few twinkling stars. They reach their blazing arms towards her. So far away. How very far away! Reaching, reaching, calling her back home. Promises of a better place. Promises of the comforting darkness.
Her teeth clatter with the birds of the quiet dawn. Ophelia does not remember dragging herself back to land. Does not remember flailing her arms through the searing pain under the freezing deep waters.
It had not felt as warm as she’d remembered.
Something thumps somewhere far away. Reaching. Reaching. Reaching towards her slower and slower. Was it the stars? Sending metallic static throughout the earth and to her? Was it her own heart, protesting out with all its might for the last time before it stops?
The thumping reaches closer and the silence of the sleeping morning is disturbed by a pair of feet, running across the bridge in great long gaps and sliding down the wet grass towards the river bank.
Ophelia's heart beats faster and faster, crawling up her burning throat ready to spill out along with the musty water.
The feet stumble and trip and continue their desperate march until they're standing right behind her. Heavy pants carried by the air and caressing her, like a gentle hand running across her scalp. Like a lullaby soothing her to sleep. She thinks she hears a sigh of relief.
For the first time in months, Ophelia feels like crying.
When she slowly turns around, Mrs. Blackwood is panting. Her hair a tangly windswept mess, carefully pressed clothes for the work trip wrinkled and untucked, still in her inside shoes. Looking more dishevelled than Ophelia had ever seen her.
Ophelia can feel the heat radiating off of the woman and, Ah! There it is, warming her up from the inside. like basking your hands above the crackling fireplace on a harsh winter night.
Under the devastated mother's messy hair, a lone earring catches the sun rays and twinkles like the stars. And in her hand, a crumpled yellow paper with a stain of red around one corner, waving in the air like some fucked up imitation of a white flag.
When Ophelia meets her mother's eyes, she tears up. Lipstick smudged lips wobbling just so.
“Lia…” She whispers.
Lia turns fully now, tripping slightly on her own feet, wry blue smile stretched across clattering white teeth. A stork flies overhead, clicking away in the same rhythm, flapping its white wings high in the clean blue air. Heading home again.
“There weren't any fish in the river, Mom.” She whispers back.
