Fish

      The lady next to me was staring, but not actually staring. She was looking at me through the corner of her eyes with darting glances, just quick enough that I would not catch her in the act. I shifted the large Tupperware container on my lap to block the view, but that only made it easier for people on the other side to stare. For the hundredth time in my half hour journey, I wished that I had booked a cab instead. That way, I would not have to sit in a smelly train filled with annoyingly inquisitive people to bring an Axolotl home.

     The afternoon sun was streaming in through the barred windows of the train and people were beginning to shift in their seats uncomfortably. I hated shifty people. They tended to start conversations to distract themselves from discomfort. I looked at my watch. Ten more minutes to go. I shut my eyes and focused on the gentle noise that the train made. Chug-chug. Chug-chug. Chug-chug. I imagined that the train was a living being with a heartbeat. Slowly, the metallic ringing dissolved away along with the pointless chatter. The chug-chug became a thump-thump. I was riding a dragon, a dragon with beautiful scales that glinted like silver under the moonlight and gold under the sunlight. It had a pair of sapphire-coloured eyes that never looked anywhere but its destination. As I flew on his majestic back towards the horizon, the wind blew past my ears, making a low whistling noise. Then, the noise grew louder, and louder until it morphed into the deafening screech of a train’s whistle.

      I had reached my destination already. Slightly irritated by the intrusion of reality, I gathered my bags and my Axolotl’s container which had become worryingly warmer. I joined the tired sea of people and flowed out through the tiny doors. After a short walk, I arrived at my apartment. Thankfully, there were no neighbours roaming outside so I did not have to say good afternoon to anyone. I gently set the Axolotl container down and opened the doors to my apartment.

     Immediately, the scent of jasmine poured out and embraced my fatigued mind like a long-lost friend. My eyes immediately floated to the pen that I always placed on my almond-coloured coffee table exactly three inches from the edge. It was still where I had left it. Assured that there were no masked men hiding behind the door to attack me, I walked in with my new friend.

     Dragon, as I had chosen to call him, was a Golden Albino Axolotl. He was only a little larger than my palm, but exquisitely gorgeous. Dragon had a pair of pale, beady eyes and a smooth body that extended into a tadpole-like tail. He had four spindly legs and the most adorable little mouth that was always turned up in a smile-shaped crescent. My favourite part about him though, was his crown. In truth, the little orange branches that stuck out of his head and burst into feathery filaments at the tips were his gills. But thinking of it as a crown made him look more extraordinary.

   I gently scooped Dragon up and placed him into the tank that I had already prepared in the corner of the living room. He slithered off my hand and dived straight into the water. Half of my mind expected him to swim about the tank in excited circles like a puppy exploring a new home, but he simply sank to the bottom and chose a dark corner to settle.

    A few hours later, I was having my dinner while attempting to explain to my mother over the phone why I had spent two hundred dollars on an Axolotl.

“Honey, you’ve been trying for months now to save money for a better house. Why did you go and spend so much of it on a fish?”

“Mom, he’s not a fish. He’s an Axolotl. More of a salamander, really.” I looked at Dragon. He was halfway inside the little hut that I had placed in the tank. His back legs and tail were sticking out.   

“I…I saw him at the pet store today and I… he was really cute and weird and…Well…Mom, he reminded me of Sarah.”

Mom stopped talking, but I could hear her breathing on the other side. She was thinking about what to say next. I imagined her running a finger over the embroidery on the sofa’s faded fabric, the way she always did when she spoke on the phone

“It’s been so long, baby…”, She said. I knew what she was going to say next and I tried to put up a mental barrier.

“You need to look towards the future now. You need to move on.”

The words ‘move on’ lingered in my head for a second longer than it should have. They smarted like hot tears on dry eyes.

“Mom, I cannot move on. I cannot just pretend that the things that happened five years ago never happened. Do you know how insensitive you’re being right now?”

“Sweetheart…”

“I am tired of us having the same conversation over and over. I will never forget what happened and I will never forgive myself for it, no matter how hard you or I try. This wound will never heal. This pain will never go away mom. What I need is time, I need time to get used to the pain. I need to time to get used to the pain so that…it won’t kill me.”

