“You've cheated death for the last time, Slimeball!” Advancing menacingly, Edna Kretschmer glowered at her mortal enemy.

“Are you talking to someone?”

Edna jumped at the sound of her husband's voice. “Roger! Don't sneak up like that! You startled me.”

“Were you on the phone, dear?” Roger Kretschmer studied his bathrobe-clad wife with a curious tilt of his head. She seemed more tense since he began working from their home, even more so when their last child, Edgar, had gone off to college. Roger was beginning to wonder if Edna was really coping at all with their newly empty nest.

“That stupid fish!” Edna turned to the bowl holding the small goldfish. “It's been five years. The dumb thing should be dead by now.” Her adversary reacted by swimming lazily clockwise.

“Listen to yourself, Edna.” Roger shook his head. “It's a fish--a simple fish for godsake! It doesn't shed, doesn't bark, won't jump up on you, won't ruin the rug, will never get you up in the middle of the night. Why do you despise it?”

“I don't know.” Edna thought for a moment.

She hated that fish the moment it showed up on their doorstep. One night, close to midnight, when Edgar was still in high school, someone rang their doorbell. Groggy, Roger got up to see what it was and nearly stepped on a plastic bag on their welcome mat. It was filled with water and held three goldfish. A rubber band kept the water from pouring out.

What's with this younger generation? Roger wondered with creased forehead. In my day it was a bag of burning shit.

“Dad, what's going on?” Edgar stood at the foot of the stairs, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

Roger held up the bag. “Looks like we're the victims of a drive-by gold-fishing.”

“Cool!” Edgar's eyes brightened. “Can I have them?” He took the bag from his father and headed for their kitchen. “I'm calling them Larry, Moe and Curly.”

The three goldfish shared the small bowl for several days, until one morning when Moe and Larry turned up doing the backstroke. Edgar was disappointed, Edna ecstatic and Roger suspicious, although nothing was ever proven.

“It's dumb and scaly,” Edna answered. “You can't pet it. It won't come when you call.” Edna watched the goldfish out of the corner of her eye, convinced it was capable of moving against her if she let her guard down. “The thing is entirely too lah-dee-dah, if you ask me, not a care in the world.”

“It's a fish, Edna. It doesn't have a single thought in the world either.”

“He ought to be deep-frying in batter, if you ask me. That would give him something to think about!”

Roger sighed and shook his head. There was no rational answer to this. “Have it your way, Edna, but it's Edgar's pet. Try not to kill Curly while he's away.” Concerned, Roger studied the fish. “I'm going to the Hassenhoffer's. They've got another virus.”

“Another one?” Edna's eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Just where on the net is Tom surfing?”

“That's not for me to say.” Roger opened the door to the garage. “I'll probably be gone most of the day,” he called over his shoulder. “And Edna, try and let go. If you don't stop obsessing over that fish, one day it's going to be the death of you.”

Edna waited until the opener fully closed the garage door before turning to her quarry. “Your luck is about to run out, Curly,” she chortled.

Edna dove into the cabinet under the kitchen sink. She rummaged through dozens of cleaners and aerosols before finding what she wanted. She held a bottle of liquid tarnish remover in her hand. Edna studied the label. “It works on silver.” Grinning, she unscrewed the cap and began dripping the chemical solution into the fish bowl. “Let's see what it does for gold.”

“One drop. Two drops. Three...” Edna began counting as the cleaner hit the water.

At ten drops, the fish began swimming in frantic figure eights. By fifteen, it began gasping, assuming a fish is capable of gasping. At twenty drops, the fish stopped doing anything at all. Delighted, Edna watched her foe rise slowly to the surface, sunning its underbelly.

“Twenty,” Edna nodded with satisfaction. “I'll have to remember that,” she said as she put the bottle back under the sink. If nothing else, Edna was thrifty. Apply only what is needed and nothing more, she thought with no small satisfaction. “Time for Mommy to shower and get dressed,” Edna chirped, padding out of the kitchen.

Thirty-minutes later, Edna returned, glowing and happy. She scooped up a half-full glass of orange juice from the counter and raised it to make a toast to her newly departed foe. As Edna caught sight of the tank, her jaw and glass both dropped. There was Curly, swimming happily counter-clockwise as if nothing had happened.

