She had always kept fish, neither a dedicated dog nor cat person, she'd decided fish were best. For years they would come and go, but there were a couple of stables, she had named them Mickey and Minnie, she hated their names by the time Minnie finally became sick and died. Mickey soon followed, having tried to commit suicide by jumping out of the tank various times, he finally succeeded two months later. She lost her taste in keeping fish with his death.Boarding school followed and it wasn't till her last year of high school that her mother came to visit bringing with her a beautiful variety of goldfish. They were given a spot on her desk, and she wanted to spend the first day watching them swim. But they spent the first few hours on their own. When she returned that night she noticed one of them float ...view middle of the document...
Her fish deserved a friend after having managed to breathe in the filthy water.The next day a new fish arrived she placed him in the bowl and thought to herself, its odd, the most beautiful type of fish she'd ever seen swimming beside the ugliest. She decided to feed them, perhaps a few freeze dried worms as a treat. She heard the water splashing around, and turned to see the beautiful one repeatedly slamming into the lungs of the ugly. In shock she was not sure what to do. But decided she must do something, as she rushed to the hall to get a cup of filtered water, her task became useless. She removed the new fish from the tank and scolded the other fish. Jack, she'd call him Jack, after Jack the Ripper. The next week she asked for another fish from her friends going to town. This one returned and appeared to be old, she named him Watson, with the hope that the name would bring him luck, from the criminal, and Watson did manage to hold his own for a few days longer than the others. But at the end, Jack kept him from eating and Watson ended, what she decided had been a long life.Jack was never given the chance to meet another victim, her love of his beauty meant she didn't have the heart to let the stray cats take him on. She graduated that year, her boyfriend being a cat lover was not given the fish, (he had provided the second victim and was not found of Jack anyhow.) she passed Jack onto an animal-lover, who she hoped would feel mercy on him, and warned him to not allow any other fish near him.She owned quite a few pets in the years that followed always naming them after a few days of observation, Sherlock, Maxwell Smart, Poirot, and Tracey all after famous detectives for luckJack as it turned out was not as smart as the original Ripper had been, he died, having finally met his match, himself, his bowl's new location had been next to mirror.
