Bill Johnston

An except from A Fish That Sings Clearly
the first pages of One Manner of Hunger or Another

Blasting a hole in my skull was the first impulse. It was a quick brutal end that left little to the imagination. After a visit to the corner gun shop where I found buying a gun harder than the second amendment led me to believe, I wandered next door passing a tempting dice game and the smile of an old whore into the liquor store and found an alternate finish, row upon row of shiny bottles and striking labels calling out to me to take them on a little trip to my final destination, into a final darkness. The price for a firearm of adequate caliber to end me cost considerably more and the idea of drinking myself down the drain followed by a hangman’s knot seemed more fitting. I hadn’t the will to finish myself in such a drawn out manner at first, but I’d always liked to drink and thanks to my time as a boy scout a length of rope would suffice.
The room looked like hell. The walls were off yellow with brown stains emerging from behind faded paint. There was a small sink in the corner below a broken mirror. The bathroom was down two flights of stairs and shared between the other unfortunates who found their lairs within the run down tenement.
The only furnishings were a four legged folding table with a sticky brown surface in the center of the room, a rusted metal folding chair, and a stained twin mattress I’d salvaged from the dumpster of a Goodwill against the wall by the door.
Then what I deemed, at first glance upon, renting the room as my final companion.
It was not golden with flowing fins or swimming within a tall circular fish bowl. It was only the size of a large minnow, with large eyes that stuck out from both sides of that ugly little head and resembled something you’d place upon your hook instead of one of the elegant aquatic creatures that grace aquariums. Even a proper fish bowl was lacking as the creature lived in clear, glass cereal bowl. I noticed immediately that the fish swam not randomly back and forth between the walls of its glass home but directly towards me. No matter where I stood within the room there the fish swam; it pressed itself against the glass, its two bulging eyes focused upon me.
Not sure when the last time it had been fed was and confident that it hadn’t much time left as my roommate. I decided to let it go hungry as I had so many times, and that after a few days its gills would cease to pulse and it would float upon the surface. I decided that when the little finned bastard turned belly up in its bowl I would take that as my queue to leave the world I currently occupy and venture out to see what else remained at the end of a rope hung from the ceiling. I paid very little attention to my only companion at first.
Unaware of just how much time I had left, I began to drink. There was no joy involved in pouring the alcohol down my throat. I drank the cheapest bottles of vodka in the store, large clear plastic bottles that slowly formed a pile in the corner of my shitty little room. I threw them back, one swallow following another, until the world around me grew fuzzy, and the room grew comfortable, and I awoke the next morning laid out upon the filthy mattress with no memory of lying down.

I lost track of the days spent alone in my room, staring at the fish as it swam ever towards me. The passage of time I deduced by adding up the empty vodka bottles in my room as I had neither clock nor window by which to judge a night’s passing. I drank more and more as time passed before I fell unconscious and had no idea how often I ventured out to visit the liquor store a block away to be met with the light of the day or the glow of a street light completing my pilgrimage weighed down with bottles.
I ate little while waiting for my roommate to die only consuming a few slices of bread a day to soak up the vodka and sustain my unwanted life.
Funds ran low. The vodka I’d been purchasing, though cheap, began to eat away at what little of my money remained from renting the room, and my last companion, the cursed little bug eyed guppy that never seemed to cease pressing it’s nose less face against the glass, ever swimming at me, had not seemed to falter after several days without food.
I had fish as a child that died without warning though I cared for them well. The ending to this story was taking far too long. I often drank calmly fondling the orange extension cord I had fashioned into a noose to hang myself from the exposed boards of the ceiling. I’d had enough. With less than twenty dollars in my pocket and only left with one quarter of a bottle of vodka for the night, I reached a decision.
I swore quietly at the gilled little bastard and matched his gaze with mine as I emptied the last of the vodka down my throat, and, with only a grunt, I swiped my annoying little roommate, bowl and all, from the table and smiled as it shattered on the tiled floor. The water spread around my feet, the glass settled, and the fish flopped upon the floor, flipping from one side to another, gills working frantically, eyes bulging as it began to dry.
I felt quite satisfied. I smiled as the little fucker suffocated feeling that as he had spent his last day upon the earth ...so would I.
Then the fish began to sing. I was stunned for a moment, sitting in disbelief. I gave a quick manic laugh. It had finally happened. I had finally lost it, achieved the madness that had been teetering over me for so long. My only comfort was that I would not have to endure it. Had I planned on living much longer, I would have been terrified.
It started slowly and I was unsure as to the source. The sound soared both high and low at once. The fish craned its head from the ground pumping it’s lipless little mouth, opening and closing, and the sound was unmistakably one that had never been heard by any ears upon this planet. The walls shook from the bass, reverberated, and struck me from all directions. It was as if I had heard the sound from not only the ears upon my head but from within and I clutched the arms of my chair and leaned back as the sound flowed through and around me.
I knew then that I had been blessed to experience something that defied description. I knew then that I heard the fish sing.
The sound ceased slowly as the fish lowered its head to the ground and its gills stopped pumping death.
I have never acted so quickly, with such purpose, in my life.
I dove to the floor as the fish ceased to move. Swooped it from the ground with both hands and rushed it to the sink.
I turned both knobs of the sink and plunged the fish into the water as it filled the basin, swearing softly and looking down at its lifeless body. Then, slowly, the gills began to work, the mouth opened and closed and I released the living fish into the filling sink.
I did my best to fill the sink with water both not too hot and not too cold and was relieved to see the fish swimming in my filthy little sink. After flipping about for a moment it brought its head to the surface of the water and began to swim, once again, towards me, pressing its head and bulging eyes against the walls of the sink.
I stood drunkenly watching the fish swim against the wall of the sink and was no longer quite sure of what had occurred. So I laid down upon my filthy mattress to gather my thoughts.
My eyes reopened hours later. I could not recall where or who I was. I looked up from the piss smelling mattress at the ceiling slightly lost when reality, if it could be called such a thing, returned to me. My head was pounding. My tongue was a dried hunk of flesh in my raspy mouth. I rose from the mattress groggy and crossed the room, dismissing the fuzzy recollections of the night before when I pressed my foot down upon a jagged piece of glass.
In an instant my memories returned and I walked, as fast as one can with a piece of glass in one’s foot, to the sink.
My beloved pet was swimming happily within. All at once I felt I’d regained a dear friend.
I took to speaking to the little fish, feeding it bread crumbs and praising its beautiful song. I even went so far as to panhandle on the street to acquire enough change to buy a glass so that my angelfish wouldn’t have to sit all day in a dirty sink.
I did not return to the liquor store.
It occurred to me that what I had experienced that night could have easily been some form of hallucination. That did not concern me as much as the fact that the memory of that voice began to grow soft.
I tried to play the sound in my mind as one does a nursery rhyme before going to sleep but it only grew fainter and fainter.
So, after some time, I reached within the glass holding my only friend on this earth and I plucked it into the deadly air, tail between my thumb and finger and waited.
Its gills pumped death and it flopped back and forth, but soon it only wriggled slightly, and, against my every instinct, I held it pinched against my palm. I held it and watched as it went limp, the lids on its beautiful eyes closed and it ceased to be my companion and became merely a dead piece of fish.
Pinching my friend’s lifeless tail between my thumb and fore finger I raised him up, tilted my head back, and dropped him into my mouth swallowing him whole.
I took a moment of silence for my final companion, stood upon my folding chair, looped the noose around the exposed boards of the ceiling, and, with the song of a fish in my mind, kicked the chair out from under me.

for the rest of the story check out the book....

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