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| Suicide Fish Fiction by Aaron Michael Morales |
Five fish committed suicide, the text message read, and the next, eerily warning, WATCH YOUR STEP, made Samuel’s stomach cower as it occurred to him that he had wondered, occasionally, where all the fish had gone because he’d drunk-stumbled past the faux-rock fishpond numerous times and they had been there, near the surface, staring at him as though entreating him to join them, but he hadn’t seen them lately, partly because it wasn’t his apartment where they’d flung themselves to their deaths, nor his pond that’d soured amid the recent heatwave, but still he felt unsettled because he recalled the time he’d arrived actually sober at his girlfriend’s place and one goldfish the size of a rubber coin purse lay on the doormat, fifteen feet from water, and when he’d leaned in to peer at the dried-out fish, it opened its gill, faintly, terrifying Samuel, who fell back toward the pond wall, nearly toppling over, where, he was sure, if he’d fallen in he’d never reemerge, instead flitting through souring water as the fish abandoned him one by one, gazing up through putrid water too cloudy to see through, living his remaining days in solitude while the world continued on. |
Aaron Michael Morales was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, and is an Assistant Professor of English at Indiana State University. His first novel, Drowning Tucson, was recently released by Coffee House Press.
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Oye, Borges! Muy bueno, senor.