~Watching Death~

The first time I ever saw his imprint was when I was six years old. My goldfish, Sunset, was dead a few hours after we bought him from the grocery store. I was shocked. I had never before seen a lifeless body (bugs don't count, okay?). Through the years of fishkeeping, I saw many, many dead fish. But that's how they were. One moment they're alive, the next morning they're dead. I never actually saw the actual death. That changed when I was 10.

~oOo~

My first four platys were Whirlaway, Sundance, Essie, and Moxie. Sundance and Essie died the next couple of days, but Moxie cut a bad combination of two fish illnesses - ich and gill fungus. It didn't quite help that she was also pregnant! When we bought a male fish, she must have had her babies, because suddenly her huge blocky stomach was gone, but she still had her gills all full of white fungus.

Then one day I decided she would get the other fish sick. I placed her in a small tupperware with some fish tank water, but then the water was getting cold! I got a ziploc, put piping hot water in there, then put the water in. I did this every few minutes. Looking back, that must have been stressing her out big time!

Then I recalled how the world's oldest fish, a goldfish named Tish, was put in the sun for a few hours every day. He lived to 43. So I took the tuperware and placed it on the carpet in the sunlight streaming from the window.

I watched Moxie slow down. I rushed and moved the tupperware to where I thought the sun was coming in stronger. Her gills had nearly stopped moving, and she halted her swimming from the warm water I was frantically pouring in.

And then I watched her die. It was short. It wasn't violent, she didn't thrash about. She slowed down and just... died.

Sometimes I still wonder why I did what I did. I probably could've kept her from Death picking her off earth if I was logically thinking. But that was the very first actual death before my very eyes.

~oOo~

I suppose Death has its reason for visiting us. It's a strange enemy. To continue on, it has to take a life. Consume. Destroy.

The second and hopefully last death I saw was, and still is, guilt-giving. I didn't mean for it to happen. Yet my careless actions resulted in the death of my betta Passion. Passion was a very intelligent fish, and I managed to teach him to swim through a hoop and push a floating small ball to me for fish food. He had betta problems though, and began to bite his own beautiful red tail. I isolated him in his own bowl and kept floating bags of hot water in his bowl to keep it warm.

While doing a water change, I filled his bowl with hot water. Too hot. Burning, hot water. Passion thrashed about and I ran to get colder water. He violently swam about, zipping back and forth, while his gills and scales and fins were burned.

When I came back, he was upside down, thrashing about. Death swooped down for the second time in my life while I was in front of his Creature of Interest . He slowed, like Moxie had did, and by now I knew there was no saving him.

He settled to the bottom of the bowl, flapped around in the water a bit more, and died.

~oOo~

You can say that I've learned a lot. For one thing, now I never EVER use hot water with the fish. And it's inevitable that death will gather us all up one day, if not tomorrow, or the day after that. That's my experience with Death. Maybe you'll realize that it's nothing to be scared of. You can't stop it from coming.

The reason I wrote this was for a background story for the antagonist of my NaNo novel. It's not a good piece, nor does it compel you to understand death's motives, but it's something.

And I got to put it into words. Read, rate, and let me know if you read it.