The car slid to a halt outside the small suburban home, with it’s rear door being fumbled open before it had even stopped moving.
A child stepped out of the car, with bright red hair, freckles and a missing front-tooth that the Tooth Fairy had given him a whole dollar for only last week. His name was Kevin.
Kevin reached back into the car and, with some difficulty, pulled out a large plastic bucket with a pet-store’s logo slapped across it. As he did, the bucket wobbled and splashed, but it’s contents remained largely unaffected.
Although that didn’t stop it’s contents from talking.
“Eep! Bucket-homesy almost faww obah!” The sea-fluffy named Neptune squeaked in fear from inside the bucket.
“Stop whining, I didn’t spill anything!” Kevin argued back, despite the numerous wet stains that had appeared all over the sidewalk. “Now c’mon! I can’t wait to show you your new tank!”
“Ooh! New tanky-homesy!” The sea-fluffy warbled, clapping it’s flat fins together in excitement as it bobbed around in it’s bucket.
“Urgh, mom, I need help!” Kevin yelled. His mother stepped out of the car, sighing wearily.
“Kevin, you said if you got a pet, you’d take care of everything. Now you can’t even get it into the house?”
“Mom, this stupid bucket’s too heavy!” He argued back. With another sigh, his mother stepped forwards and helped lift the bucket, carrying it carefully into their home.
Before long the bucket was put down again, and Neptune peeped out of it to see his new home: a rectangular tank of approximately 12 inches in length, filled with rainbow colored gravel, a cheap plastic castle and nothing else.
Neptune was so delighted to see his new home, he didn’t think about the things that were strangely missing. In the pet-store tank, they’d had a filter, and a heater, and a thermometer, and… and lots of other stuff!
But Neptune didn’t notice it. At least, not yet. He was just too happy to finally be in a home.
“Okay Kevin, I’ll get it into the tank, but that’s it.” Kevin’s mother said, wiping some sweat from her brow. She picked up the bucket, leaned it against the side of the tank, and suddenly up-ended it, dumping Neptune and the pet-store’s tank sea-water directly into the family’s tank of tap-water.
Almost instantly, Neptune began twisting and writhing.
“EEE! NU WIKE! WAWA OWIES! OWIES!!!”
“What? What’s wrong?!” Kevin yelped, more out of surprise than actual care.
“Wawa huwties! Nu wike wawas!” Neptune wailed, thrashing violently in the tank.
“It’s just water! Clean water!” Kevin said, glaring at the creature in the tank.
"Buh wawa gib Neptoon owies!" Neptune cried, fighting to stay at the surface of the tank in a desperate attempt to get back out. It was the strangest thing, the water was almost burning it’s body, prickling and stinging at his tender skin.
“It’s fine, you’ll get used to it.” Kevin’s mother said, putting the plastic lid onto the tank and walking away.
Neptune continued to cry and plead for his owners to understand him, but his words fell on deaf ears. Kevin just ignored him, and Kevin’s mother simply deflected Neptune’s words onto Kevin, who continued to ignore him.
Nobody paid Neptune any attention again until several hours later, when it was time to eat.
Kevin, while being shouted at by his mother for forgetting, removed the tank led and carelessly dumped a fistful of flakes into the water, before slamming the lid on again and walking away.
Neptune had been hungry ever since they left the pet-store, so he was happy to eat, but the flake food was… funny. It tasted weird, in a not-good kind of way. Of course, he wasn’t able to read the label on the food tub that clarified it was for goldfish only, but that wasn’t the only problem.
There was too much of it in the tank.
Neptune tried to eat it all, but he had already eaten his fill. He tried anyway, and only succeeded in giving himself a tummy-ache, and a sudden regurgitation of his half-digested flakes, which quickly vanished into the water of the tank.
Neptune wasn’t any kind of great thinker, but even he knew there was something wrong with leaving food drifting around the tank like that… it would go icky, and that would make the water icky too… and that was definitely not a good thing!
By the second week, the tank had become absolutely filthy.
Mostly because nobody was cleaning it.
