The Goldfish Syndrome

The funeral had lasted three hours, exactly the attention span of a goldfish, according to the internet article Marcus had read at 3 AM while popping Vitamin D supplements he'd bought from a pharmacy that smelled like impending mortality.

He stared at the glass bowl on his wife's nightstand. The goldfish—Bernard, she'd called him—swam in endless circles, mouth opening and closing like a small, orange O of existential dread. Sarah had been dead six weeks, and Bernard was the only thing left that required feeding.

"You look like shit," Jenna said from the doorway. She held a padel racquet like a weapon, which was appropriate. "We're playing in twenty minutes."

"I'm not going."

"Yes, you are."

She stepped inside, her presence violating the sanctuary of grief Marcus had curated like a museum exhibit. Jenna was his wife's sister, same sharp cheekbones, same way of looking at him as if he were a particularly difficult puzzle.

"Sarah wouldn't want you to become a zombie," she said, gesturing at the vitamin bottles scattered across his dresser like miniature tombstones. "She hated vitamin people. Said they were preparing for a future they weren't going to have."

Marcus laughed, and it hurt somewhere deep in his chest, behind the ribs that felt too fragile to contain anything real anymore. "Irony."

"Yes. Irony."

She moved to the fish bowl, tapping the glass. Bernard swam faster, panic in his primitive nervous system.

"You know what goldfish memory is actually like?" Jenna asked. "They can remember things for months. That's a myth, the three-second thing. Another lie we tell ourselves to feel superior."

Marcus looked at the orange shape suspended in water, swimming the same loop as yesterday, as the day before, as every day since he'd last watched Sarah breathe.

"Maybe I'm the one in the bowl," he said.

Jenna nodded, once, sharp and decisive. "Then let's go play padel. Hit something hard. Break the pattern."

He stood. Bernard continued his circles, unaware that his entire universe had almost been shattered by a woman who might have been the only thing keeping Marcus from becoming exactly what his wife had feared: a zombie taking vitamins, waiting for an ending that had already happened.

"Fine," Marcus said. "But I'm not wearing those ridiculous shoes."

Jenna smiled, and for the first time in six weeks, something inside him swam toward the light.