The Gills My Lungs Paid For” : Mujtaba Farooq

"The Gills My Lungs Paid For”

Mujtaba Farooq 

The room has an odour — an ugly odour, something I cannot quite distinguish. It smells like a rotten fish pulled from a pond and left in moist soil under the dry heat of summer.

Nothing is strange. But the fish.

It is actually there — rotten, yet alive. Its tail moves. Its gills tremble,breathing in their own stench. One eye carries a dilated pupil; the other rests against the dust of the floor.

But who kept it here, and when? I was here the entire time, and no one else came. How could I have missed it? Or did I bring it in myself and forget?

And even if all of that happened — how is it still alive?

What is this mess?

Let me close the curtains.

I have to clear this before the odour reaches the neighbours. If it does, I will surely be rumoured as a murderer — and those rumours will surely make one of me. Being rumoured is always irritating. Being rumoured over something entirely true is its own quiet torment.

I have no soap. What must I use?

Let me tear my shirt and start to clean around it. The rubbing has stained the cloth red. And yet the mess remains.

Where is my perfume? Top of the shelf.

It falls — straight onto the head of the fish. Its breath stops.

Now it is dead, and I have killed it.

Only I am left suffering this odour. I spray the perfume all over the room. Now it smells like me — worse, even. The burst from the bottle has smeared the stains across the wall. The clock ticks loudly as it witnessed my crime.

I wash my hands and find a bag to put the fish in. I keep it away. Then I have to wash again.

I do not know what I am doing.

My shirt is stained. My footsteps leave marks. The fish — I still carry its smell. And I have killed it.

I am the murderer.

But who put it here? And why did it not die on its own?

How can I open the curtains now? How can I step outside?

I killed a fish that was already meant to be dead. I have no neighbours around me — and yet I must face them.

The writer can be reached at mujtabajourno@gmail.com