First of all, there are too many fish tanks back here. They are probably left over from when my mother decided to collect aquatic animals. She's never done a damned thing by halves.
Wall to wall and all different sizes. There are more than a hundred and all arranged like a maze. I wander between them. I'm not sure where the light comes from.
I like to stare at the swimmers with their different shapes and colors, but they don't seem to care for it one bit. They bump their noses against the glass, trying to get at me. Some of of them are pissed enough they're smashing themselves into bloody messes. Some of them are spitting.
I guess I'm meant to care for them. Feed them, keep their walls clean, don't let them eat each other.
It's not that easy, though, when one of the damn things grows at an exponential rate and flops right out of his tank and into the next one with his multiple rows of giant, razor teeth gnashing away at whatever it lands on.
And this other one, the one that looks like a giant earthworm has big, brown, thorny teeth. It flops about as well, but takes a little care to preselect his victims. I suppose he must go by smell. He hasn't got any eyes.
The water splashes all over me, and now I smell just like them, and that's no good because there's not enough time to sort out how to avoid the earthworm. He has preselected my left arm. (I am left-handed. I need that arm.) He latches on with his big thorns deep in the fleshy part, right over the scar I got when I was twelve and I burned myself with hot oil while cooking french fries for the siblings.
Let me believe there's no pain, I tell myself. And I must be a magic person, because there is no pain. There is just my arm and the fish.
And all the teeth. Those are definitely there.
I raise my other arm up to cover my eyes just so they don't betray me into thinking there must be pain after all. If I can't see it, I can't feel it.
And that's all there is to that.
