Fish Tank Surprise
Two clownfish wove through the yellow tendrils of the anemone as they tried to flee from my prying eyes behind the glass. My younger brother George always went on about how they were from the family Pomacentridae and that their favorite food was zooplankton. I don’t know what any of those things are, but they sound long and complicated. I think long words are stupid. They remind me of having to take hard spelling tests in school where your first-grade teacher gives you those ugly X marks for not knowing whether potato has an E or O as a last letter.
Still, his fish are fun to play with. Sometimes if you put your finger up to the glass, they’ll come over and try to nibble on it, thinking it’s food. The dozen goby will often do this while the clownfish float cautiously in the back of the tank. I don’t know why clownfish have to be so boring. All they do is hide in their anemone at the corner of the cage while they have tons of space to swim in their giant tank. George told me it was 180 gallons.
I prodded the tank with my right pointer finger. As usual, several of the fat goby with ugly bulging eyes swam towards it in curiosity. Good thing my younger brother was in the living room doing his honors algebra homework. He would have screeched at me like a sick hyena if he even saw a fingerprint stain the glass. As I slid my finger across the tank, a trail of thick sweat followed. I’m going to be boiled alive in this room. Why my parents think it’s a good idea to save energy, by not turning on the air conditioner unless it’s above 90 outside is beyond me. Even just standing motionless, large beads of sweat were going down my neck. Dad wouldn’t come home until eight pm tonight from work, and he had our car. That meant we had no chance of even going to the local pool in Cross Plains.
I rubbed my neck as my hand soaked up the waterfall of sweat that continued to run down my back. I could have gone to the kitchen and got a glass of water, but that wouldn’t stop my skin from feeling like molten lava. I then thought about the closet next to the front door. I immediately got up and ran down the stairs. I opened the closet and dug through the incoherent piles of shoes to unearth a blue duffel bag that I quickly opened. Inside was a scuba mask with some snorkels. I picked up the gear and ran back upstairs. When I got back to George’s room, I closed the bedroom door slowly to not make any obvious noise.
The clear water of the tank bubbled temptingly to the roaring black filter inside. I got up on my tiptoes and carefully took off the lid. After gingerly placing it on the ground, I walked over to George’s closet and took out a stool that I then placed next to the tank. I’ll be honest when I say that looking down into a recently cleaned fish tank feels a lot like you're about to get into the pool, minus the stink of chlorine. It felt so good to stick my sticky hand into the cool, moving water. Within a few minutes, I had put on my goggles and snorkel. All my clothes were still on. I could just go outside and dry out later.
My body shivered a bit as I sunk my left leg into the tank, my right immediately followed. Slowly, I sunk into the water as the two clownfish darted to the back of the tank in terror. A large deluge sloshed out of the tank as I slowly sunk in further. Though the fishies would have a bit less space to swim around, the water that poured out onto the ground puddled on the tile floor that surrounded the tank. George’s fish stuffed animals that littered the carpet around the tiles would not face the consequences of my deadly flood. Not that I really cared. As long as I had time to dry up the mess with a towel I’d never get caught.
The water was a lot colder than expected, but still felt pretty good. The only drawback was that I could feel the darned gobies sliding past my legs. Putting your head underwater in a fish tank feels almost like a vacation. You can look down and see all these colorful corals below you, like the time my family went on that snorkeling trip in the Bahamas.
I lifted my head out of the water right as footsteps came up the stairs. My entire body froze. I knew very well that George had just short of thirty minutes to finish that algebra worksheet. He always timed himself and gloated on how he could finish it faster than anyone in his class. Though he’s a pretentious ass, even I find this impressive considering he’s in the fourth grade and I’m two years older than him. Should’ve known better that he worked his pencils to nubs. He was coming up to get his clownfish pencil sharpener he’d forgotten on his nightstand. I knew I was toast when George opened the door and turned his head towards the tank.
“Kile, what are you doing!” he yelled. He ran up to the tank and started screaming. I dunked my head back into the water to avoid his annoying cries. Through my goggles, I could see George grimacing back at me through the glass. If he wasn’t such a pansy, he would try to punch through it to clobber my face. Instead, he continued to stand there, screaming. My brother may be smart, but he never knows how to win a fight. All he does is stand and whine until some adult sees his pathetic chubby hands flailing around. I don’t know what he was trying to get out of this. Mom was talking to a neighbor two houses down and would never hear him. Thankfully, I had my snorkel on and could stay under the water for as long as I wanted. At least as long as it would take for George to lose his breath from yelling.
To my surprise, George’s mouth started to move, which meant he was actually speaking words. Curiosity got the best of me, and I lifted my head out of the water. “The fish tank is for fish, Kile!” yelled George.
“But it feels so nice,” I retorted.
George paused in bewilderment. For a second, I almost thought his face was paralyzed. “Get out of my fish tank!” screamed George.
“No, I’m hot,” I protested.