The crash of glass on the white tile floor snapped Edna out of her stupor. Ignoring the spreading slick of orange juice, she bent over to smell the water. Thinking it was feeding time, Curly rose to meet her. Spitting at her enemy, Edna sniffed. A hint of tarnish remover remained. She stepped back, frowning.

“You little faker,” Edna hissed, looking around for a murder weapon. She caught sight of a small lamp on the hutch. “Let's shed a little light on the subject,” Edna said as she pulled off the shade and unscrewed the bulb.

“I think a little seasoning would be appropriate.” She took a box of salt from the spice rack and poured a quarter cup of it into the water. Turning the switch on the socket, Edna plunged the lamp into the water. There was a blue flash that lasted for no more than a second before the circuit breaker kicked in. She stood there, taking in the ozone as her opponent slowly rose to the surface and flipped on its back. “There. Isn't that better?” Satisfied, Edna set the lamp on the counter.

She hummed a happy tune as she headed down the basement stairs. It took her a while to locate the breaker box and a little longer to find and reset the circuit breaker. It was normally her husband's domain. Where is Roger when you need him? She asked herself as she climbed the stairs. Edna froze as she reached the kitchen.

There, swimming in lazy clockwise circles as if nothing had happened, was Curly the goldfish. She sputtered at first, but very quickly Edna recovered and was scanning the kitchen for her next weapon of minute destruction. The toaster and spice rack aside, there was little else beside a knife block. She turned to the oven and opened it, but quickly abandoned the idea as, even with the top rack removed, the fish bowl wouldn't fit.

Edna was about to ransack the cupboards when another appliance caught her eye. “Come, my precious,” she chortled as she picked up the bowl and poured its contents into the blender. Temporarily shaken, Curly quickly recovered and began examining its new surroundings. Edna smiled a wicked grin as she set the device to puree. “Happy trails, fin-face,” she chirped as she pushed the Run button.

In the blink of a fish eye, the contents of the blender had become a bloody pulp. Edna let it run a little longer than necessary before turning it off. “There,” she said with no small amount of satisfaction, “let's see you fake your way out of this.” Edna's gloat was interrupted when the phone rang. She rushed to the den to take it.

It was still ringing when she picked it up, but as Edna put the phone to her ear she heard nothing. “Hello? Hello.” She clicked the receiver. “Hello!” she shouted. Edna waited a moment before hanging up. “What was that all about?” she asked, returning to the kitchen. “Some people are so ru-”

Edna froze, goose-bumps spreading like fire on her skin. Her eyes dilated, and then narrowed. Cold sweat turned into cold fury. “How dare you!” she roared.

There, in the blender, in water that had a definite pinkish cast, was Curly the goldfish, swimming happily counter-clockwise as if nothing had happened. That was the last straw. Edna went for the first thing she could find, a meat fork from the knife block.

Raising the kitchen implement, Edna charged her scaly enemy. “'From hell's heart, I stab at thee. For hate's sake, I spit my last breath-'”

“Oh, my!” Roger Kretschmer returned to a horrific scene.

It took several police detectives over three hours to reconstruct what had happened, and even then, they couldn't explain the goldfish swimming around in the blender. In a freakish accident, Edna had apparently hit a slick of water and orange juice, falling backward and hitting her head on the floor. The blow, though enough to knock her unconscious, was not fatal. In a near-impossible occurrence, however, Edna's arm swung up in a perfect arc. She stabbed herself in the throat, also normally a serious but non-fatal situation.

The freak part of the accident had happened when the tines of the fork pierced one of Edna's carotid arteries. She bled to death, the fork sticking out of her neck like a harpoon.

The pair who came from Judson and Sons Funeral Home to take Edna away offered Roger a business card. “They specialize in cleaning up after this kind of incident,” one of the men explained.

“Yeah. They are good,” the other affirmed. “We had a suicide last month. Guy took a shotgun and-” He would have continued, but his partner hushed him up.

“Thanks anyway, guys, but I'll handle this myself.” Roger looked at the mess from the door to the garage. “It's the least I can do for Edna.”

“Your funeral,” the second man replied as they maneuvered the gurney out of the kitchen.

Roger stood for a moment, surveying the chaos that lay before him. “First things first,” he sighed as he stepped into the garage and opened the trunk of his car. “Well, boys, looks like you two lucked out. I hate to have to take you back.” He raised a clear plastic bag filled with water and a pair of goldfish. “I hope I remembered the receipt.”