Watch out for the Fish

You are here. You are now. You are the present, not the past you have subtly escaped and not the future you dread so much.

Even now, you can hear their voices. The voices swell in your head, trying to find a way out, but you have lost your voice. You can’t yell, you can’t howl. You can’t scream. 

You can run. Which is what you do, and you do so well you have trouble believing it. 

“I’m moving out, mom.” 

How did the words come out, you will never know. You know you said them, though, because your mom pretends nonchalance, and then agreement, which is in fact, a discord in disguise. She even offers help, “Have you looked for houses? What is the price range?” and then adds, rather hastily, “I will come with you, I will search.” 

To be fair, she does. Surprising you, and probably herself, she visits every house. And of course, finds something wrong with every single one of them. 

“Are you going to live in this dump?” 

“I know this neighborhood, assholes, all of them.” 

“Have you asked your dad for money? He can help.” 

You know she doesn’t get it, not yet, probably not ever. This isn’t just a house, this is your one chance to prove your self-sufficiency, your independence. Your freedom.

And you do find it, finally. The freedom, the far fetched independence, the dream: a ramshackle, but a livable one. You have been saving for a year, heck, for more than a year. And this is all you can afford. Well, let it be. 

Your mom is furious, “You can’t live here!” and then, to convince herself, she tells you it’s not that bad, you can redo the walls, buy a curtain, or two, or three, are you sure your dad won’t lend you money, splendid view, the neighbors are kind, you can live here. 

You sign the contract, you pack. In less than a week, your status changes from the recent graduate, the child, the slightly rebellious daughter to the unemployed, one of millions, drowning in debt and rent and bills and neighbors suspicious of your life. You love it. 

You register on a freelancing website, which doesn’t pay your bills, because the salary is less than minimum wage. You look for tutoring jobs, because English is the only thing you know. Turns out, not as many people as you would think are willing to pay for their children to know what domestic abuse and corrupt government mean. The words are not yet fully understood, even though translated, in your language. "Our country does not have a global banking system, meaning that our economy survives and feeds off its own. It’s independent, but absolutely corrupted, and the corruption is circular, everlasting, like a snake biting its own tail,” teenagers, wealthy or not, look at you confused. There’s an eighteen year old who understands you perfectly, he comes from a family of merchants, he is smart. Without hesitation, or wasting time, and with a recording of your voice on his phone, he goes to the principal’s office. You are fired from the first job you've ever been hired in, in only three days. 

Life, exciting and glamorous, turns dull very quickly. The weather is gloomy at best, but you have never liked the sun. Every day, you wake up with the weather forecast on your cell phone, predicting a sunny day, a bright sky, people grinning at their amazing fortune to live in a country where ninety percent of them live just under the poverty line, trading their life for a currency that is losing its value like quicksand. You are one of them. And you are grinning too, because after a million rejections, you have found a job at a stationary store. The store is run by a middle aged couple, and you soon realize they were looking for a servant, not a salesperson. Well, let it be. You work there, full time, for a week. You sweep the floors and you watch out for thieves and burglars, you resist the constant temptation to put a pen or a notebook in your pocket. You chat with children as enthusiastic as you about the dinosaur stickers. And one day, you meet the Hatter. 

He strolls into the store while it is pouring outside, and occasional lightnings bright up the sky. It is magnificent, until the Hatter, his wellington top hat completely soaked, walks up to you. You are arranging the dusty pens, by brand and then by color, thinking of an elaborate plan to rob a stationary store, instead of a bank, a “pen heist.” You are very much aware of the old Hatter closer to you that he should be, and you are exhausted, ready to yell, call it an assault, throw the man out, provoking the owners for you have once again scared a customer away, the fact that the last one was trying to touch your breasts is irrelevant. The Hatter is leaning his head into your ears, and you can smell the madness on his breath, he whispers, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” You slowly turn to him, thinking you have misheard, you must have. He raises an eyebrow, contemplating you or an idea in his head, and then disappears into the isles. 