“Olivia!”

“Good night mom.” I set the phone down. I realised that I had been clutching my fork so hard that it had left a red mark on my palm. I dropped it next to the phone and laid my head on the table. I was not hungry anymore.

…

I was staring at moving colours in glass cases. the scent of bubble-gum and Teen Spirit deodorant was floating in the air. Sarah was here, alive and well.

I was in a nightmare, and I knew it, but it never ended until I saw her blood. We were at the aquarium, her favourite place in the world. The events started happening one by one. I knew how this story was going to end, but I couldn’t do anything to stop it. It was like watching the world through a hole in an iron box.  Sarah was pointing at a flat, blue fish that she had named Dory. It seemed so unimportant at that time, what she said, something about how ironical that Juvenile Blue Tangs could actually be yellow. Then, she dragged me towards the newest addition - an Axolotl exhibit. I told her that they looked like some kind of Pokémon fish. She laughed and told me that they were a species of Salamander. Then we got hungry, and I wanted to drive. I jumped a light, a truck crashed into our car, and Sarah was dead.

I woke up. It was eight in the morning. My neck felt like I had been sleeping on the dining table the whole night. I got up and dumped the stale food in the trash. I fed dragon and was staring at him when I heard a soft, persistent knocking on the door. I peered through the peephole and no one was there. It was probably the wind rattling my door. Then the knocking came again, harder.

Once again, the peephole revealed nothing. I slowly opened the door and looked outside. My fingers, which had wrapped themselves around the nearest vase, relaxed to my side. It was a little girl. She had a thick mass of wavy brown hair and bright, black eyes. She was either eight or ten, I couldn’t tell. For some reason, I did not possess the skill to tell a child’s age. Perhaps it was because of the fact that I refused to associate myself with anyone under the age of eighteen.

In the five seconds that it had taken for me to express faint shock at the fact that a child had dared to venture near my apartment, (I once heard a lady tell her daughter that I would eat her up if she played outside after six) the girl had already gotten bored. She was currently trying to force herself through the door despite the obvious fact that I was holding it no more than four inches open.

“Uh…hello little girl. Did you get lost?”

The girl looked at me quizzically. “Why are you talking like that?”

 I was surprised that she didn’t just gurgle and coo. “Like what?”

“Like I’m a baby. Do you have any chocolate? Are you a ghost? Can I see your fish?”

With every question, she squeezed herself further and further into my apartment.

“Yes, but you can’t have any. No. He’s an Axolotl, and no. Where is your mother?”

“Mom’s asleep. I want to see you’re A-co-lotul.”

She was fully inside now. I groaned as I watched her skip to Dragon’s tank and press her nose against the glass.

“Whoa. She’s so pretty. I’m going to call her goldy. Can I pet her?” I watched, frozen in horror as she stuck her hand into the tank.

“Stop it! You’re going to hurt him!” The girl stopped, then immediately started looking for something else do destroy. She found my Jasmine plant.

“This smells nice.”

“Little girl, please get out of my apartment.”

She looked at me, then scowled. “My name is Sarah.”

Sarah. Her name was Sarah. She was pulling a flower off my plant now, but I didn’t stop her. Maybe this was a sign, a chance for me to make up.

“You still want that chocolate?”, I asked.

The jasmine dropped onto the ground, long forgotten. I spent an entire hour listening to her stories about the mermaid and fairy world. The way her eyes danced reminded me of Sarah’s eyes when she was talking about some new fish that she had found out about. Then, realising that her mother would probably be frantic right now, I led her back to her apartment.

Week after week, I waited for Saturday morning to arrive, when Sarah would be at my doorstep waiting to show me a new drawing or tell me about school. Weeks became months and months became years. Sarah was a part of my life now, almost like my own child.

Today was the Dragon’s tenth birthday and the day Sarah was going to college. I once told my mother that a certain wound would never heal, that I would never stop hurting. Well, I was wrong.