By this point, George’s face had gotten so tensed and red that it looked like it was going to burst like those rotten tomatoes my mom always leaves in her garden.
“Kile! Get out of my fish tank!” screamed George again. I put my head back under the water. This conversation was clearly going nowhere. Mom wouldn’t get back for at least another twenty minutes. She really likes to talk to our neighbor about their garden of these disgusting vegetables called heirloom eggplants. I had plenty of time. George's lips continued to flail with no sound coming out of them as I stared back at him. The entire experience was almost spooky. It was as if I had entered a protective bubble with chaos swirling around the outside. George turned around and leapt on his bed. He started screaming again. Two pillows shaped like fish bounced in front of him. He picked one up and threw it at the tank.
I giggled as it bounced off the glass and landed on the floor. George had finally stopped his screaming. He looked down at the floor in pensive frustration. To my concern, he was grinning mischievously when he lifted his head to look at me again. George smiling that way is never a good sign. He walked back over to the tank and continued to look at me with this smile until his face almost pressed against the glass. He then pointed upwards. He was signaling me to get my head out of the water. I took my head out and looked down at him.
“What is it?” I asked.
George looked downward to the far right side of the tank and pointed.
“That filter doesn’t clean out everything you know,” he said in a foreboding tone.
I looked down to where he was pointing. I couldn’t see anything through the stirred water, so I put my snorkel back in and put my head under. The two clownfish still huddled in the back of the tank. They were surrounded by these strange white vine thingies that floated around my face. That was when I put two and two together. The fish were taking frightened dumps. I shot my head out of the water and clambered out of the tank. George was laughing hard.
“Eww, gross!” I yelled.
Water dripped all over the carpet as I struggled back down the stool and ran out of George’s room. He was still laughing when I had made it down the stairs. It was at this point that I realized my dilemma. Instead of going to the bathroom, my panic had taken my soaking body all the way down the carpeted staircase. Against my better judgement, I ran across the kitchen to the nearest door. When I got to the back door, I turned around. I had left a clear long puddle of water from his room to the other end of the house. If mom got home too soon, I’d be dead meat. All I could do was dry myself and the tile kitchen floor with a towel and pray that she wouldn’t come through the front door.
Within the next fifteen minutes, I had taken a beach towel from the closet and dried myself off as best as I could before I wiped down the floor. The thought of fish turds touching my face led me to rinse my head over the kitchen faucet.
The carpet was a lost cause. It had already soaked up the poo water and was impossible to dry completely. I could only hope my parents wouldn’t notice it was damp. George would tell on me anyway, but at least there wouldn’t be as much mess for them to complain about. I went out through the back door to stand in the sun when I heard my mom come through the front door. She came outside when she saw me basking in the middle of the lawn from the kitchen window.
“Sweety, why are you so wet?” she asked. George came downstairs and stood behind her. He gave me that same malicious smile that will forever haunt me. “Uh, I was playing with the hose.” I stammered. George was going to spill the beans, but I might as well try. I looked around for anything that could help me craft a convincing story. An empty kiddie pool George and I used to play in when we were toddlers was sitting under a giant oak behind me.
“I was just playing around with the hose and was about to fill the old pool,” I explained. “I just wanted to cool off.”
“He wanted to swim with the fishes,” whined George. Mom looked around at George in confusion.
“Swimming with the fishes? What do you mean?” she asked.
“He wanted to put them in the pool.” continued George. He clenched his face. George was using the oldest trick in the book. That trick was making fake tears. “He tried to get some out of the tank and got water all over the floor before I stopped him,” he moped.
My mom glared at me. “Kile! You know those things will die in cold water. What were you thinking!”
To be honest, I didn’t know those fish would die in cold water. Not that I’d ever try to move them. My mom didn’t have enough sense, however, to realize that I didn’t listen in to every one of George’s biology lectures at the dinner table. I knew before that I was going to be screwed, but now I was going to be obliterated. “I wasn’t doing that!” I protested.
“Yes, you were!” said George. “You got the carpet all wet when I chased you out of the room.”
Never before had I wished that the neighbors' hedges besides me would consume me and make me disappear more than I did at that moment. I had forgotten to dry up the water I had spilled around the tank. There was nothing I could do. Mom would go up to George’s room, and the proof was all there. My parents would always believe George. When he wasn’t getting pummeled by playground bullies, he always won.
Mom turned around and rushed up the stairs. I walked around the house to see George’s bedroom window. The two clownfish were looking outside. I imagined them staring down at me defiantly. They had given their revenge, and I was paying the price. Stupid George.
Fish Tank Surprise
Humor
15 and up
2205 words
Edelsit Finn
I can turn popular internet phenomena into engaging and unique stories
Hook: kid takes a swim in fish tank
surrealistic fiction readers
From cheeseland
edelsit@protonmail.com : no current website
graduated high school
writing for one year and counting
like surrealistic writing
listen to Big B
Was born in St. Paul