Goldfish Envy

It all started with some fish. Large goldfish to be precise, the big ones the Japanese call koi. They're big and pretty and make excellent eating if you were into munching on a pet you'd already named "Goldy". They were low maintenance, self-sufficient and survived the coldest of winters underneath layers of ice, feeding on the algae that grew during the warmer summer months. They didn't require walking or special attention or college trust funds. Koi were the closest things to perfect pets. This was what Jon kept telling himself as he dug larger and deeper into his front yard. It was all good—the sweat, the grit, the blisters forming on his too-soft hands. The layers melting away one shovel-full at a time meant he was getting closer to his dream. Jon could see it as clear as crystal water. Irises and lily pads, fish darting in and out of rippled sunlight. There would be rocks and a waterfall. A pure, silver stream to catch the admiration of the neighbors. For once, he would have something they wanted. This was the beginning, where the changes were going to start. He bent to his task, oblivious of the setting sun. Of course, so much of theirs that he once envied, no longer mattered. He now possessed the single most important jewel of the neighborhood: Genvieve.

She had been a lovely golden haired thing, if not exactly the most charming presence. In fact, she proved rather like them, aloofness showing under a false veil of politeness and civility. Jon had been determined to change her mind about him. He had thought, if he could manage that with her—a social catalyst among the neighbors—perhaps he could make them all see, make them understand. Now, that was not in the cards. He should have known she would turn against him as many had done before. But he had fixed it, fixed her, and now his possession of her was nearly complete.

As he dug, the vision of her petite toned body, her wavy golden hair, her perfect teeth, and the way she would saunter slowly down the sidewalk in front of his house—teasing him with her dead smile and vacant eyes—swam before him.

Brushing past the truth of her existence, Jon examined his ropes creasing the once silky skin. Cheeks, now hollow with hunger, and eyes, angry and terrified, stared back up at him from the ground. "It's better this way, you know," he commented, not pausing in his labor. "He won't be able to find you."

At first, the type of sounds a mewling animal might make had escaped from beneath the rolled up white rag he jammed in her mouth. It had been almost a day since Jon heard the last of them, but her dark green eyes still pleaded with him down on the upturned soil.

"It won't work," he warned her, shaking his head. "Don't make me remind you why I'm doing this."

She paled, gagging against the fabric as she inhaled. Black snot flew as she sneezed, leaving dark trails in the dirt. She turned red with fury, frustration, and holding in the word fucker. The last culprit was a broken acrylic nail, before that a snagged cashmere pashmina.

“Was I too fat, too bald, not appropriate? You slept with every other man in the neighborhood.” He tossed a shovel-full of dirt in her eyes. Mud formed as it mixed with her tears. “I would have bought you the Jimmy Choo’s that Martin thought were frivolous. Remember? Bad choice, Darling.”

Loam rained down on her, shaken violently away by a head turn.

“You can think about it later.” Jon looked at his watch and, staking the ground hard with his shovel, he leaned towards her as far as the handle would allow. “If I leave you here, do you think you can behave yourself for a few hours? I have an appointment that I can't be late for.”

Her eyes welled with hopeful tears and, as he dragged her to the hole, she believed she might live after all.

“I'm leaving a friend to watch, one I trust far more than I love you.”

Genevieve couldn’t see him anymore, but the sounds of his departure stoked a blazing fire in her intense will to survive. Spitting cloth and dirt, she struggled and writhed against the ropes that were meant to be her winding sheet–nothing would stop her now–except for the owner of the sweet brown eyes staring down at her from above.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. It would make Jon very, very, sad to think I let you get away. He won’t be gone long, I promise; and then it will all be over.”

Genevieve’s mind raced. Back behind the looming figure was her world, where she ruled with an iron fist, which happened to be extremely well manicured. One cocktail: a badly made dirty martini of generic vodka had been her downfall. A sip, god knows how long ago, and now she was looking into the innocuous eyes of Jon’s frumpy, simple, half-sister.

Lips the color of Genvieve’s blood drew back to reveal yellow picket fences. Garet made her skin crawl. She was the watchdog and, given the chance, she would do much more harm to Genvieve than Jon.

“Get you anything, dear? Cosmopolitan? Sushi? Human flesh?” Garet laughed a little at that last offering. “Me and Jon, we don’t like you anymore. Jon told me what you wanted to do. Shut me away in the dark forever. Send Jon to the dark too, and keep all of his nice things. But we tricked you. Now you are going into the dark.”

Genvieve vented her frustration in a volley of muffled curses and thrashed even harder. Anger at the disgusting, slobbering, creature standing over her grew larger than the fear.

To amuse herself, Garet kicked dirt and rocks over the edge of the hole nearest Genvieve’s face. Garet was 200 pounds if she weighed an ounce and on her small frame it made her look like a hairy egg. “Jon said that if I'm good I can keep you. Like a pet. Right Mister Was?” Garet pulled a long string from her pocket; as she tugged, the object at the other end caught on the lip of her jeans.

Genvieve threw up behind her gag, which stung her throat and backed into her sinuses. Regrets formed in her mind like welts—never should have had drinks, never should have given out my number, never should have said or done...

Jon tapped his foot and looked at his sister disapprovingly. “Gar-et,” he said, sighing. “There are some times you really try my patience.”

His sister looked back up at him, pouting prettily from her seat on the earth. “But Jo-on, it wasn’t my fault,” she whined. “I just showed her my Mister Was, how was I supposed to know she’d react to it so badly?”

He tsked and shook his head at her, not buying it. His eyes drifted past Garet’s Mister Was—the dried penis she’d chopped off her ex-husband—to the body lying in the hole. “I thought I told you to get rid of that. Foresight, Pet. We've had many conversations about it.” Jon's voice bled with barely restrained anger. He picked up a nearby stick and impaled the desiccated member. “Last time, Pet. No more trophies.” At the hole, he leaned over and removed Genvieve's gag. “Not before your time.”

She could only cough and wheeze, air fighting past the barely digested dinner in her throat.

Garet began to cry big whooping sobs. “No more games,” Jon said.

As he left Genvieve's limited view, suddenly Garet's tears ended. “No more games Pet,” she snapped,

Mz Black has the next patch.