You keep on arranging the pens, and a thunder roars in the sky, the manager sighs and watches a video on her phone while keeping an eye on the old man, ambling among the isles in the store. You know there is something very wrong, or very right, you have no idea. The man comes back, a yellow notebook in his left hand, and a fountain pen in his right, which he must have picked up while whispering in your ear, you shiver. 

“I think it’s the color,” you say stupidly, because you just want to say something, anything, to know if you have dreamed it or not. You have not. The old man shakes his head in disappointment, thick drops of water splashing the floor. He puts the money on the counter, and walks out as he has come, almost dancing, and just before leaving the store he yells, “Wrong!” and then turns back, smirking, looking directly at you, “Watch out for the fish.” 

Two minutes after midnight, the manager decides to close. “You can go,” she says, and then, “I wish it rained every day, people are more willing to stay inside, they buy more.” 

“We should sell umbrellas,” you suggest. “The weather forecast is always wrong, no one brings anything, they will flood the store if they find we sell umbrellas.” The manager, for once, is pleased with you, and promises a salary raise. You leave. 

You wake up the next day with a hailstorm, which is not strange at the end of the fall, just before the brief winter of this town begins. You are still groggy, and check your phone, the forecast notification is gone before you understand what it says. The sound of the hailstorm, now that you have got up from your bed, looking for your glasses wherever you have left them last night, transforms in your ears: it is not the sound of hailstones banging on the windows, but something considerably larger, heavier ... something dead. 

Cautiously, you go back to your phone, and read the notification again: Cloudy, with Ravens. 

It must be a glitch, you think. You are shivering, standing before the closed curtains of your tiny flat, which is almost trembling now, the sound is so loud. You count to three, open the curtains, and see black blurs in the sky, on your windows, and on the rooftops of the houses you can see. “My glasses,” you remember. You never put them on. Your hands shaking, you put them on after a couple of tries, you come back, and see that once again the weather forecast has been wrong. It is not ravens falling from the sky, hitting the windows, splashing on the ground: it is the fish. 

You stand there, watching, for what seems like hours. People are peeping out of their windows, hollow looks on their faces. They are not talking to each other, not even whispering, no one has taken out their phone to film a video which would become viral in less than an hour, and dismissed as visual effects in a day. No-one will ever know.

Your throat is parched, you realize. Slowly, as if every step counts, as if you are walking on thin ground which would crumble down any minute, you walk to your kitchen. You open the faucet, waiting for the water, and it never comes. Dizzily, you sit down on the kitchen floor. Now you remember him, his wellington top hat, his smirk, “watch out for the fish” he had said. You feel the rush of blood under your skin, pumping throughout your body. You feel alive, somehow the Hatter, the memory of the madness, the wisdom, has given you life. You stand up, and now you hear it: the water is trying to burst out of the faucet, it seems stuck, you hit it once, and then twice. Something is let loose, the water comes, filling your mug. You scream, without a voice, as you see the water is filled with tiny fish, not the dead ones outside your window, but feisty fish, spinning around in your sink, in your mug, in the kitchen, in the palm of your hands. You open the door, exclaim, “They are alive!” your neighbor is already out, a fish in his hand, it’s almost blue, its tail a vibrant range of colors. “You know what they are called?” he says, almost to himself, and then he answers, “Siamese fighting fish. They are very fierce.” 

The rain of fish has stopped, people are coming out, the fighting fish in their hands, on their hair, on their clothes. No longer dazed, quiet, or scared, they are laughing, they are talking, pointing to the fish and to each other, to the sky. 

The air, for once, feels nice on your face. You can feel the breeze in your hair, for you are not wearing a shawl. Of course, not covering your hair in public is an offence to the authorities, but not here. Not now. You walk among the fish on the ground, and the people, and the stores half closed. You walk, you sing, you wave to strangers and they wave back. You walk to the other end of the town, bursting with madness and wisdom, the smell of fish filling your nostrils. It does not bother you, and you realize that you know, that you have long known, why a raven is so much like a writing desk.