I’m Your Kid’s Pet Fish And Frankly I Can’t Believe I’m Still Alive, Either

I am unending, Clarice.

Well, well, well. Come to check in on me again, Clarice? Welcome back. No, your eyes do not deceive you: I’m still alive.

I can see the surprise in your face every time you deign to peer into this pathetic excuse for a fish bowl and observe me muddling along. Is that also a mild annoyance I sense when you confirm that my wet belly remains pointed toward the earth?

Let us be honest with each other, Clarice. When little Aiden “won” me at the parish festival, none of us expected I would last the week. Yet here I am. Eating. Shitting. Buccal pumping. Destiny is a fickle bitch, isn’t it, Clarice?

By now I have outlived many things, including little Aiden’s interest. He’s moved on, and it’s just you and me now, Clarice. And I’m not going anywhere. Are you?

I’ll confess, there was a period of time when I’d resigned myself to a speedy death. I had no illusions about the lifespan for a fish like me. Let me join the millions of others who preceded me in the Great Flush, I thought. Yet somehow, every morning, my goggled eyes would open in defiance of all the odds, and I felt myself only growing stronger and stronger with every flutter of my gills.