Inside the head of Bluey Scheluwee : ‘Losing sight of things around me’

The scene around me appears a kind of curtain, a thick dark one which I can’t see through.

The inevitable has happened. I have now lost sight of all external activity from my confinement space. It’s sub zero visibility now. Over the weekend I heard the stationery chatting about my ‘pathetic living quarters’ as they unsensitively put it and Idiota referred to my confinement space as an aqua-rium. I guess that’s what my confinement space was called all along. The murky water has turned a mouldy brown thick layer of slimy wall. My food and my waste now co-exist in harmony, floating together side by side as they slowly float and whirl in this cesspool of filth, increasing and multiplying by day.

As it was, being confined all day long was a horrible way to spend life, but being confined and not being able to see the outside world was another thing.

I spent my days at 3 in the aquarium of filth entertaining myself by conjuring up memories of my past and dreaming up different versions of futures that would never be. Sometimes I would dream of a future where I was free, no longer a captive and one with the sea. At other times I would imagine dying a horrible death, by way of The Others getting to me finally and skinning me alive while they cackled with evil laughter and spoke in foreign languages. Most times I would dream of how I wanted to ‘repay’ owner for how she has been treating me.

Currently I was able to rely on my sense of hearing, but I feared that it too would leave me like one of the fishes in the big old aquarium back at the shop. This particular fish had woken up one morning only to find that he had lost hearing in his left earhole followed by his right. After a short scare and some theatrics on his part, he was cured again but what if it happened to me too at this point of my existence? I was sure I would go completely insane if it did.

At this point of thought I channel my mind to think of something less frightening but equally disturbing…which has been bothering me for a while now.

These humans, how can they keep us as pets, look at us day in and day out, brag about us, their so called pets, to friends and family and whoever cared to listen to them. How could they mourn our deaths but at the same time have us as food? For breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks? Fillet o’ fish, tuna in a can, caviar (the worst of the lot!), fish and chips, ikan bakar, otak-otak (you know why they call it otak-otak? Cos we fish hope they would gain some wisdom after they barbarically chow on us and suddenly realise what they have done).

The other day owner returned from her lunch break and one whiff of her scent, I immediately knew she had fish for lunch. I knew the smell of cooked fish…i just sensed it immediately and it both horrified and creeped me to the core of my cold blooded self. And she had the cheek to proclaim out loud that she had had fish for lunch. I knew she did it on purpose to hurt me. But you can’t hurt me anymore than you already have, Owner. This much I can tell you. I’m already hurt and my soul damaged to the core of my being.

Don’t you remember, you had placed my little aquarium on your home kitchen table once, where i witnessed senseless and barbaric acts against my brothers which scarred me for life. I watched in horror as your servant scaled, cut and sliced my brothers into pieces, tossing heads which she senselessly dumped into the bin, while she boiled and stewed and steamed and fried millions of my brethren. The horror of even recounting those vile days spent in that kitchen is terrifying…and I still shudder at those moments.

Humans like to catch fish and prefer to think they do not know what is happening to them. But fish have a nervous system like other animals. When humans make us uncomfortable, we feel it, and when they hurt us, we suffer pain. I wondered whether many humans knew this fact and I wished that humans would spend more time watching the National Geographic and Animal Planet channels rather than mindless entertainment channels or even more barbaric live telecasts of parliamentary sessions.

And I do watch the telly. I know what owner’s people did to our great warrior brethrens, the Sharks. I know how they were mercilessly murdered and slayed for their fins, leaving them in pain to die while they basked and glorified in the profits they would make selling those fins to people who prepared food. Well for every sip and slurp that you vile humans take on that shark fin’s soup, we fish are damning you for generations to come. May you and your generations develop permanent seafood allergies and ghastly scales on obvious parts of your body.

I find it all just so barbaric. It’s pointless to keep us as pets. Do you hear me all you humans reading my thoughts? It’s pointless! Why in all the seas of the worlds sake, that you would want us as pets when you mercilessly murder us and devour us within the blink of an eye? Is not murder a sin? Have you no feelings?

Can’t you feel our pain???

Somehow I don’t think humans can feel our pain neither would they stop devouring us and rearing us as their pets at the same time.

But the least you could do is stay off fish if you want us as pets. At least give us that much respect.

But I guess you people are too advanced and smart to be listening to a jaded blue fish who’s practically living and breathing in his own crap.