Neptune cried out any time he saw Kevin passing, but Kevin was always busy with something else. He called it ‘playing’, but Neptune never saw him doing it, he always did it in other rooms or outside, leaving Neptune by himself in the tank. Despite that he continued to shout, begging for someone to help him, but only once did anyone hear.
“Hewp! Hewp Neptoon!” He cried, as he finally caught the attention of Kevin’s mother as she passed.
“What’s that?” She asked, having not been listening.
“Hewp Neptoon! Wawa icky!”
“What? What do you mean?” She asked, unable to follow his childish babbling.
“Cweanies! Pwease gib cweanies! Wawa icky! Nee’ cweanies!”
“Urgh, for fuck’s sake. Kevin! I told you to take care of this damn sea-fluffy! He says his tank needs cleaned!”
“I just cleaned it yesterday, ma!” Kevin’s voice shouted back from another room. Kevin’s mother looked at the tank, then shrugged and walked away.
“Fine.” She muttered to herself. “But if that sea-rat dies, it’ll be your fault Kevin.”
Neptune continued to simply bob in his tank, surrounded on all sides by ropey turds and green patches of algae that were rapidly growing on the glass walls of his home.
It had been three weeks since Neptune had left the pet-store.
In the time, the tank had not been cleaned once, and feeding had only occurred roughly once every four days. Neptune had grown thinner and weaker by the day, and had begun croaking instead of talking. Any and all of Neptune’s desperate cries for help were ignored by Kevin and his mother, who Neptune did not even see anymore.
The tank walls were completely opaque with grime and filth, and Neptune was trapped within them, completely unable to see anything. Hours would pass, as Neptune simply had nothing to do but weakly cry out for someone, anyone, to show him some mercy. He couldn’t even sleep, since the light was left on constantly, even at night. All he could do was wait to be fed, which happened rarely, and breathe in the disgusting, filth-swarmed freshwater that still continued to burn at his skin.
Finally, he could stand it no more.
Neptune could feel his life wasting away slowly, his limbs moved slower, his fins felt ragged, and his skin was peppered with burns and welts. He hadn’t eaten in five days, and the tank water itself was an opaque dark green.
Neptune decided it was time. Time for him to make a break for it, to seek out his own life elsewhere, and to live as a free and happy sea-fluffy!
And so, with one mighty surging leap, Neptune swam to the surface of his tiny, cramped tank and burst out of the top, knocking the plastic lid away as he rocketed out of the foul, stinking green water. Neptune landed on the carpeted floor of the family room, and croaked in glee. He’d done it! He’d made it out! He was free at last! Free to find a new home, with proper sea-water in it, and… and why couldn’t he breathe?
Neptune lay on the carpet, gasping and writhing as his ragged, decaying fins flapped wetly on the floor, his eyes bulging out of his head as he thrashed around, vainly seeking salvation. The only water he could see was his own filthy tank… which was actually looking pretty good compared to the bone-dry carpet, all things considered.
But it was out of reach. The rectangular glass tank was perched on a flimsy wooden end-table, with curving, buckling legs supporting it. It was far too high for Neptune to reach…
At least, that’s what Neptune thought, until fate intervened.
One of the bowed legs of the end-table finally gave way under the tank’s enormous weight. With a booming ‘CRACK!’, the table tipped forwards, bringing the heavy glass tank careening towards Neptune. He looked up, in his last seconds of suffocation, and saw the water cascading down towards, carried forth by the heavy panels of the glass tank, and he smiled.
At last, He thought. Water.
The tank hit Neptune’s body with a sound that was a hideous fusion of glass shattering and bones crunching. The tank’s weight practically flattened Neptune’s body upon impact, but that same impact caused the glass itself to shatter at the same time, skewering Neptune’s body with numerous jagged shards.
The filthy water washed across the floor, ruining the carpet not only with it’s own foulness, but also with the blood and bodily fluids of Neptune that it carried with it, filling the entire room with stinking, vile liquids of several different kinds in a matter of seconds.
Kevin was never allowed to own a pet again.
